We Are Here (27 page)

Unable to wait for the postman, I drove alone to the sorting centre at Lakemba to see if my letter was en route. It was still there. I picked up the envelope marked with the New South Wales Board of Studies logo on the outside. As I drove home, I looked at the envelope sitting beside me on the passenger
seat. I silently chanted, ‘Ninety-nine, ninety-nine, ninety-nine,’ until the numbers rolled like the streaming rhythmic sound of a Disney cartoon train. When I got home, I retreated to my room, too tense to open the envelope in front of my parents. The cork-like linoleum floor and grey walls held their breath. The blinds shuddered. The Aboriginal spirits stopped wailing.

I fumbled through the various information sheets and raw score marks until I found the Universities Admissions Index. I read it three times: 98.95. There must have been a mistake. I quickly called the Universities Admissions Centre to see whether there was an error. No error. I called the Board of Studies. I later called the University of New South Wales after the selection for places had occurred to see whether I could somehow get in. There was no hope unless I repeated year twelve or chose another course and transferred into my preferred program a year later.

I lay on my bed that day and sobbed. I don’t know how long I stayed there. The sun went down. The traffic on Punchbowl Road subsided then grew loud again. I heard countless series of pedestrian light beeps go from quarter note beeps to rapid fire beeps as some random person crossed the road just outside our house at the intersection. The neighbouring boys from down the road had come back with a stolen stash of bike parts and I heard them speaking. The air grew thick. I could smell a stir-fry from the kitchen. My parents’ attempts to comfort me were futile. I was a failure. I had come so close. I didn’t want second best. Second never mattered. Second meant my father asking blandly, ‘Why didn’t you come first?’ There was no rage, no yelling, just
a simple and dull question which somehow stung so much more than if it had been meant to hurt.

I was accepted into my second course preference, a combined Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws at the University of Sydney, the oldest university in Australia. The course wasn’t due to start for three months. It was a bizarre, vacuous experience, not having anything to study for. For as long as I could remember, school work had defined me. Achievements that I could attain within my domain of control were recorded in black text on report cards and in academic competition results. These successes were tangible, unequivocal. These scores didn’t care about my postcode or my parents’ income or the language I prayed in. Without an exam to study for and weighed down by deep disappointment, in those three months of dubious transition I drifted.

I began to hang around with a bunch of Asian boys from Sydney Technical College. I was a tomboy and the token girl in the group. Always clad in cargo pants and a loose T-shirt, I was just another one of the guys. Overnight, I morphed from a disciplined, studious, pious daughter to a joyriding delinquent who sometimes didn’t even come home. I would take the car and disappear, driving around aimlessly until the early hours of the morning. My parents were appalled and astounded at my new behaviour. When my parents took my keys away, I snuck out of the house in the middle of the night anyway.

We did stupid things that boys do. We had midnight barbecues in the middle of a soccer field, eating carcinogenic sausages in the pitch black. We drove to the city and hung out underneath the harbour bridge, talking about nothing while the boys drank beer. We squeezed into one guy’s family’s Toyota Camry and drove around roundabouts with the handbrake pulled up, burning rubber, laughing hysterically. We switched petrol station numbers and stole ice-cream signs. The perpetual pressure of academic success had abruptly evaporated. I was lost in a new universe of liberty without any assignment or exam to act as my compass. But I delighted in this rebellion. For the first time, it felt like it was I who mattered and not my grades.

One evening, as we were removing the petrol station numbers in a suburban street in the inner-western suburb of Dulwich Hill, a neighbour called the police. When we saw the cops, we all split up and bolted in different directions like hunted foxes. I ran into a random driveway and hid behind a car. The police walked through the streets looking for us with torches. With my heart thumping, I cowered in the shadows while the torch light raked the front of the house, like a menacing lighthouse beam. I wondered what I would say to the house’s occupants if they opened the door. Thoughts raced feverishly through my head. I was sweating. I felt my chest dampen and liquid beads accumulate on my eyebrows as I held my breath. When the cops finally moved on, I sat down in the driveway, pulse still racing. After a long while, I crept out of the driveway and headed slowly back to where I had parked the car. Everyone
had scattered and the boys were nowhere to be seen. I paced down the cold, still street occasionally accented by white cones of streetlight. I reflected on what had happened. What if I had been caught? How could I do that to my family? It was an unwieldy reminder that I was not entitled to be a silly carefree young person. I recalled the night of my year ten formal and the sparks coming out of my family’s only car. I finally got to the car and started to drive home. I remembered I could not afford to make mistakes.

I decided I should get a job. I looked in the community newspaper for administrative positions. It took me to a messy office situated within a bizarre junkyard. I had no clerical experience. I had only ever sold pork rolls and cookies. The young woman who had placed the ad was barely older than me; I presumed this was her family’s business. Needless to say, it was obvious I was just looking for a temporary job and was not passionate about working in a junkyard. I floated through a variety of odd jobs, from telesales of roller shutters to stuffing junk mail into envelopes in a factory. I looked in the paper again. Pizza Hut always seemed to be looking for drivers, I noticed.

With the family’s only car, I started work at a Pizza Hut just outside Lakemba in Western Sydney. I was the only female delivery driver in several districts. On the first day, I watched a three-hour induction video introducing me to Tricon, the corporation that owned Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell. I learned about hygiene from mock accidents and comical re-creations. The video was embarrassingly dated, with 1980s hairstyles and
over-scripted dialogue made worse by horrendous acting. After I endured the video in the back room, I emerged into the busy kitchen and was given a turquoise cap and collared T-shirt. It was too soon for me to get my own name tag, so I was given the name tag of a previous employee, Mohammed. On top of the minimum wage, I would get $1.86 for each pizza I delivered. The drivers lined up to be given their pizzas and dockets. On the way out, we each grabbed the promotional extras if customers had ordered a special deal. It could be a frozen cheesecake or a box of biscuit ice-creams.

