I can’t stop thinking about Michael. He’s like handprints in wet cement. One moment there’s nothing; the next moment, a lasting imprint. He’s stamped his way into my mind and, dare I even admit it to myself, my heart. I’ve seen girls fall for a guy before. The guy becomes their “complete me”; their other half. But I’ve never wanted a guy who would make me feel like a fraction. I just want a guy who can talk the small stuff and the big stuff. Who can make me laugh. Who can make my body tingle and my day feel like it’s playing to a good soundtrack.
Somebody, it turns out, like Michael.
Mum’s cooking dinner, talking a million miles an hour on the phone with Rojin and then, later, with Emily. She invites them for lunch at our place.
When she hangs up she turns to face me. She’s glowing but it’s more than the baby.
“Emily and I went for a walk today,” she tells me as we prepare for dinner.
“That’s great, Mum.”
“We see each other at the gym most mornings.” Mum turns off the tap, cracks her neck to the side, and arches her back. “It’s a good thing I’m doing yoga. This baby is killing my back.”
I laugh. “I can’t believe you’re doing yoga. Next thing you’ll be drinking kale protein shakes.”
“Kale? What on earth is that?”
“Hopefully something that never enters this apartment.”
She waves vaguely at me. “You’re talking in riddles.” She rubs her lower back.
“Does it feel different this time?”
“Oh yes. I was a skinny teenager when I had you. At nine months I looked like I’d eaten a bit too much dinner, that’s all. When I went for checkups my sister would come with me and they would mistake her for the pregnant one.”
“Were you skinny or was she fat?”
“Both,” she says with a fond smile.
There’s silence. Then she gives a forlorn sort of sigh. “God have mercy on her soul.”
My aunt wasn’t able to get out. One more person in our family buried in Afghanistan’s soil. My memories of her are scratchy. I remember sitting in her lap as she peeled the white off my orange. I remember how her breasts would suffocate me whenever she embraced me. I remember her holding me tight throughout the night Dad died because Mum had collapsed, her eyes blank holes that had stared at me without recognition. My throat tightens and I force myself to banish the memories from my mind.
“Here, pass me the gloves,” I order her, my voice a slight tremble. “I’ll finish up here. You rest.”
“Really?” But she’s already peeled off the gloves and hands them to me. She grins at me and falls onto the couch, stretching her legs out and looking up at the ceiling. She looks so beautiful it makes me ache.
“Emily is in a bad way,” she says. “She’s depressed about her weight, about looking after the twins alone all day. Her parents live in Queensland, her in-laws are in England, and her husband works long hours. I offered to help her with the twins during the day.”
“That’s nice. It’ll get harder once you get bigger though.”
“She cried.”
“Why?”
“Looking after a baby alone is hard enough. Imagine doing it alone with twins! Her husband’s not very supportive either. He comes home from work and wants to rest.”
I stack the plates and carry them over to the table. “That’s not fair.”
“Do you know what’s funny, Mina? She feels isolated.”
“There you go,” I say, smiling. “You have your own project now.”
“I wouldn’t call it a project,” Mum says as she sits up, inspecting her nails. A smile spreads slowly up to her eyes. “But, well, it’s nice to feel needed.”
For the next two weeks at school Michael and I fall into a rhythm of hanging out during our free study period, when we’re alone and can talk like the music geeks that we are without boring other people to death.
I wake up for school every day and feel a surge of energy and excitement at the thought of seeing him. When our eyes meet, or he grins at me across the classroom, I feel my skin tingle.
Paula, Jane, Leica, and I are sitting in the café when Terrence and Fred walk in. Michael isn’t with them because he’s got an extra art class today.
Leica’s having a bit of a moment because she didn’t get the grade she was expecting on a math quiz and we’re trying to calm her down. We’re failing miserably though because the three of us are also major stress heads about our work and have had moments like this ourselves. Hence our attempts to make her see reason don’t exactly ring true when Leica’s witnessed our own individual I-can’t-do-this-anymore meltdowns.
“It’s not the end of the world,” Jane says meekly, rubbing Leica’s back.
“I told you that when you got your grade on that Studies of Religion assignment and it made you cry harder!” Leica says.
Jane doesn’t bother defending herself.
“And it is the end of the world,” Leica says dramatically. “If I can’t do well on a mid-semester quiz, how am I going to do well on the final exams? I might as well give up on getting into medicine and focus on a hairdressing career.”
We all try to say something to make her feel better but Leica’s determined to beat herself up.
“What’s wrong with you?” Terrence and Fred are standing over us at the end of the table. Terrence is looking at Leica like she’s an interesting science experiment. “Have you been crying?” he asks tactlessly.
“No!” she says, and sniffs.
“You know it’s better to blow the boogies out than sniff them back up,” he says authoritatively. “Here’s a napkin.” He throws one across to her and then, because there are no free tables left in the café, the two of them sit down, just like that.
“Who invited you?” Paula asks.
“No free tables,” Fred explains.
“Free country,” Terrence adds, and they start to eat.
