House of Kwa

by Mimi Kwa

  I had the job of unravelling plastic wrap from around the three newspapers flung over our wall each day. I would peel back the outer layer along the length of the rolled-up newspaper, little by little so as not to tear it, pulling the plastic free about an inch all the way along. Then I’d press the edge onto the stair rail.

  We used the plastic wrap for leftovers and my school lunches, but over the years we accumulated hundreds of layers around the balustrade, much more than we would ever need. When I rolled off the cling film, I’d quickly scan the news headlines before taking the papers to Dad.

  Visitors must have found it odd to walk into a roll of cling film as soon as they entered our front door. But that sight was possibly not as odd as the mirrors Dad attached with rusted wire either side of the staircase, or the mirror at the top of the stairs – when you got to the landing, you’d almost topple backwards and break your neck. This was his version of feng shui, but it wasn’t very good luck. Meeting my reflection every time I walked up to my room took some getting used to; the first time, I got disoriented and cut my hand on a rusted wire. I sucked on the blood and wondered out loud if I might need a tetanus shot.

  ‘You’ll be okay.’ Dad said. ‘Mirrors good idea. Good idea. You just clumsy. And fat. Ahahahahahhahah.’

  Dad’s Floreat house is overrun with Mandarin Gardens junk, but most of it was packed into shipping containers and sent to a farm far north of Perth. ‘Storage is cheap. Cheaper than throwing away. You never know when I might need it.’ He loses track of what’s in the containers and where they are, but manages to locate one worth bringing home so he can advertise its contents on Gumtree: dozens of heaters, toasters, bunk beds and taps, among other things – he ripped out whatever he could. He spends months fielding enquiries for twenty-dollar items.

  Various international university students rent rooms in Dad’s house. They clamber around and over stuff, wedging themselves in wherever they can find space.

  Dad has sold a lot, but still stuff multiplies like cancer cells. The house, propped on stilts, has dozens of plastic tubs shoved under it. In them are items like duvets, cheese graters, chopping boards – ‘I might need them one day’ – hotel toothbrushes, empty shampoo bottles – ‘You never know’ – framed yellowing prints, remote controls and mousetraps. They all live under the house with the spiders and famous rats from the front page of the local rag.

  I fly from Melbourne to visit Dad. It takes me a while to make it through his complicated gate system: a pulley attached to a wire, metal bar and latch. I walk under a sailcloth that forms the carport, past a garage filled with anvils and motorcycles, old tools and welding machines, then past a mezzanine floor with a ladder – no doubt there’s a lodger up there – and clothes racks, kettles, a set of hair curlers, incomplete card decks, two pianos, old brochures and jars of pens that don’t work, and finally I find the front door.

  Inside, I squeeze past three photocopiers. Pictures of Dad are dotted around in newspaper articles, laminated photos alongside magnetic calendars dating back to the 1970s. On a table awkwardly arranged in a small galley kitchen, where a table should definitely not be, I find a small bubblegum dispenser containing odd socks and a tape measure. I shimmy past, sidling up to the fridge. A four-foot stuffed crocodile watches me from the top of cupboards coated in cooking residue, presumably from the four woks and two rice cookers collecting grime underneath. There are two overflowing plastic-bag holders attached to the wall, but alarmingly no stair rail for plastic wrap from newspapers.

  Dad is praying to his ancestors in a lounge room overcrowded with furniture. He has put castor wheels on the antique chair legs so he can move around freely in the one square metre of available space. Joss sticks are burning, but the serenity is sabotaged by a loud and constant whirring; Dad has installed a rangehood in the lounge room above his ancestral shrine to suck up the smoke. It’s the first time I’ve seen a rangehood in a lounge room.

  ‘Good idea, good idea,’ says Dad. ‘Look. No smoke, no smoke.’

  I can hardly hear him above the din of the extractor fan.

  In the same room, Dad has a massage chair with a mirrored bathroom cabinet above it, where he hides his jade and gold treasures. It’s the first time I’ve seen a bathroom cabinet in a lounge room.

  Dad has attached a magnifying glass to a concertina arm on the wall above his dining table. ‘All the better to read the newspaper – it’s a good idea. See. I can read with close up, whenever I want.’

  Also attached to the wall is a bracket holding Dad’s headphones, the cord running up the wall and along a cornice to an enormous television mounted next to the rangehood in the opposite corner. ‘So I can hear the TV.’ The television is just two metres away.

