Mrs Truong is staring at the ground. She has not spoken since she finished her story and I don’t know what to say. She blames herself, but what happened is not her fault.
I want to tell her this but every time I open my mouth I feel like a total idiot. I am seventeen years old, what the fuck do I know? Sure there are heaps of things that have happened that I thought were really bad but, Christ, it was all just bullshit compared to this. If I tell Mrs Truong it’s not her fault, it won’t change things. They’re just empty words.
I have always taken for granted that if I got myself into trouble, my father would sort things out for me. But I’ve never broken anything into so many pieces before; never done anything that couldn’t be glued back together. Have I done something now which might not be fixable?
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men … the nursery rhyme is like a drum pounding in the back of my mind and, with each beat, a hot wave of fear runs over me. Shit, I don’t know what to do.
As I try to bury this feeling, I am staring at Mrs Truong, crumpled over in her seat. She will blame herself if she loses Mai-Ling tonight. She will add this guilt to everything else that has happened to her. No-one will help her because no-one will ever guess what she is feeling. She will just carry on as she always has. She will not see a counsellor or talk about it to friends; it will be her burden to carry alone. As for me, she will thank me for helping her. She will think of me as the friend who was there for her. She will think this unless I tell her the truth. And if I tell the truth I won’t be able to hide my secrets away. I will have to tell everyone, and once everyone knows, I can never be “Carrie” again. I will always be despised as “that girl who …” Oh shit!
“Carrie?”
Mrs Truong is looking at me now with this caring sort of look. She has no idea how much she is going to hate me. Those voices in my head are taunting me again. The only way I can shut them up is to tell Mrs Truong what I have done. I need her to forgive me to make them go away. I am desperate. “Mrs Truong, I have to tell you something.”
She nods, “I know.”
How? Pham must have told her something. Shit she has probably known all along. This whole thing is all about making me say it, and Pham has put her up to it! “What do you mean?” I am looking her in the eyes.
“I know you feel bad telling me some of the things that you and Mai-Ling quarrelled about, but you shouldn’t worry; they are all part of being friends. You mustn’t take the blame for these things. You are a good friend to Mai-Ling and she knows that.”
Fuck! Where did that come from? “Mrs Truong, I have something I have to …” But I can’t, I just can’t. “She loves you too, Mrs Truong,” I say, knowing that it’s lame.
“Thank you.”
“Can I get you a drink of water or something?”
“No, I’m okay. I am happy just sitting here and listening to your story.”
I nod; at least I can drown out the voices if I keep talking …
After the dress thing, Mai-Ling and I weren’t friends anymore. I was back with Elle’s group, but things weren’t the same. You see, Elle always needed someone to ostracise and my turn had come.
She started whispering stuff to the others, looking at me while she did it. When I’d come over to sit down, the conversation would stop the minute I was within hearing distance. You know, all that kind of stupid stuff.
I was determined not to let it get to me, or at least to make it look that way, but it was hard.
Mai-Ling had moved classes too; she was in the top stream now, and she had a whole new group of friends. I had absolutely no-one.
Then it all came crashing down. I was walking past some girls I hardly knew and they started sniggering. I sneered, “What’s your problem?” Then one of the girls put her index and middle finger up to her mouth in a V shape and stuck her tongue through it.
As I demonstrate this to Mrs Truong, I am suddenly aware of a woman sitting over by the wall looking at me. My cheeks burn as I snatch my fingers away from my mouth.
Mrs Truong doesn’t seem to have noticed the woman. She’s just looking at me, “Ah, it means they’re saying I’m a lesbian.” I feel that I should explain, but the second the words leave my mouth I regret saying them.
I wanted to hit that girl, but I gave her ‘the bird’ instead, and as I walked away she yelled out, “Give Mai-Ling a kiss from us.” I knew exactly who this had come from; Elle. I was determined to have it out with her, but by the time I got to where she was sitting I had been given the same treatment by at least ten other girls. I was totally under attack.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I ran into the toilets and cried. I didn’t stay at school the rest of the day either; I went home and sat in my house crying. I had no-one to turn to and I was hated by everyone, even Mai-Ling.
Then I did something really stupid. I opened my father’s bar and took out a bottle of whiskey. I don’t even like scotch but I sat there and drank it anyway. By nightfall I was totally trashed. It was supposed to make me feel better, but all it had done was make me feel a hundred times worse.
I kept going over and over everything from the past few weeks and all I could see was this huge black hole ahead. I hated myself and everyone else and I couldn’t bear the way my life had turned.
I was suicidal.
I felt bad and I wanted everyone else to feel bad too. I wanted Mai-Ling to regret not forgiving me for the party thing. I guess I really blamed her for everything that had happened to me and I wanted her to know this. So I texted her a suicide note.
I look at Mrs Truong for some sign of what she is thinking. There is no judgement on her face. As she looks back at me I notice her necklace. It is a really pretty one and I am surprised I didn’t notice it before. I suppose the light has caught it and that is why I have become aware of it. She must wear it a lot because it looks so familiar, but then I hardly ever see Mrs Truong. I shrug this off and keep going on with my story.
It was a crap thing to do, sending that message, but Mrs Truong’s face is impassive as I admit to this. I’d actually felt so bad that I’d wanted to kill myself, but when I’d sent that text, I was really just trying to get Mai-Ling’s attention. I spent ages composing it, and as soon as I’d hit the send button I guess I must have passed out, because I can’t remember much after that.
“Do you ever feel that way, Mrs Truong? You know, really depressed?” It is a stupid question but I am asking because I want to know how she has managed to keep going after all the shit that has happened to her.