They’ve ordered the same amount of food we’d eat in three days. There’s a bit of grunting and loud chewing and smacking of lips. And Fred drinks with food in his mouth, which makes me want to gag. They clearly have no interest in defying teenage male stereotypes. It’s all-out Neanderthal behavior. And it’s exactly what Leica needs to put her quiz grade into perspective.
“So who made you cry?” Fred asks, his mouth full.
“Nobody made me cry,” Leica says defensively. “I just got a bad grade on the math quiz.”
“I got thirty-eight out of forty,” Terrence says.
We all glower at him.
“Mr. Sensitive,” I say.
“What?” He shakes his head. “Can’t a guy outperform you girls in a subject without you going all feminist on us? If it makes you feel better, I failed that English essay.”
“Yeah, but you deserved it,” Fred says, laughing.
“I almost got away with it,” Terrence chuckles.
“With what?” Jane asks.
“I couldn’t reach the word count so I wrote the word and one hundred times in white font so you can’t see it on the screen but it comes up in the word count.”
We roll our eyes at him, although I’m secretly impressed by his ingenuity.
He grins. “Oh well, she gave me a fail and a warning, big deal. They’re not going to raise the roof over it. With our fees? Our backs are covered.”
“You poor thing,” Jane coos, batting her eyelashes at Terrence. It has little effect.
“I like her,” Fred says. “She gave me a B.”
“On an essay about gender representations in Emma?” Paula is just as incredulous as the rest of us.
He shrugs. “Yeah. I spun some stuff.”
Terrence grins at Fred, nudging him playfully in the side. “That’s Fred’s secret talent. Don’t be fooled. He’s a whiz in English. But he sucks at math even though he’s Asian. Figure that one out.”
Paula and I groan loudly.
Tonight Mina and I are messaging each other on Snapchat as we do our homework. She
tells me she’s considering journalism, and I tell her she’d be the perfect news anchor: argumentative and unrelenting. Then, with a smile, I send her another message. And not just SBS material either. She sends me a funny photo, eyebrows raised, mouth gaping open in shock.
Mum calls me a short while later. She’s forgotten a bunch of important paperwork at home and asks me to drop it off to the local veterans’ club, where Aussie Values is having a meeting.
Reluctantly, I drag Nathan away from the iPad and head to the veterans’ club. I walk into the room and to my surprise I see that the numbers have almost doubled. Nathan points out Mum and Dad, who are at the front of the room addressing the audience.
Dad’s updating everybody about the Jordan Springs campaign and some of the alliances that are being built with grassroots groups in the area who also oppose the opening of the school. There’s furious nodding of heads, a couple of small cheers from the audience as he speaks.
Mum notices me and gives me a small wave. I gesture that I’m leaving the folder on the table next to me, and she nods and gives me a thumbs-up. Nathan and I turn to walk out, but Andrew’s suddenly before us, a big smile on his face.
“Michael! Nathan! Where’ve you been? We’ve missed you. Young blood, mate. We need more young blood spreading the message.” He grins at me.
“Yeah, um, I’ve been busy with schoolwork.”
“Oh sure, right. Eleventh grade’s a tough year. Home stretch now.”
He keeps me standing there listening to his small talk, bragging about all the work he’s putting into the campaign, the hits he’s getting on his blog. His latest piece has been picked up and shared by some famous activists in France and the US. And then I hear my mum speaking on the microphone. “There’s no jobs for them, so they hang around all day and are dependent on welfare.” Her voice isn’t shrill and hysterical like some of the other members. There’s a pleasant and easygoing calmness in her tone. “Why, just the other day my son Michael, who was on his school break, saw a group of African men just hanging around, midweek, in the street, using the traffic cones as seats, if you can imagine that.” A few people in the audience laugh. Andrew lets out a loud guffaw. My mouth is suddenly unbearably dry, like a cracked riverbed after a long drought.
Mum’s relaxed in front of the audience, slowly pacing to the right and left, weaving the microphone cord around her hand. “The problem is that our economy isn’t producing enough jobs for Aussie citizens,” she continues, “let alone all these refugees who come in and obviously can’t find work. We end up having to finance their welfare. The government must be held accountable for this mess.”
A heat begins to build in my chest, growing, uncontainable. I feel dirty, as though I’ve stripped those men of their dignity, taken something intimate between them and caused it to be the subject of public ridicule.
I can’t bear to stay there a second longer. I tell Nathan we’re going and walk out, ignoring Andrew, who calls out to me.
As I drive home it hits me so hard that I have to stop on the side of the road and focus on my breathing, on not breaking down in front of Nathan, who’s buying my line about listening for something in the engine.
I feel as though a chasm has opened between my parents and me and that things between us can never be the same again.
To tell them how I feel means attacking the very core of who they are, what gives them meaning and purpose in their lives. I feel stuck, as if the only choice in front of me is keeping silent or breaking their hearts.
I pick Mina up from the local library. We listen to music in the car, not embarrassed to sing along quietly to ourselves. Mina has no idea where I’m taking her. I tell her I’ve organized a day for us to just hang out.
We haven’t so much as held hands, and we haven’t spoken about what’s going on between us. I think we’re too scared to give “us” a name. We’ve been hanging out together at school, mainly during our free study period. Nobody has guessed anything yet, although obviously Paula knows. We call or message each other in the evenings and sometimes study together over the phone.
