Does My Head Look Big in This? (32 page)

“Why?”

“Ah, ’cause he wants girls at the counter. Thinks it looks better, ya know, being served by a girl.”

“Oh.”

“And the other two girls were too old. Like in their twenties and he wants teenagers ’cause they don’t cost as much. Here he is now.”

George is a short, fifty-something-year-old man with a perfectly trimmed moustache and beautiful grey eyes. He walks up to the counter, notices me and immediately looks constipated.

“Hi!” I say as cheerfully as possible. “I’m here about the job. I’m sixteen. I’ve worked at Hungry Jack’s so I’ve got loads of experience.” I thought I’d get it all out in one hit.

OK, now there are some people who are tactful. They see somebody they don’t like and they bluff their way through the encounter and go full throttle with the avoidance strategies. In a situation like this, there are plenty of exits available to George. “The position has been filled”, “We’re looking for somebody older”, “We don’t like people who’ve worked in the mass consumer fast food industry”. But George decides to go straight for the “say what’s on your mind” route.

“Sorry, love, we can’t accept people like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“The thing on your head, love, that’s what I mean. It’s not hygienic and it just don’t look good up at the front of the shop. Sorry, love. Try somewhere else.”

I cough, dig my toes into my shoes and try to come up for air. “What if I wore a beanie? It’d keep all the hair out of the food.
That’s
hygienic.”

“No good, love. We sell food with an image at the front. I got girls at the front, see? For a reason. Now I’m busy. Thanks for your time but it’s impossible.” He turns on his heels and goes out to the back room. I’m completely taken aback and stand there, not knowing how to walk away without looking like a rejected loser.

“Sorry about that, hey?” The girl at the counter shrugs her shoulders. “I thought he’d ignore your head thing ’cause of your experience. Don’t take it personal, though. If you had a turban he’d freak too. And he made me get rid of my eyebrow earring. I drew the line at my tongue ring. No way I’m giving that one up.”

“Yeah . . . sure . . . thanks.”

I tell my mum what happened and she wants to make a complaint to centre management. But I’m not interested.

“What’s the point?”

“At least they’ll be aware, ya Amal. We have to raise awareness that these things happen!”

“Mum, I don’t want to, OK? It’s not worth it.”

“What do you mean, it’s not worth it?! Of course it is! Then the next time some girl tries to find a job they’ll know this kind of discrimination is unacceptable!”

“No! I’m not going to make a big deal about it, OK? I just want to go home.”

“Ya Amal, you have to stick up for yourself. You can’t cave in like this.”

“Who’s caving, Mum? I’m just . . . look I just want to go home. I JUST WANT TO GO HOME!”

“Why are you yelling? Don’t yell at me like that, Amal!”

I look at her and burst into tears. We’re in the middle of the shopping centre and people are staring at us. A veiled mum and her daughter bawling in the shops. There are times you just need to disappear. It has to happen, your body tells you, or you will become hysterical and combust. I run through the crowd and out of the centre, to where our car is parked. My mum runs after me, calling out my name, but I ignore her. I get to our car and lean against it sobbing so badly that my head feels drenched with the sweat of it. My mum rushes up to me and engulfs me in a massive hug. “Oh how silly you are my darling Amal,” she says. She squashes my face against her chest and I blubber and fumble my thoughts against her jumper.

“Mum, maybe I shouldn’t have worn it. . . Maybe I was stupid. . . Where am I going to go now? It’s just going to hold me back. . . The debate’s this week and I’m so scared. People are going to laugh, I know it.”

She cups my chin in her hand and looks into my eyes. “You’re so silly, ya Amal. You can do anything you want, don’t you know that? You’re going to make us proud up there. It will only be a problem if you make it one.”

“Mum?”

“Yes?”

“I miss Leila. . . I could do this if she was in the audience cheering me on. She had all the guts and spunk and she ends up running away. I want things back to normal with her safe next to us. Nothing makes sense.”

She doesn’t say anything, just hugs me tightly and gently helps me into the car.

40

I
’ve got that sweaty-palm thing happening. The plait under my hijab feels itchy against my skin and I feel I’d rather be hole-punched in the forehead than go through with the debate.

