Does My Head Look Big in This? (31 page)

“Yeah I know. So who is it?”

I can’t hold back my astonishment as I’ve never seen Mrs Vaselli in entertainment mode.

She coughs and shifts in her chair. “Spiro and his wife. You wanting more cake?”

“You called!” I leap from my chair in excitement, nearly knocking my tea out of my hand.

She shrugs her shoulders casually and stares down at her mug. But I know her too well now. I can see the corners of her mouth itching to break out into a grin.

“Is it OK? Is he coming? When did you call? What did he say?”

She looks up and finally smiles, the frown lines in her face loosening away. “We talking now . . . my son . . . we talk now.”

“Well it’s about time! So what happened? What did you say? Are you going to see them?”

“I no know. Maybe. . . I hoping so. I want fix my house and my kitchen nice for when zey coming . . . maybe . . . zey has work so hard coming now.”

“So what happened? I want details. Start to finish.”

She laughs and gets up and cuts me another slice of cake. “Stopping with ze questions and eat more cake.”

“You want me to finish off an entire cake?” I say, laughing at her. “Leave it for yourself for tomorrow, Mrs Vaselli.”

She smiles at me. “No worry about finish ze cake, Amal. I tinking I making plenty more cakes and Greek sweets from now. I making for your family. . . And maybe I be making for my family too.”

38

I
arrive home from school the next day to find Leila’s parents sitting in the lounge room with my parents. Leila’s mum is a mess. Her eyes are squashed between puffy eyelids and heavy, sagging bags reaching just above her cheekbones; her face is a swollen pulp, as though she’s been crying for days. Her husband is sitting beside her, silent, his head in his hands. My dad is at the dining table holding my mum’s hand.

“What’s wrong?” I cry, throwing my bag on the floor and standing before them. “What’s happened?”

“Amal!” Leila’s mum shouts, pointing her finger accusingly at me. “It’s all your fault! Where’s Leila?!”

“
What?
I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Don’t lie to me!” she shrieks.

“Gulchin, you must be calm,” my mum says, a look of exasperation on her face. “I know it’s hard, but if Amal knows where Leila is she’ll tell us.”

“What’s going on?” I ask, looking desperately from my mum and dad to Leila’s parents.

“Leila’s gone, Amal,” my mum says. “She’s run away.”

“
When?
”

“This morning. She left a note in her bedroom saying she was leaving home. Has she contacted you?”

I stare back at her dumbfounded.

“Amal?” my dad says. “Has Leila contacted you?”

“Yeah, we spoke last night,” I whisper, feeling a sickening wave of fear take over my body.

“Did she give you any clue that she was going?” my mum asks.

“Nothing. We only spoke for a minute or two. She didn’t mention anything.”

“I thought you good girl, Amal,” Leila’s mum says. “But you lie to me! I say OK for her to go your house but no go out, and you lie! You make my daughter go out at night like bad girl and she reject good man and now she run away.”

I collapse into an armchair and stare in a confused daze at the carpet, not making sense of her words. Leila’s mum glares at me as she wrings her hands.

“What do you mean by
she reject good man
, Gulchin?” my mum suddenly asks.

Leila’s mum looks up with a tired expression. “I bring good man for engagement to my Leila.”

“When?” my mum asks wearily.

“Saturday. He very good man. He from America. Our families from same village in Turkey. When Leila come home that night he was visit with us. He see her walking in with her brother so late and I disgraced, you know? But he still no reject her.”

“That’s just bull crap!” I say, and she frowns at me but continues to talk.

“Hakan tell us what happen and I so mad! Leila betray me. I go her room and I so upset with her. I tell her I forgiving her if she talk to him, he good man, he interesting to engage her.”

My mouth is gaping open. My mum and dad each let out heavy, frustrated sighs.

“Then Leila suddenly screaming and shouting. No respect! When this good man in our house and hearing her! And after I convince him to live here and no take Leila away to America. And he agreed. After weeks talking with him we convincing him to start his business here. I no wanted to be separate from Leila.” She takes a gulp of breath and her husband clasps her hand tightly.

Rage suddenly hammers through my head. “Why couldn’t you just leave her alone?”

She looks up, startled. “What you meaning?”

“It’s not time for her to marry!”

“I know what best for my daughter!”

“This is your daughter’s life, Gulchin,” my mum interrupts. “There is plenty of time for her to meet somebody and settle down, if she chooses to. She’s still so young and her duty, Gulchin, her
Islamic
duty, is to gain an education, to seek knowledge. She has never given you any cause to feel disgraced. You should be proud of her.”

She looks at us indignantly. “She marry
now
, when she this age, better for her.”

“Why?”

“Because she have nice home and he look after her and she be secure. She visiting me and I teaching her nice recipes and she having babies. She girl, she supposed to be doing this, so why she delaying?”

“What a load of—”

“
Amal
,”
my dad says sternly.

“– crap!”

“
Amal
,” my mum hisses but I cross my arms over my chest and glare at the floor.

“You rude girl,” Leila’s mum says.

My mum quickly interrupts again, sensing that I’m about to explode. “What happened this morning?”

“All week she moody. This man coming every night for dinner and she sit like statue, no talk or laugh. I begging her to show him how nice she is and how she funny and I asking her to wear make-up. But no, she come out in her boy track pants and she no wear make-up and she no fixing her scarf nicely. I even telling her to show her fringe a little, you know? Fix it up so he see how beautiful her hair is. Allah, he no worry about your fringe in this time, I tell her. And she go crazy at me when I tell her this!”

I knock my head back against the back of the armchair in frustration and let out an exaggerated “Ooof”.

“Then this morning I knocking on her door and no answer. I go in and she . . . gone. . . We call police and they no help.”

