Rebecca Handler

o n e w o m a n p a r t y

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Leave Them Kids Alone

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“And now let’s hear from Alastair, a Year Eight student. He enjoys math and rugby.”

Alastair walks up to the podium and thanks us all for coming. He is tall, blond and tan, wearing a white dress shirt, necktie, and shorts. “I love it here. I’ve learned loads from every subject. There’s heaps of sports and clubs.”

“Thank you Alastair. Next up is Anjali. Anjali wants to be a scientist. She lives in the country and travels more than an hour each way to school.”

“I used to think I had the IQ of a pear. It turns out, pears are quite smart,” Anjali giggles. As she returns to her seat, I notice her shiny black braid cascading all the way down her back. My mind wanders. Does Anjali need to wake up even earlier to do her hair, or does she braid it on the train?

The Year Eight String Quartet starts playing Vivaldi’s Spring. I decide that Anjali does not braid her hair on the train.

If we are still living in Perth next year, my daughter will start secondary school in Australia. Having ruled out girls-only and religious schools, we are left with few options. Today I am visiting the Perth Modern School (“Mod”), a magnet public school close to home.

Mod’s tagline is “Exceptional schooling. Exceptional students,” a sharp contrast to Australia’s tall poppy syndrome, the tendency to belittle others’ skills and accomplishments. The campus is large and grassy. The students wear blazers and lug heavy backpacks across a courtyard. The school is funded by the state. Teachers are paid well and there are ample resources and activities.

The principal approaches the podium and looks out at the crowd of apprehensive parents. She tells us not to worry about the three-hour exam our children will be taking next month. “It’s designed to be hard. Just make sure they have breakfast.” She exudes warmth and strength. I can equally imagine her teaching an art class for seniors or running a country.

As she’s talking about the school’s curriculum, photos are projected on a screen behind her. Kids in front of blooming cherry blossoms! Kids on a trip to NASA! Kids on stage in pirate shirts! Kids with seeing-eye dogs! Kids in the library!

I glance down at my information packet and see the phrase, “Delivering leading edge learning to gifted students.” I think about raising my hand and asking what leading edge learning means but decide I don’t care that much, and anyways, I would probably sound like a dick.

The quartet plays again. More Vivaldi. I check my calendar. Tomorrow I’m visiting a tiny private school that provides each student with a laptop and something called a “personalized learning plan.”

Everyone starts clapping. I skip the morning tea and walk to my car. I have an urge to pick up my daughter from school and take her to the beach. We could play in the waves and dig a hole. We could make a big mess.

Bogan Bingo

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The first thing I notice at Bogan Bingo is the bouncer’s fake tattoo: “Dilligaf.” I ask him what it means. “Does it look like I give a fuck?” he growls. Wow, that’s rude. As I make my way to the bar, it makes sense.

The event, held at our local primary school, is a fundraiser for suicide prevention. The invitation had stated, “Bogan Bingo gives everyone’s inner Bogan a chance to escape for the night. There will be beer, wine, pies, sausage rolls and sauce.”

I am wearing denim shorts, a Balinese beer tank top, sheepskin boots, purple eye shadow, and a tattoo with the name of my high school sweetheart. Dave is wearing more or less the same outfit, minus the makeup. One of our friends is in a Jack Daniels t-shirt that was a gift from his mother. Another has big hair, big cleavage, and a tattoo that says, “No Ragrets.” I spot close to 100 mullet wigs, a handful of fake pregnant bellies, and one pack of menthol cigarettes. We’re drinking white wine that tastes like Jolly Ranchers.

You Give Love a Bad Name is blaring on the speakers and bingo cards are scattered on our foldout table. The emcee yells out numbers followed by helpful hints: “Seventy-six! Eat a bag of dicks!” There’s also some call and response: “I say Up The Bum, you say No Babies!”

Bogan is a word that gets tossed around frequently in Perth. It’s a derogatory term for someone who is considered low status, unsophisticated. Rebel Wilson hit it big with Bogan Pride. A popular show here is Upper Middle Bogan. In America, Bogan translates to “white-trash” or “redneck,” two words I stopped using sometime in the early 90’s, along with “retarded” and “Benetton.”

