SHAME

There’s a sense of anticipation when you round the corner of a supermarket aisle. That bookend demi-space where displays of tacky gimmicks and fads catch your eye between the serious considerations of the aisles proper. Mick Li was a nervous shopper, always anticipating a confrontation with one of his students. Admittedly he got on well with most of them, but there were a few of the redneck variety who still resented having an ‘Asian’ teacher. He’d long given up telling them he was an Australian teacher.

And when he was with his family, Mick felt the trauma of shopping even more. His wife was Caucasian, and his children a basically acceptable ‘Eurasian’ – his teenage daughters were beautiful, or so everyone said. Even the redneck boys followed them around with hangdog expressions. Not that Mick, sensitive to bigoted overtones, would ever publicly use the term ‘redneck’ himself. Sometimes, wanting an easier life, he had to check himself from thinking it would have been good for him if his daughters had gone to the state high school where he taught, rather than their religious private school. They would have counted as kudos, as a kind of protection for him from the we’re full taunts.

He acknowledged that he had a peculiar habit of lingering behind in the supermarket. The trolley and the rest of the family would have long rounded the corner before he appeared. He had also perfected the art of looking at nothing other than what was being searched for on the list, though he rarely spotted an item first. And his kids liked pushing the trolley, so he didn’t have any gender guilt about the whole business. Instead, he filled his mental in-between moments with footnotes from the history he was teaching or reading at the time. He was cogitating over whether to include a little local history in his Australian political history course. He wondered how his students would react to reading, ‘Only allow the Chinese a footing in our town and district [and] morality and public decency will be grossly outraged.’ And there was worse. The article was from the local town newspaper, an 1896 edition. ‘Asiatic Scum’, it screamed to the good white residents. He should do it, really. But it would surely backfire on him. His eye caught the small ‘Asian food’ section as his wife selected a bottle of soy sauce from a shelf. History is in the timing, he thought.

At first, Mick didn’t register. Then he saw his wife staring at him, and his daughters. His son was already miles down the aisle, surfing on the back of the trolley. Then he heard again what he suddenly realised he’d already heard.

Dad-dee, Dad-dee.

A baby in a trolley seat. A little girl? Pretty little thing. She was pointing at him. She was insistent. Dad-dee, Dad-dee!

His wife continued to stare at him. What? he asked. Then he noticed the baby’s mother. All in slow motion. The mother was embarrassed, red-faced. Was he supposed to say something?

Then his wife said, Yes, baby, that’s our Daddy. She then followed the surfing boy down the aisle, her two beautiful but bemused daughters in tow.

Mick stood transfixed, staring at the baby, then the mother. After a long pause, he said, Nice baby. He turned his gaze from the mother and walked off.

His family were at the end of the aisle, selecting a brand of tea. They did not look back, though as he joined them he couldn’t help taking a quick glance; not at the baby, but at the mother. She was studying him with her bright red face. Was that a look of longing? No, no, it was all too ridiculous for words. He didn’t know her; he didn’t know the baby.

*

The Li house was within easy walking distance of the supermarket, so they carried the shopping home. This ‘shamed’ the kids. Mick and his wife knew such ‘shame’ was a favourite teenage pastime. His wife would say, A little bit of shame will do them good, but to rub their faces in things will only turn out for the worst. Mick agreed that carrying the shopping home was on the minor end of the shame scale. There wasn’t a lot of shopping, and it was a glorious wheatbelt day. True, they had a low hill to climb, but even from halfway up you could look out across the town onto crops of wheat just turning from green to bisque. Mick Li could saturate himself in those colours and never get bored. He felt them running through his veins.

Hey, kids, he said, look up! A pair of wedge-tailed eagles were spiralling high above. They often saw them. The entire town knew them.

They mate for life, he said proudly, slightly troubled by the pride this induced, and the look his wife shot him. Something was bugging her.

He spoke to her in the code they shared, which he liked to think the kids didn’t get, though they always rolled their eyes and either moved ahead or dropped back from the zone of discomfort. What’s news? he asked.