We arrive at Chelsea Grammar School by school bus at six thirty on Thursday evening. The entire trip consists of Mr Pearse giving us you-can-do-anything-if-you-put-your-mind-to-it pep talks, and Tia scanning me over as I practise my cards on Eileen and Simone. Adam is sitting with Josh and they’re both going through their cards. Adam looks my way and winks at me. I flash him a smile and give him the thumbs-up sign.

Things between Adam and me aren’t like they used to be. I don’t suppose I should expect them to be. The late-night telephone calls and long chat sessions on MSN are gone. We still hang out as a group some lunch times but I can tell that the spark between us isn’t there any more. The other day we were all studying in the library. I asked him whether he’d spoken to his mum recently and if things had changed at all. He shook his head and immediately changed the subject. I’m pretty certain that he won’t be opening up to me about his mum or anything truly personal any more.

Maybe he feels betrayed by me. I just thought we were becoming closer friends. But if he did sense that I had the hots for him and that I was sending out signals that I wanted to be with him then I feel like a hypocrite. I would have been playing with his mind. I would have been betraying my own faith too, because belief means nothing without action.

It’s all very confusing and if it was the movies we’d probably kiss and make up and things would go back to normal. Except in our case it’s the kissing part that’s holding up the making up.

Mr Pearse insists on taking photos of the teams and so we pose before him with sheepish smiles or I’m-too-cool-to-smile scowls. I survey the hall for my parents but don’t see them.

Our adjudicator unlocks the hall and we file in. His face is a work of art: bright hazel eyes in a tanned canvas chiselled to perfection. He has dreadlocks down to his waist, an earring in his eyebrow and a stud earring in the cleft of his chin. Not really my look but he’s making Tia drool.

Adam, Josh and I take a seat at the front of the room. The other side walks in. Three girls. Two of them look like they want to get intimate with a toilet bowl. The other looks so damn self-confident that I start to panic. Her lips are curled up in a smug half-smile, her head is up like she’s got a Granny Smith wedged between her chin and neck, and her chest is sticking out like overcooked puff pastry.

The adjudicator raps his pen on the table and Mr Pearse and the teacher for the other side start their shooshing frenzy. At that moment my parents walk in and start waving to me like I’m on a boat departing to Tahiti instead of three metres away. I do a grimace mixed up with a grin and they get the message, stop waving and get the video camera out instead. I try not to self-combust from embarrassment until I notice two other parents with their cameras out too.

The adjudicator starts to introduce himself. “Hi. My name is Timothy. I’ll skip a long intro. I study law. I’m in my second last year. Tonight’s topic is ‘Should Australia become a republic?’ On the affirmative is McCleans Grammar School and arguing in the negative is Barnia Girls. Good luck. First speaker start.” He flashes an utterly captivating grin at us.

The first speaker, Emily, is pretty good. Adam and I write furiously, passing on rebuttal points to Josh, who’s flicking through our notes trying to decode our illegible hand-writing. Rebuttal is definitely the most challenging part about debating. The adjudicator is testing your ability to respond to the points raised by the speaker before you. You have to think on the spot and come up with an intelligent comeback line that conveys an argument beyond “I disagree with that point because it’s crap”.

Emily gets a round of applause and I lock gazes with Simone and Eileen, who give me the thumbs-up. Josh is next, and after a few seconds of fumbling nerves during rebuttal, gets into the argument which he’s practised before, with a solid, aggressive voice and overly excited use of hand gestures, especially when he’s pointing to the other side like they’re vermin. He’s getting stuck in to it and Adam and I are getting conceited, thinking we’ve won. I glance sidelong at the other team and the puff pastry girl is hunched over her desk writing out her rebuttal. She looks up for a moment and our eyes connect. She gives me a scowl. I pull an arrogant face. She smirks and I narrow my eyes as I prepare to go for the rebuttal kill.

