Does My Head Look Big in This? (9 page)

“Oof! This book is heavy! How about you sit down with us? At least we’ll be comfortable while you waste my lunch time on chem.” I hold my breath for his answer and avoid eye contact with Eileen and Simone.

“OK,” he says. “Just as long as Eileen stops with the counsellor advice and Simone offers me a carrot.”

“Ugh! I feel like a disgusting slob!” Tia groans, clutching her non-existent stomach and sneaking a look at Simone as we stand around class waiting for our Biology teacher to arrive. “I ate a whole sandwich. I feel so bloated. I could just kill myself from guilt!”

“You don’t look fat!” Claire reassures her.

“Yeah, you look gorgeous,” Rita gushes.

Tia flips her long, shiny jet-black hair to the side and flashes them a Colgate smile.

“No, honest, girls. Feel this pot. Look.” She lifts up her shirt to reveal a stomach as flat as a cutting board. “What do you think, Simone?”

Simone looks horrified and stands with her mouth gaping open, her eyes fixed on Tia’s stomach. The absence of even one millimetre of fat has taken the wind out of her.

“You’re right, Tia,” I say in a sickly-sweet tone. She darts a lethal look at me, her eyes narrowing as they scan me up and down.

“
Excuse
me?”

“You’ve put on weight. You should watch your figure. Have you been eating a lot of salt lately? Your face is all puffed up. My pregnant aunt has a good water-retention remedy. Would you like me to get the name for you?”

She sneers at me and I turn away to take a seat.

Later in class, she gets me back.

“I just don’t know what I’d do without my long hair!” she says to Claire and Rita, loud enough for us to hear. “I mean, what’s a woman without hair? You have to have a model’s face to get away with covering up. Don’t you think so?”

They nod like obedient puppies and I let out an exaggerated sigh.

“I just don’t know what I’d do without a brain, Simone!” I say. “I mean, what’s a person without one?”

“Coffee at the Lounge Room, tonight?” Simone whispers to Eileen and me during History on Friday.

Eileen’s on. I don’t know whether to go. The Lounge Room is a trendy café on Burke Road: long coffee tables centred between big suede lounge chairs and sofas, dim lamps and television screens with MTV and
Friends
reruns. It was our hang-out joint in the mid-year break. Where we’d go to goss and eat strawberry tart and talk school and parents and top five chick flicks and the rest. Because I’d rather eat decomposed meat than be thought of as a chicken, I fake a big smile and tell them I’m all for it.

*

I chicken out.

I’m ashamed to admit it but after dinner I ring Simone and Eileen and tell them I can’t make it because we have visitors. They believe me. And why wouldn’t they? I’m supposed to be pious and God-fearing. Not a lying, hypocritical, pathetic coward. I’m lying on my bed listening to Craig David’s “I’m walking away”. On repeat.

What’s happened to me? Haven’t I decided to wear the hijab because I feel proud of who I am? Suddenly I’m too chicken to go to a café? I don’t recognize myself. I’m the one who put her head out the school bus window last year and yelled at a group of boys who threw a can of Coke at our “wog” school bus. It was me who stood up during a Year Nine interschool debate and told the audience that my team didn’t appreciate the other team’s whispers about competing against “terrorists”. When we were at the medical clinic and the secretary asked Leila if she could cope with filling out a form in English, it was me who pointed out that Leila’s never set foot out of Australia and can manage an A+ average in Eng Lit, and then some.

So if that’s all me, then who’s this girl who’s making up excuses to avoid going out to a café?

8

“
I
’m starving!” Simone moans on our way home on the school bus.

“I think I have an apple in my bag,” I say. “Do you want it?”

“Thanks, I’ll pass. I’m so sick of fruit and vegetables. Aren’t you hungry, Amal?”

“Nah, I had a big sandwich at lunch.”

“I don’t get the skinny world!”

I nudge her in the side. “Don’t be silly.”