Although Bogan is used by ladies in pearls to describe ladies with belly button rings, it is more often used by people who identify as Bogan. At the bar, a woman in an Aka Daka (AC/DC) t-shirt tells me she feels affection for the word because it describes her family. Her friend leans in, agreeing, “Bogans like to have a good time.”

Last week, I asked a few Australian children what they think of when they hear the word Bogan. “Heaps of tattoos and piercings,” one giggled as she reached for a biscuit. “They’re really loud, and they like cars,” another said. At needlepoint class, I asked my fellow students if they’d go to an event called Bogan Bingo. Looking up over her bifocals, Hazel said, “It’s in bad taste.” (She’s from England.) “Take pictures,” she added.

Dave nudges me. “This is amazing,” he whispers as I take my meat pie out of its plastic wrapping. A song I later learn is called Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again comes on. Everyone chants, “No way! Get fucked! Fuck off!”

I don’t think I’d attend a redneck-themed party in the U.S. I’d feel it was, at best, in poor taste, and perhaps offensive. Some Australians believe that Americans take certain things too seriously (what to say and how to say it) and other things not seriously enough (gun violence). I guess we’re livin’ on a prayer.

In-flight

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I am wondering whether or not it’s appropriate to watch Magic Mike XXL while sitting next to your children on an airplane. I’m just asking for a friend.

We are on our way back to Perth, via Singapore, via Seoul. Flight time is approximately 6200 hours. In addition to eye masks and fuzzy socks, flight attendants will be distributing new eyeballs and kneecaps. My eight-year-old is reading Harry Potter while chewing what I think is an entire pack of gum. The older one is watching a reality show called Blue Zoo where teenagers seem to be teaching dolphins how to collect and dispose of plastic water bottles which, when you think about it, is kind of brilliant. Clean up your own oceans, you lazy dolphins!

My mind has turned to mush after a visit to San Francisco. I blame the lack of exercise, the burritos, and a certain late night with certain friends who like to drink bourbon, make up songs about kangaroos sacks, and give me rides on their electric bicycles.

Waiting to board, I asked my daughter what it was like to see her friends after a year abroad. She smiled with relief, “It was great. They’re exactly the same.”

The city’s the same too. I could go on about all the techies moving in and snapchatting all over our cable cars, but when it comes to my hometown, I’m a crazed woman in love.

I am not in love, however, with the passenger two rows back who apparently has no problem sleeping on planes. Did you know that snoring is one of the top causes of divorce? My husband told me that.

Growing up, my family occasionally took day trips across the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin. We’d walk through a redwood forest, or see a community theater production of Annie Get Your Gun. Coming home, halfway through the rainbow tunnel, my mother would inevitably turn around and say to my brother and me, “Here it comes.” Then, as we exited the tunnel, Mom would sigh, “Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?”

That view – the bridge popping up through the fog and the city lights twinkling in the distance – is breathtaking. And fleeting. If you were say, sulking or goofing off with your brother, you’d miss it.

My meal choices are beef satay and fish curry. I pull some almonds out of my backpack.

“Girls, here it comes.” We drove through that tunnel just a few days ago, after visiting friends who recently got a puppy that likes to chew on shoes and pee under the dining table. (But who cares because he looks like a fuzzy profiterole.) I don’t know if my daughters noticed the view. They were poking each other. I thought of my mother and how she used to stare out the window and shake her head in disbelief. She was right. There is nothing more beautiful than seeing your home from a distance.

Crossing the Street in Hanoi

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A man holding a sign with my name greets us at the Hanoi airport and drives us to our hotel in the Old Quarter. As we approach the city, motor scooters appear gradually, like raindrops before a storm. A lady in a blue dress with a baby strapped to her back rounds the corner at full speed. Her Hello Kitty helmet has a cutout in the back to allow for a ponytail. Businessmen in suits and facemasks zip in and out of traffic, checking their phones and lighting cigarettes. A man with 50 plastic red chairs secured to his Suzuki slows down to avoid colliding with an old woman transporting an enormous basket of lychees.