I listen to the other side’s second speaker, Natalie, who rips through Josh’s speech but then delivers a performance two minutes under time. We’re about to break out in a hymn. She plonks herself down in her chair and scrunches her cards in her hands. Emily smiles reassuringly at her but the third speaker gives her a frustrated look. For a moment I feel sorry for her. But Mother Teresa departs from me within a second when I remember what I’m here for. To win over the adjudicator hunk and return victorious to Tia, I mean Ms Walsh, I mean my parents, I mean Mr Pearse, I mean my school. OK, to win, period.

It’s Adam’s turn now and Josh slaps him encouragingly on the back. He gives me a nervous look and I cross my eyes at him and grin. His face relaxes. He stands up, takes a deep breath, and then proceeds to detonate the other side. He knows his palm cards by heart and doesn’t even have to so much as glance at them. He’s demanding backup to their claims, contradicting their arguments, trying to show them up as clueless wannabes more suited to a career in face painting than debating. We keep looking at the other side, taunting them with our smug nodding until I realize my turn is up soon and the butterflies start playing basketball in my stomach.

The third speaker is Carmen, the smirking one. She is brilliant. Pulverizes Adam into dust. Makes Josh look like one of the Wiggles delivering a speech in Pig Latin. The audience stares back, open-mouthed. Mr Pearse looks on edge. His encouraging winks don’t fool us for a moment. My hand is cramping up as I go into a whirl writing out rebuttal points. I glance at the audience again and my eyes connect with Tia and for one second, one minuscule nanosecond, I detect we’re on the same wavelength: she’s also worried we’ll lose. It’s the only time we’re connected together against another object – not each other.

Carmen doesn’t walk back to her chair. She glides as if on a red carpet. She’s just about to start doing a royal wave. Our eyes lock and then and there I decide that I want to do a combined Science and Law degree because one day I want to be wearing a wig in court, pulverizing my opponent too.

I do the fastest internal recitation of some Koranic prayers, smooth my trousers and shirt out, stand up, position myself in front of the room, look out at everybody and debate.

I’ve been injected with the formula for confidence and butt kicking. Not in spite of my hijab but because of it. Because I want to prove to everybody that it’s just a piece of material and that I’m here, representing my school, supporting my team, kicking some serious rear ends. Carmen had better scuttle herself off to the maid’s quarters because there isn’t going to be any royalty around here except our team. With every card I start believing that my team line symbolizes the holiest of truths. I go Chosen People on the other team. Mr Pearse is beaming with pride. My mum is trying to save her mascara. My dad is zooming in the lens, grinning wildly at me. Simone and Eileen are dangling off the edge of their seats, stuck in a permanent thumbs-up. Tia is covering her mouth with her hand, trying to stifle a smile. The dreadlocked hunk is writing out notes furiously and I finish my speech wishing that Leila had been here so that she could have seen that I tried to make her proud.

We win the debate by one point and Carmen and I are tied best speakers. Unorthodox decision, but Timothy talked for fifteen minutes analysing our strengths and couldn’t make up his mind in the end.

It’s quite possibly the best moment of my year. I am floating and Adam and Josh are grinning wildly. My parents are flashing their cameras and holding back woo hoos. Simone and Eileen are clapping after everybody else has stopped. I’m pretty sure Mr Pearse is having a this-is-why-I-became-a-teacher moment, because he’s gazing at us like we’ve sewn up the hole in the ozone layer. We all spend twenty minutes outside the classroom reliving moments, sharing our euphoria. It’s fantastic.

My parents take me out for gelato in Lygon Street and make me feel even better, if that’s possible.
So articulate, ya Amal. So persuasive. So confident.
So
needing a bigger scarf now that my head has expanded and is blocking the car’s rear window.

I tell them I’ve finally worked out what I want to do at uni and that I’m thinking about whether I want to be a scientist with a law degree or a lawyer with a science degree. They hear law and go absolutely ga-ga on me.
Just like your uncle! Another lawyer in the family! Oh how you will make us proud!
What is it with parents and law degrees? It seems like a group of barristers and doctors patrol the maternity wards telling expectant parents that eternal bliss, the answers to all life’s mysteries, and honour and prestige will be granted to their children if they study law or medicine. Like society would really function if everybody were qualified to either cure the sick or sue the doctor.