Repeat After Me

Chapter 38

I saw it on TikTok first – the shocking footage of a coloured man named George Floyd being kneed to death in the neck by a white policeman. It was repulsive. I tried to scroll away from it at first, but it kept appearing on my For You page, over and over again, until I realised something big had happened, and I had to watch it.

'Please man, please man. I can't breathe, I can't breathe,' I could hear George Floyd say. A policeman told him to 'relax'. George Floyd, with his head squashed into the road, continued to cry out, a harrowing sound of fear and breathlessness. His cries sounded like 'mama, mama.' 'Get up and get in the car,' the officer yelled. 'I can't move', George Floyd said. He died with the policeman's knee pushed into his neck.

It set off a chain reaction around the world, starting on social media, on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, on every news station, on the radio, in every conversation, with a shake of the head, and a tut of the tongue. People began protesting in the US. There were scenes of the Minneapolis police station burning down, people rioting, burning cars, burning buildings, burning look the other way, burning the old ways. It was everywhere.

We were watching the protests on the Channel 10 news, the smell of lamb in the slow cooker in the kitchen, making us feel hungry. Dad said, 'They need to go back to work.'

'No dad, this is important,' I said. 'How could a policeman do such a thing? It's disgusting.'

'These protests are out of control. People are too bored.'

I could feel anger rising from the ashes within me.

'It was probably drug related,' dad said.

'You're wrong. He was buying cigarettes and the guy accused him of using a forged bank note,' I corrected him. 'It may not have even been intentional.'

Dad shrugged his shoulders, dismissively. 'He shouldn't have been smoking.'

'So now police should kill people who smoke?'

'They're killing themselves, anyway.'

'Dad. How can you say such a thing? You shouldn't joke about this. It's not right,' I wanted him to know. 'The police are here to protect us. Who can we call for help, if the police are killing its people? Who's going to protect us from the police?'

'For goodness sakes. I don't know why the world is getting so upset about this. The cop is a dickhead, obviously. His life is ruined as well.'

'It happens here too,' I said.

'Don't be ridiculous, Ivy. Police brutality is not a thing here.'

'Yes it is,' I said. 'I've seen it myself.'

'As if,' Josh said.

'I have. A Taiwanese friend of mine was humiliated by the cops right in front of me. They made rude comments because they thought he was Chinese. Something about wet markets and how his people had screwed the world with COVID.'

'What friend?' Josh asked.

'Just a friend okay,' I said.

'A boyfriend?' Josh teased.

'Enough,' dad said.

'Aboriginal people are over policed too and there's too many deaths in custody,' I said.

'Read that on social media?' dad asked. 'Hashtag we Gen Z all think the same. It's an echo chamber of virtuous woke thinking.' I was preparing my comeback when dad said. 'Wait until the universities have closed and none of you young people can get a job, and COVID has screwed your possibilities, and then see if you remember George Floyd's name or Greta Thunberg. See who cares about them then.'

I turned to my mother for support, but she just raised her eyebrows at me. I couldn't remember dad ever having spoken so grumpily about human rights or climate change before. His attitudes were being pushed more and more conservative as he fought against his own personal battles with this pandemic.

The football team was back training now – they were preparing for games to restart. The club had cut the support staff in half, and dad was lucky to still have a job, except his hours had been reduced to three days plus game day. He was under strict orders not to go anywhere unnecessarily. He wasn't allowed to go to the supermarket or Bunnings or anywhere with lots of people. Mum had to do all the shopping. We weren't allowed to have any friends over at home. Dad was basically being forced to live in a bubble, so that his precious football team wouldn't catch COVID.