The Gospel According to Luke by Emily Maguire Read Free Book Online Page B

of scripture class asking God to give him blue eyes and blond hair, or at the very least, skin that freckled in the sun instead of darkening. God never came through for him; he never got a single freckle, never a sun streak in his increasingly wavy hair. Of course, that was before he was a proper Christian.
    When he was fourteen he was assigned
My Place
by Sally Morgan as his contemporary English text. He read it in one sitting, shaking inside and out for at least the last hundred pages. For the first time in his life he didn’t want to be white. Or more precisely, not being white mattered less than not knowing what he was. He had always considered himself fortunate to have been abandoned at birth. He knew that the boys at New Hope who remembered their parents, whetherthey were mourning their deaths like Alex or waiting for their return like Charlie, had a much harder time accepting their situation. But now, he was jealous of these other boys. At least they knew what they were!
    Luke became fixated on discovering his ancestry, and wondered if, like Sally Morgan, he was part Aboriginal, or if he was, as Hakim insisted, an Arab. He locked himself in the bathroom for hours at a time, comparing every aspect of his appearance to those of men of every possible ethnic background whose pictures he obsessively clipped from magazines and newspapers. His friends joked about his gallery of men, and liked to say that while Luke was busy searching for his roots, they were out in the world getting some.
    Of all the boys at his school, Luke was the one most girls would have been happy to give themselves to. He knew this, but did not know why. When Luke looked in the mirror he saw hair like a Sicilian, skin like an Arab, slim hips and long muscles like an Indian, black eyes like an Aborigine. He didn’t know what could possibly be attractive about all that. When girls stared at him in class or on the bus, he assumed they were trying to work out what he was. When they sent their friends to tell him they wanted to get with him, or when he found their love notes in his locker, he assumed they were chasing him because he was a novelty, the way all his friends wanted to get with the Austrian exchange student even though she was chubby.
    A week before his fifteenth birthday, he was lying on the grass out the front of the library, reading about the racial breakdown and settlement patterns of the post-war migrant influx, when an Asian girl of around his own age sat beside him and introduced herself as Mai.
    Luke said hello, just to be polite, and returned to his book, lifting it up so it hid his face from the girl. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
    â€˜Luke,’ he said from behind his book.
    â€˜You don’t look like a Luke.’
    He put down his book. ‘What do I look like?’
    â€˜I don’t know. But you definitely don’t look like a Luke.’ She smiled and crinkled up her nose. Luke noticed the sprinkle of freckles across the bridge. He had never seen an Asian with freckles; he thought they were reserved for whites.
    â€˜What does a Luke look like?’ he asked her.
    â€˜Luke is a saint’s name. You look too dark and dangerous to be a saint. You should be called Holden or J.D. or something like that.’
    Luke laughed. ‘What does Mai mean? Nutcase?’
    â€˜Flower.’
    â€˜It suits you,’ he said, and felt his face grow hot. ‘I mean, you know, because it’s an Asian name and you’re Asian.’
    â€˜That matters, you think? So what will we call you then? Is it Abu or maybe Muhammad? What shall we label you? I am Asian and you are what?’
    â€˜I’m not anything. Forget it.’ Luke picked up his book, burning with shame and wondering for the thousandth time that year why girls were always bothering him.
    â€˜I know what you are, Luke. You’re the same as me.’
    â€˜What the hell are you talking about? You’re a chong. I’m