Summary
At fourteen, Clarke discovers itchy lumps emerging all over her skin. The dermatologist diagnoses her with keloid scarring, saying it’s scar tissue formed because the body doesn’t know to stop producing it. He says it commonly occurs “in blacks,” quoting a medical book, and references the keloid scars of African tribespeople Clarke has seen on TV.
The doctor injects her with cortisone to try to limit the scarring while the tissue is soft, although Clarke can feel that the tissue is already hardened. Unlike her vitiligo, the keloid scarring doesn’t go away; she takes to wearing loose clothing to cover up the scars, even in the swimming pool.
Clarke comments that Michael Callingham—Mick—came along at the perfect time. They played together as little kids, but after ten years, Mick is a brooding, cigarette-smoking James Dean–resembling Jesuit private school dreamboat. He is the first boy to look at her like she is desirable. They both play trumpet in their respective school bands. One night, Mick takes her hand at a youth group evening at The Barn. Simultaneously, Selina begins going steady with Mick’s friend Jed. As rumors of Clarke’s relationship with Mick spread at school, the bullying slows.
Clarke invites him to her house, but he says he’s never coming near the place; he has seen that her father is built like a truck. One evening, the youth club goes to see the closing night of the school play Mick is starring in. He introduces her to the female cast mates, who show their surprise in a way that’s off-putting to Clarke, reminding her of Carlita. Instead of going home with the youth group, Mick blows Clarke a kiss and goes for a pizza with the other actors. After that, Clarke orchestrates an end to the relationship, their conversations on the phone gradually growing more stilted.
The bullying of Clarke shifts to a new tactic: notes. It is all the rage to pass notes covertly among friends, but the notes Clarke starts finding slipped into her textbooks and backpack are hateful: a gun’s crosshair with a message for her to go back where she came from, or a minstrel-like caricature. She dreads the notes but says nothing about them to anyone.
One day a teacher sees a note fall on the ground next to Clarke, and brings her to speak with a counsellor and the principal, her mother included. Clarke wishes to ignore it, but the teachers begin questioning all of her classmates. The last thing to happen is Clarke discovers her sketchbook sliced to shreds. And then the notes stop, without her finding out who was sending them.
With increased immigration from African and Caribbean nations, black hair specialists set up shop in Sydney. Clarke goes to a woman from Sierra Leone to get her hair micro-plaited. People at school comment approvingly of the long small plaits hanging down her shoulders. When Bhagita, an isolated Sikh girl, sees the hair and comments that poor women where she’s from sell their hair to make wigs and extensions, Clarke is angry, unable to explain in the moment that her plaits are her own hair.
To humiliate Bhagita, Clarke says nobody would ever pay for Bhagita’s hair “because it stinks like curry.” The white bullies in the room overhear and congratulate Clarke for the racist abuse. The next day, Clarke attempts to apologize, the guilt having eaten at her. Bhagita shouts at her to get away. Clarke feels sick to know Bhagita sees Clarke as Clarke sees her bullies.
Selina and Clarke start reporting every incidence of racism to the principal, who grimaces when he sees them coming to his office every second morning. But gradually the bullies tire of being called in, and their harassment lessens. Clarke joins the debate team, which is largely removed from the usual racism because it relies on people coming together for a common purpose.
While on the debate team, Clarke develops the “trick” of memorizing famous speeches by Black orators. When their team is in a difficult position, she quotes emotionally stirring lines from Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. and wins. One day, her teammate Eric admits that his great-great-grandfather was a slave driver in America. Clarke feels sick and says she can’t debate that night.
Analysis
Clarke builds further on the theme of everyday racism by discussing the mysterious keloid scars that appear on her skin when she is fourteen. The spontaneous buildup of scar tissue alarms Clarke and her mother. Just as her mother feared, the dermatologist confirms Clarke has keloid scarring, which occurs more often in Black people. The white doctor reveals this news insensitively, making Clarke uncomfortable by comparing her to African tribespeople she has seen in documentaries or in National Geographic. Once again, Clarke’s heritage means she will be singled out among her peers and ridiculed for being different.
Although Clarke notices that bullies target her less once the rumor mill spreads the news that she has a white boyfriend, after her relationship with Mick ends, Clarke discovers that the bullies have a new tactic. The anonymous notes she receives are overtly racist and overly threatening; the race hate Clarke has always contended with becomes charged with a new sense of menace. While Clarke tries to keep the notes secret, their discovery by a teacher leads to some of the first tangible action that school authority figures take to root out racist abuse. However, the school’s inquiries don’t turn up the culprit, and Clarke never learns who had been targeting her.
The theme of internalized racism arises with Clarke’s anecdote about how her trauma manifests in an ironic instance of racist abuse—doled out by her. Triggered by Bhagita’s comment about Black women wearing the hair of poor Indian women, Clarke reacts to the negative attention coming her way by deflecting it to Bhagita. Clarke recounts how she parroted the tropes of the racists in her class, calling Bhagita a “curry muncher” and making light of the importance the Sikh faith puts in one’s hair. Having been the victim of exactly this kind of verbal abuse herself, Clarke knows how to hurt Bhagita.
As they get older, Clarke and Selina are emboldened to report every incidence of everyday and overt racism they witness. This squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease mentality is irritating to the school authorities, who would rather ignore the complaints, but the girls’ persistence eventually pays off. To bullies, the hassle of being called into the principal’s office to address their behavior isn’t worth whatever perverse satisfaction they get from their racist taunting.
Clarke comments that the debate team is attractive to her because it utilizes her public-speaking skills and because it stands apart from the usual racism she encounters in group activities, since everyone must work together as a team. In an instance of situational irony, Clarke discovers that quoting popular Black civil rights leaders is something of a trump card when her team’s arguments are weak. Although she knows she is reciting the quotes in bad faith, Clarke relies on this tactic to carry her team to victory.
However, Clarke’s sense of remove from everyday racism is undermined when she discovers that her teammate is the descendant of an American “slave driver”—knowledge that makes Clarke physically ill to learn. In this way, the legacy of racism haunts Clarke even when she believes she has escaped it.