“So what are we doing?” Mina asks, looking out the window as we drive. “Where are we going?”
“I’ll tell you when we get there. What time are they picking you up from the library?”
“Six. Going straight to the restaurant from there.”
My phone beeps. I check the message. It’s Mum, and I quickly send a reply.
“She wants me to pick up some food from that Middle Eastern restaurant in the Village on my way home … they’ve got a meeting tonight.”
“So they’ll eat Middle Eastern cuisine while they talk about keeping Middle Easterners out?”
“Pretty much.”
“Wow. I’m speechless.”
“Miracle.”
Mina hits me playfully on the arm and I feel electricity pass between us.
“I’ve got to hand it to them,” she says, “it’s impressive, maintaining that kind of hypocrisy. No offense.”
“It’s okay. You have the right to be mad at them. Anyway, change the topic. Today’s not about them. It’s about us.”
“Us?” She grins.
“Yeah.” I grin back. “And pizza.”
I pull up to the curb in front of my favorite pizza shop.
“Vegetarian and seafood?” I ask her.
“Double supreme with extra ham, thanks.”
I almost fall for it and she laughs. She waits in the car as I run out and grab the order.
“So, what’s the plan?” she whines. “Come on, tell me.”
“Nope.”
It doesn’t take long for us to arrive at the beach. I know that the point I’m taking us to won’t be busy. It’s winter, always the best time to visit the beach in my opinion.
I park the Jeep, the rear facing the beach. I open the trunk. I tell Mina to wait outside in the front and not sneak a peek.
I set up the cushions in the back and take out the portable DVD player.
“Okay, you can come round now,” I call out to her.
She walks slowly toward the rear of the car, eyeing me suspiciously. “What’s going on?”
“We’ve got a view of the sea while we eat pizza for lunch and watch The Great Gatsby. And I’ve managed to hook up the sound to the car stereo so the background soundtrack will blow your mind.”
A smile spreads slowly up to her eyes and she grins broadly.
“Not bad, Michael Blainey. Not bad at all.”
After the movie we’re sitting on a bench at the lookout. Mina’s sitting close to me, my arm around her shoulders. Her hair smells like shampoo, her breath like the raspberry lollipops we’ve just eaten. I have my iPod on my lap, the volume on max.
“What was it like, Mina?” I ask her, treading carefully. “Coming out here on the boat?”
She doesn’t answer straightaway, just looks out at the sea.
“Every moment I was awake I thought we were going to die,” she says quietly. “I couldn’t swim. It was just ocean and there we were in a boat made of wood, trusting people who had taken our money on a promise they’d get us here safely. We all knew they couldn’t make any promises, not on a boat like that, not with people who’d believe anything because the alternative was too awful.”
I feel unworthy of responding. I just let her talk. Eventually, a comfortable silence settles between us as we each get lost in our own thoughts.
“So how old is your brother?” Mina asks me. “I saw him on the show. He looks like you.”
“Lucky guy.”
She pokes her tongue out at me.
“Nathan’s ten.”
“Hasan would have been ten this year.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” I heave a sigh. “What’s a person even supposed to say? It’s too awful.”
“I can’t remember his face.” She says it matter-of-factly, but her expression reveals the agony behind the words. She draws her knees up against her chest on the bench and wraps her arms around them. r />
“We don’t have any photos. There was no death certificate. We were in this weird waiting room, trying to get from our homeland to a safe place, and it’s like life becomes nothing there. Death literally snatched people away and nobody gave a shit. I feel like … like if I don’t remember his face then there’s nothing left to prove he existed.”
“But you and your mum know he existed.”
“I can’t explain. It’s more than that. It’s like all these nameless, faceless people getting killed all around the world every day and nobody gives a shit because they’re not Aussie or American or French, you know what I mean? It’s like dying and getting killed is just something people like us do. It doesn’t shock anybody. If we live, then people are surprised.” She lets out a short laugh. “If I can at least remember Hasan’s face then I bring him out of that fog. He becomes real and he matters.” She shrugs and then tilts her head to face me.
“What’s Nathan like?” she asks, smiling at me.
“He’s a great kid. Crazy about planes and gaming. A straight shooter. Remembers everything and has zero problem reminding you of a time you screwed up even if it was two years ago. I worry about him. A lot.”
“Why?”
“Because I won’t always be around to protect him. When he was younger we’d be at the park and I’d see the way some kids had this sixth sense for picking up his vulnerability. And he had no idea they were after him. They’d be asking him if he’s a retard, stuff like that, and he’d have this goofy, innocent grin on his face. I’d tell off the kids. Sometimes their parents too.” I laugh.
“My mum’s having a baby,” she says. “I can’t wait to be a big sister again. But it’s terrifying too. The job of protecting somebody.”
“I went to the Auburn mosque,” I suddenly find myself saying. “Hung out in Auburn for a bit.”
She puts her feet back down on the ground, gives me a searching look, and then grins. “You stalked my hood?”
I laugh again. “Yeah.”
“Should I be worried? Creepy or endearing?”
“Let’s leave it at endearingly creepy.”