We Are Here (25 page)

The student body for each grade was much larger than I had expected. Most of the new girls who joined in year eleven were of Asian backgrounds. I met a couple of girls who, like me, had joined St George in year eleven and were Vietnamese. They also lived nearby in Bankstown. We caught the same train every morning and got off at Sydenham station to change for a train to Kogarah. From there it was a short walk to school. Naturally we merged into the existing large group of students of Chinese, Hong Kong and Malaysian origins. There was the odd girl of Indian or Anglo descent who latched on like Asian groupies. We didn’t mind them. Our group of Asians mainly
wore glasses, straight fringes, long hair and were huge fans of Hello Kitty. None of us went to dance parties. There were FFKs (Fresh from Korea), ABCs (Australian-Born Chinese) and FOBS (Fresh off the Boat). There were also girls of Asian origin who hung out with the Anglo ‘skips’. They spoke with ocker accents. Some even skateboarded. There were lesbians who clustered together like a mixed bag of candy, proud to be misfits who challenged anything conventional.

In one of the first weeks of school, there was a study camp. I had not yet aligned myself with any group in particular, and was still getting to know my fellow students. So I visited the lesbian group in their bunks and had a chat. They were all very friendly until a tall girl with a pixie cut, obviously the unofficial leader of the group, entered the room. ‘What is this?’ she demanded. ‘A tea party? Get out!’ I immediately left the room. Over the next two years she would remain an intimidating presence. I never loitered around the year twelve study room, a special room with a kitchen and lounge reserved only for girls in their final year. This girl and her crew had made the room their domain. None of the Hello Kitty Asian girls hung around there. We were playground and library girls.

I never spoke to the pixie-cut lesbian until the last week of high school. Before school ended, some girls got together to hatch plans to trash our brother school, Sydney Technical High School. They painted a huge sign emblazoned with the word
WANKERVILLE
. A group of them were supposed to sneak into the boys’ school to hang it up one evening. Apparently there were
a lot of meetings to discuss how to best trash the school while they were there hanging up the sign.

By the time the end of year twelve came around I had become more confident. I had my provisional driver’s licence and I was on the edge of entering the world beyond high school. I was brimming with a constant sense of anticipation but was also heavy with an escalating desire to prove myself. One night, I made cards with the word
Wankerville
written on them in thick blue texta. After everyone was asleep, I snuck out of the house with the keys to the Corona. I don’t know how my parents slept through the thunderous ignition and unmistakable screech when I over-turned the key. I then drove to the boys school in Hurstville. I parked the car on a side street and my heart pounded in my chest. I slowly walked to the school and jumped over the fence. I had never been to the school before that night and didn’t know the layout. After looking around for a while, I found the main playground. I took the cards from my bag and scattered them across the asphalt. In the bluish black of the night, the white cards glowed like brilliant patches of snow.

After my bag was emptied, I decided to run. The girls at school had talked about the security shifts at the boys school and the best times to get in and out but I hadn’t paid attention. I bolted across the school towards the fence, climbed over and raced back to where I had parked the car. Sweat clung to my body. Each breath felt like a weighty sonic boom emitting from deep inside my lungs. My pulse raced with fear and adrenalin. Then from the shadows I heard urgent whispers.

‘Who’s that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Fuck, I think that’s Cat Thao. Hey, Cat Thao!’

I moved towards the shadows. There were three of them, one holding the large sign. I recognised Pixie Cut.

‘Who are you with?’ she asked.

‘I’m not with anyone,’ I replied.

‘Are you serious? You came by yourself? What did you do?’

I told them about the cards, and then I left them in the shadows. That was the first conversation I had had with that girl since the camp. I don’t think they ever did hang up that sign.

The next day, as we rehearsed the year twelve graduation ceremony in the assembly hall, news was spreading about my prank. I had a few girls come up to me and tell me how gutsy I was. Even Pixie Cut looked at me differently that day. I had never intended for anyone to find out. The whole thing was silly and didn’t have any real purpose. But as I sat there in the hall, with the tune of the school song emanating from the piano, I felt proud of my immature burst of courage.

I had always been wilful and stubborn. My parents never forced me to study hard. I went the extra mile because I decided to do so. I had always resented instructions and detested direction. But during those last two years of high school, somehow these qualities coalesced into brazen ego. One lunchtime, one of my friends said that she bet I couldn’t ride a bicycle from Punchbowl
to Hurstville in less than a certain time. The distance was only about seven kilometres but it was the time limit that was the challenge. I have no idea how the subject had come up; I didn’t even own a bicycle at the time. Nevertheless, I proclaimed that I could do it. I saved up the money to buy a red bicycle from Kmart and set out one Saturday to ride from Punchbowl to Hurstville. As I was speeding downhill on Bonds Road in Roselands, a magpie suddenly swooped at me, causing me to lose balance. I fell off my bike and skidded down the road, straight into the pole of a bus stop. My new bike had been flung into the middle of the road and my shins and knees were bleeding. But with my friend waiting for me at Hurstville, I had no choice but to get up and keep on going. I made it there in time. When I reported my success to my friends on Monday the adulation they expressed didn’t give me the joy I had anticipated. I’m sure they gained a little insight into my personality, the insecurity masked by a facade of bravado and fearlessness.

Foolish dares aside, I still channelled every ounce of energy into study. This was the world that I could control. Six times a week I attended extra tutoring for maths, physics, chemistry and English. On weekends, I read the
Financial Review
,
Time
magazine and
The Economist
. One day, scanning
Time
magazine, I saw an article about Eddie Adams and the Vietnam War photo that won him the Pulitzer Prize. It was the image of South Vietnamese police chief General Nguy
n Ng
c Loan executing a Vi
t C
ng prisoner somewhere in Saigon on 1 February 1968. The general has his back turned to the camera. His arm is
almost fully outstretched, holding a handgun to the head of the prisoner. The general wears a sobering look of unflinching resolve. His target is squinting obscurely in anticipation of the bullet. A soldier dressed in camouflage looks on, the shadow from his helmet concealing his eyes. From the black and white photo, it is unclear whether the ground is covered with shadows from nearby trees or whether the road is stained with blood. In an article he wrote for
Time
, Eddie Adams said that while the general had executed the suspect, he, Adams, had killed the general with his camera. For as long as the general survived, long after that fateful photograph was taken, hate, cynicism and resentment latched onto the general’s reputation like an incurable virus. His family would also suffer.

After I read the
Time
article, I asked my father about the photo. My father explained that it was war. People died. That just before the execution, the captured Vi
t C
ng had himself slaughtered some Americans. My father believed that all the images that came from the war, the images that helped to consolidate anti-war activism in the US and around the world, were part of a Communist propaganda effort to ensure the withdrawal of US troops. As horrific colour images from the jungles of South-East Asia appeared on televisions in homes of American and Australian families, people took to the streets. Crescendos of anti-war sentiment transformed into thousands of signed petitions rolling into the corridors of political decision making, which would end up in parliament. All the while, lieutenants like my father and former army doctors like my
doctor in Cabramatta watched in dismay as military assistance was phased out. South Vietnamese soldiers battled on without bullets in their guns. My father, my uncles and members of the Vietnamese community drip-fed me their side of the story. I absorbed these one-dimensional stories about the war that destroyed their villages, their livelihoods and robbed them of their rightful places within the nation of their elders.