One evening, I grabbed a couple of dockets and pizzas as usual, then looked at the address and momentarily froze. It was a street in Lakemba that a friend of mine lived on. All the major insurance providers refused to insure anyone living on that street. Even brokers were apprehensive. Statistically, it was the most robbed street in Sydney at that time. I opened the passenger door to the car and put the pizzas on the seat. I had been to my friend’s apartment before on that street but only during daylight. As I cruised down the street looking for the address on the docket, I talked aloud to myself. The tabloid current affair shows on television sensationalised statistics and postcodes, I said, but I was a kid born of these streets. There wasn’t anything for me to worry about.

When I finally found the apartment block, I parked the Toyota Corona and placed the heavy club lock across the steering wheel. The beloved Corona was a piece of reliable junk but it was an easy target. I went around the building to the side entrance
and walked up the stairs to look for apartment number seven. The stairwell light was broken. As I ascended further and further up the stairs, the darkness swallowed me. It was completely pitch-black. The hot pizzas inside the insulated covers became heavy. I could hear nothing and see nothing. I put one of my hands in front of my face. I couldn’t see it. I walked towards what I knew would be a door and slowly felt it for a number. I traced my fingertips across a cold metallic curve. The air was humid and cavernous. I felt the sheets of carpet melt beneath me like quicksand. It was apartment six. One more flight. I inched along, wary of falling.

Finally I found apartment seven and knocked on the door. I could feel the beat in my carotid artery knocking like a giant kernel against the lining of my throat. ‘Pizza Hut! Delivery!’ I stepped back. The door opened. Inside was a group of six or so men, huddled on and around a lounge. There was a strong smoky smell. They all had their shirts off. I bent my head down, hiding underneath my cap. The guy who’d opened the door went to get some cash. The men all looked at me and said something I couldn’t understand. The man who gave me the money said, ‘Keep the change,’ and smirked like a cartoon villain. I didn’t even bother counting the money. Later I found out the tip was fifteen cents.

I quickly left the building and prayed to my grandmother that my car was still there.
Please, please, please.
I wouldn’t be able to face my parents if the car was gone. As I ran out to the street, she gleamed at me under the streetlight. A flood of
relief washed over me. I looked at the Corona affectionately. The familiar bubbles of rust under the paint and broken metal trim were suddenly reassuring. I got in the car and opened the club lock around the steering wheel. I had parked the car in a small laneway. It was too narrow to do a full U-turn or even a three-point turn. I inched forward and back in what turned out to be a six-point turn. Without any power steering, it was a real effort. My forearms started to ache and I was sweating.

Finally I got out of the laneway and drove back to the store. The delivery had taken longer than the promised thirty minutes, the hallmark of Pizza Hut. The manager said, ‘That took a while. Hey, you have a bit of chow mein on your face.’ Chow mein? It was a while before I understood what he was implying, that I made some sort of detour, maybe even home to eat some food. A protest of some kind formed on my lips but wouldn’t come out. All I could think was that chow mein was a Chinese dish, one that I hated. I was Vietnamese. Clearly we Asians were all the same to him.

‘Next order’s waiting for you. Hurry up.’ I tried to spit out a seething insult but it never reached him. My cheeks burned.

I walked outside onto the busy street, desperate to get away from the wafts of baking dough and melting cheese.

Tarek, an Iranian American guy on a working holiday, said, ‘You shoulda told ’im to fuck off.’

I retorted, ‘And lose the chance to wear this uniform? No way.’

He laughed and got into his rented car.

The last time I wore the Pizza Hut uniform was at an eighteenth birthday party. A girl from school invited me and I had to come straight from a shift. I grabbed an empty pizza box and scribbled
Happy Birthday
on the inside. When I arrived at the door in my uniform, my friend’s mother really did think someone had ordered pizza. I’m sure she was offended as there was plenty of homemade Indian food. I went out the back to where the birthday girl was and said, ‘Someone call for a delivery?’ just like the red-headed Dougie in the Pizza Hut ads. My friend liked my hand-delivered pizza birthday message, despite the stench of pepperoni.

The boys I used to hang out with had gone to Queensland for a holiday. When they came back most of them got girlfriends. By this time I had started working odd jobs and was too tired to see them anymore, especially when I was still delivering pizza at night. In between their girlfriend time and my need to earn some money, we drifted apart.

Towards the end of the three-month break before university started, I became involved with the Vietnamese Catholic Youth Organisation. Needless to say, my parents were relieved. Văn was already a member of the group. There were retreats, camps and meetings. At each large communal gathering of Vietnamese Catholics, which often brought together over ten thousand people, the members of the youth group would be stationed at key points of Paul Keating Park in Bankstown, selling candles
for the church. The yellow and red-striped flag of old South Vietnam flew high. We prayed for political prisoners in Vietnam who fought for religious freedom. We prayed for all those souls who did not make the journey to Australia like us, hoping that their deaths weren’t in vain and one day Vietnam would become a democracy. Amen. When the Lunar New Year T
t festival came about, the Vietnamese community organised a three-day celebration at Warwick Farm racecourse. Stalls would be set up with Vietnamese bingo, grilled pork and barbecued corn, and a stage would feature Vietnamese boy bands and fashion parades. Depending on whether there was an upcoming election, the opening ceremony would attract the state premier, the opposition leader and sometimes the federal Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs. Sponsorship money poured in from community and business leaders.