We have been waiting for two hours now, and still no-one tells us what is happening with Mai-Ling. Occasionally, a doctor pushes through the plastic doors and both Mrs Truong and I hold our breath as we brace for bad news. But each time, those doctors hurry past. Neither of us speaks when this happens; it is as if we are both afraid to give life to our fear. The waiting room is full again; all seats are taken except those on either side of us. We are castaways on an island in the middle of this sea of people. I’m not sure why we are being given this communal snub, and care even less. Waiting is like a slow death. Like we are insects caught in a web, struggling to escape but preparing for the end. Has it been too long to hope for good news? I can’t convince myself any more that things will be alright. I’m hoping that when someone finally speaks to us we will not be told the worst.
Every time a doctor disappears into the catacomb of corridors, I promise myself that I will crash-tackle the next one and hold them down until they tell me exactly what is going on. But each time one of them pushes through those doors I freeze, shit scared that if I ask the question, I will be told the answer. I stay in my seat with my lips pressed together.
“Did Mai-Ling have a boyfriend?”
I sit bolt upright. Not because the question is hard to answer, but because it catches me off guard and sets those voices off again. Christ, they are screaming at me, taunting me to answer that question with all kinds of shit. Ask her, go on; ask her to define the word ‘boyfriend’. Ask if she means the type of boyfriend who takes you out on dates and stuff, or the kind of boyfriend Pham is to her. You know, the kind you keep secret, and just screw now and then.
All this shit is blasting away in my head and I can’t reply to Mrs Truong’s perfectly reasonable question in case I come out with these awful thoughts. I can’t get past how fucking pissed off I am with Mrs Truong right now either. If she wasn’t so fucking stupid, none of this would ever have happened. If she had just opened her eyes and seen what a creep her ‘hero’ Pham is, then Mai-Ling would have been able to answer this question for herself. For fuck’s sake, I want to blame Mrs Truong for everything, and the voices are insisting if she hadn’t been screwing Pham, none of this would have happened. Tell her, go on, tell her! Shut up! Shut up!
I don’t want to be like this, like some kind of judgemental bitch. I just want to forget everything that has gone on and go back to the way things were. Way back, before everything got so out of control.
I’m shit scared of my own thoughts. A war is going on inside my skull and I feel like I’m going crazy. Christ, is this how I’m going to be from now on? Is this it? Am I going to become one of those weirdos, pacing the streets muttering and mumbling and yelling abuse? Shit, what if I’m already like that and I just haven’t noticed? What if the few drugs I have taken at parties really have rewired my brain and I just can’t see …
I am sucking in air and holding it as long as I can to try to stop my mind racing, but Mrs Truong has assumed that I’m upset again because of Mai-Ling. She touches my shoulder and looks at me, like she knows how I feel. “It’s alright Carrie; you don’t have to tell me.”
She is so nice; too fucking nice to me, and I’m such a bitch in return. Jesus Christ, Carrie, answer the woman’s question!
“It’s okay Mrs Truong, I was just thinking.”
“I know Mai-Ling probably has a boyfriend; I guess all girls your age do.”
“Actually no. Mai-Ling doesn’t have a boyfriend anymore. But she did last summer.”
“She never said. Was he a nice boy? Was he good to her?”
Christ, define good! “They had a good time together. We all had a good time together actually. I can tell you about it if you want.”
“Yes, I would like to hear.”
“Okay, well do you remember when Mai-Ling stayed with me at my place, when my father was in Europe? That’s when it all started.”
I am glad to be telling Mrs Truong about a time which was totally awesome. I can see that she is glad to hear something good too. So I tell her how great it was to have the whole house to ourselves, and no-one to tell us what to do.
We spent loads of time at the beach just hanging out with surfies and there were so many parties. You know, impromptu ones, where we’d all go to the city for a while, then end up at someone’s house and spend all night just talking and listening to music and stuff.
Alex was this really cute surfer we met at the beach. I could tell he liked Mai-Ling; he was always looking at her and doing stupid stuff in front of her. You know, making smart comments or throwing her over his shoulder and not letting her down, even though she was squealing and begging him to. Just fun stuff.
Mai-Ling thought he was cute too, and loved the attention. She’d talk about him all the time but she wouldn’t go over and ask him out. She was way too shy to do that. There was this other girl, Kirsten, who liked him too, and she was all over him. To be honest I didn’t understand why he didn’t tell her to piss off because it was obvious he thought she was a bit of a dog.
One night, we decided to stay in and just watch DVDs and stuff. We were curled up on the lounge in our pyjamas, eating pizza, when Mai-Ling got a text message. She was so excited when she saw it was from Alex. All he’d written was, “where r u?” but Mai-Ling was nearly wetting herself over it, like he’d asked her to marry him or something.
I told her to wait for half an hour before she texted him back, but after five minutes she couldn’t help herself. She was going to write something stupid, like the truth, so I grabbed her phone and texted for her, “out with Carrie”. I told her that the last thing she wanted him to know was that we were just hanging around at home.