“I have felt despair in my life. Overwhelming despair sometimes. So yes, I know the feeling you are talking about.”
“How do you get through it?” I need to know how she sits there so calmly when I can feel myself totally unravelling. Having to wait is bullshit. I can’t stand it. If I were Mrs Truong I wouldn’t be just sitting here waiting to be told when I could see Mai-Ling. I would be screaming and shouting and pushing my way past those plastic doors. I would be telling everyone who tried to stop me to get out of my way and let me see my daughter. But she just sits and waits like she is willing to leave everything to fate. And yet I know she is hurting, I can see it in her eyes. I want to know if this is what happens to people when life slaps them down that once too often? Do they just surrender?
Mrs Truong shakes her head, “There is little choice. You just take each day that you are given and do what you can with it.”
“I didn’t feel like I could cope with another day, the night I sent that text. I wonder sometimes if I really could kill myself. You know, if I ever felt that bad again, could I really go through with it?”
“When you woke up you must have felt differently though, true?”
“Not exactly; that’s where my story gets a little twisted.”
Mrs Truong looks intrigued, for once, like this stuff about me has really hooked her.
“So what happened?”
Well actually, the text did have the desired effect. I certainly got Mai-Ling’s attention alright. Apparently when Mai-Ling got the message, she went into panic mode. She tried to ring me, but of course I was passed out and didn’t answer. Then she tried to find out my home number by ringing directory assistance, but they were no help. I was surprised she did this, because I had thought she’d probably just look at the message and think what a total wanker I was. But she didn’t, she took it really seriously.
She told me after that she’d even tried to get her mum to leave work early to drive her over to my place but because she wouldn’t tell her mum why it was so urgent her mum wouldn’t do it for her.
I’m hesitating, wondering if I should tell Mrs Truong this next bit; but I have to, now I’ve started.
In the end, Mai-Ling called Pham and convinced him to pick her up and drive her over to my house.
Anyway, when they got there the back door was unlocked, so Pham waited outside while Mai-Ling went in. She said that she was terrified she would find me with blood everywhere, dead on the floor. When I think back it must have been really hard to even come inside the house, expecting to find that. I’m not sure that I would have been able to do it.
When Mai-Ling found me passed out on the bed, she was furious with what I had done. I woke up to her hitting me and shouting all sorts of things. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, because I had forgotten all about the text.
She was screaming that I was such a bitch for putting her though this, and that she had come through the back door expecting to find a dead body. Then she started crying, like people do when they are really distraught. She sat down on the bed next to me, and hugged me while she bawled her eyes out.
It took ages for her to calm down. I thought she would never forgive me, but for some reason she did. It was like everything that had happened before was all forgotten, and in that moment we became best friends again. I never got why she had got so upset about the dress thing, and yet this shit that I had laid on her, which was a hundred times worse, made us close.
Mrs Truong nods like she totally understands. She has pursed her lips like she is ready to say something important.
“There is a reason Mai-Ling was so upset with what you did.”
It will be my fault, I know it, so I might as well apologise again and get it over with. “I know, it was a shit thing to do to someone, and I’m really sorry.”
She continues like she has not even heard what I have just said. “In Villawood, a friend of Mai-Ling’s hung himself. He was fifteen. They would spend hours talking, but one day she couldn’t find him and went looking for him around the compound. He had hung himself with his bed sheet. It was Mai-Ling who found him.”
“Oh my God, she never told me this.”
“She was devastated. He was her best friend and he never even hinted that he would do such a thing. For many months after that, she became withdrawn. I thought I would lose her the same way, but then we were granted our residency. I think that was what saved her.”
“The children in the centre had very little to do. There was nothing to keep their minds active. I believe he lost heart, and with that, he lost everything.”
“I’m so sorry Mrs Truong.” I mean that, too. I have spent my whole life demanding that people love me. I wish I were someone else, anyone other than who I am, because the person I am is so pathetic. But I at least have hope, and no-one has taken that from me.
Mrs Truong’s necklace catches my eye again and it suddenly hits me where I have seen it before: it’s exactly like the necklace my father’s girlfriend accused me of taking. My God, I can’t believe Mrs Truong has one the same. I have to ask. “Your necklace, it’s really pretty. My father’s girlfriend had one like it.”
Mrs Truong puts her hand on the small cluster of diamonds which are hanging from the chain. “I love this necklace. Pham gave it to me for my birthday.”
As she says this I am suddenly seeing another piece of the puzzle. Pham must have taken the opportunity to rob the house while Mai-Ling and I were … Fuck! It never occurred to me to wonder what happened to him that night, because he had gone by the time Mai-Ling was ready to leave. What a prick!
I am so angry. I am so angry that Pham has got away with so much. He thinks he can take whatever he wants: things, people – anything. When he doesn’t want it anymore, he just throws it away like it never meant anything anyway. Mrs Truong thinks he loves her, and you can really tell, the way she fingers that necklace. She thinks he is the one person in this world that she can trust. Fuck, I am so pissed that he gets away with murder like that.
I need to make Mrs Truong understand who Pham really is. She needs to know that he is not her friend; that he is the one to blame for everything. That necklace is nothing to him. It is a shiny thing, a distraction from the truth. It is not love, it is an illusion. And what’s worse is that by trusting Pham like she does, Mrs Truong is hurting so many people, and she has no fucking idea about any of it. I want and need to ‘out’ the prick, but how can I without confessing my own part in the dirty lie? God I hate him!
She takes her hand away from the necklace.
I bite my lip and say nothing.