Unpolished Gem (24 page)

But most of all, we hated ourselves for loving them.

*

I grabbed a paper napkin from the metal napkin box on the table and started wiping my spoon and chopsticks with it. Then I started wiping his utensils.

His eyes widened. “Umm, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Saving you from Mr Salmonella.”

“Isn’t that a bit rude?”

“Look around you. Everone else is doing it. That’s what these napkins are for. The restaurant owners don’t care. Saves their poor high-school sons from having to wash the dishes too thoroughly. We’re actually doing them a favour.”

He didn’t look too convinced, but he saw that at least three other tables were doing the same. He also noticed for the first time the fourteen-year-old son of the owner, still sweating in his white shirt with his private-school tie loosened around his neck, taking orders from the table opposite us. He turned back to me. “So … umm, how about it?” His eyes, I noticed, were the same colour as the amber jar of fish-sauce on the table.

I liked fish-sauce.

I didn’t know what to say or do, and it was my turn to speak. What could I say?
“How about
what
?” Come on, you know exactly
what what implies, you’re just prolonging his torment. “Oh. You
want to go out with me. Sure. Get in line, and get your folks to make
an inventory of their assets and real estate, including any small businesses
they own, and then get them to put forward a tender submission
to my folks.” Or how about, “I’d love to be your girlfriend, but
my darling, first you need to get a bowl haircut, you need to get a
shirt-and-tie combo, you need to stop making up silly sonnets and
start thinking about our mortgage and how you can give my parents
Eurasian grandkids so that we can improve the gene pool for the next
generation, because Eurasians are meant to be the most beautiful
people in the world according to my pa,
The Reader’s Digest
and
Han Suyin.”

Then I thought about Cousin Melanie parading her husband around to our dirt-poor relatives in Phnom Penh and it wasn’t so funny anymore. I suddenly felt very sad, and not so good about myself.

He just wants to screw you and sow his wild oats,
I told myself,
and then not even the Fresh-off-the-Boats at Footscray Swim Centre
will want you, and all your eggs will dry up and you’ll be a sorry case,
a warning to future delinquent daughters. And then what will you
do hah?

I didn’t know what to do. I remembered once unpacking a new washing machine for a middle-aged customer. He stood admiring the product, nodding his approval. “I could get one for half the price at Cash Converters, but there’s nothing like brand-new goods, you mark my words, young lady. Cost me a week’s wages, but worth it. Brand-new.” And then: “That’s how we Chinese like our women too.” Wink wink, nudge nudge. I imagined the neat young homeboys with their severe expressions and their shirts tucked into their pants diligently packing me into a cardboard box, sealing the top with masking tape and sending me back to my manufacturers. “No good, is broken.” And their mothers standing over them, boxing their ears and shouting, “Aiyah, stupid boy! How could you pick one that was broken hah?” Hands shoved in their pockets and looking sheepish, they would protest, “But Ma, how was I to know? She
did
sell us a new microwave, remember?”

I started to laugh.
Good, good, treat it as a joke, because you’re
taking this whole thing far too seriously. Laugh so that you won’t
squirm when he says, “I was only kidding, hah hah, I just came back
with you to meet Franco Cozzo,” or when he tells you, “Heh, what a
joke, I was only mucking around, hasn’t your mother ever told you
that we white devils do that all the time, we get our kicks that way?”,
or when he says …

“I
am
serious, you know.”

Oh.

How serious?
I immediately wanted to ask. I told myself to shut up.

Come on,
Voice of Reason coaxed,
just say yes. Come on, look
at him, he’s cute, and other girls like him, and he doesn’t seem the
type of boy who’s going to make you wear Hello-Kitty apparel or hold
his hand because helplessness is so endearing, and oh, come on, he has
fish-sauce eyes for crying out loud!

But I couldn’t stop the other commentary that was going on inside my mind. I wanted to ask him whether he planned to go to Southeast Asia anytime soon, because there he would meet girls ten thousand times nicer and milder and good-er than I was, girls like Big Fat Potato’s wife who would graciously slink into the corners and sit in back rooms grateful just to be here. Girls who would dote on him, who’d do more than wipe the salmonella from his spoon and fork.

