My mother could not stop her hands from moving. She pointed, she jabbed, she spoke at a hundred miles an hour. How happy they all were, and how happy my mother was to see her parents. Everything was so bright and big to my outside grandparents, how much she would have to teach them. Supermarkets. Moving stairs in glass buildings taller than anything imaginable. Hospitals where it was all white inside and like those hotels for Westerners back in the old country. She would show them how they would get a house here even bigger than any of the houses in which they had ever lived in Vietnam or Cambodia. How the government would give them money. “Every Thursday,” my grandpa would later hoot almost with tears in his eyes because of bewilderment at the generous whims of the government. “The government gives me money and not only that, when I am standing at the counter, they say ‘thank you’ to
me,
a useless old man!”
But Grandpa proved to be far from useless. When he and my grandma moved to their own house in Springvale, Grandpa turned his whole suburban back lawn into a ploughed field of brown parallel lines. He dug deep complicated irrigation channels and collected rainwater in big barrels. And in his field he planted Chinese vegetables, flying dragon plants, four types of hot basil, turnips, melons, potatoes, chives, cumquat, plum and lemon trees. At eighty-four he got up at six every morning to water his plants and plough his field, with the bottoms of his homemade polyester-blue pyjama pants rolled up. Meanwhile, Outside Ma continued to sew her Mao suits, right down to the cloth-covered buttons. She even made underwear, with a little pocket on the back just like jeans. They did not trust banks to stay solvent, even during peacetime, so they buried their money in Nescafé jars all over the backyard.
*
I was glad that Outside Ma did not ask me why I had chosen to come to her house that day. I was glad she did not ask why we didn’t come over to her house more often. I was glad that she did not ask any of these questions, because then I might have had to tell her the ugly truth: that Alexander and I were there only because no one else wanted us.
*
“We’re going to William and Joanne’s house!” my five-year-old brother squealed, excited to the point of near-incontinence. After much begging and pleading we had finally been allowed to spend the afternoon at Aunt Meili’s. Aunt Meili was my parents’ family friend and she lived in a big birthday-cake of a house in Keilor, with an unused dishwasher (“to save water”), plastic coverings on the dining table (“to save table”) and a gold lion statue in the hallway near the front door (“to save money”).
My mother stalled our Toyota in the street, noticing that Aunt Meili’s silver Volvo with the numberplate “WANG
88
” (the eighty-eight for good luck) was not in the driveway. “Aunt Meili is not home,” she said slowly. “I’ll take you to your Outside Ma’s.”
“Just because the Wang Car is not home doesn’t mean that William and Joanne aren’t home!” pleaded Alexander. “Let’s ring the doorbell and see!”
Thirteen-year-old Joanne opened the door. “Oh,” she said.
“I am just leaving them here to play,” said my mother. “You know how they plead and clamour!”
“Oh,” said Joanne, “oh. Okay.” She let us in but, strangely, turned and walked away down the hall, back into her room. We heard her door slam. We stood there like sticks. We did not know what to do. Finally, Alexander and I walked into the lounge room and sat on the sofa. We waited for William. We waited. And waited. And waited. Joanne peered in through the sliding glass door. “Where’s William?” I summoned up the courage to ask.
“He’s in his room,” Joanne told us. It was clear that he did not intend to come out. I felt heavy. I slunk back. “Hey, don’t lean on the sofa!” Joanne scowled. I forced myself to sit up straighter so that my back didn’t touch the leather, and so did Alexander.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, William emerged. Woohoo, I thought, saved! I wanted to clap. William would relieve the boredom! He came towards us. I was just about ready to offer him a standing ovation when he reached past me to grab his transformer toy from the sofa. “Hey, get the clothes off the sofa too!” commanded Joanne. William pushed the half-folded fresh laundry on the sofa into a basket, disappeared into his mother’s bedroom with the basket, and then went back into his own room with the transformer, the door slamming behind him. Satisfied, Joanne retreated to her room.
Suddenly I
knew
. It was the nits. Somehow they had found out that we had nits. Occasionally a head emerged from the white blanks of their doorways to check up on us, accompanied by an order – “Don’t lie your head on the armrest!” or “Don’t sit like that!”
