We Are Here (36 page)

I walked down the street towards the United States Mission to the United Nations to attend the karaoke party. The light was fading quickly together with the heat of the day. I passed through several security checkpoints before I was finally admitted to the party. There were about a hundred delegates from various countries. The cocktails had not yet flowed sufficiently when the ambassador grabbed the microphone and invited the Norwegian delegate to perform. She bellowed a version of ‘I Will Survive’ and we all applauded politely. Then the ambassador asked for the Australian delegate. My ears burned and I tried to hide behind a large European delegate, but it was too late, the ambassador had seen me. He pointed a finger in my direction And the gaze of the room shifted to me, the lights suddenly frying me. I moved towards the stage reluctantly and requested the first song that came into my head—Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’. Because I can’t sing very well, I then proceeded to rap the entire song, accompanying my rendition with pathetic moon-walking and crotch-grabbing motions. Moderate applause and chuckles
followed as I tried to swiftly disappear into the audience. The US ambassador laughed out loud.

After the performance, I went to the bar to get a much-needed drink. The bartender congratulated me on my performance. We got talking and he asked whether he could show me New York. I thought, ‘How lovely New Yorkers are!’ He was a former Armani model trying to get more gigs and meanwhile moonlighted as a waiter for a catering company.

We made arrangements and one evening he took me first to a typical New York diner for dinner, and then to see
Rent
, my first-ever Broadway musical. There is no greater magic than the melodrama of people singing on stage with a live band. I couldn’t stop beaming and had to consciously prevent myself from squealing like a child. At the end of the evening, he walked me back to my apartment and asked to come in. He then produced a jar of Vegemite in case I was missing home. He also brought out a bottle of wine. I was so naive that I hadn’t even realised it was a date. It only occurred to me when he said, ‘You look really beautiful tonight.’

‘Really?’ I must have had a very confused look on my face.

As I was pondering how to respond, he whispered, ‘I really want to kiss you.’

‘Really?’ I said again, baffled, followed by, ‘Um, no, sorry. I don’t think so. Thanks, though.’ I then ushered a very bewildered man out the door of my apartment.

As I began to close the door, he said, ‘You really do look beautiful tonight.’

‘Um, yeah. Thanks. Good night.’ I stood there looking at the Vegemite jar, feeling very awkward. I had met David six years earlier straight out of high school and never really dated. I couldn’t even read the standard signs of dating. I was on my own and was in a whole new world that existed and went on without me. I thought about the subtext lining my adventure, a yearning for the comfort of familiarity. I missed David.

New York was a time of learning and tantalising new experiences. That year I saw snow for the first time. I discovered bagels, went to the famed Hammerstein Ballroom and attended hip-hop shows and feminist poetry readings in the East Village. I went to Columbia University to hear lectures by great thinkers whose work I had studied at university, including Noam Chomsky, Milton Friedman and Nobel Prize-winning economist, Amartya Sen. I witnessed how big decisions were made—big decisions that affect little people, like me and my family. I discovered how truly interdependent everything is. I discovered that beyond my family, beyond Bankstown, there was just so much world. And it enchanted me.

When I came back to Australia several months later, I craved the same sense of independence I’d had when I lived alone in New York. Close to the beginning of the academic year, I moved out. In my parents’ eyes, unmarried Vietnamese women who moved out of home were gangster girls, pregnant or those who had nothing left to hope for. But I sold the idea to them by asserting
that since it was my final year of study, I had to concentrate very hard. Hoping that I would finally graduate from law after two deferments, they gave in. In normal circumstances this would have rendered me an unforgivable sinner. So I was not to inform any of our relatives; they would assume that something was wrong.

Clutching my collection of Hitchcock and
Astro Boy
DVDs, I moved into a share house in Enmore, a mere eight minutes by bus from Sydney University’s main campus. I lived with three other students—an international student from Nepal, a physics major who was a member of a Gregorian choir and a gay activist of Chinese-Cambodian descent. It was a classic student house, a time of cooking pad Thai, hanging out at the pub on the corner and waking up on Sunday mornings to find my mother downstairs with a box of spring rolls. I wore corduroy pants, bandanas and ate discounted pub meals. I walked up and down the streets of nearby Newtown, browsing through vintage furniture stores and checking out Mexican eateries. It was the student life I had seen on American TV shows and I relished it. However, I could not escape the feelings of guilt that I had abandoned Vinh and my parents. I was living a colourful life away from them. I felt that my freedom and new experiences were at their expense. They could certainly use the money I spent living away from home. Vinh was still in high school and I wasn’t there for him. Each day I tried to escape these thoughts, choosing instead to focus on café lattes, used books and live
music. But they intruded every so often as I gazed at a schooner of beer or stared out my bedroom window.

Despite the demands on my time made by law school, I returned to my old patterns of diverting my attention to other activities. I continued to serve on the national advisory committee to SBS and the management committee of the Ethnic Communities’ Council of New South Wales, while also undertaking an intensive ten-month social leadership program with the Benevolent Society. After returning from the UN, I also travelled around Australia on a national speaking tour. I was a member of the NGO delegation to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva while still working as a project consultant.

