“Mohammed was telling me at Friday prayer that there are some new brothers on bridging visas, living in Auburn,” Irfan says to Baba. “How are they supposed to live with no work? The others are helping them settle in. Apparently they’re good cooks. Ehssan wants to offer them some work at the money-exchange place but there just isn’t enough work to justify it. We could help them.”
“We should,” Baba says firmly. “It’s a long way for them though.”
“They’re sharing a car. It could work. We hire them Thursday to Sunday, see if that suits them.”
Baba nods. “Okay, talk to them.”
The midyear break passes by in a flash. I spend most of my time doing assignments either at home or with Paula at her house.
At senior assembly on the first day back at school, the coordinator, Ms. Ham, announces that there’s a gallery of artwork by eleventh- and twelfth-grade Visual Arts students on display in the seniors’ common room.
Paula and I go to have a look at lunchtime.
I’m stunned by some of the work. We walk around the room, trying to make our own sense of the different paintings and installations and what they might mean. We don’t have much of a clue really, but it’s fun pretending we’re art critics. We go through different reactions: “Ew, creepy”; “Wow, that’s amazing”; “Oh my God, I had no idea Adrian could draw like that”; “Oh come on, Mrs. Darwin’s nose is not that big.”
And then I see it.
It’s a series of five sketches, starting with a sketch of a closed wire birdcage, a key dangling on a piece of string outside the cage and down to the bottom of the canvas. Inside the cage, there’s a man running, a small satchel on his back, a trail of identity papers behind him. In the next sketch, the man is in a room behind bars, still within the cage. The key to the cage dangles slightly higher up though. In the third sketch, the man is pressed up against other bodies in a dilapidated boat on the sea, still trapped within the cage. The key is dangling even higher now, almost at the height of the cage door. In the fourth image, the man is lying down in the cage beside a small Australian flag pitched next to him. He’s extending his arm through the bars, trying to reach the key, which is just past his grasp. In the final sketch, a hand holding a pencil appears out of the corner of the canvas. The tip of the pencil twirls the string upward, so that the man is able to clasp the key in his hands.
I’m speechless, as much because of the images as the name attached to them.
Michael Blainey.
I look for Michael after school and find him before he leaves to catch the school bus home. I spot him ahead of me and quicken my pace to catch up.
“Hey,” I call out.
He turns around.
“I saw your artwork. What’s that about?” It comes across as an accusation but I can’t help the sharpness in my tone.
He blinks at me. “You didn’t like it?”
“That’s not what I said.”
He smiles broadly. Something about the way he’s carrying himself seems different. There’s a spark in him, something almost joyful about his manner, as though he’s just excavated some insight that’s been buried for some time.
Which makes my irrational anger impossible to understand but too strong to suppress.
“What?” I say. “You’ve suddenly changed?”
He lets out a short laugh, looks at me with disbelief. “Why are you angry?”
“I’m not …” I pause, confused by my reaction. I feel like there’s cotton wool in my head.
“So what’s your problem?”
I throw my hands in the air. “I don’t get it. One minute you’re all don’t jump the queue, you’re the poster boy for Aussie Values, liking all kinds of racist crap on Facebook, and the next minute your Facebook is cleaned up, you go and do this incredible art—”
“You’ve been stalking me on Facebook?” He grins.
So awkward.
I shuffle my feet. “What’s interesting,” I say, hoping really badly that my deflection will work, “is your backflip.”
“You’re so confusing,” he says, suddenly frustrated. “Are you saying you resent what I drew?”
“Of course not! It’s beautiful.” My voice stalls.
“Then what?”
I stare into his eyes for a moment. “What you drew contradicts everything Aussie Values stands for. I don’t get it.”
“I’m just trying to figure out what I stand for.”
“That’s …” I pause, and then smile at him. I don’t bother saying anything. I don’t need to.
Paula bounds over to us, a massive grin on her face.
“Michael, that was amazing!”
“Is that the best you can do? I would have thought it deserved one of your quotes.”
She grins. “Fine. One does not simply grow a conscience without being invited to a movie marathon.”
I laugh.
Michael looks at me. “You’re doing the Lord of the Rings movie marathon?”
“This weekend!”
“We’re having it at my place,” Paula says. “Given I’m not in the running for any popularity or coolness contests, attending is completely at your own risk.”
“That doesn’t worry me,” he says casually.
“So you’re basically admitting that hanging out with me might ruin your reputation but it doesn’t worry you?”
Michael grins.
“So you’ll come?” Paula asks.
“Sure,” he says, throwing a glance my way. Then, smiling, he says, “Unless of course Mina holds grudges?”
“I don’t hold grudges!”
He grins again.
“You can bring a friend, but Terrence and Fred aren’t welcome,” Paula says.
He shrugs. “Okay, I get it. Who else from school is coming?”
“There’s a small geek contingent,” Paula says. “Plus Adrian, Leica, Cameron, and Jane.”
“Okay. Send me the details then. See you later.”
He starts to walk away when Paula calls him back.
“Yeah?”
