Laurinda (22 page)

*

At recess that day I could not join the Cabinet because Mrs Grey wanted to see me. I sat on the bench outside her office, next to a tiny girl with a face too small for her large features. Even though she had beautiful big eyes and lips like pillows, the disparity made her look a little clownish. She was picking miserably at the hem of her blazer.

After a few moments of silence, I tried to make her feel more at ease. “What are you here for?”

She looked down, and at first I thought she was extremely shy, until I saw that she was pointing to her feet. Then I noticed that her socks were not the regulation anklet length, but long and white, even though they were now pooling at her ankles. Like her face, her legs seemed to be covered with scaly acne.

“I forgot to get a uniform pass,” she whispered. “I didn’t think I needed one because of my psoriasis, but Mr Abraham noticed them and sent me here.”

“Don’t worry,” I reassured her, “it’s not a big deal.” Secretly, I knew better.

“Nadia Pinto,” called Mrs Grey’s secretary, and the girl stood up and disappeared behind the door.

Ten minutes later she came back out with red-rimmed eyes. Nadia Pinto didn’t look at me as she walked back to class.

It was my turn.

Mrs Grey’s eyes were the colour of pickled onions, shot through with hair-width strands of red. Her cheeks were etched with lines to match. The girls were saying she was a closet alcoholic.

“I’m concerned about your performance, Miss Lam,” she said as soon as I sat down.

“But I’m working hard, Mrs Grey.” I racked my brain to see where I had gone wrong. I’d had good results for my midyear exams. “Maybe I could go back to remedial English with Mrs Leslie?” I offered disingenuously.

It turned out she wasn’t talking about my academic performance.

“It seems to me, Miss Lam, that you’ve become uninterested in what Laurinda has to offer. You’ve become lacklustre. Insipid.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs Grey, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Not taking advantage of all the remarkable opportunities here for you. You have not attended any Saturday-morning sports.”

“I thought they were voluntary . . .” I began and trailed off, immediately realising it was the wrong thing to say.

“You did not come to our Constitutional Convention in Term Two.”

Of course not, I wanted to tell her. I’d have had to stuck toothpicks in my eyes to prop them open.

“You did not get involved in drama or music.”

“But I did some debating,” I protested feebly.

“You attended the debating finals. That is not the same thing. The truth of the matter is that you are not becoming the well-rounded individual that we envisioned when we accepted you into this college. Do you think that is a fair assessment?”

No, I wanted to say. It’s crap.

“The letter from your former principal said that you were involved in the school choir and Tournament of Minds, and that you started a book club.”

Ah, the halcyon days of youth, I wanted to say to her. Alas, my mind is not as sharp as it once was. Actually, this would not have been far from the truth, because I was feeling exhausted all the time now, and I didn’t do half as much as before.

I forced myself to look Mrs Grey in the eye in case she thought I was being evasive. I didn’t see myself reflected back. Instead of a human being, she seemed to see me solely as a human
doing
, and all my doings had to add to the prestige of Laurinda. At that moment I felt nothing but repulsion as I looked at the white orbs of pearl hovering above her neckline. Someone who wore the remains of sea molluscs strung around her neck and would make a thirteen-year-old cry over wearing the wrong socks was not someone I respected.

“We may need to have a word with your parents,” she said. “The letters we sent home don’t appear to have been read.”

Good luck with that, I thought. Maybe you can courier them to my father at the carpet factory.

“I understand you have become friends with Brodie Newberry and Amber Leslie.” For some reason she left out Chelsea. “These girls demonstrate the Laurinda spirit,” she said. “Particularly Brodie.”

Brodie’s a dickhead, I thought.

The truth was, Linh, this school sucked you in. It demanded every part of your life and mind. In order to be a Laurinda girl, you had to dedicate every waking moment to doing its bidding. I had to make myself “deserving” of the scholarship; at the moment I was blocking its march Forward in Harmony. I had to be one of those girls in the brochures: holding a test tube in the science lab, or laughing with manic glee on the sporting field. I had to be the well-adjusted student whom the school could tout as its equity and access success. That was why I was allowed to be so close to the Cabinet, when everyone else had to orbit like distant planets. They were the sun bringing life to my barren earth; they were civilising the beast in me.

