Ten Things I Hate About Me (15 page)

TONIGHT I’M ON
my break at work when Timothy comes by on his bike. I see him and my insides go all funny, like they do the moment before you’re about to board an upside-down roller coaster.

“Don’t tell me—undercooked chops again?” I ask.

“No, this time it was undercooked fish fingers.” He leans his bike against the table and takes a seat across from me. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

“They go all soggy and the breading gets moist and the whole thing becomes a disaster?”

“Precisely. I love my grandma, but since we moved in with her I haven’t had a decent meal. My mom works late nights and doesn’t really have time to cook. I’m one of those toast-burning guys so I’m usually on a diet of fast food.”

“Do you mind me asking you why your mom chose to move to Guildford?”

He hesitates for a moment and then shrugs. “When my mom left my dad, she decided to live with my grandmother and look after her more. It was kind of her way of making up for lost time. She neglected my grandma all the years she was with my dad.”

“Is it as hard as they say?”

“What?”

“Divorce. I know what it feels like to be raised by one parent. But I think it’d be so awkward living between two houses, getting stuck in the middle, dividing your loyalties.”

“I don’t have a problem with that. My loyalty’s firmly with my mom. My dad was cheating on my mom for years. My mom knew that but she stayed for the sake of me and Jessica. That drives me crazy, but let’s not go there.”

“So what made her finally decide to leave?”

“It’s funny but it was something very stupid and simple. She found my dad’s girlfriend’s eyebrow tweezer in the car and it set her off. She went ballistic. All this pent-up anger exploded and she packed her bags then and there and left to go stay with my grandmother. I followed her a couple of days later.”

“It’s funny how small things can set people off. I remember the time my dad—” I quickly cut myself off.

“You remember the time…?”

I smile shyly. “Never mind. It’s not important.”

“Do you usually expect people to open up to you in exchange for nothing?”

“I’m not used to talking about my dad…”

“So start.”

I pause and look at him closely. I see trust and honesty and loyalty in his smile. “I was just going to say that after my mother died, my dad kind of fell apart. Have you ever been around silence? The kind of silence that weighs a house down? Like thick, murky, humid air, it sucks the noise and sound out of a place. My dad barely spoke to us. And then one day he was cleaning out our laundry and he found an old hair clip that belonged to my mom. It had fallen behind the washing machine. He just stood there, bawling. I have no idea what went on in his mind but he started looking into our eyes again after that. He reclaimed his voice and he hasn’t stopped talking since.”

“My mom did the opposite. She was suddenly alone and desperate to convince herself it was fine. She threw herself into a master’s degree, volunteer work, painting classes, yoga. It drove me crazy. It was like she was trying to make sure that she was busy for every last minute of the day. That way she’d never have to deal with anything.”

“So I take it things are ugly between your parents now?”

“Whenever I have weekend visits with my dad, he complains about my
irresponsible
mother hauling me over to the
slums of Sydney
to live with her
senile mother.
He has never stepped foot over to this side of the city. I honestly bet he thinks he needs to be immunized or to apply for a visa to get over the bridge.”

“Do you ever miss him?”

“The bimbo hanging off his arm makes it hard to feel any sense of loss. I know lots of people in class wonder about me: where I’ve come from, why I’m here and not in some prestigious school on the North Shore. But I couldn’t care less.”

“Really?” I say, grinning. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“This is weird,” he says after a moment’s thought.

“What is?”

He squirms uncomfortably in his seat. “I don’t usually do this.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t do personal. I don’t talk about family stuff. With anybody.”

I smile. “Me neither.”

Uncle Joseph somehow sees me talking to Timothy. My dad now thinks I have a boyfriend and that I only wanted a job so that I could organize secret meetings with him.

“He goes to school with me and
no,
I didn’t ask him to meet me at work. He happens to live close by and, would you believe it, he felt like a Big Mac!”

“Do not talk to me in that tone of voice, Jamilah! Uncle Joseph said that you were in a very compromising situation. How many times have I told you to be careful about your reputation?”

“Dad!” I cry, jumping from my chair in frustration. “Whose word do you trust? Mine or Uncle Joseph’s? There is nothing
going on between me and Timothy. It was an innocent conversation.”

