by Alice Pung
DaWei bounded in with a furry creature in his hands. ‘Look at this!’ he said.
‘Where’d you get a new toy?’ demanded Marly. Then she realised that it wasn’t new at all. It was her Duracell bunny, but he looked like a different creature. Tuyet had sewn him a smart new outfit, complete with a stripy shirt and overalls held together by two buttons. She’d removed his drum and drumsticks, and attached a small bouncy ball on a thin elastic thread between his paws.
She pretended not to be impressed and turned back to the television just as her father walked in.
‘Excuse me, Uncle, but do you have those big round batteries?’ Tuyet asked Marly’s dad sweetly.
‘What size?’ he replied. ‘Why do you need them for?’
DaWei held up the bunny.
‘Wah, who got you a new toy?’
‘It’s MyLinh’s old bunny,’ said DaWei. ‘See? My sister fixed it.’
Marly’s father took the bunny and looked at it closely. ‘This is amazing,’ he said. ‘Let’s find those batteries!’
Marly ground her teeth and concentrated on the television as her dad found two C-cell batteries from an old radio, lifted up bunny’s overall leg, and inserted them in the side. Suddenly, Duracell bunny came to life, but instead of banging on a drum he was bouncing a red rubber ball from one paw to the other.
‘Wah, this is just incredible,’ said her dad. ‘Ay, Beng, come and have a look at this!’
Uncle Beng came over. ‘Oh, she’s good with her hands,’ he said. ‘She’s always doing stuff like this.’
‘This is genius,’ exclaimed Marly’s dad. ‘An entirely new invention! If only Marly could create such wonders, instead of wrecking existing ones.’
Marly ignored them as her mother and aunty appeared, hot and sweaty, to see what all the fuss was about.
‘Look at this, Diep,’ said Marly’s dad. ‘This girl is talented. Her talent will blow you away.’
‘Wah!’ exclaimed Marly’s mum.
Then to Uncle Beng he said, ‘Brother, your daughter could be anything she wants! An engineer. An inventor. A mechanic. A designer. Anything. Look at the physics of this thing!’
Marly was so angry now she felt ill. If someone had put a bowl of chocolate ice-cream in front of her at that very moment, she didn’t think she’d have been able to eat a single spoonful. Marly knew that her father hoped that she would become an engineer one day in the future, because he used to be an engineer in Vietnam.
‘What about DaWei?’ asked Marly’s uncle, which Marly thought was a strange question to ask. ‘Do you think he shows talent, brother?’
‘Too early to say,’ said Marly’s father. ‘But there may be hope for him if he turns out anything like his sister.’
‘I wish DaWei was more like his sister,’ Marly overheard her uncle muttering to her aunty. ‘All that talent is wasted on a girl. All she needs to know how to do is boil a good pot of rice.’
Marly was waiting for her aunty to burst out laughing at this joke, but no laughter came. They were serious!
Marly looked at DaWei happily playing with the bunny and Tuyet watching silently from the doorway. Just a moment ago Tuyet’s face had been flushed with pride, but now it was flushed in a bad way. It was the same way Marly’s face heated up when she was trying not to cry. For a moment, Marly felt very sorry for her cousin.
Tuyet may have been a genius at recycling old toys, but at school Marly got to play with the latest ones. Last year, Jessica had Pink & Pretty Barbie while Kylie had Twirly Curls Barbie, so they had let Marly play with Great Shape Ken. Marly made him do cool things – climb cliffs (the large rock near the drinking taps) to rescue one of them, walk on very high and narrow ledges on skyscrapers (the school barbeque), and jump out of the sky with nothing but a Twisties packet parachute. The best thing of all was that Ken could do all these amazing tricks and the Barbies would have to say, ‘Ooh, wow, Ken, you are so amazing. Thank you for saving our lives.’
‘You know what, Marly,’ Kylie said out of the blue one day, ‘you do a great Ken voice. You don’t even have an accent. I don’t see you as chinky.’
Marly knew exactly what ‘chinky’ meant. It meant not speaking English, and taking great delight in eating Coco Pops for lunch, dry, without even caring that they were a breakfast food. It meant jabbering in Cantonese all the time so no one could understand what you were saying or if you were talking about them behind their back. It meant saving your Glad Wrap so you could blow it into a big plastic bubble for your brother to pop. It meant searching the schoolyard at lunchtime for dropped lollies.
