“The keyword there is ‘study’,” Mr Dejanovic said. “Which is something my daughter’s never tried.”
That, I had to respond to. I looked over towards Bree, trying to include her in this conversation. “Actually, my friends and I have been helping Bree with her subjects recently, and she’s doing much better. I think you’ll be really impressed.”
He swallowed another mouthful of bisque, half-choking on it as he chuckled. “Not hard to do better than ‘fail’, is it?” He chuckled a bit more. “It would be better if she’d make some money instead of wasting ours on that place. I don’t know what she thinks an HSC is going to do for her, anyway. It’s not like she could go to university, is it?” He put his spoon down and gestured at his wife. “Vera can probably find her some work in the office right now. That would be good for her: it would get her head out of the clouds. She won’t have to get everyone to buy things for her, then. She can work hard and buy them for herself for once.”
I wasn’t sure which part of that had stung Bree more, but I watched her lips part like she’d just been punched in the stomach. I touched her fingers under the table, but it was too late. She stood up, strain audible in her voice. “I-I’m going to go and get the main course ready,” she said as evenly as she could, and marched out.
I wanted to go after her—I should have—but Mr Dejanovic was already talking to me as he finished his bisque and wiped his hands on one of the beautiful thick napkins. “Okay, boy,” he said to me in a no-nonsense tone. “While Briana’s gone, I need to be straight with you.”
All the blood drained immediately from my face. What he had been saying so far wasn't the bluntest he could be? I put my spoon down and nodded mutely.
His moustache made him look even sterner and more threatening. “I don’t know why Briana thinks it’s important for us to sit down to dinner with you, but if it’s to butter us up so you can marry her right now, forget about it. My niece married and got pregnant at 19. They were separated a year later, and now she just sits at my sister’s home smoking drugs and listening to rock music. My sister has to take care of the baby. Me and Vera do not have time to take care of a baby, so you can forget about it if that’s why you’re here.”
I stared at him, jaw open. It took me a few seconds to come to my senses. “No,” I said. “No, that’s not why I’m here. I’m definitely not interested in marriage yet, either.”
He jabbed a finger at me. “And do not get her pregnant either, do you hear me? If she gets pregnant, you’ll have me to answer to.”
Oh, god... “There’s absolutely no chance of that, don’t worry.”
He grunted, satisfied he'd made his point, and then leant over and emptied the rest of the wine evenly into all our glasses.
You should tell him why you can't get Bree pregnant, I thought, feeling panic build at the thought. Tell him. Tell him now.
I watched him sit low in his chair, with his brow low on his face. Honestly, he was probably one of the least open and welcoming men I’d ever met. His wife was tense and quiet, but at least she didn’t look so angry. I hadn’t seen or heard enough of her to know if she agreed with everything her husband said, but at least I didn’t feel like she was going to bite my head off.
How the hell was I supposed to tell these two people I was female? Maybe I should just leave it.
No, Min, don’t you chicken out of this, I told myself, grimacing. Before I could talk myself out of it, I took a deep breath.
I could barely get the words of my mouth. “There is something that I wanted to discuss with you, though.”
They both looked up at me.
I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. “It’s about what I am,” I began, and then stumbled. “You see—” How did Bree put it? Something about doctors making a mistake. I opened my mouth to say that, but as I imagined the words, I realised it sounded too simplistic and patronising, but I couldn't think of how else to put it. My brain was completely empty. I was about to try and explain it another way when Mr Dejanovic cut me off. He was sick of watching me flounder.
“—You mean because you’re Asian?” he asked directly. “You can just say it, you don’t have to beat around the bush.”
Fuck, I thought, and imagined saying ‘No’, but didn’t. Instead, I just sank back into my chair. Fuck…
He took my silence as a ‘yes’. He glanced at his wife. “Well,” he said. “It’s not what we expected from Briana but we’re not racists. If she wants an Asian instead of a good Serbian boy, so be it.”
