On Wednesday night, with my first school week past halfway, we go for dinner at a nearby Thai place called Thai-Ryffic. We haven’t seen much of Brisbane yet, but I’ve noticed three Thai restaurants and every one had a name that involved a bad pun on the word ‘Thai’.

When we walk in Mom looks pleased. ‘Crowded. That’s a good sign,’ she says.

Most of the tables we can see are full, and there are more around the corner, beyond a big wooden elephant and some pot plants. The place is noisy with conversation and the excellent food smells make my stomach rumble.

We find a table and Mom hands me a menu. Hansie kneels on the floor, driving his Lightning McQueen over the black-and-white tiles. At first, the menu looks a lot like one from home, but then I notice something I’m not expecting. I point to it on Mom’s.

‘Hmmm,’ she says. ‘Does it really . . .’

She lifts the menu up to take a closer look. Yes, it does. It says ‘kaffir lime leaves’. She shakes her head and takes a breath, in and out.

Mom looks around for a staff member, but they’re all out the back. So she walks to the counter and rings the bell, once, twice, and then keeps ringing it until someone pushes through the double doors in a hurry. It’s a young white guy with a goatee.

‘Sorry, is –’ he says, looking at Mom and then past her to see what the emergency is. He’s wiping his hands on a towel.

‘This!’ She talks over him. She holds up the menu. ‘This word.’ She jabs her finger at the page. ‘What kind of racist place is this? Don’t you have any coloured people here? It’s Thai food. What are you doing using the’ – she drops her voice – ‘k-word?’

‘I’m sorry, I . . .’ The man looks at Mom, looks over at me.

I’m not going to save him. He’s got a racist word on his menu. I can’t believe that no one else here has complained. He keeps wringing his hands in the towel.

‘I didn’t say anything.’ He glances nervously at the nearby tables. People are starting to turn our way. ‘I just got out here.’

‘Look at your menu.’ Mom points again.

‘Ah, yes, kaffir lime leaves.’ Mum flinches when he says it. ‘We use them in some of the curries.’ He folds the towel and sets it on the counter. ‘It’s traditional. It’s a Thai thing.’

‘But the word. The k-word.’ He’s not getting it, so Mom’s getting louder. ‘It’s totally racist.’

With that, conversation in the room goes quiet. But it’s strange. People are looking at Mom like she’s the one doing something wrong.

‘It’s like the n-word,’ Mom says. ‘Would you put that in a menu? I don’t think so.’

‘The n-word? Naffir?’ The man looks twitchy. He glances again at the other diners. ‘I don’t think that’s a . . . No, they’re kaffir limes leaves, definitely.’

Mom shakes her head. She’s not going to back down. I can tell. Everyone is staring, but I know why she has to do it.

‘It’s okay,’ says a woman on the table next to us. ‘They’re just lime leaves, a kind of lime leaves.’

The man at the counter fakes a smile. ‘Darren – that’s our chef – he trained at Chang Mai. With actual Thai people. He’s very spiritual. Practically a Buddhist. He’s not a racist.’

Hansie looks up at me from knee height. ‘Why is Mom angry?’

‘She’s not angry.’ I glance her way. ‘She just . . . saw something that needed fixing. Something that wasn’t quite right. Sometimes people need to be helped to make the right choice.’

He looks blankly at me, and drives Lightning McQueen up my ankle.

‘You can call it makrut lime or maybe k-lime,’ my mother tells him, ‘but you really need to change that. Or get your Darren to talk to his actual Thai people and start using their word for it. That would be respectful, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he says, very seriously, nodding. ‘Yes, it would.’

Hansie drives Lightning McQueen over my foot, making louder engine noises to cope with challenging terrain.

‘Well, we shall order now,’ Mom says, making it sound like a declaration. Maybe it is one, letting the people in the room know they can get back to their meals. ‘And you and Darren can work on sorting this out.’

She turns towards the diners and nods reassuringly. Problem solved. The woman on the table next to us smiles back nervously. Most pretend they were busy with something else all along.

The man, whose name we never hear, seems glad to pick up his pad and pen. He takes our order, and runs back into the kitchen as soon as possible.

‘I miss Jonah,’ Hansie says. Jonah is a big Lightning McQueen fan, back in Cape Town. They fought all the time about who got to play with the car. ‘And Georgia and Lily and Auntie Val.’

Lightning McQueen drives most of the way up my leg, screeching as he takes the hairpin bend at my knee. I pull Hansie up and carry him to the wooden elephant.

‘Your teeth don’t miss Auntie Val,’ I tell him. She was forever giving Hansie entire tubes of wine gums when Mom wasn’t looking. ‘I miss people too. But there are good people here as well. It’ll be okay.’

And then it hits me. No one here has a clue why Mom’s upset. No one knows that the k-word is the most racist word ever. They all think my mom’s gone bossies.

At the counter, Mom has found a black felt-tip pen and she’s going through the pile of takeaway menus putting a fat line over ‘affir’ every time kaffir lime leaves appear.