‘I don’t even care that you’re Asian,’ added Jessica. ‘In fact, most of the time I forget that you are. You’re just like us, Marly.’
That was all Marly needed to hear. She glowed with happiness.
‘Wow, Barbies, youse look beautiful,’ Marly told them, even though she really thought they looked demented.
Despite everything at school, Tuyet and DaWei seemed to be happy. Marly could not understand how they were. When she had been picked on in Grade Two for peeing her pants, the other kids had teased her terribly at recess. For two whole weeks she’d tried not to drink anything at school so she wouldn’t need to go to the toilet. And when she’d gone home, she’d skulked around the house miserably, the scene running like a constant cassette-tape loop in her brain.
But what happened at school just didn’t seem to affect her cousins.
One evening after dinner, the whole family watched Michael Jackson on television. He was on a special show called ‘Motown 25’, celebrating twenty-five years of their music company. His brothers were talented and handsome, but Michael was something else altogether. He had a tendril of curly hair hanging down the middle of his forehead, like a grapevine. He wore a black hat and one single white sequinned glove. His jacket shimmered like a road at night beneath the moon. He sang a song about a girl named Billie Jean.
And he did something amazing. After spinning like an ice skater without skates, leaping on his toes and a few crazy high kicks, he glided backwards as if he were on a horizontal escalator.
Her whole family went ‘Wahhh’ over this nifty move. Aunty Tam looked baffled and asked, ‘But why is he wearing a lady’s jacket and only one glove?’
‘It’s not fair!’ complained DaWei after the show. ‘Why didn’t you name me Michael instead?’
‘You wanted to be Jackie,’ said Marly. And anyway, Michael was too special. Marly would never call anyone else that. She sat there, aglow with happiness over the magic of what she’d just seen.
‘You!’ Tuyet suddenly exploded. ‘You named me after that man with the purple shoes that matched his guitar!’ The reality of her name had not sunk in for Tuyet until now. ‘The teacher at the school thought I was German! “German? Gerrr-man?” she called out on the first day. “German Vo?” When I realised it was me and answered, she said, “What are you? A European car?”’
Marly couldn’t help smirking. She had no idea what a European car was, but it was pretty funny. She knew that the other kids would have done the same. She glanced at her dad, who was also smirking.
‘Come on, brother, you have to admit, that’s a little funny,’ he said to his elder brother. ‘It’s just a joke.’
‘We’re sorry we don’t get your jokes,’ said Uncle Beng angrily. ‘We are not as educated as you are, remember? We didn’t get the chance to finish high school. I had to take care of the family business.’
Tuyet started sniffing loudly, and then Aunty Tam began to get teary too. Soon enough, even DaWei was crying.
‘You see?’ retorted Uncle Beng. ‘You see what a terrible thing your daughter has done to my trusting children? She has given them black man names!’
‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ said Marly’s father. ‘Marly picked a group of popular, talented musicians. At least Jermaine’s named after the most handsome member!’
‘Don’t kid around with me!’ warned Uncle Beng, his voice getting louder.
‘But I’m not. I let Marly pick her own name from that same group! Of course, at the time I had no idea they were a group of young men . . .’
‘Enough!’ This time Uncle Beng was really shouting. ‘You see, Duong, that is why your daughter is the way she is. Impertinent. Spoilt. She can’t sit still because you let her run around all the time and jump on our bed when we’re not home! No sense of respect for her elders. Just like you.’
Marly’s father didn’t usually get angry, but Marly could see him clamping his jaw very tightly shut so that he would not say what was on his mind. She thought how strange it was that her father was acting this way around his brother, when ordinarily, if one of his friends drank a bit too much VB and started to say things that irked him, he would be able to give them a piece of his mind.
‘You watch it,’ he’d often say to his friends. ‘Or I’m going to kick you so hard that by the time you stop rolling, your clothes will be out of fashion!’
Of course, Marly’s dad meant this as a joke. He’d never kick anyone. But it seemed that you could never joke with Uncle Beng. He looked like he hadn’t smiled in thirty years.
