Guilt and Me (Chapter 3 – ‘Jil’, Part 1)
September 4th 2007 00:13
Jill is my girlfriend’s nickname, her real name is Chyou. She was born in Singapore, her mother was Singaporean and her father was Chinese. Her name means autumn and ever since I found out the meaning of her name autumn had become my favourite season. Autumn… what a perfect name for her, she so looked like autumn, her brown eyes like the leaves of autumn, her warming face, like the sun of autumn, her long flowing hair, like the falling leaves of autumn, her simple, peaceful smile, like the grey sky of autumn.
Despite having the pencil and paper Brendan had given me I wasn’t going to write anything. I didn’t bring writing material not because I forgot but because I didn’t want to write home. Writing home meant remembering home, remembering home brought me pain, something I was already experiencing enough of.
Sitting back and closing my eyes I remembered Jill, how we met and fell in love. Back during the early years of high school, when Brendan and I were for the first time in our lives not in the same classroom I ended up sitting next to Jill. It was a confusing and difficult time for me, but not nearly as confusing or difficult as it was for Jill.
Despite the country not being fully ready to accept ‘different’ types of people her family had emigrated from Singapore, I don’t know why, I never asked why, perhaps too happy that they just had. For her English was a second language, she had no friends and knew very little of our customs and culture. I might have been intimidated by high school, but she was intimidated by everything.
Even though segregation, particularly amongst high school students was enforced our teacher was pretty open for the times, or perhaps he wasn’t, as he set us up to sit in a boy/girl/boy/girl configuration, maybe in an effort to keep us from talking with our friends. I was lucky enough to sit with Jill.
The first few days of high school were particularly awkward for both me and her, we were the only two in the whole school who didn’t have any friends. She would sit on one end of a field that was used as a playground and I would on the other, both of us alone and a little scared. I would often look up to catch glimpses of her, hoping she’d look back, but she never looked up, always down at the ground like something was wrong. Which was true, something was wrong, I was sitting on the other end of the field instead of next to her.
One day I decided to make what seemed like a long march of death to the other end of the field to where Jill was sitting. I put my books on the seat besides her and sat on the opposite end without saying a word. It was quite scary, I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat there. Looking down, trying to look up at her, I just couldn’t, don’t know why.
This went on for a few days, every time I would sit besides her and try to muster up the courage to look at her and talk to her. I wasn’t afraid of her sexually, in fact I didn’t even understand the differences between the genders at the time. It was just difficult for me to try and be friends with her.
Finally, one day, an ant saved me. An ant, of all creatures great and small it was a humble ant, who found his way under my shorts and bit me on the leg. I got up at that instance, it hurt quite a bit, and beat down on my shorts hoping to kill it. Between the mayhem I forgot where I and spoke out loud, ‘stupid ant bit me!’
Jill looked up at me, surprised with how casual I spoke, perhaps a little intimidated even, and said in broken English ‘oh, do you need help?’ Laughing I sat back down, trying to continue the light mood and said ‘nah, nah, nah, I’ll be ’right’.
From this, somewhat absurd beginning, started our first ever conversation. We talked and talked about everything, mostly about where we came from. She was particularly interested about what I had to say, asking me many questions, especially about how Brendan and I used to go skinny dipping at the local creek. ‘But are their snakes?’ she asked sounding a little worried, not being sure of the answer as I had never encountered any I teased her, ‘oh yeah, this one snake was huge and it wrapped itself around me mate, Brendan’s, leg, had to go to the doctors to remove it and he reckoned they were going to have to amputate!’.
She laughed at my crazy stories, I don’t think she believed any of it but still found it interesting. We stayed until late after school, talking about things, she even started teasing me with stories about live dragons. She wasn’t as good as me at telling stories, maybe because of her broken English or that she had a peculiar habit of whispering words to herself before making up a lie.
Later on the other kids started teasing her because of her name. It was actually our teachers fault, he was doing the roll calls and just before he called out Chyou’s name he sneezed, it sounded like ‘achyou’. Everyone teased her about it and gave her a hard time, of course I defended her, despite copping a lot of teasing myself for it. Normally this sort of teasing would end after a few days, but for Chyou it lasted for months on end, probably fuelled by her non-Australian heritage.
One day she broke down and fell into my arms crying, telling me she couldn’t take the teasing anymore. I didn’t know what to do about the situation, our teacher kept on telling us to ignore it, as did her parents. I hadn’t ever have to deal with another persons problems like this before, and I had never held Chyou in my arms either. It was a multitude of emotions, some good some bad.
Determination was never my strong suite, often times I’d try to just get by in life, but in this case, it wasn’t about me, it was about Chyou and she told me that she couldn’t take the teasing anymore. I talked to Brendan about it afterwards, sometimes he would have the best ideas for the most difficult problems and even if he didn’t talking to him would have helped me get rid of the stress. He laughed, ‘give her a nickname’ he said.
‘A nickname? Like what? Achoo?’
‘No, like a proper nickname, something that sounds better’
‘I don’t see how Chyou can sound better…’
‘It doesn’t have to rhyme with her name silly, give her a cool nickname that other girls would love’
‘Like what? What do girls love?’
‘I’m not sure, but something that sounds glittery, like Gem or Jill’.
