by Alice Pung
When old Mr Warren wore shorts to school, you said, “Hey, Sir, nice legs! You should be on a catwalk!”
“Linh, you watch it, or one day you’ll have a harassment claim against your name,” he retorted, but then he did a mock sashay with one hand on his hip and wiggled his bum. Those teachers, they cracked us up.
Tully sat quietly and miserably in our group, occasionally smiling like a moribund old lady who wanted relatives to think she was going to be okay. When we got our end-of-year science test back, you could see that Tully had got near full marks again. “Wow, Tully, you’re the smartest person I know,” you told her.
“Piss off, Linh. I don’t want to hear your bullshit!” She got up and left.
On my last day, the teachers took us Year Nines to the Botanical Gardens for a picnic. Even Sister Clarke came along. It was one of those days where the sky was all one bright shade of blue and stretched high, as though you’re living inside a balloon, warm and giddy. The sunshine slowed our heartbeats down bit by bit as we sat on the grass in our small satellite groups, but close to one another. Even the popular girls – Alessandra, Toula and their gang – were huddled nearby. Of course we had a hierarchy, but on days like this, when we shared all our food, and when Mr Warren and four other girls were strumming soft classics like “Stand By Me” and “More Than Words” on guitars they’d lugged from the music house, I was reminded what a nice place this was. The only break in the mood was when Alessandra turned to Yvonne and said, “Hey, nice blouse, Yvonne. Is it from the eighties?”
Yvonne just shrugged, but you replied, “I heard that the 1980s are coming back into fashion, Alessandra.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean the 1980s,” Alessandra said, “I meant the 1880s.”
Before you could think of a comeback, there were five loud claps and we looked up to see Sister Clarke calling for Tully and me to stand up. Bewildered, we did. “I would like us all to congratulate these girls, your elected student representatives, for the superb job they have done this year.” People cheered. “Not only have they been tireless and enthusiastic in organising the Red Cross doorknock appeal, the Tournament of Minds team and the ‘Meet the Year Sevens’ barbecue, but they have successfully petitioned for the introduction of trousers as part of your uniform, so next year you’ll be warm during winter!”
Loud cheers erupted. Tully smiled at me wanly.
For years, we had been trying to get out of wearing ridiculous woollen skirts that kept our legs cold no matter how many pairs of tights we had on. Tully and I had argued that it was sexist and old-fashioned. The compromise we had reached with the school was that we would be allowed to wear woollen pants, but the school would also introduce blazers. Otherwise, in our all-grey woollen jumper and trousers combo, we’d look like a prison work gang.
Until then, the entire school had only had twelve black blazers of different sizes, which students borrowed whenever we had to do out-of-school presentations or debating. But every girl next year would have her own smart new jacket. With no trimmings on the sleeves or collar, and a detachable college logo on the pocket, our blazers could also double as suit jackets for job interviews. For mothers who could sew, they could be made from Butterick’s pattern no. 6578. All they had to do was buy and attach the embroidered Christ Our Saviour crest. My mother had made a mock-up of the jacket, and Tully and I had advocated for it in student–staff meetings.
Sister Clarke brought out a surprise cake. It was only a Safeway mudcake, and she had six more in plastic bags on the barbecue bench for the whole of Year Nine, but this one had white lettering on it that someone had done with an icing pen. “FAREWELL,” it said, with my name below in cursive.
“It has been a wonderful three years having you at our college,” Sister Clarke said. “You have contributed so much to the school, not only by being involved in so many activities, but also through your strong friendships with your classmates. You will be dearly missed. We wish you all the very best at your new school. Remember, you will always be welcome here at Christ Our Saviour . . .”
“Woah!” you interrupted, because you didn’t want me to sook in front of the class – that’s how good a friend you were, Linh – “this cake is awesome! Mr Warren, you’d better not stand too close, because the knife’s coming out and the first cut is the deepest!”
When the buses dropped us back at the school to collect our bags, we saw a group of St Andrew’s boys loitering near our fence.
“Ooh, Yvonne, your lover boy is here!” teased the girls.
