CHAPTER 2
Because I’m no good at maths, and love reading, long-distance running, dancing and drawing, Dad has pretty much given up on me and tells me all the time that I’m destined to be a waitress, like that’s a bad thing, or a housewife like my mother if I’m lucky.
No amount of extra maths tuition on Saturday mornings or extra helpings of maths homework have been able to sew shut the maths-shaped gap in my brain. I’m impervious to improvement, I tell Henry, loftily, all the time. That’s a fancy way of saying I am resistant to mathematical theory in any shape or form.
You do not take after me! Dad roars every time I bring another maths test home with all the letters of the alphabet on it, except the one that really matters.
She takes after me, Mum will murmur tiredly, I was not very strong in maths.
To which Dad will give his usual response in Chinese, Useless.
Or, No brain.
But my study buddy, Henry, is more stubborn than I am and keeps telling me, You’re getting better all the time. He’s made it his mission to get me to an A in maths the way I’m trying to get him to an A in English. Henry’s always complaining that English, the language and/or the subject, makes no sense, especially the writing of stories, and that nothing is sufficiently certain. I tell him it’s the opposite for me with maths – it’s all too sufficiently certain and there’s no room for improvisation, which is what I am good at. I tell him English is like drawing, more free-flowing and imaginative, which Henry is good at too, although he doesn’t think so. But Henry’s pictures are like his maths – precise and detailed and internally consistent. He doesn’t think drawing is important to life on earth, the way I do.
Henry’s family came from a different part of China than we did, and only arrived a year ago, so when he speaks he’s almost impossible to understand; that’s what all the other kids say. But we’re the only two Chinese kids in our class so, at first, he had to hang with me for necessity, and now we’re actually mates. When people want to talk to Henry, or vice versa, they have to go through me.
He’s like a kid behind glass, kind of untouchable and remote. He won’t let anyone but me get too close, because he’s already hurrying on his way to somewhere else – somewhere better. And that’s the beauty of being Henry’s friend. Because when it all gets too much, and too hard, especially at home, he reminds me that one day things will change for both of us. They have to.
‘We’re comets,’ he will say simply. ‘We’re going to burn our way out of here and leave a trail that people can see.’
My usual response to that? ‘Sure, keep believing that, mate.’
But, still, it would be amazing if it came true.
Henry’s dad, who left school at fifteen in China, works for a distant relative at the fresh fruit and vegetable markets near where we live. He gets up before dawn every morning, leaving Henry’s much younger mother – who can’t speak any English at all – at home all day by herself. Henry gets himself to and from school while his mum watches Chinese-language TV, and cries.
Mum says it’s widely known, and talked about, what a bad mother Fay Xiao is. Often when Henry’s dad gets home from the market, late in the afternoon, Henry’s mum won’t have moved at all from where she’s been sitting in her armchair opposite the TV. The house will be dark and cold, and there will be no food on the table or in the fridge. On the very worst days, when she’s paralysed by sadness, she won’t even have washed her face or brushed her hair. Henry says when his mum isn’t crying, she’s screaming at his dad, who is like this tense, angry knot all the time.
‘The house is either silent, or on fire,’ Henry tells me, half in Mandarin and half in English, which I insist that he uses so that he can practise.
‘Since you’re stuck here, like I am,’ I remind him casually, ‘you might as well try to speak English.’
And Henry will screw up his face and end up making both of us laugh helplessly with the twisted words that come out of his mouth. ‘Rs are kind of optional in Chinese, remember?’ he snorts, as we laugh at each other in a way that Mr Cornish’s before-school English class has no right to do.
‘Stand in my shoes, be inside my skin,’ Henry once said grimly, ‘and then you may laugh.’
I tell Henry about my dad all the time, all the things he does, and Henry completely gets it – how fury is like this thing that holds the entire house up; how all of us are suspended like hot-air balloons and drifting further and further away from each other, and from our true selves. Henry understands how anger has tides and temperatures and speeds that can suck you down, or spit you out, depending on the day, the hour, the moment – changing you forever.
‘Who knows what would happen if, suddenly, all that anger disappeared?’ Henry said once. ‘What would we do with ourselves then?’
‘We would feel joy,’ I’d replied immediately, sure of it. ‘Life wouldn’t seem so … narrow.’