“It’s a costume party, by the way. Preferably a Lord of the Rings character, but if you can’t manage that, any other costume will do. But no tights. I don’t care how you’re built.”
I can’t help but laugh.
He looks worried. “Do you seriously think that with my height I can dress up as a hobbit?”
“That’s okay,” I find myself saying. “We won’t judge you if you come as an orc.”
“A Hallmark card writer if ever there was one.” His eyes linger for a moment, and then he walks to the bus.
I receive Paula’s Facebook invitation to the movie marathon and accept. As a mark of respect to an occasion of this magnitude, I decide that a generic Facebook invitation with a mere cut-and-paste picture of Frodo Baggins simply will not do.
So I play around with some programs and design an interactive e-card invitation using LOTR movie clips and …
And then, at 11:45 p.m., I upload it to Paula’s Facebook Event.
11:50 p.m.
Facebook notification alerting me to a comment from Mina about the LOTR event.
A smiley face emoji.
From Mina.
If we’re going to do emoji, we might as well have fun with it.
So I send her a friend request.
Within less than a minute she accepts.
I send her an emoji narrative. She sends one back.
This is going to be fun.
“It’s kidneys this afternoon, Michael,” Anh says when I arrive at work.
“Right. Got it.”
“I’ve emailed you the details. Your last shift was an improvement but you’re still not reaching target. You have to lift your game. Be ruthless. What do you do if they hang up on you?”
“Move on to the next person on the list?”
“Fail. Hanging up, cursing you, telling you they’re not interested means nothing. Just call them on your next shift or pass their name on to one of us to
chase up the next day when you’re not here.”
“But isn’t that harassment?”
Anh gives me a look that leaves me in no doubt that he thinks I’m an idiot.
“This job is purely about harassment. Would have thought that was obvious. If they register their number off the call list, fine. If they’re too lazy to do that, bad luck, we’re coming after them.”
“Wow, and I thought working for charities would be about goodwill.”
Anh shakes his head at me. “Michael. You’re killing me.”
Terrence texts me while I’m at work, asking if I want to catch up tonight or play a game online. I make up an excuse to get out of both. If Terrence and Fred find out that I’m going to Paula’s party, I’ll never live it down. I’ll have to deal with them later.
I go shopping after work and mix and match a few things to put together a Gandalf outfit. If somebody had told me at the start of the year that I would be going as a cross-dressing geriatric magician to a movie marathon at Paula’s house, I would never have believed it.
“You need to pull your weight around here, Michael,” Mum says as she chops onions.
“Are you crying because I forgot to empty the dishwasher, or because of the onions?” I sneak a carrot from the corner of the chopping board and she hits me on the hand.
“You know,” I say, “one day there will be robotic machines for all this domestic drudgery. Probably invented at UTS Design School …” I grin at her.
She groans. “Can you make yourself useful and pick up Nathan from after-school care? I don’t have a robotic machine just yet and this dinner needs finishing.”
Nathan’s school is only a short walk from home. We take our time walking back. Nathan likes to avoid stepping on cracks in the concrete.
“What does it feel like to punch somebody?” he asks me.
“Well, to be honest, for a split second it feels good. You feel powerful. And then it feels horrible and it goes on feeling horrible.”
“I wanted to punch a kid today. Ray Cooper’s brother. His name is Jason Cooper. Ray Cooper is in my class. He called me a spastic.”
“Ray did?”
“No. Jason Cooper. The brother. After school.”
I feel a heat rise in my chest. “I want to punch him for you.”
“That would be futile,” he says dryly. “You’d be arrested for hitting a child. It wouldn’t solve anything.”
I shake my head. “Of course, I won’t be punching anybody. I was just being silly. Was there a teacher around?”
“Yes. Ms. Lee. That’s Ms., not Miss or Mrs. because she said her marital status is nobody’s business. But she is married and he is from China like Ms. Lee and he came here by plane not a boat and she was born in Sydney in 1982.”
I balk a little. “How do you know that? I mean, why do you know that?”
He shrugs and then takes a wide step to avoid a crack. “I asked her if she was an illegal and she said that is a hurtful thing to say and showed us a book called The Arrival. It has beautiful pictures but yours are better, except you can’t do eyes the way that illustrator does them and his family were boat people too, I think. But a long time ago.”
“Jesus,” I mutter under my breath.
“Ms. Lee is Buddhist.”
We turn the corner into our street. There’s a man leaning against a car parked in front of our neighbor’s house. He walks toward us, blocking our path.
“Michael Blainey?”
“Yeah?” I answer without thinking.
“I’m a journalist with Vice newspaper. What’s it like being the son of the founder of a racist organization like Aussie Values?”
I instinctively put my arm around Nathan. “Piss off,” I say, and try to hurry Nathan up, but with the concrete crack thing, there’s no chance.
“Do you agree with your father’s policies?”
“Come on, Nathan,” I hiss, trying to drag him along, but he refuses to be hurried and continues concentrating on not stepping on the cracks.
“Is that your brother?” The man is walking right alongside us. “How do you feel, kid?” he asks Nathan.