“Shut up,” said Yvonne.
We all knew that one of the boys, Hai, had the hots for Yvonne. When we grabbed our bags and headed towards the gate, he and his mates were there to greet us, every one of them dressed in black T-shirts and jackets and jeans. “Yo, Yvonne, check this out, me and mah homies are going to sing you a song, baby gurrllll.”
“Oh my god, so embarrassing,” said Yvonne, covering her face with one hand.
All his mates made gangsta gestures, pointing towards him like he was a South-East Asian Nick Carter, and he started to belt out “Quit Playing Games (with My Heart)” – but in Maltese. As the only Viet kid in a class full of kids from Malta, he spoke Maltese better than he spoke English. When he finished serenading Yvonne, we all clapped, and then Hai dropped to one knee and asked if Yvonne would be his girlfriend.
She squealed and laughed and said, “Oh, you are too embarrassing,” and of course we egged her on until she eventually said yes, which was what she had wanted to do in the first place. Hai jumped up and squeezed Yvonne in a massive bear hug and then kissed her cheek, and all the while she was shrieking, “Eww, gross!”
I sighed inwardly. Boys, I thought. I would sure miss those boys when I went to the new school.
Suddenly, Ivy hollered, “Hey, guys, it’s her last day!” She pointed, and all eyes turned to me and I went red. The paradoxes of being a teenager: I didn’t like this attention, and yet secretly I loved it.
“Oh yeah? Where you going?” the tallest boy asked.
These cute Maltese boys – I just knew Ivy was going to explain to them that I had won a scholarship to Laurinda, like it was a huge deal – and of course it was, except not to these guys. It was the sort of thing that would make them think I was a swot, a snob who reckoned she was too good for this suburb. That thought suddenly made me feel very sad.
Luckily, you jumped in. “I’m going away,” you lied, but I didn’t mind. I never minded when you did these crazy things, Linh. “It’s my last day!”
“Oh yeah? Where’re you going to?”
“Juvenile justice, yo.”
The tall boy knew you were BS-ing, but he played along. “What for, gangsta?”
“Give her a kiss on the cheek and she’ll tell you.”
Holy Mary! Even you could not believe Ivy had blurted that out, Linh. But it was our last day of term, and you were in a reckless mood. You grinned and turned your cheek to one side.
The tall boy smiled and came closer. Everyone whooped. Then you turned the other cheek.
“Wow,” you breathed afterwards, flapping your hands as if you’d just stuck them in hot coals. “Discount day. Two for the price of one!”
As we walked home that last afternoon, you with that dopey grin stamped on your face, I thought about the summer before I had started Year Seven at Christ Our Saviour. I was a pretty shy kid, but I had read all the Baby-Sitters Club books and every edition of Smash Hits and TV Hits at the library over those holidays to train myself to be a teenager. I thought that if I knew who Johnny Depp’s latest girlfriend was, I would have things to talk about with the cool girls. It never occurred to me that what I knew wouldn’t alter the personality I had – not until I came to that first homeroom and Mrs Abrams sat me next to Melissa for roll call. All year I had nothing much to say to her, because she lived the life the magazines assumed teenagers lived: sneaking out at night to go to parties, lining up to get her CDs autographed and buying the same brand of T-shirt as Kate Moss. She didn’t have to re
ad about it.
But you, Linh, you managed to make a place for yourself at Christ Our Saviour by watching, not by showing off with try-hard knowledge of popular culture. Your jokes and pranks were good-natured, self-effacing and never pissed people off like some of the backhanded things girls like Alessandra said.
Do you remember how, before we left for the picnic that morning, we heard Melissa crying in the girls’ loos, refusing to come out? You leaned against the door and quietly told her, “Don’t worry, Melissa, at least you’re really highbrow now, not like the rest of those hussies.”
She finally emerged from her cubicle, realising you weren’t going to offer her false reassurance like everyone else, but also that it wasn’t that big a deal that her drawn-on eyebrows were half an inch higher than the two pale and hairless half-moons created by her terrible waxing mistake.