‘Yes,’ Henry had replied simply, understanding right away.
Henry wants an A in English to match all the other ones he gets for science, maths, IT and design and technology. One day, he wants to build aeroplanes from the ground up, from wheels to seat covers. He is obsessed with flying, with machines, with speed and power, with speaking the international language of numbers so that he will never feel tongue-tied again and can talk to anyone, from any country, in numbers and pictures and fiendish 3D diagrams.
His plan is to escape his awful home life by going for a place at that big high school that’s so far away from home – near some huge mansions by the sea – that it could be on another planet. Just about everything will be solved, Henry says, if he can get that place at that school full of clever kids. And Miss Spencer is in on Henry’s plan as well. That’s who Henry got his idea from – the idea that people who come out of that selective school by the sea can do anything, and be anything. It gives him the feeling of infinite possibility. And that feeling, of being able to do anything, or be anything, is very much missing from Henry’s life. So the mere idea of that school, and going to that school – even if it will take him two separate bus lines to get there, over an hour on the road each way, or four hours of extra study at night – is something so powerful, it gets him out of bed when he doesn’t want to.
Against my better judgement, Henry’s convinced me to sit the entrance exam as well. That’s our project for me, even though I still think of it as largely theoretical and almost wholly fantastical. He says if the school sees one of the stories I write, and the way that I draw, how hard and how far I can run, they will want me to go there too. Mostly, I think Henry’s dreaming – how could a school like that want someone who can’t even do long division properly? – but a small part of me is excited that I might have a chance at a different life too. Just a small part.
The part of me that isn’t sensible or realistic.
Miss Spencer and Henry put in all the forms for me. The forms claimed that I live at Henry’s home address, and I’d asked, shocked, ‘But what about my parents? They would never say yes to this.’
Miss Spencer’s mouth had gone all tight and funny and she’d said, ‘We’ll deal with that hurdle when we come to it, Wen.’
When I reach the classroom on Tuesday morning, Henry isn’t in his usual seat in the corner, up the back. I don’t bother asking Nikki or Michaela where Henry is, because most people don’t talk to him; in fact, they seem a little afraid to.
In the beginning they tried, and some kids – the jokers and the mean ones – even stole his phone out of his hands when he was looking at it and held it away from him for hours, or shoved him around or tripped him up, just for a laugh. But people leave him alone now because there is something so wise, and sad, and clearly special about Henry. He always knows the answer – any class, any subject, any question. If you’re a kid that can’t even speak properly but can’t ever be caught out, that means something around here. People just let him be these days because he looks like, any moment, he could break apart.
Miss Spencer’s up the front, glancing with a frown at Henry’s empty seat and taking the roll, when the deputy principal, bosomy blonde-tipped Mrs Douglas-Williams, hurries into the classroom and whispers in her ear. Miss Spencer actually drops her clipboard, which falls to the ground with a bang like a gun going off.
We all jump, muttering among ourselves when Miss Spencer leaves the room with Mrs Douglas-Williams, a hand over her mouth, and doesn’t come back at all for the rest of the day.
Mr Fraser, the geography teacher who’s really bad with kids, takes over. You can tell he hates kids, and wishes he were something else, like an international airline pilot, or a spy. And we wonder what could have happened to Miss Spencer to make her just leave like that. She loves us, and she loves teaching, the way Mr Fraser doesn’t, you can tell.
We all forgot about Henry, completely. Even me.
The next day, Henry’s still not in his chair and I’m the only one who knows that yesterday and today are connected because while all the other kids are laboriously writing a narrative – which I’ve already finished because I could write stories all day, it’s not even work, honestly – Miss Spencer takes me aside in the tiny staff kitchen next door to our classroom.
‘It’s about Henry,’ she says, blinking rapidly, and something inside me switches to high alert immediately. ‘I know how close you are …’ and I’m horrified when her big brown eyes become shiny. I go hot, then cold, thinking of all the things that might have happened to Henry. Like, did he have an accident?
I relax a little when she says, ‘You need to convince him to come back to school. It’s really, really important. The entrance exam is in less than two weeks. The finish line is right there. You’re almost there, the two of you. You’ve worked so hard.’
‘Has he got cold feet?’ I ask, wrinkling my nose in consternation. ‘I can’t do it without him. We were supposed to do this together. I can’t believe he’s thinking of quitting! That’s so selfish.’