I wanted to know whether he wanted to go out with me just to spite his parents. To say, look here, you Capital-L Liberal folks, I’m different from you, I’m going out with this authentic, culturally oppressed ethnic minority, and she’s going to give our kids the third-world gene, and there is nothing you can do about it! Then I realised that if I still had head lice and scabies he would not have given me a second glance.

I wanted to know whether it was only because I was “exotic”, and if so, what that word meant to him. If he told me he liked my almond eyes and caramel skin, I would tell him to buy a bag of confectionery instead, because I was sick of it all – how we always had to have hair like a black waterfall, alabaster or porcelain skin, and some body part or other resembling a peach. I wanted to ask him whether one of his reasons for going out with me was to test out the rumour about Asian girls’ gynaecological advantages. And finally, I wanted to know why, out of all the girls in his college who liked him, he had picked me.

But then I thought, bugger it. I didn’t want to marry him. And if I didn’t want to marry him, then why go through all the trouble and torment for something so impermanent? Dating – my Auntie Chia’s first and only “date” was at thirty-two, in
Safeway
, and she had been sent there by my grandparents to suss out whether her fiancé was a cheapskate. Why should I even
give it a try
? Soon enough he would discover that I wasn’t the flippant, fun or exciting girl he liked, especially with the head-swivelling compulsion and the multiple neuroses. Going out with him would transform me into Woody Allen with a black wig. In half a decade’s time I would be someone’s serious wife, and he would be history because we Southeast Asians don’t do the
Bridges of Madison County
thing. Or perhaps in half a decade’s time I would have the matchmakers avoiding me like the plague, whispering to each other, “Oh, there’s the one who does the dating thing, goes out with one after another to try them out.”

I didn’t know which was worse. I could already feel the ASIO spies disguised as diners watching me.

Bugger it, why couldn’t I have something simple and spontaneous and not-so-serious? Bugger. Bugger. Bugger. Then I realised, why not? Just give him a simple and spontaneous and not-so-serious answer to show him that you’re a simple and spontaneous and not-so-serious person. Why not why not why not?

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“I can’t.”
Great. Now you sound like fifteen-year-old loser whose
parents won’t let her go out. What are you going to say now? “It’s not
you, it’s
me
?” Oh, but it was so true!

We both sat there looking pretty tormented. When our food arrived, we let the noodles soak. He half-heartedly plonked in a spoon.

“You know, I don’t know how to do this.”

“Don’t worry, they automatically lower the MSG content for Caucasians and you can use a fork.”

“No! I mean, I’ve never … you know, asked anyone … like … well, you know …”

“Oh.”

“Perhaps I’ve gone about it the wrong way. I’m an idiot.

Sorry. I’ve mucked it up. Crap.”

“No, you haven’t. I think
I’ve
mucked it up.” I paused, and realised that I didn’t say these words merely to make him feel better either. I wanted to cry. This was terrible and confusing and I had mucked it up by thinking too much, and now I had hurt this poor amateur Asian-asker-outer by frightening myself with fears before anything had even happened.

“Well …” I said, and paused. Where could I begin?

“Err …” I began again. How could I begin? Oh, what to say! Oh, what to do!

Luckily he came up with a simple solution.

“Ummm … can we un-muck it then?”

Anything to get rid of this sudden sinking feeling I had in my gut, this feeling of cowardice. This feeling of missing out on something I wasn’t even sure I wanted. But worst of all, this feeling of missing out on something I might have chosen for myself.

“Okay.”

O
NCE
we resolved to un-muck things, it became much easier. After all, I thought, it was time to loosen this small and tightly coiled life of mine and do the things that ordinary young people did, like falling in love without being under the spotlight of the Indochinese (in)security cameras. So I went on my first date. And my second and third. Woohoo, I thought, I’m doing well. At least I beat Aunt Chia’s record, and in none of those dates did we venture near a supermarket. In fact, I didn’t even let my parents know I was “going out”, and we visited places and suburbs where no one would ever recognise us.