Defeated, Alexander and I knew there was no way to remain on the sofa and not offend our precocious prison wardens, so we slid ourselves onto the floor. There was nothing for us to do. I ran my fingers through the dark pink carpet with the patterned rivulets running through it like scars and wondered what Joanne and William were doing in the lolly-coloured depths of their rooms. The Venetian blinds were drawn, and the entire lounge room was haunted by pinky-purple shadows.
Wish I had my book, I thought. During our epoch on the floor, my brother and I did not speak to each other. “Let’s lie on the floor and spread our army over their perfect carpet!” I wanted to tell him. “Come on, come on, I command you to do it!” I imagined a whole army emerging from the guerrilla turf of our black heads, spreading across the veins of the carpet like little white ants, to conquer this new territory. Two by two, ten by ten, three thousand by three thousand they would march, invigorated by the generous sustenance bequeathed them by my personal Blood Bank, and they would spread to every terrain in this Brave New World where everything was pale-pink.
Eons passed with each eye-blink, and we weren’t killing time – the time was killing us. When we finally heard the sound of the doorbell, we were off the floor in a split-second. We bolted towards the door with the cooties on our heads clinging for dear life.
*
In the car going home, Alexander and I didn’t howl, let alone speak to each other. My mother looked at us and said, “You two look exhausted. I told you not to play too hard! Now you won’t have any appetite for dinner!”
She was right. We didn’t. I turned to Alexander. His hand went up absentmindedly to scratch his head. That did it. “Don’t play with Richard anymore, okay?” Richard was my best friend Beatrice’s kid brother. It was the only order I could issue to my five-year-old brother. He nodded. I looked at him and knew he was already intent on avoiding Richard. We were in this together, I realised. I knew that at school on Monday my brother and I would be together at recess and lunch. Just the two of us. And I knew that Beatrice would have to go back to hanging around with her kid brother too. I sank back in my seat with a despair deeper than tears.
“Ay!” came my mother’s voice from the front of the car, “don’t do that! Do you want the car to be swarming with nits?”
*
“This will kill them all off,” said my mother, but it was a lie.
When my mother had finished applying the treatment to my hair, it reeked of fetid alcohol. It was to be left in for another twelve hours, which meant that I had to go to school smelling like cat-piss. “Everybody will know!” I protested, even though I knew that they already knew anyway. “Nonsense,” said my father. “Look at how nice and shiny your hair is. People will just think you freshly shampooed it.”
But the bottle treatment didn’t work.
*
“
Ta ku le
,” said the hairdresser to my mother in Mandarin when my parents came to pick me up.
She has been sooking
.
“No other kid gets twenty-five dollars spent on their hair!” scolded my mother as she led me from the garage salon of the hairdresser to our car. “You don’t know how lucky you are. And if the heat from the rollers has not burnt them all dead, then I don’t know what will!” She examined the tight poufy little half-loops on my head. “This is much nicer than the scraggly few strands you were growing and brushing. I don’t know why you are sooking, honestly. Now don’t show that dug-out-of-a-coffin-face when you arrive at Outside Ma’s house or else you’ll be dead!”
In the car, I despaired. I was Chinese Ronald McDonald, minus the Happy Times. “So curly, so cute,” said my father. They were not curls, I decided. I had a perm. No other kid at school had a perm – they had waves, or crimps, or even curls. But not a perm.
When our car arrived at Outside Ma’s house, I sat firmly where I was. I did not want Outside Ma to see that our crusade with the comb was in vain. “What do you think you’re doing in the car?” cried my mother. “Fermenting? Get out now!”
When I stepped inside Outside Ma’s house, I threw a tantrum. I howled on the carpet of Outside Ma’s lounge room, my head on the ground and my skinny arms and legs flailing like matchsticks trying to self-ignite on the floor. I howled with my mouth stretched into the gaping sign of infinity. I howled for the loss of my hair. I howled for the lost afternoon spent on the floor of Aunt Meili’s house. And finally, I howled for the loss of Beatrice, the best friend I ever had. Outside Ma did not care whether my head was on her carpet, whether my hands were shredding the wool, whether my feet were kicking her sofa. She looked at my mother. “Why is she crying? Is she hungry?”
