30th January 2023
Alphard - Creative Nonfiction
This short story will be published in the 2023 UTS Writer's Anthology publication.
It flashed in my mind, in that place. All blistering heat and screaming children running about ankles and that incessant service bell; another order up. It was some tacky Italian pop hits playlist underscored by wine-drunk women in Louboutin heels. Plates which marred my hands ugly and red. The men in that restaurant – your boyfriend, co-worked, your grandfather – liked to wink as they made a crass, yet socially acceptable joke, eyes lingering as I walked away, who liked to ask:
“Where are you from, love?”
always liked to imagine the look on their faces as I retorted, smugly, “Just up the road.”
Forced them to ask with flushed cheeks or a creased brow “No really. Where are you from?”
Or maybe, just maybe, for once I wouldn’t dignify them with an answer.
But of course, behind my well-practiced smile, my good manners, I would simply suck it up and rationalise that they were just well meaning. Curious even. Perhaps they wondered why my skin wasn’t exactly white or brown, why I didn’t have an accent, how I challenged their cookie cutter perceptions of race?
The answers to their questions were…complicated.