“But you skinny people eat two slices of bread filled with rabbit food at midday, and you’re all ‘I’m about to explode’ until dinner. I’m
always
hungry. Honestly, Amal.” Her voice goes down to a whisper. “Don’t laugh. But sometimes I can be eating my lunch and thinking about what I’m going to have for dinner!”

“That’s normal,” I say.

“Won’t Allah punish you for lying?”

I jab her again.

We sit in silence for a while, staring out the window. After some time Simone turns to me: “My mum and I had a massive fight last night.”

“What happened?”

“She’s been hassling me to join the gym with her. She’s going through a Pilates craze. She’s constantly on my back about losing weight and how she was a size six when she was my age and how she can’t believe I’ve turned out like this. Am I really that bad, Amal?”

“What is she on about? You’re only about one size bigger than me and Eileen and you’ve got certain
assets
most girls would kill for!”

“My mum says that they’re the
only
thing going for me and that I need to work on making the rest of my body more attractive.”

“She wouldn’t say that!”

“She’s said worse, believe me. She says it’s because she
loves and cares for me
–
spew – that it’s only for my own good – spew.”

“Simone, you’re gorgeous. You’re a natural blonde, just about the most sought-after hair colour in the world, you’ve got amazing eyes, you never have a pimple
and
you fill out a shirt. So your ribcage isn’t on display – big deal.”

“Amal, best friends are supposed to say things like that. It’s like compliments from parents – well, not mine – they don’t count. I mean, we wouldn’t be best friends if you thought I was ugly and boring, would we? How you feel about me has nothing to do with how other people see me. I’m always going to be fat Simone. Like Tia said the other day, I probably spend more on Big Macs than she does on her annual gym membership.”

“Bullshit she said that! The BITCH!”

Simone shrugs her shoulders. “Yeah, well, it’s probably true. . . Sometimes I start a diet and then I open a
Cosmo
or a
Cleo
and there are these articles about pregnant superstars losing thirty kilos in two or three months and here I am struggling to lose a kilo. So I give up and demolish a Mars bar. Or I see all these model shoots of gorgeous beach babes with their bones poking into my hand when I turn the pages and I think, what’s the point? Even if I lost ten kilos and was in my weight–height ratio, people would still consider me fat. I wish I could become anorexic. How sick is that, huh? But I don’t have the self-control to live off a lettuce leaf a day. And I’ve tried the whole bulimia thing but I can’t even throw up. I’m just pathetic! Abnormal!”

“You know what? Who cares what normal is, Simone. Let’s protest. From now on we’re the anti-normal, anti-average, anti-standard. You can eat when you want to, I’ll wear what I want, and we’ll die with a packet of chips in our hand and a tablecloth on our head.”

“So, can you make it for coffee
tonight
?” Eileen asks me on the telephone the following Thursday.

I can’t bear to sit through another night manicuring my nails with Craig David, so I say yes.

My dad drops me off and I beg him to turn down his
Greatest Hits of Jerusalem
album when we turn the corner into Burke Road.

“You used to love this music when you were young,” he says, pinching my cheek.

“Dad! Far out, I’m like sixteen. Get over it.”

Instead he starts to sing a song about meeting his secret darling love under a tree in the olive groves.

“Just remember,” he says as I get out of the car, “before Kylie, Ricky Martin and these blond boys singing like parrots, you were singing songs about olive groves and mountains too.”

I roll my eyes at him.

“Have fun, ya Amal. And don’t be late. It’s a school night. You get dropped off not one second later than ten thirty or else I dial triple zero. Not your mobile. TRIPLE ZERO.”

Like I’m really going to be kidnapped when most people are looking at me and wondering whether I’ve got an AK-47 assault rifle inside my jean jacket.

Simone and Eileen are waiting for me in the front of the café. We say hi and wait in line. There’s a big crowd tonight. Panic sets in. A deep flush begins on my neck. At least my veil hides it. Who gets this worked up over a café? During the mid-year holidays Simone, Eileen and I would hang out here, laughing with Pedro, the old Italian owner, or chatting with Ray, the spunky waiter. Now my hands are sweaty, I’m worrying about whether my scarf matches my jeans and I’m convinced my make-up has smudged.