“But people—”

“How about I lock myself up in my bedroom for the rest of my life? That way we never have to worry about what people will say.”

My dad raises his voice. “Do not mock me, Jamilah!”

“I obey your will. I follow your curfew rules. You don’t appreciate me! I might as well go behind your back because you think I do anyway.”

And so that’s what I decide to do. I’m fed up with the rules and fights. I’m angry with my dad and I want to get back at him. So when Liz invites me to go to the movies after school with her, Sam, and Peter, I don’t fumble for an excuse to get out of the invitation. I say yes.

I call Bilal. He’s at the gym and unimpressed with my call as I have interrupted his bicep-curl repetition session. I beg him to delay his plans for tonight and pick me up. He reluctantly agrees, warning me that I’ll be pet food if Dad finds out what we’re doing.

Then I call my dad.

“I need to go to Amy’s house tonight.”

“Why?”

“We have an overnight test. We have to hand it in tomorrow and our teacher has made us work in pairs.”

“She’s welcome to come to our place.”

He is so predictable. I have an answer ready. “Her mom needs her to be home tonight. She’s not feeling well and needs someone around.”

There’s a long pause.

“Dad?”

“I have a late shift tonight. Who will pick you up?”

“I checked with Bilal. He said he can.”

“So you asked him before you asked me?”

“Dad,”
I moan. “I just wanted to cover all my bases before I bothered you.” I bite down hard on my lip, praying that he’ll take the bait.

“I want you home by nine. And this is not to become a habit.”

“OK, sure,” I say jokingly, “I’ll tell the Board of Education to review the way they assign their tests so it aligns with your rules.”

“Yes, you do that,” he responds. I can sense that he’s trying to hold back a laugh and I suddenly feel guilty about lying to him.

And yet the temptation is so strong. It’s like being on a diet and being confronted with a slice of chocolate mud pie. You decide to devour it and deal with the consequences the next day: an extra-long run on the treadmill, a compensatory day of carrots and celery. I don’t think my dad would appreciate the analogy, but that’s the way I rationalize it as I hop onto the bus with Liz, Sam, and Peter.

I wonder what Amy would think. She’s absent from school
again so I don’t have to face her today. Somehow I don’t think she’d approve.

As soon as we arrive at the cinema complex Liz and Sam decide that they’re “famished.” They give Peter and me pathetic, wide-eyed looks of despair and rub their tummies.

“I
must
eat food,” Sam says.

“OK, grab a burger and take it into the cinema with you.” My voice is desperate. We have fifteen minutes until the next movie begins. If we miss it, the next one doesn’t start for another hour. That means I won’t get home by nine.

“I hate eating a burger over my lap,” Liz complains, pouting at me. “It’s so icky and messy. And I like to eat one fry and then take a bite of the burger. There’s a system involved.”

“How
cute,”
Sam says, grabbing her by the waist and whacking a big sloppy kiss on her neck.

I start to panic. If I insist on the earlier movie I’ll be the whining odd one out. But if I don’t, I’ll get home late and my dad is likely to send out an Australian Federal Police task force with sniffer dogs to look for me.

“I hate to be the party pooper,” I say meekly, “but do you mind if we see this showing? It’s just that my brother’s picking me up and he can’t come by later.”

“You can hitch a ride with me,” Peter offers. “My brother’s picking me up too ’cause he’s free tonight.”

My heart starts racing like an Olympic athlete sighting the finish line. So I keep spinning a web of lies. “Thanks, but we’re going out afterward, so he has to pick me up anyway.”

“Well, I’m hungry!” Liz says, looking at me with an annoyed expression on her face. “I wish you’d told me that when I invited you.”

I want to thump her on the head with a blunt instrument. Has she always been so selfish?

We end up deciding to see a different movie. One that allows Liz to eat her meal according to her wretched system and me to get picked up on time. We grab some food, and because Peter, Sam, and Liz all want to smoke we take our food outside and hang out on a bench in the parking lot.

“Want a drag?” Peter asks. We’re sitting up on the bench, our feet resting on the seat. We’re so close that our legs are touching. He blows the smoke close to my face and I can’t help but cough. He bursts out laughing.