“Got to go to Mao-Bin U library today,” I declared to my mother on the days I was not supposed to be at university. There were no questions asked, because I was trading on my reputation as a studious daughter. University was a foreign country to my parents. Never having set foot inside one, they saw universities as little scaled-down cities populated with the best and finest minds. “My daughter is studying at Mao-Bin U,” my mother declared to her friends, especially ones who also had sons studying there. Their pronunciation made the place sound like a shonky university in China for discarded communists, but our proud Southeast Asian mothers spoke the name with such reverence that it hardly mattered.

“Don’t come home too late.” By too late my mother meant anytime past
6
p.m.

“I won’t.”

*

“Have you ever hopped on a random train and got off at a place you have never been before?” I asked him.

“No.”

I often looked at the signs on stations while travelling past on trains and tried to imagine what those places might be like.

I pictured Balaclava as a place full of thugs and Box Hill as full of packing crates. Sometimes I hopped off at arbitrary places and had a wander around, pretending I was an overseas student by speaking slowly to strangers. I always wanted to get off at another destination, to escape the familiarity of home and be anonymous, an adventurer. So there we were on our first date, sitting on the bright green grass in the middle of an empty equestrian park in Caulfield.

We were both unfamiliar with the suburbs of Melbourne, because he had come from the countryside and I had spent most of my life locked in two neighbourhoods. “Your neighbourhood is fascinating,” he told me, lying on the grass, hands behind his head, staring up at the sky. “Even without English, the people there seem to understand each other so well that they could get to work on the Tower of Babel again with no problems.”

I sat cross-legged, back straight. I realised that no matter how tired or how hot, I could never be so laid-back, even if no one else was around. Would I ever see the sky as completely and as clearly as he could? I was always on guard, always ready to leap to my feet and deny everything.
Boy? What boy? I’m not
with any boy! I’m a good girl, saving myself up for some whitegoods
connoisseur who will treat me like a brand-spanking-new fridge.
Then I heard my mother’s voice in my head –
those Aussie boys,
they just park themselves anywhere, and sprawl their limbs in every
direction, you had better watch out.

But I was acting less and less like a top-notch Frigidaire model the more we spoke. I became less fidgety. I stopped pulling blades of grass from the ground and realised that I had cleared quite a large patch.
A few more outdoor dates,
I thought,
and Jim’s Mowing would be out of business.

“Speaking of bible stories,” I said, “I was brought up to believe that the fall of man was Adam’s fault entirely.”

“Really? Even though I’ve never met your mother, somehow I don’t imagine her as a raving feminist.”

“Not my mother. My father. He used to tell me stories when I was small. His version of the Fall-from-Paradise story went something like this: Adam stands in the garden of Eden and reaches out for the apple on the tree. ‘Don’t pick it!’ Eve cries out to him, but Adam takes a big bite out of the apple, offering it to Eve, who, of course, refuses. Suddenly a huge voice roars from the sky, ‘Hey, what the
HELL
do you think you’re doing, Adam?’ Adam is so startled that he chokes on his piece of apple and it gets stuck in his throat. The Lord then decides that that’s pretty funny, and it should be stuck there permanently as evidence of Adam’s guilt. So that’s my father’s explanation of why men have Adam’s apples.” I looked down at him, because here in this unknown area I could look him straight in the face without having to avert my eyes or be demure. “Hey, that’s strange, because you don’t appear to have an Adam’s apple.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Nah, I don’t think so. I think without the obvious mark of Deity disobedience you are destined to be a celibate of sorts.

Which means you shouldn’t even be here with me.”

“No, it’s here. Feel here.”

Suddenly he had taken my hand and placed it at his throat and my fingers were so stunned that they became still and stuck.

Move, hand!
I commanded,
move move move stupid fingers!

No.

What do you mean no?!

Actually, we like it here.

What are you saying?