New Boy (5 page)

That night I can't sleep. The faint glow of the hands of the travel alarm clock on my floor tell me it's about ten o'clock. One Mile Creek is quiet at night. Somewhere in the distance, I can hear a car.

After an hour of lying there, I get up and open the curtains. My window is just glass, no bars. Probably not even thick glass. The fence outside is designed to look nice in photos, not to work like a fence. There are trees on either side of it. Possums scramble through them sometimes, and every time they do it freaks me out. Every time, my first thought is to wonder where the guard is. But that was Bergvliet, not One Mile Creek. No guards here. I can't feel safe here at all.

There's a streetlight just outside our house, and our car is a dark shape on the pale stamped concrete driveway. There are no gates. There's nothing between the car and the street.

It could be stolen by anyone. Anyone might be on their way to steal it or break into the house.

The kitchen lights are still on when I go to get a glass of water. The free local paper is lying folded on the counter, open at the neighbourhood crime report. It looks like a regular feature, with a map numbered with crimes. This week, across the entire north-western suburbs of Brisbane, including One Mile Creek, there were only five break-ins. And every one seems to have been through an unlocked door or an open window. That can't be right.

‘Ai,' says Mom, coming up behind me with a cup of tea. ‘They don't even lock the doors, these Aussies. Cashmere, Eatons Hill.' She points to the text that matches the numbers. ‘Every car stolen was by someone who walked into a house through an unlocked door and took the keys.' She laughs. ‘They should just leave a sign when they park the car:
free car – please enquire inside about keys
. The skollies here need an open door before they can work out how to steal anything.'

Maybe that's it. Maybe that's why we don't have a wall or a guard. Have they locked all the smart skollies up already? Do the ones who are still around have so little idea about how to rob people?

I google ‘the marter' while I'm having breakfast on Tuesday, and it turns out there are Mater hospitals, including a big one in Brisbane where a lot of babies are born. So, that's what Ms Vo meant when she said she was born at the Mater.

In Science, Ms Vo hands out a worksheet and tells us we have an hour to fill it in. It's on ‘solids, liquids and gases'. It's based on the whole term's work and I've only been part of one lesson in which I said ‘bloody'.

‘Just do the best you can,' she tells me as she puts the sheet on my desk. ‘Treat it as practice with our way of assessment.'

That, it turns out, is the worst aspect of it for me. I know a bit about solids, liquids and gases, but the worksheet feels as if it's written in a foreign language. Question four is a Venn diagram. I'm supposed to show what I know, but all it has is three overlapping circles with ‘solids', ‘liquids' and ‘gases' written in them. What kind of thing am I supposed to write? Am I supposed to give examples? It feels as if part of the question is missing, and it's the important part that would tell me what to do.

So I just stare at it thinking this isn't how we did it in South Africa. I thought fitting in here would be all about the Aussie words, so I worked hard to learn them. But it turns out it's about everything.

Around the room, everyone else is working, answering questions. This is normal for them. Completely normal. It's as if I'm on my own island, somehow separate from the rest of them, even though they're sitting all around me. Max is writing notes all over the sheet. Harry is ruling lines. Ben is thinking, but it looks like real calm thinking and not blind staring panic. Beyond him, even Lachlan Parkes is tapping his pencil on his desk and working out an answer.

Max is definitely a nerd, but he's not a bad guy. I'm pretty lucky Ms Vo picked him to show me around. I'm sure we had people like him in the class in Bergvliet, even if I was more with the hockey players then. He's not Richard Frost. But Richard was never good at returning my skidder at handball, even if he was a great left wing at hockey. And Richard doesn't have a quad bike.

In the end I make some notes on the worksheet. I don't know if they're anything close to right. Is dry ice where the circles for solids and gases overlap, since there's no liquid phase? We had some of it at Bergvliet once, for Science. We even had liquid nitrogen and we froze things solid and smashed them. I wonder if they've done that here. It was fun. It'd certainly make the subject of solids, liquids and gases a lot more interesting.

‘Don't they give you homework at that school?' Mom calls out from inside. ‘Come in so we can skype your pa and then you can do some before dinner.'

