Take ASIANS OUT to lunch

You know that awful feeling after backing out a satisfactorily big turd, only for the water to splash back and hit you in the bum?

Well, back in the eighties, Australia still had an unfortunate number of these human butt splashes who decided that Asians emigrating to Australia were a problem.  Never mind that we’d taken over and almost destroyed the dozens of indigenous people’s cultures or welcomed the Greeks and Italians after they fled the desolation of World War II, apparently the traumatised Vietnamese and intrepid Chinese were just a tad too much.

One of these mental amoebas spray painted ‘ASIANS OUT’ on a wall near Rundle Street where it was guaranteed to get a lot of attention.  Not long after, an anonymous champion added a few words so that it read: ‘Take ASIANS OUT to lunch!’  That edited graffiti stayed there for years and was a pleasant reminder that racists are far outnumbered by kinder and more decent people.

In 2001, we were having a family BBQ with my husband’s side of the family at our house in Adelaide.  Dean was outside taking care of the chops and sausages and I was inside with my two-year-old daughter, her 6-month-old cousin, my two sisters-in-law and his mother.  We did not see each other often, but that was due to an acrimonious upbringing and painful divorce two decades before I was on the scene.

I happened to mention that my older brother, let’s call him R, had just got engaged.  He had met an experimental microbiologist who had originally come from Singapore but had made Australia her home since gaining her PhD.

With that fairly innocuous conversation over, Dean’s sister, let’s call her A, started doing a form of muttered whispering that never, ever involves saying anything nice.  I ignored it the first time, focusing my attention on the baby and my own toddler.

A tried again, a tiny bit louder, but low enough that she could deny if I claimed that she had said anything racist.  I stopped what I was doing and looked straight at her.  “Sigh, mutter mutter mutter, Asians taking jobs away from Australians….”

“What did you say?”

A said it louder this time, with an expression daring me to respond.

I thought for a few seconds. “Why do you think like that?”

The answer was not one from the KKK textbook.  Instead, she ranted on that I was taunting her; making fun of her single status by bragging that my brother was about to get married.

“Eh?”

She went on to say that she had in fact gone on a single date with my brother, R, in 1988.  She refused my explanation that a) I had not remembered that fact; and b) I was not with Dean at the time.  Somehow, in the thirteen years of work, overseas adventures, marriage, motherhood and general living life, I was supposed to remember that R had asked her out once.

But then I *did* remember.  He told me about it afterwards.  “I tried to make conversation like, oh your mum is really nice, but she shot back with, I hate her.”

“Dean’s a mate of mine and...” 

“I can’t stand him.”

It was a disaster on all counts and he, of course, did not request a second date.

But that was 1988.  Now A was on her feet, spouting all sorts of hateful nonsense about Asian immigrants and their place being nowhere near Australia.

Dean’s Mum and other sister sat cowed on the sofa.  We knew that A often verbally abused them both and sometimes hit them, with Dean having to get out of bed in the middle of the night to step in or call the police.

The trouble for A, is that I am not as petite as her mother or sister.  I am five foot seven in flat shoes and was then in training for a half marathon.  I had also grown up with two hyperactive brothers and knew how to wrestle.  

“How dare you say those things.  I will not have anyone in my house say those things about other people or my brother’s fiancée.”

She lunged towards me and I lunged right back.  This surprised her a little because her usual, smaller prey were more defenceless and not able to adequately defend themselves.  As I was furiously deciding between bestowing a dead leg or a sharp slap to the face, Dean had heard the yelling from outside and was now separating us with what he had on hand – a greasy pair of BBQ tongs.

He firmly gripped A by the shoulders and walked her to the front door and into her car.  She drove off, still yelling obscenities, this time at me and not the Singaporean fiancée she had never met.

About a week later, we saw her familiar yellow Ford laser drive up our street at midnight before hearing “you stuck up cunt” and a beer bottle smashed on our front steps.  Over the next few years, we would occasionally receive a phone call from A which said guff like ‘You’re going to pay for this’ or ‘you think you’re so much better than me but you’re a piece of shit,’ before abruptly hanging up.

It was only at Dean’s mother’s funeral in 2008 that she approached me and said, “Well, I guess I should say sorry to you.”

“Yeah, I guess you should.”  I felt sorry for her by then.  Her bitterness and determination to blame all her sadness and loneliness on events based long in the past had destroyed her.  She had alienated everyone in her life and was being actively avoided by everyone at the post memorial afternoon tea. I cuddled then nine-year old daughter up against me and smiled across the room at Dean who was chatting to his aunties.

As the years rolled on, R married WC and she was a welcomed family member to all our gatherings.

In 2012, our daughter was almost thirteen years old and in the grips of a frighteningly dark depression and self-loathing that Dean and I were desperately struggling to understand.  During our Christmas visit to Australia, WC witnessed some of her behaviour and decided to lecture her, explaining that she only gives people ‘three strikes’ and then they are out.  Out of her life forever.

Our daughter wondered if WC’s parents had applied that same rule to her and was assured that they had.  This did not sit well with the many stories we had heard about the fights with her sister and troublemaking they got up to, but as guests for a couple of days in R and WCs home, our daughter had to suck it up.