“You dork! You can’t go coughing every time somebody blows smoke in your face. It’s not cool. Here, I’ll teach you how to take a drag.”

My eyes dart maniacally to the left and right, searching for any familiar faces passing by in the parking lot. There’s every possibility that somebody we know might see me. But I ignore my conscience and put the cigarette to my lips. I cough and splutter and Peter points at me and laughs with Sam and Liz. I feel like an idiot.

“You just need practice,” he says. He takes the cigarette from me and inhales. “You know, you’re pretty innocent, Jamie. But you don’t fool me. I bet you’ve got lots of dark secrets.”

“What makes you say that?” I stammer.

He taps his temple with his finger. “Trust me, I know these things. I think there’s a wild side to you. Like they say, you’ve gotta watch out for the quiet ones.”

“Well, what you see is what you get,” I say in an unconvincing voice. “So are you excited about the formal?” I smile broadly, trying to steer the conversation in another direction.

“Yeah, but I’m still pissed off about the band. You can’t dance to Middle Eastern music.”

“You need props,” Sam says. “Like camels or bombs.” They let out a big hoot of laughter.

“My dad thinks it’s just political correctness,” Peter says. “The school’s obviously trying to suck up to the minorities.”

I clear my throat and play with my fingernails. This is wrong. I regret being here. I want to be around people who make me feel good about myself and who bring out the best in me. But I’m sitting here listening to my heritage being trash-talked, and I’m a mute.

I can’t help but think of Timothy. There’s so much courage and fire in him. He can be quiet and unassuming and then bold and daring. He walks around the school knowing that Peter and his entourage spread rumors about him being a snob because he used to live on the North Shore. And yet he holds his head up. He refuses to wear a bulletproof vest to protect against their words, words that shoot out and pierce the skin. He’s like a football player who runs out onto the field without any protection. No mouth guard or knee and elbow
padding. He’s ready to tackle anyone, but he does it without any fierce need to prove a point.

I want to be like that. I’ve got so much protective padding strapped to myself that it’s suffocating my voice, my conscience, my personality.

And then there’s the guilt.

Trust. It’s all I’ve ever wanted from my dad.

I’ve defended myself. Argued that I’m worthy of it. That my word is my honor. That he can snuggle up to it and sleep well through the night.

But I’m betraying my father, and the hypocrisy is sitting in my stomach like an undigested sandwich.

I sit and listen to the three of them ramble on about a world wholly foreign to my own: nightclubs and joints and getting wasted and doing “it” and picking on
losers
like Ahmed and Paul in the locker room.

Then Peter notices two Indian ladies walking up the stairs in their colorful saris. He cups his hands to his mouth and yells out:
“Curry munchers!”
Liz and Sam cackle and Peter looks thoroughly pleased with himself.

The movie is a blur. All I can see is Amy shaking her head at me. All I can hear are Timothy’s words of disappointment. And my father? He’s sitting in an armchair, his argeela in one hand, a cup of tea in the other, smoking my betrayal, drinking in my deceit.

After the movie, we go to the parking lot, where Peter’s brother is waiting. They decide to hang out at a nearby park.

“Come along,” Peter says. “My brother’s brought some beer. We’ll play truth or dare. We can find out about your
wild
side.” He winks at me and I feel dirty. I turn the offer down, reminding them about my other commitments.

They jump into the car and leave me waiting alone in the dark. I stand under the theater entrance lights and wait for Bilal.

I put one foot into the car and he raises his hand in the air. “Stop!”

“What’s wrong?”

“You
stink
of smoke!”

I pull my hair and clothes to my nose. It’s as though I’ve taken a bath in an ashtray.

“Have you been smoking?”

“I took one drag. It sucks. I have no idea why you do it.”

“You can’t go home smelling like that. Dad will know as soon as I turn the car into our driveway!”

“He’s working late.”

“He told me he’ll be home by nine.” He leans his head on the steering wheel. “What are we going to do?”

I throw my jacket into the backseat. “I’ll wash my hair.”

“I told you he’ll probably be home by the time we arrive.”