I’ve had enough. “Serves you right!” I suddenly yell, jumping up from my seat. “You don’t deserve her!”

“Amal!” my dad shouts.

Leila’s mum looks at me in shock. “Why you talk like this to me? I older than you! You show manners!”

“You’re just so bloody ignorant!”

“That’s
enough
, Amal!” my mum shouts, but I’m beyond control and lash out.

“How could you treat her like that when she could be anything she wants to be? How can you think you’re religious? You don’t know the first thing about Islam. You picked on Leila when your son is an idiot!”

Leila’s mum gasps, holding her hand to her throat as though I’ve got her in a headlock. “Oh Allah! This girl crazy!”

“Don’t you
dare
bring Allah into this!”

She stares back at me, her mouth snapping shut.

“Amal, that is enough.” My dad is towering over me now, his eyes ordering me to shut up.

“We go.” Leila’s mum grabs her husband’s hand. She stands up and storms out of the living room to the front door. As she passes me she pauses, looks at me and shakes her head. “I never knowing you like this, Amal,” she says. “I always thinking you a good girl. You wear hijab, you praying. You telling me I no know religion. Where your religion when you liar and you talking back to your friend mum?”

Her words suck the wind out of me; I feel as though she’s shoved a Hoover down my throat and switched it on maximum power. She yanks her husband’s arm and walks out of the house.

39

W
hat do you do when your best friend disappears? Life doesn’t stop. There’s no intermission when you can lean back in your chair and let the scenes and dialogues you’ve just watched sink in. It feels like an ABC or SBS movie, where there are no ad breaks. Things roll on and you’re expected to keep going. You have no choice but to adjust your screen monitor so that each thought or pain or emotion is on minimizer. So I’m in History and I have to minimize thoughts of where Leila is sleeping while Mr Piper roams the classroom demanding answers to his pop quiz. I’m setting the table for dinner. Don’t click on
Is Leila getting three meals a day?
Otherwise I’ll break down.

I keep on going to school, hanging out with everybody, doing all the normal, boring stuff in my day. But I feel like an emotional mess. The debate is in a week. I’m dying to back out but I can’t bring myself to let Adam and Josh down after all our practice. I’m so nervous I’ve been waking up at night. When I’m not having nightmares about Leila being somewhere dangerous I’m having nightmares about me bombing out in the debate. I know there’s no comparison but that’s the way school is. Things just go on and you have to deal with everything on the same level.

I don’t feel real. I feel like a clone who’s pretending to be me while the real me remains curled up in bed thinking about where my best friend is. The evenings are the hardest. I don’t feel like eating. I don’t feel like watching TV or working out or talking celebrity goss with the girls on the telephone. I just come home and go straight to my room. My parents tread carefully around me, giving me my space, being really selective with their words like they’re scared I’ll collapse into a puddle of tears if they say a word which even rhymes with her name.

The only person I get a time-out on life with is Yasmeen. Neither of us has heard from Leila. Leila’s mum calls my mum every day to find out if we’ve had any contact. Her brother calls my mobile telephone, accusing me of knowing where she is and hiding it from him.

I ring all the shelters but nobody will answer my questions. Who’s there is strictly confidential and I suppose they have a point, but it makes me furious anyway. Yasmeen, Simone, Eileen and I patrol the streets, shops, even libraries Leila used to go to, with the false hope we’ll bump into her.

It hurts at night, when I’m lying in bed listening to the leaves on the trees rattle in the wind. I stare at the ceiling wondering how easy it is to take freedom and open-minded parents for granted. I wonder if she’s better off away from her family. I wonder if she’s safe and protected and able to be all she wants to be without loneliness or fear.

Time without Leila makes me feel like I used to on primary school camps. You’d say bye to your parents and then your guts would start to churn and twist and you’d feel so lost and teary that you’d do anything just to see their faces. I feel homesick for her. I miss her face and her smile and the way she makes us laugh and the way she can memorize television commercials and the annoying way she eats an apple and corrects us when we get our grammar wrong and how strong and real and gutsy she is.

On Sunday afternoon Mum takes me to a shopping mall. We split after a while. She wants to spend time looking at patterns in Lincraft, which is as excruciating as counting how many times the letter
a
is used in a newspaper. So I go to the food court to get a drink and as I’m walking I see a takeaway shop advertising for casuals.

I had a casual job last year, working in Hungry Jack’s on the weekend. I was pretty cool having the extra pocket money and we used to muck around a lot on our shifts. Mum and Dad made me quit because of VCE. I gave them ulcers about taking away my “economic independence”. Thinking about the stacks of homework the teachers keep dishing out, I guess it probably makes sense. But when I see the advertisement, I have an urge to apply. If I could get just one shift a week, on the weekend, I think I could still manage to study and have a life. So I go to the toilets and fix my hijab and put some gloss on. Then I hover at the counter, waiting for the customers to be served. The shop sells fish and chips.

When the last customer has left, the girl at the front turns to me and asks me what I’d like.

“I’m here about the job . . . how do I apply?”

“Have you got any experience?”

“Yeah, I used to work at Hungry Jack’s.”

“Cool!” She smiles at me and tells me to hang on a second so that she can call the owner who’s out back.

“Hey George! Someone here about the job!”

“Gimme a minute!” he yells back.

“How old are ya?”

“Sixteen.”

“Sweet!” She grabs a stash of napkins and starts folding them with plastic forks. “He hasn’t had much response to the advertisement, ya know? And he needs someone pronto ’cause the other girl quit and it’s bloody impossible just the two of us. The ad’s been up there for ages now and we’ve only got four people come up and ask. Two of them were guys and that was a definite no-no!”