“Leave him alone!” I say, trying to shield Nathan.
“Feel about what?” he asks cheerfully, not looking at him, his eyes focused on the ground.
“Do you think we should stop Muslim immigration to this country?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you agree with your dad?”
“I said leave us alone,” I yell.
“Muslims are trying to take over,” Nathan cries cheerfully. “I like the bathrooms in their mosques. There are hoses inside.”
I carry Nathan and run with him to the house, trying to block out his screaming at me to put him down, to not touch the cracks. I rush into the house and slam the door behind us.
I’ve freaked him out and he’s crying his lungs out. I crouch down to his level and try to calm him down. “I’m really sorry, Nathan. I didn’t mean to scare you. But that guy wasn’t nice.”
Mum rushes into the hallway.
“What’s wrong?” she cries in a panic.
Nathan’s sobbing uncontrollably. Mum holds him close to her and yells at me to grab his plane model from the lounge. I run and get it. She gives it to him and gently lowers him to the hallway floor. She sits next to him until eventually, after a very long time, he stops crying.
Mum and Dad talk to me after Nathan’s gone to bed. They expect that the media attention will fluctuate in intensity, but reassure me that a repeat of this afternoon is unlikely.
I think about Mina and her parents’ restaurant. The Protect Australia rally that Aussie Values is organizing with other like-minded organizations is in the next few weeks. The upcoming protest at a council meeting regarding the Islamic school application out in Jordan Springs.
“Is it all worth it?” I ask them.
“We’ve been pushed into this corner,” Dad says with a heavy sigh. “I don’t relish being one of the few who are actually concerned enough about the state our country is in to do something about it.”
“It’s a burden actually,” my mother says faintly, stretching her arms up and yawning. “Oh boy, what a day.”
“It’s harder for you to see how much things have changed, Michael,” Dad says. “So many migrants have come to this country and assimilated to our culture, and we’re richer for it. This isn’t a racist country. It offends me when people say that. But there are groups who refuse to assimilate.”
Mum picks at an invisible piece of lint on her trousers and heaves a sigh. “What frustrates me most is the arrogance. The ones who walk around puffed up with this … I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like they don’t even care that we have a problem with their way of life clashing with ours.”
“But what I don’t get is how you can tell if somebody’s assimilated enough. Who decides?”
Mum stands up, yawning again. “I’ve got an early start. Let’s talk about this another time.”
Dad gets up to make a coffee and offers to make me one. I’ve got a pile of work ahead of me so I say yes and follow him to the kitchen.
“Studying hard?” he asks. “Or am I not allowed to ask?”
“Yeah, better not.” I smile.
He grins. “I’m proud of you. I can see you’re putting in the effort, Michael. You always have. Well, except for eighth grade.” He shudders. “Still trying to forget dealing with you that year. Your generation doesn’t do puberty blues like we used to.”
I chuckle.
“I appreciate that you’re opening up to us with your doubts, Michael,” he says. “I want you to feel that you can tell us anything.”
I eye him, a lump forming in my throat. “Hmm.”
I want so badly to blurt it out. I don’t want to be an architect. Two sugars in my coffee, thanks, Dad.
I go as Aragorn.
Jane comes as Galadriel, Leica as Arwen, and Cameron as a dwarf. Paula’s dressed up as Frodo Baggins. There are
a couple of Gandalfs, someone in a Gollum mask, an Elizabeth Bennett, a Professor Snape, and, inevitably, someone shows up in a Star Wars costume.
The doorbell rings and I answer it.
“Another Gandalf,” I say, smiling at Michael.
“Really?” he says, disappointed. “I thought I was being original.”
I cock an eyebrow at him. “Well, your beard’s the best so far.”
Jaxon is standing beside Michael. He’s in eleventh grade as well but I don’t share any classes with him. I’ve seen him on the basketball courts with Michael at recess a lot of times though. I look him up and down and laugh. He’s all in black spandex. He’s got a big orange, red, and yellow oval over his head with a slit down the front, covered with a black stocking that he can see and breathe out of. His head is like a big ball of flame.
“I give you the Eye of Sauron,” Michael says in a dramatic voice, ushering Jaxon in.
“That is awesome!” we all cry.
“He won’t answer,” Michael tells us. “He’s sworn to stay in character all day. He takes his Lord of the Rings nerdiness seriously. A man can only respect that.”
Jaxon surveys the gathering, doesn’t say a word, steps into the cinema room on our right, and sits down, hands folded in his lap, facing the TV screen, patiently waiting for the movie to begin. It’s hysterical and we all burst out laughing, but Jaxon doesn’t so much as flinch.
“Aragorn?” Michael whispers to me when we’re standing at the buffet spread Paula’s laid out, getting a tub of popcorn before the first movie starts. She’s really worked wonders with the emotional blackmail; thanks to her parents’ credit card there’s a Bilbo cake, loads of food, a popcorn machine, and enough junk food to turn us all into diabetics.
Michael looks me up and down, amused. “I was hoping you’d come as Arwen.”