I grimaced. I wasn’t sure Mr Dejanovic knew the meaning of the word ‘racist’, but I certainly wasn’t going to take this opportunity to correct him. I just sunk back into my chair and spent a minute or so quietly beating myself up over not having the guts to actually tell them. No one really said anything to me either; it seemed like Bree’s parents were just as disinclined to have polite conversation as I was. They both looked so exhausted, I think they probably didn’t have the energy. The silence was very heavy, though, and Mr Dejanovic was getting very impatient. He kept checking his watch and looking towards the door.
Bree broke the silence when she returned with an alfoil-covered casserole dish. Her smile was back; that was a pleasant change. She set the casserole dish on the table and stood back, getting ready to give a presentation. It looked a bit rehearsed. “Before I show you what I made, I want to tell you a little bit about what it means and why I chose it, and why some of the ingredients are included. I think it’s a really beautiful representation of—”
Mr Dejanovic groaned. “—I don’t have time for all this, Briana,” he said gruffly, and reached over to take the casserole dish. “It’s food, let’s eat it. I only have an hour to myself before I need to go to bed, and then get up to go to work again in the morning.”
He put it in front of himself on the table, and—even though I could see Bree was desperate to do a proper big reveal of her beautiful dish—he just tore back the alfoil and held his hand out to me. “Plate.” Mutely, I passed my plate across to him. Then, he took the serving tongs and just drove them right into Bree’s masterpiece.
I hadn’t seen it properly until that point. It was bright and multi-coloured, filled with various East Asian veggies and covered in sesame seeds. On top of them, beautifully arranged all throughout it, were those meticulously sculpted pieces of carrots she’d been practising all week. They were in the shape of roses, lilies, sunflowers—every flower you could imagine. Different shapes, different textures, they were all so beautiful and so different. She’d done it: they were perfect. The whole dish looked perfect, all her hard work had paid off.
Mr Dejanovic didn’t even notice. As if he were serving cheap canteen food, he just dug the tongs right into the centre and gutted the dish, roughly heaping noodles and vegetables on my plate, handing it back to me. After he’d served us all, he looked down at what was in front of him. “Are these edible?” he asked Bree about the carrot flowers. She nodded—what else could she do?—and he plucked a flawless little rose from on top of the dish and put it in his mouth without even looking at it, crunching it. Then, he picked up his fork and he and Mrs Dejanovic started eating.
Jaw open, Bree watched as her beautiful masterpiece and her lovely carrot flowers were unceremoniously destroyed. No one complimented it as they ate. No one made satisfied noises or nodded indulgently as they put spoonfuls into their mouths. They just ate mechanically, transferring the food from their plates into their stomachs.
Bree looked like she was about to cry. I think the shock was the only reason she didn’t.
It was awful. Even worse: halfway through it, Mr Dejanovic grunted, searching around in the noodles with his fork. “Where’s the meat?” he asked flatly.
“It’s vegetarian,” Bree answered. There was no emotion in her voice.
He scoffed. He said something that sounded like, “Of course it is,” in Serbian. He didn’t look impressed.
I’d only just began to look apprehensively down at t
he carnage of noodles he’d put on my plate when there was the jingle of keys outside the door, and the sound of someone fitting one into the lock.
Bree looked up suddenly, and then quickly across at the old clock on the wall. It was 9pm.
“Shit!” she said openly, and then pushed her chair back as she stood up, rushing down the hallway as the door opened. Mrs Dejanovic called something after her, but Bree didn't reply. She and her husband glanced at each other, their faces hardening.
I heard Andrej’s voice in the hallway. “What do you want?” My hackles immediately rose. I hated the way he spoke to her.
“I just cooked something,” that was Bree. “If you want it, I’ll bring it upstairs to you.”
He paused. “Yeah, I’m sure it won't be full of rat poison at all,” he said sceptically. “Then again, your cooking is so shit it might kill me anyway even if you haven't filled it with poison. No thanks.”
“Fine, starve then, no one will care,” Bree said, and I heard footsteps back down the hallway.
“You’re being weird,” Andrej accused her, and the footsteps stopped. “Hang on, what’s—”
“Nothing!” There were sounds of a scuffle. “No! Fuck off, Andrej! Just go up to your room and leave us alone!”