“I’m afraid that if you don’t get your act together,” Mrs Grey was saying, “you might not be an appropriate cultural fit for this college.”

She knew exactly how to get to me. The only way I could be that girl was if I gave up my family – if I stopped working in the garage with Mum, and stopped looking after the Lamb.

“Academic results aren’t everything, you know, Miss Lam.”

We sat in silence. Then Mrs Grey reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a brochure.

“There’s a conference in a month’s time, at the University of Melbourne,” she said. “Dr Markus will be presenting on behalf of our school.”

Dr Markus was the Latin teacher and History coordinator. He had got his PhD for research into the use of the comma in contemporary English translations of traditional Italian children’s books circa 1965–85. Some girls claimed he was an even worse teacher than Ms Vanderwerp, but the school board thought Laurinda was lucky to have enticed such a learned scholar to publish papers and represent it at conferences.

She pushed the document at me. “Equity in Education,” I read. “Approaching the Twenty-First Century.”

“Some schools will also have student participants,” she continued. “For instance, Meredith Grammar is sending three of its Indigenous access students along to do a dance.”

I waited for Mrs Grey to continue.

“We want you to give a short speech on behalf of the school,” she concluded. “So get your act together. We are trying our best to be inclusive, Lucy, but we need you to cooperate.”

Now I understood what all this was about. I suppose I should have shown more gratitude, or jumped at the opportunity to speak at the conference. But I felt like a puppet, and I didn’t want to have my strings pulled.

N
othing escaped the Cabinet. At lunchtime, when we found our usual spot near the rose garden and sat down, they started in on me.

“I hear you’ve been asked to speak at the Equity in Education conference next term,” enthused Brodie.

How did she know about this?

“How exciting. How lucky for you, Lucy! You get to put yourself out there.”

“It’s only for ten minutes,” I said.

“But there’ll be university staff there, and professors, and lots of important people. Wow, what an honour.”

“What do you think you’ll talk about?” asked Amber.

“Well, since it’s about equity, I might talk about fairness.”

“Oh, you mean equal access, and getting into this school on a scholarship because you’re so smart, that kind of thing?” asked Brodie.

I did not fall for her flattery.

“No,” I said slowly. “Maybe how different schools cultivate different cultures of fairness. For instance, at my old school we had a student representative council—”

“But you’re not meant to be talking about your old school,” interrupted Chelsea. “You’re representing Laurinda, remember?”

“Hmm,” mused Brodie. “How about you focus on the two schools’ different academic standards and extracurricular activities? Do you think that would be a good approach?”

“I’m not sure about that,” said Amber. “The last time I spoke outside of school was at Poppy King’s Red Lipstick Luncheon. Those ladies liked hearing personal stories of motivation and success.”

“I think what Lucy is doing is very different,” said Brodie.

“You’re right,” I said. “Maybe I will talk about how povvo my old school was and how it’s a hundred times better here.”

“We didn’t mean it like that!” protested Chelsea, with her sensitive-offended look. She paused and pouted so that I could apologise, but I ignored her.

I hadn’t meant to blurt any of this out. I wanted to keep my cards close to my chest, but once I got started I couldn’t contain myself. “I suppose I’ll also mention our culture of fairness and respect towards teachers.”

I watched a vein in Brodie’s temple throb as she tried to work out the best way to deal with this unexpected revelation: that while I was sitting there with them, silent and smiling, I was thinking all the time, and I was judging them.

Chelsea looked incensed; two red patches appeared on her cheeks, like sunburn.

But Brodie simply turned to me and said, “Lucy, you’re just going to be wasting your time when you could really be impressing the audience with the story of your own achievements.”

They thought I was like them, and that I would want to use every opportunity to show off.

I did not reply. Usually, my silence rendered me invisible, but this time the quiet was ominous because it was a silence I had caused deliberately.

“The teachers must think you’re so innocent, Lucy Lam, with your sad, big, brown eyes,” hissed Chelsea. “But we know. We know what you’re like. You may look timid, but you’re devious.”