My hockey stick came with us on the plane, ready for me to use right away. The grass at the front is too long, but not much too long, so I've been dribbling across it, imaging oncoming defenders, stick checks, shots at goal. I've lost track of how long I've been out there. I've had my mind on the ball, only the ball, not Max or Richard or Venn diagrams or home.

When I go into the kitchen Mom's staring at her phone.

‘Do you not have plates at school?' she says, frowning. ‘I just got this email. It's from the P and C – the parents' organisation. They're having a fashion parade at lunchtime on Thursday. It's a fundraiser. I bought a ticket, but the invitation says to bring a plate. Do they have plates there, or . . .'

‘I haven't seen any.' I really haven't. Maybe they don't have plates. ‘Either people have lunchboxes or, if you buy from the tuckshop, you get it in a paper bag or maybe on a paper plate, but not a real one.'

‘No plates.' She shakes her head. ‘I wonder what kind of plate I'm supposed to bring. A dinner plate, probably. There'll be a meal. What if they serve soup? I'd need a bowl for that. Eish! Do I take a bowl too?' She takes a step back and throws her hands in the air. ‘This place takes a bit of getting used to.'

I want to tell her that she has it easy, that she doesn't have a classroom to deal with – in fact a whole school and everyone who goes there – but if I start talking about it I won't stop. It's better if I just go and get Hansie. On the way to his room, I notice that the house smells a bit like Mom's cooking now, and a week ago it didn't.

Hansie is lying on his blow-up travel bed, facing the wall and holding his favourite bear. His thumb is in his mouth, but his eyes are wide open. We're all stuck getting used to this, each in our own way.

‘Time to talk to Dad,' I tell him.

He looks at me and blinks.

‘Time to engage the superhero power of speech. Do you think you can do that?'

He doesn't move.

‘I think you might need to fly.'

I rush forward and pick him up with both arms. That at least gets a snotty laugh. I carry him, flying superhero-style, all the way to the kitchen. He makes an Iron Man landing, one foot at a time, complete with powering-down sounds.

Mom has already got through to Dad on Skype, and the first thing I hear him say is, ‘What about knives and forks? Do you have to bring them as well as the plate?'

‘Not mentioned,' Mom tells him, and shrugs. ‘Look who's here.' She smiles and moves aside so that all three of us can fit in front of the camera. ‘Is it Superman today or Iron Man?'

‘Iron Man,' Hansie says before blasting her with his imaginary repulsors.

She moves a stool in front of the laptop so that he can kneel on it.

‘Boys, howzit,' Dad says. ‘It's good to see your faces.' He's in his donga again, though the wall behind him is one I haven't seen before. ‘So, Josie, this plate. If they didn't say to bring a knife and fork, maybe just stick to the plate. Could be a safety thing. You know how crazy they are about safety here. Like everyone needing to wear their seatbelts. I know it's the law at home too, but they seem to be real sticklers for it here. For any rules. It's all rules here, and I bet they've got rules about cutlery too.'

‘Seatbelts are a good idea,' Mom says. ‘They save lives. There's nothing to be gained by being macho and not wearing one.'

Dad nods. ‘Well, yes . . .'

‘It's a different country,' she says. ‘That's why we're here, remember?'

On Wednesday night, with my first school week past halfway, we go for dinner at a nearby Thai place called Thai-Ryffic. We haven't seen much of Brisbane yet, but I've noticed three Thai restaurants and every one had a name that involved a bad pun on the word ‘Thai'.

When we walk in Mom looks pleased. ‘Crowded. That's a good sign,' she says.

Most of the tables we can see are full, and there are more around the corner, beyond a big wooden elephant and some pot plants. The place is noisy with conversation and the excellent food smells make my stomach rumble.

We find a table and Mom hands me a menu. Hansie kneels on the floor, driving his Lightning McQueen over the black-and-white tiles. At first, the menu looks a lot like one from home, but then I notice something I'm not expecting. I point to it on Mom's.

‘Hmmm,' she says. ‘Does it really . . .'