It seemed ages before he replied. Mai-Ling was checking her phone, like a million times. We had almost given up when she got another text, “can i meet up with u?”
You should have seen us; we flew into the bedroom and started dragging clothes out of the wardrobe, throwing on make-up and fixing our hair. It was madness really but we had to keep up the story.
We met up in the city about an hour later. Alex brought a mate along and I spent most of the night talking to him, so that Mai-Ling could have Alex all to herself. Then Mai-Ling dragged me into the Ladies and said we had to go home. I didn’t get it, but we left anyway, because she was really insisting.
Anyway, later on she told me that he had asked her to go back to his place with him, and that’s why she’d wanted us to take off. I didn’t realise that Mai-Ling was still a virgin, and if I had I might have understood her a little more. But as it was, I was like, “What’s the matter with you? You think he’s really cute and he’s obviously really into you, so why didn’t you go home with him?”
I didn’t think he’d call her back, but how wrong was I? He started texting her before we even got home.
Mai-Ling was so cool after that. She had a really cute boyfriend and everyone knew it. Alex was a nice guy too. He really respected her, even though she wasn’t sleeping with him or anything. That’s kind of unusual I think, for a guy to still hang around with a chick he’s not getting any from. Anyway they were like, together all the time for the next couple of weeks and Mai-Ling was really happy.
Then Alex stopped seeing her so much and Mai-Ling started to get all insecure. I tried to tell her that guys like to spend time with their mates, and not every minute with their girlfriend, but she didn’t believe me. She was convinced she had done something wrong. From then on every text she got I had to analyse for ‘signs’, interpreting each one for hidden meanings. She was sending me mental. I think it was then that she started to think that maybe he was seeing someone else because she wasn’t sleeping with him. It had crossed my mind too but I didn’t say that to her.
They had only been going out for like a month, and she was acting as if they’d been together for years. She started all this stupid girl shit, like holding off on making plans with me in case Alex called. And she was constantly checking her phone and stuff, in case he’d left a message. I was really getting the shits, especially since she was still seeing him a couple of times a week. It wasn’t like he’d dumped her or anything.
Anyway, one night we were all going out in a big group and she told me on the bus on the way there that she was going to go home with him that night to, you know, have sex with him …
Shit, Mrs Truong’s face says it all. Fuck, I thought she would have assumed that Mai-Ling had had sex. Fuck! I’ve done it again.
“Mrs Truong, it’s not like she was a slut or anything. Everyone does it, you know? It’s okay.” Mrs Truong’s smile looks forced and I know she’s not handling this at all. “Are you alright, Mrs Truong? I’m sorry I told you, I should have kept my mouth shut, I’m really sorry.”
Mrs Truong is nodding slowly, like she’s processing everything over and over again. “Did she go home with this boy?”
This is my out, and I should take it. I should say, “no” and pretend like Mai-Ling had decided to wait for her wedding day or some shit like that, but I can’t carry it off. She’d know I was lying, so here goes. “Yes, she did.”
Mrs Truong is just looking at me like I haven’t finished my sentence, but that was all I was going to say. Jesus, what am I supposed to say? “And she was really glad she did.” Christ why did I say that? “That’s what she told me anyway …” I’m not making it sound any better. “Anyway, that’s what happened.” Please, please don’t ask me any more!
I’m expecting Mrs Truong to cry or get mad or something, but she’s not. She’s actually smiling, almost like she’s okay with it. Go figure. She takes my hand and squeezes it.
“Carrie, I am glad she did that. I’m glad she enjoyed.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m glad that she enjoyed sex, and I’m glad that she can choose who she sleeps with. I could never speak to her about that sort of thing. I didn’t know what to say. But I know if we had stayed poor and in Vietnam, she may not have been able to choose for herself. She may have had to make a decision based on security, not her feelings. So I am glad.”
Oh my God. Mrs Truong blows me away sometimes.
“So what happened to this Alex?”
Now comes the bad news. “Oh, he dumped her a few weeks later.”
“Dumped?”
“He didn’t want to go out with her anymore.”
“I know. She was really hurt by it. She was crying for days and kept going over and over everything they did, trying to figure out what she’d done wrong. I tried to make her see that it wasn’t any big deal, that he was just one guy. You know, there are heaps of cute guys out there, it’s not like she couldn’t get another boyfriend or anything. Don’t buy the book when you can borrow the whole library, that kind of stuff. But it still took her ages to get over him.”
I can see that Mrs Truong doesn’t get what I’m saying, and now I’m starting to realise something that I didn’t get until now, either. I am starting to think that Mrs Truong is not actually in love with Pham after all. It’s like a duty fuck for her. Payment for everything he has done for her. Shit! She’s not left her old life behind at all. And here’s the really fucked-up part: she thinks Mai-Ling has.