‘We sacrificed a lot to get you and your family to Australia first,’ said Uncle Beng. ‘The least you can do is have your kid show my kids a little more respect!’
‘She doesn’t even want to know us at school!’ wailed Tuyet. ‘She ignores us and pretends that we aren’t related.’
Marly’s mum turned towards her. ‘Is this true?’
Marly couldn’t help herself. ‘They ruin everything!’ she hollered.
Suddenly, Marly’s mum dragged her up by her elbow and gave her a big smack on her bum. Marly howled even louder. The smack didn’t really hurt that much, but she needed to pretend that it did, because she knew how these things worked. If you didn’t show enough misery, you’d get more smacks. ‘Aooowwww!’ wailed Marly.
‘Apologise to your cousins now,’ demanded her mother.
‘I’m sorry Tuyet! Sorry, DaWei!’
But deep inside, Marly wasn’t really sorry. She was very angry. Her parents just didn’t understand anything about wanting to fit in and not being lumped as one of the only three Asian kids at school.
‘Family must always stick together,’ her father told her.
Marly was making Ken do the Moonwalk at school. She’d learned this was what Michael Jackson called his backwards-walking dance move. Marly liked how Great Shape Ken had flat feet, unlike the tiptoeing Barbies whose feet reminded Marly of cartoon characters. Whenever they were up to no good, Sylvester the Cat and Elmer Fudd would sneak around corners on their toes to avoid being seen. There was something untrustworthy like that about the Barbies. They were quiet and elegant, but Marly got the feeling that they would pounce on you when you least expected it.
‘Stop mucking about with Ken,’ said Kylie. ‘We need T.C. to judge which one of us looks better for the Crystal Ball.’
T.C. was what they called the old Twirly Curls Barbie.
Marly thought it was ridiculous. The two other Barbies were going to a ball in the ‘Crystal Cave’, a hollow in a large rock where it would be completely dark and probably stinky with bird poo, and they were dressed in lace outfits and high heels. They stood there, waiting for T.C. to judge their random beauty contest. Marly made T.C. just point to the nearest one. ‘Her,’ she said, ‘I pick her.’
‘Ha!’ gloated Jessica. ‘I win!’
‘That’s not fair!’ protested Kylie. Then she said to Marly, ‘You’re not even trying, are you?’
‘Yes, I am,’ said Marly.
‘Fine.’ Kylie took both dolls and hid them behind her back. ‘Now you have to guess what colour . . .’
‘I know, I know,’ sighed Marly. ‘I have to guess what colour dresses they were wearing. Yours was wearing some kind of puffy purple thing.’
‘No,’ said Jessica. ‘What colour earrings were they both wearing?’
‘I don’t know!’ Marly was sick of this game. ‘I really don’t want to play with Twirly Curls Barbie. I was happy with Ken.’
‘You see, Kylie? She’s ruining it for us!’ Marly knew that Jessica was just trying to distract Kylie from rubbing it in that she had won the beauty contest. ‘You’ve let her play with your doll that she was eyeing off all last year, and she doesn’t want to anymore.’
Kylie’s eyes glowed dangerously like matches and Marly knew she was close to ending their friendship.
‘Fine then,’ said Kylie, ‘if Marly doesn’t want her, we’ll throw her away.’ She grabbed Twirly Curls Barbie by the legs, and walked towards the nearest rubbish bin.
‘Wait! What are you doing?’ said Marly, running towards her. ‘Don’t be stupid, Kylie!’ Even though Marly didn’t particularly like Twirly Curls Barbie, she didn’t want her to end up buried among apple cores and Zooper Dooper Wrappers and half-eaten Vegemite sandwiches.
But she was too late. Kylie flung the Barbie into the bin as Jessica looked sadly on.
‘Wait! You can’t just leave her there!’ protested Marly.
‘What are you, Marly? A bin scab?’ asked Jessica.
‘Yeah, Marly, do you fish things out of bins and play with them? Like your cousins?’ They walked back to their dolls.
Marly didn’t say a word as she joined her friends. She couldn’t believe that they had chucked out a perfectly good toy. It was a crime.
‘Okay, where were we up to?’ asked Kylie. ‘Oh! I remember! Ken was going to take Dream Date Barbie out to get married in Mildura. So come on, Ken! Get in the convertible and drive over to her house!’
