“Mrs Truong?”
“Yes, Carrie?”
“I really screwed up tonight.”
“You did what you could for Mai-Ling. I know you did.”
“I should have realised that things were out of control months ago. I was so stupid. I thought we were just having fun. Being wild and all that. I didn’t think about what could happen.”
“I have made many mistakes in my life too, Carrie. We all do. And you are young.”
“No, Mrs Truong, I did something really terrible tonight and I have to tell you. Please, just let me say it. I know you will hate me for it and I’m really sorry about that because, well, over these last few hours I’ve started to think if things had been different. I mean I just wish I’d got to know you better before, that’s all. I think we could have been friends.”
“We are friends. You have given me a true gift tonight. You don’t realise how much your story has meant to me. Whatever you have to say won’t change that.”
“I know it will but thank you.”
I want to cry but if I give in to myself I will never be able to say what I need to say. My stomach is churning and I want to puke. Jesus, this is the hardest thing I have ever done. I take a deep breath and swallow the lump in my throat.
I need to start way back, before tonight, so that Mrs Truong kind of understands why things got so crazy. I say this to myself but I know it won’t make any difference. I am condemned and there is no way out of it. Still, this is how I choose to tell it, the story of the moment when my life changed forever and Mrs Truong just has to know it too.
Mai-Ling and I did end up swotting for the HSC exams but we didn’t work as hard as we should have. That’s because we spent more time going out than a lot of the other kids. I kind of had myself convinced that it made us study harder if we had a bit of pressure.
Once the exams were over, however, we both really cut loose. It was like I had my fabulous best friend back again. Mai-Ling was just like I was, and when we went out we partied hard. We were inseparable and it was fantastic.
Things were perfect, that is until about a month ago. I noticed that Mai-Ling was changing and little things started happening. I don’t mean she was getting really studious again. It was like she was going beyond fun and getting really moody and stuff.
Some nights she wouldn’t answer her phone or even return my text messages. When I mentioned it to her, she kind of threw the shutters down on me. I thought she must have had a boyfriend or something that she didn’t want to tell me about. It was so stupid really because I hadn’t noticed that anything had happened to bring this on. Not like before with – well, you know.
Then, one day, I was like phoning her every half hour and she wouldn’t pick up. I was certain she was at home and that really pissed me off, so I drove over to have it out with her.
As I pulled up, I saw Pham getting into his car and driving away. I didn’t think a whole lot about it at the time because I figured that her mum must have been home. Anyway, I was about to drive off as well when I saw Mai-Ling come outside. She had something in her hands which she was putting into the bin.
I jumped out of my car and surprised her. She tried to cover up what she was throwing out but I’d already seen it. It was a pair of underpants. Hers, I imagine. I didn’t say anything about it at the time. I thought she must have had her – well, you know …
The odd bit was that she was acting really normally. You know, since I’d seen that Pham had been there, I thought she must have finally sorted the whole thing out with her mum. But when I broached the subject, she denied Pham had been there at all.
Mrs Truong is looking at me, like she is waiting for me to say something bad about her again, but this is not about her – it’s about me.
Anyway, that was a few weeks ago now. Things seemed to go back to normal after that but there was this unspoken agreement that I didn’t ask her any questions about things at home, and she wouldn’t act so moody.
And that’s how it was until tonight, when we were at this party in Newtown. We had been in the city earlier and met these guys who asked us to come along with them. They were really cute and it seemed like a great idea.
It was a great night – to start with. Mai-Ling and I were like, talking to everyone and really having fun. Mai-Ling hooked up with one of the guys who had invited us there and they were getting on well until she went off to take a phone call. After that she was acting really weird. I had hooked up with this other guy and we were kissing and stuff in the lounge when Mai-Ling came over and started to hit on him. I couldn’t believe it; she had never done that to me before. She was really going for it, too. You know – more than just flirting.
I was so pissed off with her that I dragged her out to the kitchen to tell her to wake up to herself, and back off. She was pretty drunk though, and by the time I got her outside she was like, apologising for everything, and I sort of didn’t feel like I could go off at her anymore. I got her a drink of water and made her sit and talk to me for a bit to try to sober her up. That’s when I saw Pham through the kitchen window. He was parked outside the house and just leaning on his car like he was waiting for someone.
I couldn’t believe he was there. As I turned to tell Mai-Ling, I could see on her face that she already knew. Things started adding up; you know, all the stuff that had happened before and suddenly I realised what was going on.
I just stared at her and shook my head and she knew that I knew. Huge tears welled up in her eyes and started rolling down her face, but all I could say to her was, “You can’t be serious? Pham is your boyfriend?”