The scooter monsoon rapidly descends on our van. Hondas, Yamahas, families of four with purses and school bags, old men carrying fishing rods and lumber. Everyone weaving in and out of cars, flying through intersections, passing storefronts selling shoes, candy, dried fish, luggage and tea leaves. I grab my daughter’s hand. “Are you seeing this?”

Hanoi is a city with more than seven million people and an estimated four million motorbikes. With the exception of a few major thoroughfares, there are neither traffic lights nor stop signs. Watching the traffic from an air-conditioned van is mesmerizing. Crossing the street as a pedestrian is an entirely different basket of lychees.

We pull up in front of the hotel – aptly named La Siesta – and our American friends run out to greet us. Some are much taller than when we last saw them. We hug and laugh and hug again. “Look at where we are!” we all exclaim in various ways. “This is crazy!”

We drop our bags, grab water bottles, and set off to meet Viet, a hired local who will take us on a culinary adventure. “How will we cross the street?” I ask my friend Jason, in the calmest voice I can muster. “Just stay right behind me,” he responds, with the confidence one acquires after spending 24 hours in Hanoi.

The streets are loud and smell like grilled onions, petrol and papaya. Jason yells over his shoulder, “Everyone grab a kid.” I reach for a hand and squeeze it tight. I say a prayer: I apologize for stepping out into traffic and killing this child. Please forgive me.

We step off the curb in twos, like square dancers in a mosh pit. Scooters are barreling towards us from all sides. I focus on the back of Jason’s head, and pull the child closer. Somehow, magically, we make it.

We find Viet and eat rice noodles with pork belly. An hour later, over pho and lotus flower tea, my friend Lindsy says, “I think of Hanoi traffic as an organism. When we enter it, we are part of it. And when we exit, we leave it behind.”

Over the next two days, we cross many streets together. My prayer changes slightly: I still don’t want to kill this child but I really want to try the banh mi. Please forgive me.

Hardship

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Ghaith is a Syrian refugee who fled to Sweden, by way of Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Austria, and Germany. He left his wife and mother to try and build a life for them that won’t involve car bombs and streets littered with body parts. He walked for miles, hid in train bathrooms and pickup trucks, and helped care for a pregnant woman and her toddler on a tiny boat that barely made it to shore. He cried when he finally reunited with his brother he hadn’t seen in three years.

I read Ghaith’s story in The New Yorker, from the comfort of my bed that was shipped from San Francisco to Perth by a company that wants to help ease my transition to a new country.

I recently chaperoned a field trip to the Freshwater Bay Museum, which, despite its name, is neither an aquarium nor a museum. It is an activity center where children can experience the lives of Australian settlers in the 1860’s. Twenty-four children in polyester blue school uniforms scrubbed tea towels on washboards, made scones out of crushed wheat, and were assigned new names like Emma Atkinson and Benjamin Sutton.

The children were asked to line up single file and take a seat in a classroom that was decked out with wooden pews and slate boards. “Girls up front, boys in back.” Pip, our tour guide who, up until this point, had been patient and kind with the children, tied on a white apron and announced she was now Mrs. Herbert.

Mrs. Herbert checked fingernails for dirt and slapped desks with her ruler. “Are you being naughty, Sarah Gallop? Do you want me to whack you?” “No.” “No, what?” “No, Mrs. Herbert.”

The children were given a spelling test. Pip asked for a volunteer to pretend to have failed. My daughter’s friend Daisy raised her hand high. Mrs. Herbert said, “Charlotte Yates, you have done very poorly on this test. Come here this instant.” Mrs. Herbert reached behind her desk and pulled out a tall cap with the word “Dunce” on it. For the remainder of the class, Daisy faced the wall, giggling with delight.

“Let’s play Olden Days!” Simone yells out to Daisy, as they run to our house after school, zipping past kookaburras and jacaranda trees. “I’ll be the student and you be the mean teacher,” Daisy commands, tossing her backpack on the floor and pulling off her sneakers. For hours, the girls speak very sternly, pretend to whack each other with rulers, and write the alphabet over and over. I knock on the bedroom door and ask if they want a snack. They tell me they’re not allowed to eat. “We might get whacked!” they shriek.

I’d bet my life these girls will never spend a week on a tiny boat with scared strangers, vomiting into ziplock bags and tossing them overboard. But I’ve never had to bet my life.