He obviously overpowered her, because a second later he was laughing and saying, “What are you hiding in...” He appeared in the doorway to the dining room and saw us all. “…here.” The triumphant grin fell off his face.
Mrs Dejanovic said something quietly in Serbian which sounded like ‘just leave it’ or ‘don’t make a scene’.
He ignored her, and looked across the elaborately set dinner table and all our food. “What the fuck is this?”
Bree was trying to push him out. It was pointless, because he was much bigger than she was. “None of your business! Leave us alone!"
He actually looked really hurt; not that I felt at all sorry for him. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said, shaking his head at his mum and dad. “You guys just decided you’d have a whole family dinner like old times without me? Not even without me, but without even telling me, and with her?” He was referring to me. I felt that pronoun like a slap in the face, but I couldn’t catch my breath from the shock of it because he took another swing. “She told the cops to press charges against your son—you remember me? Your son?—and yet she’s the one who’s invited to dinner?” He was looking directly at me.
And so were Mr and Mrs Dejanovic.
NINETEEN
Mr Dejanovic’s heavy brow was low over his eyes, and Mrs Dejanovic had a settling hand on his arm, as if she was worried he might leap out of his chair at any second. Both of them looked like they’d aged about ten years in the space of a minute.
Well, now they know, I thought, there's nothing more I can do. I braced for their reaction.
It didn’t come. Something was wrong; their eyes weren’t glancing down me. When people found out about me, their eyes always travelled down my body, looking for evidence. The Dejanovics weren’t appraising me like that. They were just staring. And it didn’t last for longer than a couple of seconds before it was over.
Mr Dejanovic seemed a bit confused about why we were all looking at me, and then turned sharply back at Andrej. “Let me get this straight,” he said, “you stole her boyfriend’s computer and punched him out, and you’re surprised that Briana wants the police to press charges against you? You’re surprised she doesn’t invite you to a dinner? What’s in your head, boy? Stop carrying on like a two-year-old and go upstairs, I can’t be bothered with your nonsense now.” He looked across at me. “Sorry,” he said neutrally, and then very pointedly went back to eating.
Wait... Wait a second, he thought that by ‘she’, Andrej meant Bree? Really...? Oh my god, I was about to breathe an enormous, heaving sigh of relief when Andrej swung his head around to me again and the breath caught in my throat. He wasn't done.
“’Him’,” he repeated, his lip curling on the word as he said to his dad, “You’re not serious, are you? As if Bree could find a real man that would voluntarily spend more than 15 minutes alone with her.”
If I hadn't been so petrified Andrej was going to succeed in outing me, I would have had a go at him over that. Bree started to do it herself, but Mr Dejanovic talked over her and cut her off. “You want to insult him now, boy? Just because he doesn’t punch you back, that makes him ‘not a real man’? That doesn’t make him ‘not a real man’, that makes him an adult. Only little boys try to solve problems with their fists.” When Andrej went to say something else, thankfully Mr Dejanovic cut him off with, “No! Go on, go upstairs! Now!”
Before Andrej could leave, Mrs Dejanovic put her hand on her husband’s arm again and said something softly in Serbian. When he shook his head and made a gruff noise, she switched to English. “But there’s plenty of food, Dragi,” she said. “We can just get another chair for him.”
“What?” Bree piped up, echoing my thoughts exactly. “You’re not going to let him stay and eat the food I cooked after he was really mean to me, are you?”
Her mum didn’t look impressed. “Maybe Andrej would be nicer to you if you were nicer to him, Briana.”
Andrej smirked at Bree. “Yeah, Briana, it wasn’t very nice of you to invite everyone to dinner except me and then—”
—there was a loud thump as Mr Dejanovic slammed his knife and fork flat against the table. We all jumped and the cutlery rattled as he twisted to face Andrej and Bree properly. “That’s enough!” he bellowed. He sat straight up for a second, glaring at them while they both gaped wide-eyed at him. “You will not argue like this in front of a guest. Andrej goes up to his room, that’s final.” When Andrej didn’t move, Mr Dejanovic feinted forward as if he was going to jump up out of his chair and chase him upstairs. “Go!”