She lifts the menu up to take a closer look. Yes, it does. It says ‘kaffir lime leaves'. She shakes her head and takes a breath, in and out.

Mom looks around for a staff member, but they're all out the back. So she walks to the counter and rings the bell, once, twice, and then keeps ringing it until someone pushes through the double doors in a hurry. It's a young white guy with a goatee.

‘Sorry, is –' he says, looking at Mom and then past her to see what the emergency is. He's wiping his hands on a towel.

‘This!' She talks over him. She holds up the menu. ‘This word.' She jabs her finger at the page. ‘What kind of racist place is this? Don't you have any coloured people here? It's Thai food. What are you doing using the' – she drops her voice – ‘k-word?'

‘I'm sorry, I . . .' The man looks at Mom, looks over at me.

I'm not going to save him. He's got a racist word on his menu. I can't believe that no one else here has complained. He keeps wringing his hands in the towel.

‘I didn't say anything.' He glances nervously at the nearby tables. People are starting to turn our way. ‘I just got out here.'

‘Look at your menu.' Mom points again.

‘Ah, yes, kaffir lime leaves.' Mum flinches when he says it. ‘We use them in some of the curries.' He folds the towel and sets it on the counter. ‘It's traditional. It's a Thai thing.'

‘But the word. The k-word.' He's not getting it, so Mom's getting louder. ‘It's totally racist.'

With that, conversation in the room goes quiet. But it's strange. People are looking at Mom like
she's
the one doing something wrong.

‘It's like the n-word,' Mom says. ‘Would you put that in a menu? I don't think so.'

‘The n-word? Naffir?' The man looks twitchy. He glances again at the other diners. ‘I don't think that's a . . . No, they're
kaffir
limes leaves, definitely.'

Mom shakes her head. She's not going to back down. I can tell. Everyone is staring, but I know why she has to do it.

‘It's okay,' says a woman on the table next to us. ‘They're just lime leaves, a kind of lime leaves.'

The man at the counter fakes a smile. ‘Darren – that's our chef – he trained at Chang Mai. With actual Thai people. He's very spiritual. Practically a Buddhist. He's not a racist.'

Hansie looks up at me from knee height. ‘Why is Mom angry?'

‘She's not angry.' I glance her way. ‘She just . . . saw something that needed fixing. Something that wasn't quite right. Sometimes people need to be helped to make the right choice.'

He looks blankly at me, and drives Lightning McQueen up my ankle.

‘You can call it makrut lime or maybe k-lime,' my mother tells him, ‘but you really need to change that. Or get your Darren to talk to his actual Thai people and start using their word for it. That would be respectful, wouldn't it?'

‘Yes,' he says, very seriously, nodding. ‘Yes, it would.'

Hansie drives Lightning McQueen over my foot, making louder engine noises to cope with challenging terrain.

‘Well, we shall order now,' Mom says, making it sound like a declaration. Maybe it is one, letting the people in the room know they can get back to their meals. ‘And you and Darren can work on sorting this out.'

She turns towards the diners and nods reassuringly. Problem solved. The woman on the table next to us smiles back nervously. Most pretend they were busy with something else all along.

The man, whose name we never hear, seems glad to pick up his pad and pen. He takes our order, and runs back into the kitchen as soon as possible.

‘I miss Jonah,' Hansie says. Jonah is a big Lightning McQueen fan, back in Cape Town. They fought all the time about who got to play with the car. ‘And Georgia and Lily and Auntie Val.'

Lightning McQueen drives most of the way up my leg, screeching as he takes the hairpin bend at my knee. I pull Hansie up and carry him to the wooden elephant.

‘Your teeth don't miss Auntie Val,' I tell him. She was forever giving Hansie entire tubes of wine gums when Mom wasn't looking. ‘I miss people too. But there are good people here as well. It'll be okay.'

And then it hits me. No one here has a clue why Mom's upset. No one knows that the k-word is the most racist word ever. They all think my mom's gone bossies.

At the counter, Mom has found a black felt-tip pen and she's going through the pile of takeaway menus putting a fat line over ‘affir' every time kaffir lime leaves appear.