You paid a lot of interest.

He knew she meant the woman in the supermarket, but he wasn’t going to grace the point with acknowledgement. What?

That woman with the baby.

The kids were well away now, almost home, moving at a brisk trot with the recycled shopping bags banging against their legs.

Never seen her before.

Didn’t say you had, his wife replied. I mean, you were flattered.

By a baby calling me Dad? Maybe I look like her dad! Maybe she hasn’t got a dad and wants one.

The baby looked nothing like you, Mick. Don’t flatter yourself. And that woman wasn’t single.

How do you know?

Can just tell – too assured. She’d be the kind with a lover and a husband.

She looked embarrassed, to me. I mean, she was embarrassed by her baby mistaking me for its father.

She was only shamefaced because she was caught out. I saw her beforehand, before she and the baby saw you. She oozed confidence.

A proud and happy mother. Why shouldn’t she be confident? This is too silly for words.

You looked back. I saw you look back.

I was being polite, for God’s sake, he said. I could see it made her uncomfortable. Just one of those things that happen. The baby was speaking its first words. Or word. Every adult male in the world is probably her Dad-dee at the moment.

One truth doesn’t mean another truth doesn’t lurk in the murk as well, Mick.

Lurk in the murk? Now that’s a stinker. Lurk in the murk. Lurk in the murk.

You’re trying to distract from the issue. Are you feeling guilty?

Jesus!

And then they were home and the kids were kicking at the flywire door, moaning about the shopping, waiting to be let in, desperate for Playstation or whatever.

*

It was only a week later in the supermarket that Mick Li stumbled across the woman and her baby again. He was there with his son, Sam, because the girls were playing netball and his wife had refused to go to the supermarket since, well, the last encounter.

The baby saw Mick and called out Mum-mee, Mummee. Mick glanced confusedly at the baby, then the mother, who was smiling at him. She wasn’t red-faced; she didn’t seem embarrassed. She seemed … confident. He looked to the ground and walked briskly by with Sam in tow and did not turn back. Straight to the checkout and then up the hill, home.

At dinner he said to his wife, Saw the baby and her mother again.

So? I’m not interested. Keep your filthy goings-on to yourself.

What is your problem? I’ve told you a thousand times, I’ve never seen the woman or her baby before we ran into them last week. I’m sorry I mentioned it. Let’s just eat.

Women like that like an audience. They like to rub it in. She wanted the truth out without saying anything. She wanted the confrontation. When did it happen? I’ve done the math – on one of those in-service courses you took in the city last year? Or after school when you ‘stayed back, marking’? On a weekend when I was down in the city with the kids? Any or all of the above.

This is sick. And in front of the kids. Look at them – you want shame, you want embarrassed? They are really learning how crazy you are!

The kids know more than you think. They saw it.

Well, Sam didn’t see anything this afternoon, because there was nothing to see. The woman didn’t flinch.

Women like that are different around men. She knew I was there with the girls last week. It was fake embarrassment for our benefit, to let us know. You ask the girls.

I will not ask the girls. Leave them alone. Eat your dinner, girls, and don’t listen to this rubbish your mother is speaking.

They heard it, Mick. Dad-dee, Dad-dee, Dadee …!

Well, the baby called me Mum-mee today! She did. Didn’t she, Sam?

So it’s okay to bring Sam into it but not the girls?

No, it’s just that he was actually there today, and none of you were!

You can shop on your own from now on. That’ll suit you!

The baby just says Dad-dee and Mum-mee because that’s all it can say! Bloody cans of baked beans are probably Mummee or Dad-dee! Isn’t that true, Sam? Didn’t she call me Mum-mee?

And Sam said in that annoying ‘private school’ way he had, Why don’t you let it go, Dad? It’s history now. We won’t have our faces rubbed in it like we do at school. Everyone knows who you are. Different schools aren’t enough. I wish you taught in a completely different town a long way from here … from us. You’re always drawing attention to yourself and us. We are not the same as you. We’re Australian, we’re local. This is your shame, not ours.