Marly really hated this game now, but she had no choice but to continue. In the distance she could see her cousins, walking by themselves as usual, searching the oval for dropped lollies and hidden treasure. It seemed to Marly that they were having more fun than she ever would with her friends.
What was worse, her cousins had stopped talking to her at school. They let her walk home by herself in front of them, while they laughed and told jokes in Cantonese.
At home, Tuyet and DaWei stuck closely together like they had when they’d first arrived, blocking Marly out. With such a full house, it was strange that Marly felt even lonelier than she ever had before.
At home, Marly’s mum and aunty were picking the ends off bean sprouts and Tuyet was roasting peanuts in a frying pan.
‘Not fair,’ complained Marly, ‘you never let me do that.’
‘Come here and you can help wash the spinach,’ coaxed her aunty.
‘But that’s no fun.’ It was no fun being all good and helpful because you got stuck with all the boring jobs, thought Marly, unlike Tuyet. The adults seemed to prefer her, she thought sullenly. She ignored the fact that Tuyet had spent months doing the boring jobs and had only just been allowed to start cooking on the stove.
‘Look,’ Tuyet said to Marly after dinner, when they were sitting on the sofa watching television. She held out a familiar object in front of Marly’s face.
It was Twirly Curls Barbie. Tuyet had sewed a beautiful ballgown for her out of a piece of pink satin she must have found in the school Art Room scraps pile. She’d carefully peeled off all the gold stars she’d received on her worksheets and stuck them on the dress. Where the doll’s hair had once been tangled into five different plaits, it was now wavy and soft from shampoo and conditioning. And out of the gold foil that looked like it was from the lid of a Nutella jar, Tuyet had made a crown.
T.C. looked like a new doll now, and even though she’d never admit it, Marly was pleased that Tuyet had fished her out of the bin and given her a new life. She knew Tuyet would take care of Twirly Curls Barbie much better than Kylie. Marly didn’t ask her cousin where she got her new toy from. She just said, casually, ‘Nice doll. What’s her name?’
‘Primrose.’
‘Primrose? Where on earth did you come up with a name like that?’ exclaimed Marly.
‘Do you want to play with her?’ Tuyet offered generously
Marly shudder
ed. She didn’t ever want to see T.C. again. ‘No thanks.’
Marly decided she had to get Kylie and Jessica to do something else at lunchtimes other than play Barbies or she would go crazy. She suggested jumping rope, playing elastics, looking for insects to keep in jars, even pouring bottles of water into the sandpit to make quicksand for the My Little Ponies. But it was no use – Kylie and Jessica stuck to the Barbies, even when Kane walked past them all one day and said, ‘Hey, aren’t you a little too old for dolls?’
They used the Barbies to say things to each other that they wouldn’t dare say in real life. And they used Marly to come between them when things started getting nasty, like when Kylie’s Dream Date Barbie said to Jessica’s Pink Barbie, ‘How come you’re wearing your pyjamas out?’ Or when Pink Barbie told Dream Date that her face was ugly.
When this happened, Marly would quickly distract them with Ken. Ken would make a bad joke, or trapeze through the air to save the distressed damsel and karate-kick the other Barbie in the face.
‘What a horrible thing to do!’ they would say to Marly, distracted, and everything would be forgotten.
One day, as Marly was trying to get Dream Date out of trouble – she had fallen down a deep ravine and could not get up and would not take off her clumsy long wraparound skirt to use as a lasso – Marly saw Tuyet approaching.
Oh no, thought Marly, here comes real trouble.
‘Can I play?’ asked Tuyet.
‘Sorry, Jermajesty,’ said Kylie, ‘but you need a Barbie.’
‘I got a Barbie.’ Tuyet took Primrose from her Cathay Pacific bag. ‘I also got Barbie clothes.’ She pulled out a white tulle wedding dress, a peasant blouse, an off-the-shoulder T-shirt, and some tiny shorts.
‘Woah, that’s really cool,’ said Jessica. ‘I’ve never seen a doll with so many clothes before. Did they all come in the same box?’
‘What kind of Barbie is she?’ asked Kylie suspiciously.