“A
N electrical appliance store? What are you – crazy?” my grandmother cried. “What do people here in Footscray want from a little electrical appliance store? What they really need is another Asian Mixed-Goods store.”
“Every Lee and Lah are opening bloody grocery stores!” retorted my father. “You just watch – there will be a grocery store on every corner five years from now. And who wants to go around selling soy sauce and force-fried meat forever?”
So my father, my Uncle Suong and two friends from the Alcan factory decided to form a partnership. The first store that they bought was on Barkly Street, a tiny four-by-five shop with no toilet. Every time my pa needed to relieve himself, he would have to stick the hand-written “BAcK In TeN MInUTEs” sign across the glass door, lock up and pop over to the restaurant across the road.
There weren’t many electrical appliances – mainly watches, batteries, little radios and musical Christmas cards. Theft was common, and so was badgering by gangs who came to torment small shop-owners, asking for money – and they wouldn’t leave until they got it. “Just like in Cambodia,” my father would mutter. “Except now it’s not the government officials bugging us, it’s these gangs!”
One shop-to-shop supplier would sell adaptor plugs at a very cheap price. Every time he visited he wore a black leather jacket, and his face was like a potato – dotted with pockmarks. Carrying his goods in cardboard boxes under his arm, he would sit the boxes on the counter for my father and Uncle Suong to sift through. “Great plugs, eh, so much cheaper than buying them from the wholesalers!” exclaimed my Uncle Suong.
Later my father realised that they were
too
cheap and decided not to buy any more. Next time Jacket Potato came, my father said to him, “Sorry brother, we don’t need any more of these plugs.” He had to start out polite, because he was scared that Jacket Potato would come later with his gang and trash the store.
“Hah?”
“We don’t need any more plugs at the moment, brother.”
“Nonsense. Everybody needs these plugs. How do you expect people who buy their rice cookers from Vietnam to connect them to the Australian sockets, eh?”
“Tell me something,” began my father with studied naivety, “hmm, how do you make a profit hah, with your prices so cheap?”
“What do you mean, my prices are too cheap?” demanded Jacket Potato. “Prices are meant to be cheap, brother. I pride myself on not ripping off the small shop-owner.”
“But, your prices are
too
cheap, if you know what I am saying,” my father said very slowly, casting a look at my uncle, who nodded. Jacket Potato decided it was no use feigning no-know. “Heh heh,” he said, “heh heh brother. I know what you are thinking. And let me tell you, brother, I came from Vietnam two years ago. Back in Vietnam my parents had a little table at the market-place where they sold this and thats to make money, heh. So I assure you, brother, that I only take from the very big stores, you know.”
“Big stores?” My father looked at the box of goods in front of him.
“Heh, come on, you know the big stores, brother. Like Kmart. I support small business, brother, I don’t do the small stores, you understand. I know what it is like for the small store-owners with the gangs roaming around giving you trouble.”
“But … how do you do it?”
“Heh heh, a master never reveals his tricks. But since we are good business partners, let me show you. Let me show you how this master does his tricks, heh?”
“Err, no, it’s alright, you don’t have to.” My uncle looked a little uneasy. My father looked even more uneasy.
“No, no, let me show you how I do it. You are my good brothers, and I will reveal to you what I reveal to no one. Just to show you that I don’t do the small stores, even though it is so easy for me to. You can trust me, brothers, eh?”
My father’s curiosity got the better of him. “Alright.”
So Jacket Potato idly roamed around the tiny four-metre-by-four store, while from the counter my father and my uncle watched his every move. At last when the guy came back, my father said, “But you didn’t take anything! Is this a trick?”
“Heh heh, but I did. Man, the master is good.” Beneath his jacket he revealed a small clock radio from one of the shelves on the wall. My father and my uncle were slack-jawed.
“How did you manage to do that? We never noticed! We didn’t even realise anything was missing!”
“Heh heh,” said the man happily. “I told you, brothers, the master is good.”
“Wah, how clever you are,” said my father with a mix of admiration and trepidation. But from then on, he made sure that we ordered all our plugs legitimately, and half a year later he told Jacket Potato we could no longer order from door-to-door suppliers because we were now a Retravision franchise.