As I kept busy with policy work, I found myself in rather interesting circumstances. On one occasion I dined at the New South Wales Governor’s residence with Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. I decided to wear a traditional Vietnamese dress. A man dressed in an amazing uniform with medals and a sword announced me to their royal highnesses. There were only about forty people at the dinner. Princess Mary was beautiful and Crown Prince Frederik was actually quite laidback. The residence was stunning, looking out over Sydney Harbour, surrounded by meticulously kept gardens. Despite the grandeur, I was too stressed about the array of cutlery to fully appreciate the fabulousness of the occasion. I had never seen so much cutlery and crockery at one meal in my life. Each plate and knife glistened with a gold rim and a crest. I pretended to enjoy my dinner while secretly petrified I would chew too
loudly. Each time a new course was served, I stealthily watched what the other guests did with the cutlery and mimicked them while trying to look nonchalant. I tried hard to conceal the pressure I felt by nodding politely at the conversation. Finally, when the night ended, I made my way up the long driveway, shaded by giant trees, to catch a bus back to my shabby share house in Enmore, where I slept on a futon I’d borrowed from my Cambodian housemate.

On another occasion, I was invited to speak at an Australian Chinese association dinner. It was a large dinner and I needed the support of my Cambodian housemate, so he accompanied me. The day of the dinner, he fussed over me and over some hours we workshopped what I would wear. He spray tanned my legs. On my left at the dinner was Kim Beazley, the federal leader of the opposition at the time and the only other speaker that evening. On my right was Justice Marcus Einfeld, a federal court judge, who a few years later would be imprisoned for perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice. On the table next to me was Senator Penny Wong, who would become the first Asian-born and openly lesbian member of an Australian cabinet.

I was wearing my $5 fake diamond drop earrings. When I had bought them, there was round piece of clear plastic at the back. I didn’t realise I was supposed to remove this before wearing them. At my dinner table was also the managing director of one of the largest jewellery companies in Sydney. After I gave my speech and sat down, the guests at my table congratulated me. At the end of the evening, the managing director approached me and
gave me his card. ‘Any time you have an event where you need to borrow jewellery, you just let me know.’ My housemate stared at my plastic and fake diamond earrings. My cheeks flushed with awkward embarrassment as I nodded and thanked him.

The community dinner was not complete without a raffle. The opposition leader gave me his raffle tickets, and to my delight I won. It was a year’s supply of fresh juice! My housemate and I were beside ourselves with glee.

Law school was still as stifling as before, but this time I had a couple of allies. I met a brilliant professor of migration law. She was married to the Dean of the Law School at the time, who was a fiercely intelligent blind professor. She advocated for refugees and spoke about them with the deepest humanity. Her conviction was extraordinary and her sense of compassion and dedication to social justice motivated me to forge ahead. In between Intellectual Property, Media Law and Litigation, her classes became a beacon of inspiration and a sacred haven.

Another ally was Brendan. I met him in one of my first Media Law classes. He had shoulder-length curly brown hair and wore the kind of square surf bag that only year five kids carried. I had on my usual headscarf, revealing bits of the platinum blonde streaks my Bankstown train station hairdresser had given me. I recalled Brendan’s face from a tutorial I’d attended when I was in first year with Peter. But despite being in the same course, I hadn’t seen him again in the intervening five years.

When he called me out of the blue, I didn’t even know who he was, even after he told me his name. But I quickly discovered
he wasn’t like everyone else. While at college, he would catch the train to Cabramatta on weekends to get sugarcane juice. His mates thought he was ‘eccentric’. He had taken a year off to travel, which was why he hadn’t finished his degree sooner. I came to realise that Brendan saw poetry in the same things I did. In the beauty of a floating leaf, the hidden messages in a song and the struggle to make the world a better place. His political conscience and worldview were cultivated not only by wise and socially aware parents but by confident and intelligent older sisters.

Ours was a slow courtship as, after a game of pool, I dismissed the idea that he could possibly be interested in me. Like his father before him, he had attended The King’s School, one of the most elite private schools in Australia. After high school he lived on campus at Sydney University at another elite establishment, St Paul’s College.

One evening we walked through Hyde Park, with the fairy lights scattered among the trees and the sun fast descending. We saw rays of light nimbly moving across the cold grass. We decided to chase the sun wherever it would take us. In every patch of light, we lay on the grass holding hands with the world dissolving around us as we remained protected by a halo of love.

Brendan and I devised escapades that helped me to endure the rest of my time in law school. It seemed he was friends with everyone. I always felt uncomfortable when he introduced me to peers who didn’t even know I was enrolled there, despite the fact that there had been a colour photo of me on the noticeboard in
the foyer ever since my UN assignment. My portrait had stayed on the noticeboard for months and each time I saw it, I would try to scurry into the lift like a cowering criminal, hoping to not be detected. Once I saw a group of students staring at my picture. One of them said, ‘Who’s that?’ ‘Dunno,’ the others replied.

The first time I met Brendan’s parents was at their house on the South Coast at the foot of a small mountain. It was a picturesque hour-and-a-half drive from Sydney. I was nervous, anticipating an unfamiliar world. Outside the Vietnamese community, I had really only visited the homes of friends who were Greek, Albanian and Lebanese. When I arrived, though, I was greeted with warm smiles. I walked through the house Brendan grew up in, examining the timeline of photos, ribbons and trophies, newspaper clippings and toothless primary school smiles. It was exactly like the homes on family television shows. Images of little Brendan blowing into a trumpet, holding a cricket bat and sitting in a school assembly lingered through the house. As I walked through this beautiful museum, I wondered where my equivalent wall of growth was. Where was my history displayed? I recalled that in my grandfather’s house in Vietnam I had seen photos of myself as a child, as a teenager. Pictures my parents had sent over were displayed proudly. Birthdays, visits to the zoo. Our family shrine was there. My continuity was there. Not here.