Depositing Dignity

Tick, tick…tick. I stopped tapping my foot for a moment as I regarded the unrhythmical clock on the wall. The battery must be going, I thought and went back to my previous activity of practicing my rudimentary tap dancing skills. For thirty minutes I’d tapped my way through boredom, occasionally watching the clocks’ arms make dogged progress around it’s face, and yet I had still only moved slightly forward in the line. The bank’s air conditioning was off, and the heat of the hot summer day added to the body heat of the other patrons, turning the bank into something resembling a sauna in the pits of hell. I fanned myself with my deposit form as a bead of sweat trickled down my back.

A small Vietnamese woman turned to face me with an understanding smile. She had whipped out an oriental fan a few minutes ago and I started to get concerned that if she fanned any harder, her thin wrist would snap off.

“Hot, isn’t it?” I said with a grimace.

“Certainly is, this Australian heat is bad,” she spoke quietly and slowly, picking her words with care as only one who has not spoken the language from an early age does.

I nodded “They should really have the air con on today…these ruddy banks are always so blasted hot in summer,”

“If you hate it so much here you could always just leave,” a male voice drawled from behind me with a casual Australian accent.

“And why would I want to do that?” I replied with a raised eyebrow as I turned around to face him and noticed storm clouds brewing in the distance behind him “It’s just a bit of heat.”

“You’re a Pom, you should just nick off back home back to England,” the man whom I instantly assumed would be called Mick, accused. He wore mechanics overalls, and I thought he was a spanner short of a toolbox at that moment.

“That’s entirely ridiculous,” I protested, growing aware that our little tiff was attracting some attention from the dead bored patrons. “What makes you think I’m British?”

“You’re lily white, you can’t cut the heat, and no Aussie talks like that,” Mr Fraternal informed me with a sweeping glance over my body. I bit my lip, I’d been targeted like this before due to my British habits. Most times I’d just try and shrug it off, but this time I was going to set the record straight. It just wasn’t fair. Even though I knew most other immigrants were treated much worse, it still burnt me like a cigarette butt carelessly thrown in my direction.

“Well that’s all good and jolly, but I’m actually Australian,” I said steadily, giving him a sharp glare I hoped would encourage him to shut up and mind his own business. I fiddled with my rosary necklace absently. “I have citizenship, and adhere to the laws of this land,”

He snorted, “So what if you signed a piece of paper, you’re still not an Aussie. I bet you keep cut outs from the paper of the Queen in a scrapbook and everything. Go home,”

Now it was my time to smirk “Actually, I don’t. Why would I? She’s just some old woman who has no power,” I said and knowing he wouldn’t be able to make a comeback on that, barged on “Besides, if you got rid of every person in this land who wasn’t born here, you wouldn’t have much of a diverse sort of country,”

“Why should I care? All those Nips and Chink’s, and your little Chink friend can nick off home too. We don’t need them here- they’re taking over.”

I glowered. This man had obviously very little grasp on what was keeping “his” oh-so-precious country afloat in the global economies. That aside, his remarks were starting to make my blood boil. I’d subconsciously clenched my fists and I had to restrain myself from hurling obscene abuse at him right then. The humid atmosphere in the bank froze to pure ice with that simple statement.

“I suggest you shut up, you uneducated fool,” I managed to spit out from behind gritted teeth, but I could not keep the venom from my almost pleasant tone. If I had known that I’d be treated with such distain when I walked into the bank, I wouldn’t have came in.

He laughed at me. Not a sarcastic chuckle, but a malicious, low rumbling laugh of self assured animosity.

“And what are you going to do about it,” he said once regaining his voice “you’re a woman, you can’t exactly beat me up.”

“Bring it on,” I declared, almost unaware in my anger of what I was saying “outside, you and me, right now.” I narrowed my eyes up at his tall bulky figure of about six foot two from my own diminutive five foot five stance.

I can take him, I thought irately and rather belatedly wished I’d taken my hormone pills that morning. My Vietnamese friend breathed in sharply, and effectively stopped me loosing my dignity by stepping on his foot right then and there by putting a hand on my shoulder.

“It is not worth it,” she said quietly, in a voice that commanded attention “He is bigger than you, and a man. You will not prove anything by hitting him.”

“But, …but,” I protested, as the arrogant Aussie laughed at me. “He insulted me, and you, and your people. And what’s worse, he didn’t even get the discriminative term right!”

The Vietnamese woman looked at me with an almost expressionless face “I am an Australian now, as much as you are and as much as he. My people are his people. He only insulted himself,” She said rather cynically.

“Oh come off it,” Mr ‘I’m the Ideal Aussie’ himself snorted, “just get over it.”

I swiveled to face the rest of the bank and Australians painted with all different brushes looked back at me. I breathed in deeply, and turned to face the man again.

“You wouldn’t have a country like you do right now if not for the English, nor the Japanese or the Vietnamese, or any of the other people that make up this place.” I declared, gave him one last glare and turned to the Vietnamese woman and nodded thanks.

Tired, hot and totally disgruntled, I strode out of the bank that afternoon just as the teller looked up, completely oblivious to what had been going on and said,

“Next please?”