As soon as I say the word selfish, Miss Spencer places both her hands on my shoulders and closes her eyes tightly, drawing a deep breath. I’m horrified all over again when I see that her mouth is … quivering. When she opens her eyes, there are tears in them. I don’t know what to do – should I just pat her shoulder? Find her a tissue? Call for help?
As I’m panicking about what to do, Miss Spencer finally lets go of me, crossing her arms and stepping back. She’s wearing black trousers and a white shirt today and looks like a sad panda with a cloud of brown hair around her small, heart-shaped face. I don’t know what to say and neither does she, because I can almost see her picking the words she’s going to use, in her head; examining each one and dropping some of them in favour of others. She’s silent for a long time.
Her voice is funny, but her words, when she finally speaks, are very careful. ‘I don’t know … if you know Henry’s mother, Fay?’
I shake my head, confused about how Henry’s mother – his silent, ghostlike mother who refuses to do any actual mothering and is staging a sit-in protest about her own life – could have any impact on Henry’s decision not to do the exam. Once Henry decides to do something, that’s it, it’s done. Or as good as. There is this part of him that’s made of actual iron.
‘Doesn’t she want him to go ahead with it?’ I ask in a small voice, and I’m worried about me, I admit. I can’t do it by myself. It was our plan, not just mine. I’m not brave enough. I’m only sharing Henry’s dream. The dream was too big for me in the first place.
Miss Spencer makes a weird, hiccupping noise and shakes her head so that her tight curls and big gold earrings bounce around. ‘I don’t think Mrs Xiao even knew what Henry was planning. She had nothing to do with it …’ Her mouth starts turning down again at the corners.
I step back in alarm, trying to put some distance between me and her.
‘… and everything to do with it.’ Miss Spencer suddenly looks down at her shoes, her shoulders shaking.
I’m used to my dad telling me No to everything; how final and hopeless and immovable that feels. ‘Did she tell him No?’ I ask tentatively as Miss Spencer smudges the heel of one hand across her eyes. ‘Do you want me to explain how important the entrance exam is to Henry’s mum? Do you want me to change her mind? I can speak to her,’ I add eagerly. ‘She’ll understand me. We share a common dialect, the same way Henry and I do. I can go over there and talk to her.’
Miss Spencer finally sweeps her wet, smudgy brown eyes back up to mine, and says in a low voice, ‘Wen, I don’t know how to tell you this, but Henry’s mum... she died yesterday. Henry was getting ready for school and found her in their backyard. By the time he got outside there wasn’t anything he could do. His dad had already been gone for hours. We only know because the police called us and I went over to check on him and there he was...’
There’s suddenly no air in the room, and I start shaking too.
‘... trying to deal with it.’ A tear slides down Miss Spencer’s cheek, and we both pretend it isn’t there.
‘I’m really afraid,’ she pulls herself together with difficulty, the words forming on her lips even though I’m unable to make sense of them through the roaring in my ears, ‘for Henry. He needs to come back from this. He can’t be allowed to give up, not now. We have to do everything we can to help him.’
In art class in the afternoon, the boys give me stick for the entire period. But I just ignore them. I have to finish it, and Henry has to understand what it means. Fatima gives my arm a quick squeeze of encouragement as she passes to get more sequins and glue, but like most of my other friends, doesn’t know what to say. Someone in the principal’s office must have blabbed after they hung up on the police and what’s happened to Henry’s mum is everywhere, everyone knows already, it’s the worst thing anyone can possibly imagine, you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.
‘Ooooooh,’ some of the boys say. ‘Wen’s got the hots for Henry. Just look at what she’s making him!’
I know it’s over the top. I can’t help it. I’m trying to tell Henry how important he is, this is, how important our plan is for the both of us. How dreams, just like food, can keep you alive. I’m trying to tell him that someone cares. Not just in words, but in cardboard and paper, plastic beads and glitter glue. As vital as words are, sometimes they aren’t enough.
After school, Mum is waiting for me as usual, her long, sleek black hair tucked behind her ears. She’s wearing a neat pink skirt suit and white blouse, her white handbag slung over one arm in exactly the same shade of white as her high-heeled shoes. Pearl earrings. Immaculate, just the way Dad likes her to dress, even when he can’t see her, even though he won’t give her money for any new clothes. She represents him, you see, at all times. Which means she never wears jeans or gym gear or thongs. She doesn’t even own any.