Andrej gave me and Bree one last pointed look—just in case I was under any sort of misapprehension that the trouble between us was over—and then grudgingly followed his father’s orders and left.
Mrs Dejanovic did not look happy. As soon as Andrej had gone, she took her husband’s arm firmly and had a go at him in Serbian. It sounded really rude, and like something I shouldn't be here to witness. Uncomfortable, I sunk down into my seat and glanced at the door. I might have tried to leave, but there was no way in hell I was leaving Bree in here by herself. Mr Dejanovic noticed where I was looking anyway. He turned around and snapped something back at his wife that sounded like ‘stop it’ or even ‘behave yourself’. It made me even more uncomfortable.
Bree glanced over apologetically at me; she looked terrified. I wished she was close enough for me to touch her.
Mrs Dejanovic didn’t pay any sort of attention to her husband's request to be quiet, making it worse by switching to English as she spoke to him. “So you are the only one who’s allowed to speak?”
Mr Dejanovic threw his hands up in the air. “Oh, you want to start now, Vera? You want to argue in front of him?” He gestured towards me. I sunk further into my chair.
Mrs Dejanovic had narrowed her eyes at her husband, defiantly standing and walking over to the door. When she got there, she jabbed her finger at him and said something very harsh that ended in, “You say Andrej acts like everything belongs to him? Like everyone should do what he wants? Well, I wonder which of us he got that from?” She put her hands on her hips. “He is trying, Dragi, he is trying, and you are only punishing him!” With that, she turned on her heels and walked slowly and painfully up the stairs, calling, “Andrej?” as she left.
Bree watched her go, mouth open and hand half-outstretched like was about to beg her to stay, but then as her mum disappeared up the stairs, Bree wilted like a flower. She surveyed her half-eaten dinner, looking bitterly disappointed.
Apparently, that expression made her fair game for her very angry father. Mr Dejanovic rose out of his chair as well. “There, you see what you’ve done?” he asked her, flinging an arm towards the stairs. “You see? I knew I never should
have agreed to this stupid dinner in the first place. There is a reason we don’t ever have guests here, Briana. You understand that, yes? I don’t say no for fun! I say it so people like him,” he gestured at me, “don’t have to sit through this!”
“I’m sorry…” she murmured. “I just thought it would be nice.”
“’Sorry, sorry’,” he repeated, “everyone in this house thinks they can do whatever they like and say sorry! Sorry doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t change anything. You think I can say sorry to the bank? ‘Sorry, I didn’t make that payment?’ No!” He glared at her for a moment, making sure she was listening properly. “It’s too late for sorry. My blood pressure is probably up again—you will be the death of me, Briana, I swear it—your mother will be angry all week, and your brother? If he ends up back at the horses, we’ll know why he did it, won’t we? Whose fault will that be?”
Unable to snap back at him, Bree just stood there and weathered his criticism, her lips pressed in a tight line.
Well, it won't be her fault if those things happen, I thought fiercely. How could he possibly be blaming Bree for any of this? She'd done nothing except try to do something nice, and now she was the one at fault? I wanted to say something, I wanted to speak up in her defence, and if it had been anyone other than her father saying those things, I definitely would have. But I thought back to my mother; I'd hate it if anyone else got dragged into her mire. It would have made things far worse for me if my friends spoke up, so I kept my mouth shut as he kept going. I didn’t want to make it worse for Bree.
“If you truly spent all that time on this,” he scooped up a fork full of noodles and roughly slapped it back on his plate with a distasteful expression, “and you truly believe that this was a good use of your time, then you need to get out of fairyland and back to reality. You’re an adult now, not a little girl anymore, and things have to change.” He released a long breath. “You can’t come in and out of this house anymore when it suits you. Either you stay and you start paying board, or you leave for good. We work hard, we have bills to pay, and you make a mockery of that when you come and go as you please, having stupid dinner parties and flitting around with your head in the clouds.”
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