Gem, I liked that, it sounded prettier to me than Jill, but she had other ideas. Maybe if I had just said ‘I’m going to start calling you Gem from now on’ it would have worked out to my favour, but instead I told her ‘My friend thinks we should get you a nickname like Gem or Jill and let everyone call you that’. She replied enthusiastically ‘Yes, I like Jill’. She didn’t see the disappointment in my face.
***
Despite having the pencil and paper Brendan had given me I wasn’t going to write anything. I didn’t bring writing material not because I forgot but because I didn’t want to write home. Writing home meant remembering home, remembering home brought me pain, something I was already experiencing enough of.
Sitting back and closing my eyes I remembered Jill, how we met and fell in love. Back during the early years of high school, when Brendan and I were for the first time in our lives not in the same classroom I ended up sitting next to Jill. It was a confusing and difficult time for me, but not nearly as confusing or difficult as it was for Jill.
Despite the country not being fully ready to accept ‘different’ types of people her family had emigrated from Singapore, I don’t know why, I never asked why, perhaps too happy that they just had. For her English was a second language, she had no friends and knew very little of our customs and culture. I might have been intimidated by high school, but she was intimidated by everything.
Even though segregation, particularly amongst high school students was enforced our teacher was pretty open for the times, or perhaps he wasn’t, as he set us up to sit in a boy/girl/boy/girl configuration, maybe in an effort to keep us from talking with our friends. I was lucky enough to sit with Jill.
The first few days of high school were particularly awkward for both me and her, we were the only two in the whole school who didn’t have any friends. She would sit on one end of a field that was used as a playground and I would on the other, both of us alone and a little scared. I would often look up to catch glimpses of her, hoping she’d look back, but she never looked up, always down at the ground like something was wrong. Which was true, something was wrong, I was sitting on the other end of the field instead of next to her.
One day I decided to make what seemed like a long march of death to the other end of the field to where Jill was sitting. I put my books on the seat besides her and sat on the opposite end without saying a word. It was quite scary, I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat there. Looking down, trying to look up at her, I just couldn’t, don’t know why.
This went on for a few days, every time I would sit besides her and try to muster up the courage to look at her and talk to her. I wasn’t afraid of her sexually, in fact I didn’t even understand the differences between the genders at the time. It was just difficult for me to try and be friends with her.
Finally, one day, an ant saved me. An ant, of all creatures great and small it was a humble ant, who found his way under my shorts and bit me on the leg. I got up at that instance, it hurt quite a bit, and beat down on my shorts hoping to kill it. Between the mayhem I forgot where I and spoke out loud, ‘stupid ant bit me!’
Jill looked up at me, surprised with how casual I spoke, perhaps a little intimidated even, and said in broken English ‘oh, do you need help?’ Laughing I sat back down, trying to continue the light mood and said ‘nah, nah, nah, I’ll be ’right’.
From this, somewhat absurd beginning, started our first ever conversation. We talked and talked about everything, mostly about where we came from. She was particularly interested about what I had to say, asking me many questions, especially about how Brendan and I used to go skinny dipping at the local creek. ‘But are their snakes?’ she asked sounding a little worried, not being sure of the answer as I had never encountered any I teased her, ‘oh yeah, this one snake was huge and it wrapped itself around me mate, Brendan’s, leg, had to go to the doctors to remove it and he reckoned they were going to have to amputate!’.
She laughed at my crazy stories, I don’t think she believed any of it but still found it interesting. We stayed until late after school, talking about things, she even started teasing me with stories about live dragons. She wasn’t as good as me at telling stories, maybe because of her broken English or that she had a peculiar habit of whispering words to herself before making up a lie.
Later on the other kids started teasing her because of her name. It was actually our teachers fault, he was doing the roll calls and just before he called out Chyou’s name he sneezed, it sounded like ‘achyou’. Everyone teased her about it and gave her a hard time, of course I defended her, despite copping a lot of teasing myself for it. Normally this sort of teasing would end after a few days, but for Chyou it lasted for months on end, probably fuelled by her non-Australian heritage.
One day she broke down and fell into my arms crying, telling me she couldn’t take the teasing anymore. I didn’t know what to do about the situation, our teacher kept on telling us to ignore it, as did her parents. I hadn’t ever have to deal with another persons problems like this before, and I had never held Chyou in my arms either. It was a multitude of emotions, some good some bad.
Determination was never my strong suite, often times I’d try to just get by in life, but in this case, it wasn’t about me, it was about Chyou and she told me that she couldn’t take the teasing anymore. I talked to Brendan about it afterwards, sometimes he would have the best ideas for the most difficult problems and even if he didn’t talking to him would have helped me get rid of the stress. He laughed, ‘give her a nickname’ he said.
‘A nickname? Like what? Achoo?’
‘No, like a proper nickname, something that sounds better’
‘I don’t see how Chyou can sound better…’
‘It doesn’t have to rhyme with her name silly, give her a cool nickname that other girls would love’
‘Like what? What do girls love?’
‘I’m not sure, but something that sounds glittery, like Gem or Jill’.
Gem, I liked that, it sounded prettier to me than Jill, but she had other ideas. Maybe if I had just said ‘I’m going to start calling you Gem from now on’ it would have worked out to my favour, but instead I told her ‘My friend thinks we should get you a nickname like Gem or Jill and let everyone call you that’. She replied enthusiastically ‘Yes, I like Jill’. She didn’t see the disappointment in my face.
***
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