“Hey?” Eileen says forcefully, interrupting my panic attack and grabbing my arm in support. “Relax.”

“Yeah, I know,” I say with a nervous laugh.

“Shit,” Simone says. “Everyone’s so skinny. Look at those three girls standing over there. They look like they’ve had a good binge today. Three peas and half a capsicum.” She fiddles self-consciously with her top, pulling it down and adjusting her trousers.

“They look like they need World Vision support. One dollar a day. Let’s sponsor them.” But I’m also fiddling self-consciously with my top, wondering if I look OK, if I can get away with a veil among all these cool people.

“You both look like you’re about to jump out of a plane without a parachute,” Eileen says, standing in front of us. “Both of you relax. These people are nothing in the scale of your lives. You’re both gorgeous and look hot and I’m dying for a slice of mud cake so quit the panic attacks and let’s get a table.”

“Ooh yum, mud cake.” Simone instantly brightens up.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I say. “I’m just imagining them all naked.”

“Isn’t that a sin?” Eileen says as we make our way to the entrance.

“I’m sure God will consider this an exception.” I look around the café as we wait to be ushered to a table. Maybe it was stupid of me to come. I look so out of place. I mean, I’ve worked on the whole trendy clothes and accessories thing, but you add a hijab and you might as well be wearing a kilt. I can see some people narrowing their eyes as they look up from their conversations and take notice of me.

Imagine them naked. Imagine them naked.

Ray is suddenly before us, looking me directly in the eye. Somehow I don’t think God will consider him an exception.

“Amal?” he ventures.

You’d think I’d grown a toe on my nose. I’ve got two options. Weak, spineless, passive twit. Or over-the-top, confident, Priscilla Queen-style hello.

“Hi, Ray!” I squeal with exaggerated warmth. “
How are you?
”

He looks confused. He should too. My voice is so high-pitched I’m in danger of breaking the windows.

“Can’t complain.”

“That’s great! So what’s new?”

“Nothing.”

“Me either! Same old.”

Eileen and Simone put him out of his misery and ask for a lounge table.

“I’ll check if there’s one available,” he says with relief. “Follow me.”

We follow him, and I keep my head high, avoiding eye contact with the people staring at me as we walk across the floor. We sit at a lounge table and Ray takes our order. He seems very formal, no joking around, no conversation, just “Would you like syrup with that?” and then he abruptly leaves to place our order.

“Amal!” Eileen says, doubling over with laughter. “You spun him out. He’s probably wondering what cult you joined!”

“Better than the one he did. What’s he gone and done to his goatee? He looks like he shaved in the dark.”

“Strawberry tarts and
skinny
hot chocolates,” Simone interrupts, snorting. “
Really
cancels out our calorie intake.”

We talk for ages. About everything: school, guys, politics, our parents, what we want to do when we finish, whether Catherine Zeta-Jones has had surgery.

When I’m home in bed later that night, it occurs to me that all it’s taken is a couple of good friends and a lot of chocolate to make me forget I’m the “girl who wears hijab”. So I take Craig David’s album out of my CD player and go to bed listening to Destiny’s Child “I’m a Survivor” instead.

“I need new clothes,” I wail to Yasmeen on the phone. I can almost sense her eyes lighting up on the other end.

“Done,” she says, in her let’s-get-down-to-business-and-talk-shopping tone. “Bridge Road, Chapel Street and the city. Tomorrow. Meet at Bridge at ten. Work our way from there. Wear comfy shoes. Work out what colour scarves you’ve got so we can mix and match. Also, bags. Have to match your bags to your veil. Tell you what, write a list of all your scarf and bag colours. Shoes if you want as well, but I recommend a triple S be conducted separately, to give it the full attention it deserves.”