The Family Law by Benjamin Law Read Free Book Online Page A

wake up at night, panic-stricken at the memory of broadcasting such an incendiary, untrue story about my mother. At least when bad children were caught, they were punished accordingly. There was opportunity for atonement: scores could be settled, sins forgiven. But no one knew about this, and no one ever would, mainly because I couldn’t explain the crime. How could I even begin to explain? I broke your vase. I took your money. I spilled the milk. Those are easy to admit. But how does a seven-year-old even begin to say, I accidentally told my entire class you had an abortion ?
    For years, everyone had thought I was such a good boy – so polite, so hard-working – but now the cracks were starting to show. I was the boy who’d vandalised books, the pervert who’d mutilated the reproductive system, the son who said dark, unspeakable things about his mother. At night, I’d sob quietly to myself, knowing I was an impostor, convinced I was nothing but bad news, believing I deserved whatever punishment was coming my way.

Tourism
    My family isn’t the outdoors type. Despite being raised on the coast, Mum detested visits to the beach (all the sand it brought into the house), while Dad disapproved of wearing thongs (‘It splits the toes’). We never camped. All those things involved in camping – pitching a tent; cooking on open fires; the insects; shitting in the woods; sleeping on rocks; getting murdered and raped in the middle of nowhere – they never appealed to us. ‘We were never camping people,’ Mum says now. ‘Your dad never wanted to camp, and insects eat me alive. See, Asians – we’re scared of dying. White people, they like to “live life to the full,” and “die happy.”’ She pauses. ‘Asians are the opposite.’
    We preferred theme parks. For parents raising five children, theme parks made so much sense. They were clean and safe. There were clearly designated activities, and auditory and visual stimuli that transcended racial, language and age barriers. Also, you could buy heaps of useless shit. This is an exercise at which Asians of all backgrounds seem to naturally excel. Venture into my childhood home, and in amongst the epic piles of suburban debris you’ll still find a plush blue whale wearing a Sea World cap, T-shirts emblazoned with Kenny and Belinda – the now defunct Dreamworld mascots – and a pox of fridge magnets commemorating each visit.
    It was family tradition that once a year, our family of seven (eight, including my grandmother) would cram ourselves into a 1990 grey five-seat automatic Honda. Faces smashed against the glass; no leg room; the two smallest children illegally wedged between various legs – we travelled like this for a good three hours before we reached the Gold Coast. We’d fall asleep at such extreme angles that our spines contorted. When we woke up, our shirts would be covered in drool we weren’t even sure was ours. By the time we got to the theme park, our limbs were numb, our nerve endings destroyed.
    On the day of the trip, we’d wake up before sunrise in order to get there by opening time. Despite enduring three hours of vivid pain in the car, we’d feel an overwhelming sense of awe as the Thunderbolt, Dreamworld’s rollercoaster, painted with flames, emerged from the trees that bordered the Pacific Highway. It would appear so suddenly, like a strange apparition or a mirage. We would crane our necks back, trying to take in the sheer majesty of it. For a non-religious family like ours, the experience was borderline spiritual.
    Once through the gates, we kids would do our best to distinguish ourselves from the Asian tourists. We’d make our Australian accents more pronounced and end our sentences with ‘eh.’ Our trousers were pulled further downwards, away from our navels. We refused to wear bumbags, and spoke English very loudly, with proper