A few days later, Dean and I drove our daughter to the children’s hospital in Adelaide because she felt suicidal.  The shame I felt – and still feel, writing this eight years later - at not believing her will stay with me forever.  With psychiatric help and hindsight of my own, I can barely touch on the exhaustion of trying to manage what I thought was her unceasing hatred of Dean and I and the despair we felt at seeing her unceasing pain and not knowing how to help or reassure her of our love which was destroying us all.

In short, it was an exceedingly difficult trip ‘home’ to Australia.

Five months later in 2013, I received this email from R’s wife, WC.  It has been edited for brevity and relevance.

Subject title: Final letter to the Locket

Hi Kath,

You have not done anything to hurt me.

The plain truth is: You to me, is like pumpkin to you.

I have tried for 12 years to like you.

I do not agree with 99% of your decision, do not approve of your behaviour.

We do not share the same taste in everything (even chocolate, you love creme eggs which is the only chocolate I will not eat), don't share the same outlook. I do not enjoy our time together.

My motto is: Life is too short to pretend to like someone or to waste time in doing things I do not enjoy.  So, I do not see the point of continuing our relationship.

Simple fact is you are struck off my friend/family list. I made my decision and announced it to your parents, your brother and his wife and your brother R.  I did not ask them to do the same because I neither need approval nor support from anyone for my action.

Yes, I am selfish, arrogant, intolerant, ungracious; so, it is no loss to you then for me not to contact you any further. 

Yes, I could do the 'normal' thing, just simply make up excuses and avoid future contact (e.g. too much work to go to Victor Harbor during Xmas, feeling unwell to go for dinner etc).

However, I respect your parents too much to lie to them and they will see through it anyway.

That is the thing - you haven't done anything specifically wrong to me. So, there is no wrong to correct, and no side to take for your parents. I don't wish to have any further discussion, your email will remain blocked.

Analogy: you don't have to justify to people why don't you eat pumpkin, so I don't have to justify to anyone why don't I associate with Locketts.

You have a great life, I know you will.

Sincerely,

WC

So, essentially, she cut me out of her – and therefore my older brother’s life - and not associating with ‘Locketts’ presumably meant that Dean and our daughter were also dead to her.

In May 2013 when our daughter turned fourteen years old, she cried.  Somehow, she hoped that Auntie WC and Uncle R would see that their problem was with me.  she was just a struggling kid, still growing and learning, so surely they’d at least send her a birthday card.  They did not.

They didn’t send her a card for Christmas, or for her fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth or twenty first birthdays either.  She stopped crying by her sixteenth.

Our daughter is approaching twenty-two years old now and her wisdom, intelligence, humour, kindness and beauty astound me every single time I see her in person or on facetime.  She’s currently stuck in lockdown as a student at Edinburgh uni and always wants us to show her what Felix the dog is up to in our apartment.  She earned a spectacularly high mark for her International Baccalaureate and the major award at school for being the academically-gifted student who also actively cared for and advocated for others.  WC and R know none of this.

R and WC also aren’t aware of the great work that Dean is doing in Geneva, the project he has so long fought for and successfully concluded with a new one just about to start.  His love and kindness for me as I struggled and continue to struggle with anxiety and depression.  His admiration and love for his daughter as they compare recipes over the internet and his commitment to helping new colleagues settle into life in a new country and to get fair conditions for his staff.

WC and R have missed all of that.  The few times we’ve made it to Australia, they are absent, revolted by our presence.  When my mother turned eighty years old in September, my little brother set up two iPads on the table by the birthday cake – one for us to speak to mum and one for them to speak to her.  I dearly wish they had set up two different times for the calls as it just emphasised the irreparable split in our family and made me feel so very sad afterwards.

The powerlessness I feel at being loathed enough to be written off as a human being, along with the man I love most in the world and my beautiful child is so isolating and heart breaking.  My parents tell me that R and WC have refused to give them the reason for our exile and as her email suggests, they would not listen to me even if I did try to contact them for an explanation.  My younger brother doesn’t want any trouble, nor do my parents, so we three here in Geneva just have to accept that we are the outsiders and it’s because of me.  Not Dean, nor our daughter, but me.

I’m no Royal watcher, but the news about the concern about the colour of baby Archie’s skin and the refusal to help Meghan get treatment for her mental distress was shocking.  No-one could dispute those instances as being anything but inhumane and callous.  But the one that punched me in the gut?  Prince Charles refusing to take his son Harry’s phone calls.

How cold.  How despicably cruel.  His son wanted to protect his family and leave the duties required of him if he stayed a royal.  His father had treated his Firm-sanctioned virgin bride Diana with thinly veiled contempt whilst continuing to have an affair with Camilla and give voice to his desire to act as her tampon.  After the inevitable divorce, Charles and Camilla simply carried on happily with their romance as Diana was hounded to death escaping from the paparazzi.

Yet Chuck doesn’t want to speak to his youngest son who was only twelve when his mother died and did not wish a similar fate for his own wife.  

After seeing snippets of ‘that’ interview with Oprah, it made me think back to the almost brawl I had with A at lunch twenty years ago, wishing that I had been given the time to get a punch in before Dean intervened.  

Knowing what I know now about the person I defended, would I have changed anything?  

The answer is no.