YOU’RE BORN WHEN I’M EIGHT. A fat May
baby who looks 100 per cent white, though only
your dad is. Your dad is my dad. Your mum isn’t
my mum. Your mum’s mum, a tiny figure in pastel
robes and headscarves, isn’t my grandma. I watch
your grandma pray to Mecca in the spare room;
watch her massage your baby pigeon toes with telon
oil until they grow normal. I run feral with the little
blonde girl who lives in the same block of flats and
whose dad, like our dad, works in South-East Asia.
I return from play with messy hair and blackened
feet. Your grandma dubs me “anak kambing”
(goat child). I’m no longer the cute one. At the end of
each weekend, I go back to Mum’s, which isn’t as
neat, and where there is no dad – just the boyfriend
who looks like Jesus.
Aunties, and women who call themselves
aunties, give you clothes, toys, money. Your mum
dresses you in OshKosh B’Gosh, takes you to be
photographed naked in a basket of flowers. She
takes you to baby swim classes, slathers you in
sunscreen so your white skin doesn’t darken.
When your hair grows, it comes in ringlets, a lighter
shade of dark than mine. Your eyes are the only thing
that look Indonesian.
They take you, as a family of
three, to Indonesia. A stranger,
struck by your beauty, stops
your mum in the street, offering
to buy you for $50,000. I’m
jealous when I hear the story.
You start talking. We
communicate in a babyish
pidgin, mostly about bodily
functions. I learn the song
“Burung Hantu” and sing it to
you when no-one’s listening.
Your Indonesian surpasses
mine. You invent cute words:
heart-love, shadow-kid. In
private, I read dictionaries and
make myself the daughter with
the best vocabulary.
You turn four. You learn of
princesses, wicked sisters. Your mum takes you to
church where you shock the ladies with tales of white-
skinned sisters who like to beat you. Our dad laughs
at your flair for drama. In private, I cry about it.
You start primary school. I start high school. You
take after-school classes: singing, dancing, swimming.
I coast along, keep journals, pluck my eyebrows to ]ELLE.COM.AU / @ELLEAUS 131
and Gabrielle, are 18 months apart. Sibling rivalry?
Leave that to the boys. Sorry, dear brothers, but
I distinctly remember the two of you, red-faced and
sweaty, often wrestling on the family floor. We girls
had to step over you to turn on the TV.
As the eldest, I was, for a brief time, the organiser.
I drew up a school sandwich roster – not that Mum
asked for it, but my 14-year-old self knew exactly
how things should be done. Six rows, one for each
kid, by five columns for the days of the week, and
a different sandwich filling in each. A tilt at some sort
of constant sandwich heaven, but it never quite
worked out that way. The more “gourmet” fridge
contents – ham, chicken loaf, iceberg lettuce
- inevitably dwindled with each passing day, and by
Thursday and Friday we were back to the predictable
binary of peanut butter or Vegemite.
As a girl, Justine was industrious, rational and
calm. Her bedroom was an exercise in military
precision. She was a deft hand with the sewing
machine, creating intricately pleated dresses while
I, without fail, sewed things back to front and inside
out. She’s now a senior lawyer with a large
multinational, just as at home in London as she is in
Shanghai. Her organisational skills are frightening –
she could have made the sandwich roster work.
Gabrielle, at age eight, told Mum she’d like to
play the viola. By age 12 she was playing in adult
orchestras, and during high school she’d get up at
6am to practise. The rest of us, bashing away at the
piano, all knew she’d become a musician. She’s now
a violist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
And Antoinette, perhaps by dint of being the
youngest of six and at grave risk of lack of attention,
found her inner performer at an early age. At first she
starred in neighbourhood concerts, singing and
dancing on a makeshift stage at the end of the street.
By high school she was nabbing lead roles in school
musicals. She’s now an operatic diva, performing
with major companies all over the world.
I became a doctor, all the while yearning to write.
I was a bookworm as a kid; dreamy, overly sensitive,
prone to worrying – traits common to writers, I’ve
learned. Now, to my poor sisters’ discomfort, I turn
my writer’s eyes on them. I see in all of us a common
steely spirit, a determination to do things to the best
of our ability despite – or perhaps because of – the
critical voice in our heads. My sisters are tough,
funny, self-deprecating and courageous, and worthy
of many more fine words than this article allows.
JACINTA HALLORAN IS THE AUTHOR OF THE SCIENCE OF
APPEARANCES ($29.99, SCRIBE PUBLICATIONS)“You invent
cute words:
heart-love,
shadow-kid. In
private, I read
dictionaries
and make
myself the
daughter
with the best
vocabulary”