She was sobbing and almost choking on her tears, but I kept going, “That’s why you were so pissed off that day when you saw him with your mum. Mai-Ling, he’s like fifty something. What’s the matter with you?”
She kept shaking her head and saying, “No, he’s not my boyfriend!”
But I kept on. “How did he know we were here, then? Come on, Mai-Ling. I’m not fucking stupid! What I don’t get is why him? He’s such a creep and you can do so much better.”
That’s when she started screaming back at me, “He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my mother’s boyfriend. He’s having sex with me but he’s her boyfriend.”
“He’s what?”
“He’s making me have sex with him,” Mai-Ling screamed back at me. “He says that if I don’t he’ll make big trouble for my mum. He says he will dob her in to the tax and immigration, and worse. He’s dangerous Carrie, really dangerous, and if I don’t do what he says, then I don’t know what he’ll do.”
“He’ll do something terrible to us. You don’t mess with Pham, Carrie. You do what he wants.”
I could see that she was terrified. I was so angry that the bastard thought he could get away with doing that to Mai-Ling. I wanted to help her, to make him pay for what he was doing. So I ran outside and started yelling stuff at him, telling him to get the fuck away from Mai-Ling. I called him a paedophile and everything, but he didn’t even acknowledge me. It was like I was nothing.
He looked straight past me and started calling out to Mai-Ling in Vietnamese. He must have been telling her to get in the car. She came to the door and I was screaming at her to go back inside. Then Pham started slowly walking towards us. He was so intimidating. He was holding something which kind of flashed in the moonlight and I thought it was a knife. I was so scared that I picked up some bottles from the ground and just threw them at him, one after another. I hit him, too, right in the chest.
Mai-Ling was going crazy. She was crying and shouting at me to stop but I kept going. I had to, because by now he was coming right for me. I knew I was in for it and I’d run out of bottles. I needed to distract him so I could make a run for it back inside, so I started hurling rocks at his precious car instead. He was threatening me with all kinds of stuff, and people from the party started coming outside. He narrowed his eyes and stared at me and I knew he really wanted to hurt me. By that time, there was quite a crowd watching us. He just got back into his car and took off.
After that, Mai-Ling was a real mess. She couldn’t stop crying. She kept saying I’d fucked everything up and that Pham would make everyone pay for what I’d done. I thought she was overreacting. I had no idea who I was dealing with. All I knew was that I had to make everything alright again, so I did something to try to fix it. I just wanted to try to help Mai-Ling calm down so she could hear reason.
I am shaking all over now. Mrs Truong is looking at me so intently her eyes are burning into mine like a laser. As she waits for me to finish my story, hot tears begin cascading down my cheeks.
“Mrs Truong, I gave it to her. I gave her the ecstasy tablet!”
Our eyes lock as I wait for a reaction. Mrs Truong is just staring blankly back at me like she hasn’t heard a word I said. “I told her to break it in half. To share it with me but she was too upset to hear me properly. Before I could stop her, she just swallowed the whole thing. I thought it would help calm her down. I thought I was helping her …” I am trying to speak coherently but my words are coming out broken and torn. I desperately need Mrs Truong to say something but she is just staring at me.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs Truong. I didn’t mean things to end up like this, I was just trying to …” She is just looking at me blankly and I can’t stop babbling on. “But if she dies tonight, oh God, if she dies I’ll hate myself forever. I’m so sorry. I know you must hate me now. Christ I hate me.”
Mrs Truong has taken my hand and breaks her silence. “Carrie, I don’t hate you.”
I am trembling so much I can hardly speak. “But you should.”
“It’s myself I hate for turning a blind eye to what Pham was doing. For not being a good mother to my daughter. For not protecting Mai-Ling. These things are not your fault, Carrie. They’re mine. All mine.”
“No Mrs Truong, it’s mine too.”
“No, it’s true. I allowed my debt to Pham to become so great that my own daughter was used as a payback. He has always taken whatever he wanted from us. He owns us, and now that I have sacrificed everything to him, I only have my Mai-Ling left. I only have my beautiful daughter, and now she is dying.”
Mrs Truong breaks into sobs and I put my arms around her. We are both crying now, holding tightly to each other.
As I let the entrails of my dirty secret fall to the ground I feel the hopelessness of the situation strangle me like a python crushing a mouse. It is a no win whichever way it goes. Our lives are fucked from this point onwards and there is no turning back. If Mai-Ling dies, I will never forgive myself but if Mai-Ling lives it will be Mrs Truong who will never be forgiven.