Melissa stood in front of the mirror, cleaning her face and sniffling. After a few moments, you both cackled like crazy. Then she looked at me. “Oh, man, I’m going to miss you!”
It was really nice that she said that, since you were the one she really liked. Even if it wasn’t true, at that moment it felt good.
When I arrived home, our lounge room was packed with new boxes, which meant that Uncle Sokkha had paid a visit. My mother was crouched on the floor, peeling the masking tape from the tops of the boxes. “Wah, who would wear this?” she asked, holding up the sample she was meant to replicate, a very short dark-red skirt with buttons up the front. I did not tell her that some of the girls at Christ Our Saviour would commit unholy acts for a thing like that.
“Hey, Ma, will you have any of that material left?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Can I have some?”
“What do you want it for?”
“I want to make a skirt.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“Don’t waste your time.”
“It won’t be a short one,” I promised.
“You’ve got better things to do now,” she told me.
Dad sat on our mustard-yellow sofa, which had been donated to us fourteen years earlier by the Brotherhood of St Laurence. He was looking through the navy folder that Mrs Grey had given us. “Wah!” he suddenly exclaimed. “Look here, Quyen! Look at this!”
My mother eased herself off the floor and sat next to my father. “One hundred and thirty-five dollars!” she exclaimed.
They were looking at the uniform list from Edmondsons. “And that’s only the jacket,” said my father. “Look at this skirt!”
He held up the booklet and showed us the winter uniform, a pleated tartan kilt worn by a smug girl who obviously did not care about having cold legs in winter.
“Let me see that.” My mother took the booklet from him and put it up close to her face. All the sewing had made her shortsighted. Then she said the five words I dreaded most: “I could make you that.”
“But where would you get the material?” I hoped to put her off, but knew she would try to find it in the Vietnamese fabric stores. I also knew she would never find an exact match, because the fabric was probably imported from England for $100 a metre. She would pick a polyester tartan in a close-enough pattern, and to get the double buckle belt link at the top of the kilt she would go to Spotlight and find a plastic-painted-to-look-like-metal one. She would have no idea how worlds apart her homemade skirt would be, even if her couture skills were just as good as those of the tailors of Edmondsons, if not better.
“No one will know the difference,” she said.
“Old woman,” my father sighed (though in fact he was five years older), “she is not going to have one of your peasant homemade outfits for this school. What will the teachers think of this cheapskate family? They’re already providing her with a full scholarship!”
Even though he had insulted my mother’s sewing skills and implied she was stingy, Linh, I did not say anything to contradict my father. I was on his side, because he was on mine.
TERM ONE
Dear Linh, On my first day, when I entered our homeroom, I had no idea where to sit, so I headed for the first empty seat I saw, next to a girl with very long hair braided into a plait and a Madeira-cake face flecked with freckles.
“You’re the new girl, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Yes – how did you know?”
“All your clothes are new.”
I looked down, embarrassed. Not a thread of my new uniform had been in the wash. My shirt had crease lines from being folded in the packet. Around the room, the other girls’ clothes had a lived-in, everyday look. Later, I would see how they chucked their jackets on the back seats of buses, tied their jumpers around their waists, not caring if the sleeves stretched, and hiked up the hems of their summer skirts. No one wore the blue hair ribbons – I was the only one dumb enough to have taken that part of the uniform code seriously.
The girl next to me was named Katie. “Don’t worry,” she told me, “you look great.”
I didn’t detect any sarcasm. She was being genuinely kind, and at that moment I learned two things about Katie. By telling me that she noticed my clothes were new, she was honest, but she could also tell the occasional white lie if the circumstances called for it.
After homeroom, we marched to the Performing Arts Centre for assembly. Years Seven and Eight sat level with the stage, while Years Nine and Ten sat in the raised seating areas. Looking down, I could see a moving blanket of blue and maroon. I had never seen something so ordered before in real life, something so . . . well, uniform. Even though we had a uniform at Christ Our Saviour, we got away with wearing whatever socks we wanted as long as they were white, and whatever shirt we wanted as long as it was blue. Remember how some girls came in with Esprit shirts, while others pulled their socks so high that they looked like tights, Linh?