Then I knew. I knew that the Cabinet did not want me messing things up for them. Next year we would be at the senior campus, and they wanted to maintain their unassailable Unholy Trinity, their position at the top. Because it appeared to the teachers, and especially to Mrs Grey, that they had taken me under their wing, whatever I said would be a reflection of their work.

They had to keep me in line. They were the ones who would be held responsible for me, the ones whose duty it was to infuse me with the “Laurinda spirit”. Being a Laurinda young lady was all about controlling your impulses when it was beneficial to you. You moved by stealth, and maintained clean nails.

I stood up. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’ve got to go.”

“Where?” demanded Brodie.

“To the loo.”

“No!” shouted Chelsea.

If they weren’t deadly serious, this would have been hilarious – just like the time they tormented Ms Vanderwerp and then told me to wet my pants rather than leave the room.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, and this time I really did leave.

*

Most toilet blocks at Laurinda were disgusting. There was a set of visitor’s toilets in the main building that had gleaming white tiles and lavender hand soap in a pump, but the ones we used had stone walls, concrete floors, 1950s stainless-steel sinks, and mirrors so old that they were dark at the edges.

There were four toilets in the Year Ten block, but the lock of the last cubicle didn’t work. Often that was the cleanest toilet, if you didn’t mind leaning forward to hold the door closed with your fingertips while sitting down to do your business. If there was no one else in the block, I always used that cubicle.

When I walked in and saw that it was occupied, I peered into each of the other three cubicles. Two were coated with thick, smeary dark-brown crap on the sides of the bowls, and the third had a disgusting coiled floater on top of the water. This was a new low even for Laurinda.

Trisha MacMahon was standing at the sink, washing her hands, so I told her how much I enjoyed her music.

“Thanks,” she replied. “Can’t believe how often they want me back! Can’t believe how disgusting these loos are, either. I’ve come in twice in half an hour but the last one’s never free.” She bounced out of the toilet block but I decided to wait.

About three minutes later, who should skulk in but the Cabinet. I opened my mouth to say something but Brodie put a finger to her lips. She and Amber glanced at the occupied cubicle and exchanged a look, then Amber nodded.

Chelsea watched this wordless communication. There was glee in her eyes as she readied herself at the sink in front of the closed toilet door. Then she swung her body around and gave the broken door a swift and sharp and forceful kick – a
very
hard one – and then came a sound I would never forget, like when you snap apart a cooked chicken wing.

It all happened so fast and so silently that I had no time to warn whoever was in there. I expected a snap like that would be accompanied by a monstrous howl, but all we heard was one “Ahhhhhhh,” one long weeping “Eeeeee,” and very shallow and fast breathing followed by more whimpering.

Inside the cubicle, with her green cotton underpants still around her knees, was Nadia Pinto – Nadia of the wrong socks and severe psoriasis. She was clutching her left hand with her right, and mewing like a cat hit by a car, her eyes and nose and mouth leaking.

Although there was no blood, I could see that there was something very, very wrong with Nadia’s fingers and wrist.

“Oh my god,” cried Brodie in genuine dismay. “Oh my god!”

“What the—?” Chelsea was also incredulous, but I don’t know that she had any right to be. She knew someone was behind that door, she also knew the door had a broken lock, and she was the one who had kicked it in.

Brodie dashed over to Nadia. “Oh, oh. Oh, we’re sooo sorry,” she cried. “Oh, no. Oh, no. Can you get up?”

Tearfully and obediently, Nadia stood up. I watched as Brodie pulled up Nadia’s green cotton underpants for her, all the while murmuring, “Oh, we’re so sorry. We need to get you to the hospital.” I watched as Brodie walked Nadia out of the toilets, a hand on her shoulder holding her close, leading her to the school office.

News like this travels fast, and soon gawkers were milling outside the office, so much so that they were later told off for obstructing the ambulance. When it arrived, Brodie was still by Nadia’s side, her protector, hissing at anyone who got too near. She climbed in the back with Nadia.

As it drove off, I saw Brodie’s face peering at us from the back window. Tears were streaming down her face.