She looks very pretty. If you don’t look too closely, you can’t see that her suit is fading around the neckline and armpits, and that she’s had to stitch up the right pocket of her blazer so that it doesn’t hang lower than the other pocket. On the surface, she’s shipshape and spick-and-span.
I don’t have time to explain to Mum what I’m doing, I just run all the way to Henry’s house, which we have passed almost every day of our lives since we arrived in this country. It’s on the main road, almost in the shadow of a huge, concrete pedestrian bridge that goes over the top of the traffic to get from my side of the suburb to Henry’s side. They say over fifty thousand cars travel past his house every day. I don’t even know how he can study for the honking, the fumes and the noise from all the cars and long-distance trucks that speed by on their way to somewhere else, somewhere distant.
Trailing behind, protesting, Mum does what she always does. She follows.
When I stop outside Henry’s place, my heart is hammering and sweat is running down my back, under my school sweatshirt, between my shoulderblades.
When Mum demands in Chinese what we’re doing here, why I made her run in her only pair of good shoes left, I tell her to be quiet, because this is important. Her mouth snaps shut in outrage. I know I will pay for this insolence later somehow, because Mum tells Dad about everything that I do, right or wrong. Mostly wrong, because after Dad hears about my latest misdeed, or failure of judgement, he will usually quote something obscure from the philosopher Confucius like There are young plants that fail to produce blossoms, and blossoms that fail to produce fruit, and my parents will frown at me, together, in the certainty that my future is likely to be blossomless, or fruitless, if I continue in the disastrous way that I’m going.
I study the front of Henry’s house while Mum fumes beside me, every hair, and her foofy white blouse, still immaculate, while I’m puffing and red-faced and sweaty.
As always, the curtains in the window that looks out onto the tiny, patchy front yard are tightly drawn and there are weeds everywhere, in all the beds, because weeds are the least of anyone’s concerns, in the Xiao household. I know Henry’s bedroom is down the back, right beside the laundry. It looks onto the twisted apple tree, which is almost the only living thing in the Xiaos’ entire backyard. He told me that. He said even the grass had given up, and that they don’t grow grass back there, they grow mushrooms and snails.
Nothing survives but that tree.
I can’t imagine what Henry saw, or felt, when he woke to go to school two days ago. What did he do? What would I have done, if it were my mother I saw through the window? I go cold inside, even though my pretty mother, dressed all in white and pink like a neat gift, is standing right here, anger and incomprehension and fear rising and rising under her skin, like blood.
I ring the doorbell and hear nothing. No footsteps, no noises. Maybe no one is home. But I know Henry must be home. In his tiny, peeling bedroom filled with Chinese books and English books that would tell anyone who is paying attention that he is a boy on a mission to get up and out of here, the street of fifty thousand cars and trucks. I ring the doorbell again and again.
In the front window of the small, single-storey house next door, built in exactly the same style as Henry’s but with added black mould growing up the striped awning that hangs over it, I see a curtain twitch, and know that someone is watching me and my hovering, overdressed mother. That Henry’s horrible, nosy old neighbour, who yells Ching Chong Chinaman! over the side fence at Henry’s family whenever he hears any of them moving around the garden, might even rush out and tell us, in awful detail that I don’t want to know, what happened to Fay Xiao.
What she did to herself, the silly cow.
With Mum now hissing at me (‘Your father told us no stops, Wen! No stops! Is this not a stop?’) I crouch hurriedly at the base of the steel security door and fumble the thing that I made in art class out of my backpack, feeding it under the door. I make sure the lavish confection of cardboard and paper, beads and glue, disappears entirely through the gap so that it’s safely inside Henry’s house. Where he might find it before it’s too late.
I made it this shape because I don’t want him to lose heart. It’s as simple and corny as that.
Inside the card, all I wrote, because today I had no words to describe what I was feeling, was:
You’re not going anywhere without me.
And I’m not doing this without you.
As I crouch there, listening at the door for a little too long, Mum surges forward and wrenches me up by the arm onto my feet. And this time it’s Mum running home in her good shoes, dragging me all the way, the fear hanging over both of us.