Here, every girl in the auditorium had her hair tied back if it was below shoulder length. Here, every girl wore a blazer. Here, every girl sat still, no matter how long she had to wait. If she couldn’t sit still, she was probably told to sit on her hands, as I saw many of the Year Sevens doing. I had been to assemblies before, but this was the model of an assembly. Suddenly, I understood what it was to assemble, just as a few moments before I had truly understood uniform.
I heard the sound of bagpipes, and everyone began to stand. Then I saw a girl playing actual bagpipes march through the stained-glass double doors of the auditorium.
Following her were two girls carrying long white flags emblazoned with the Laurinda motto – one in Latin (Concordia Prorsum) and the other in English (Forward in Harmony). They had more badges and pins on their lapels than a World War Two veteran. Following them were four girls carrying red, blue, yellow and green flags. These, I presumed, were the house captains.
Finally, the staff of the college marched by, all decked out in black academic gowns. Some had sashes of green or orange, while others had tassels and other scholarly insignia. I recognised Mrs Grey by her red hood.
When everyone had taken their seats onstage, Mrs Grey stood up and looked around the auditorium. A few students were still quietly talking to each other. Mrs Grey raised her right hand in the air, as if in parody of a bored student waiting to answer a question.
Then something strange happened. Students in the middle row – Year Eights – also raised their right arms in the air. Then the Year Nines followed. Meanwhile, the teachers at each end of the aisles raised their right arms. The befuddled Year Sevens, with whom I could identify, slowly began to copy the motion. Soon, everyone on the ground floor of the auditorium had raised an arm and was quiet. That’s when I noticed that all the girls on the top level also had their right arms raised. The entire school did! I quickly shot mine up. The room was now dead silent – you could hear every suppressed cough.
Over the next few weeks I grew used to this technique, which the staff and teachers used to quieten the girls. I saw how effective it was: it required barely any effort on their part, and yo
u could see almost immediately who had caught on, and who hadn’t, and how we silently policed each other.
When all was quiet, the hands went down. The principal, Mrs Ellison, walked to the podium. A petite and pretty woman in a pale-pink silk shirt and a navy double-breasted suit with small gold buttons, she resembled a geriatric Princess Diana. She even had a string of pearls around her neck. I almost laughed – she was nothing like good old Sister Clarke with her frizzy hair and brown A-line skirts!
“It is good to see you all back, young ladies. I hope you had a refreshing break over the summer in readiness for a new school year.” She then told us what the young ladies of Laurinda could expect from the year ahead. First, the stained-glass windows of the main wing were being restored to their former glory with glass flown in from England. This term we would have seven more guest speakers than last year, including chocolatier queen Penelope Piper. The girls cheered; apparently, Penelope had come from a rival girls’ school so it was a coup to have her. Also, the girls were probably thinking, free samples, woo hoo. Then, after the applause and cheering, Mrs Ellison reminded us once more to take the academic year seriously.
A musical interlude followed. A girl named Trisha sat at the side of the stage in front of a grand piano. I hadn’t even noticed the piano until then, so big was the auditorium. She started to play.
She was possessed. Her hands seemed to drag her body left and right, up and down the keys of the piano, at one point almost toppling her out of her seat. It was as if her fingers were playing some mad game of chasey with her torso, except that every time they landed on a key, they made magical sounds that made me think of ice cubes in clear cups, floors of buildings collapsing with tiles tinkering unbroken, the first chink of daylight through castle windows in faraway countries, flying fish, volcanoes erupting with fireworks, the Lamb in his white beanie, my mother’s Singer in full swing.
When she finished, Trisha stood up and took a small bow. It was the most incredible thing I had ever seen a fifteen-year-old do. She was a genius, Linh. At Christ Our Saviour she would have been on the cover of the school magazine – they’d have made her play the organ in church every week and given her a nickname like “Magic Digits”.