  There’s a shaving mirror attached to the wall too. ‘It’s angled perfectly to reflect the ceiling light onto my newspaper position. See, so I can read. Here, look.’

  Dad has a cherished picture of Mandarin Gardens framed and hanging above a door with an inscription that reads, I did it my way. Even though it has been repossessed, closed down and demolished, Mandarin Gardens will always be Francis’s masterpiece. Five pictures are glued together in a panoramic series, overlapping and not quite matching up to form the perfect image. A bit like life. Dad has signed and dated it anyway, for authenticity. I imagine him sticky-taping its corners, framing it and polishing the glass with a dirty tea towel, threading wire through staples on the back of the frame, hammering a nail above the door and hanging the memory of his kingdom. I did it my way.

  Dad brings out a vinyl album. He’s sitting on an antique Chinese carved wooden dining chair on castor wheels. ‘So convenient,’ he says as he scoots from dining table to record player. He lifts and places the needle, and the recording crackles to life: it’s Dad singing ‘Moon River’ with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at the Malvern Town Hall, a lifetime ago. He closes his eyes and listens to the young man, and dreams of Mandarin Gardens.

  My teenage brothers were living with Dad in among the paying lodgers until recently. When more students moved in, Dad decided that it was time for my brothers to move out. The boys are in high school, and Dad knows they don’t have jobs or any money, but they move back in with Angela in her one-bedroom apartment. Dad has now installed four more students in my brothers’ old room. Their Matchbox cars are still in plastic tubs under the tenants’ beds.

  When I ask Dad why they’ve moved home, he says, ‘Darling daughter, I told the boys if they pay rent they can stay. They said “no” so they go. Simple. Their choice. No hard feeling.’

  Dad never ceases to amaze me.

  I never cease to amaze Dad. ‘They can work. Buddy no-hopers. I worked when I was seven years old.’

  ALLIGATOR AND SAFARI

  I LONG TO SEE AUNTY. SHE OFTEN WRITES AND I SAVOUR HER letters, usually calling her back right away instead of taking the time to handwrite my thoughts. A letter from Theresa is like stardust, a sprinkle of magic every time.

  I imagine her sitting at her mahogany desk. ‘Brigit, Brigit,’ she calls out, ‘I’m writing to Mimi.’

  Brigit brings in a cup of Chinese tea and sets it beside Aunty.

  ‘Now, what’s for lunch? Once I finish writing, I will eat.’

  Brigit feigns dismay as she always does with this routine. ‘But, ma’am, you tell me you are on a diet, and you have a dinner party with the professor vice-chancellor peoples tonight, so you wanted no lunch.’

  Aunty rubs her belly and laughs. ‘Okay. Okay then, just a little snack then, so I don’t get fat.’

  Brigit rolls her eyes. ‘Oh, ma’am.’ And she prepares a three-course lunch, knowing Theresa will change her mind and want a big meal after all.

  I open the latest letter from Theresa, unfolding the rice-paper-thin blue paper. The cheapest way to send a letter overseas involves writing it within the folds of the custom envelope. I’ve kept dozens of these fine foolscap sheets filledwith elegant curls and wisps, versions of copperplate only Aunty and my grandparents�
�� generation knows. I have to take great care to open her letter, gently tearing the correct edges in two with a knife, careful not to butcher any of those beautiful words.

  Aunty and Paw Paw each own ornate letter openers. Paw Paw’s is brass and shaped like a sword, a scholarly male figure sculpted on the handle; it’s a wartime souvenir from the Netherlands, near the border with Belgium. Theresa’s letter opener is ivory, a souvenir from a Kenyan safari when she would visit with BOAC to join celebrity and distinguished passengers on hunting trips. Ernest Hemingway made safaris fashionable in the 1950s, and as the world recovered from the war, stars such as John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn filmed movies in Africa, which opened a wellspring of flight paths for Theresa to explore.

  In her letter just arrived, Aunty shares news of Hong Kong. She was just there and is, as usual, staying in her aristocratic German friends’ place. It seems they are never there, and they’re more than happy for Aunty to occupy their home for months on end, treating their villa as her own. This includes their staff: a driver, and a maid who doubles as cook. The gym in the building is so-so, she writes. So I visit the tennis club where the baroness still includes my signature on her membership.

  I picture us crossing the road after a swim at the beach, Aunty with her flip-flops and tasselled terry-towelling poncho and me trying to keep up, wearing the terry shorts and varsity printed T-shirt she bought for me on our shopping spree the day before. ‘You are such a good shopper. Good shopper.’ Aunty had clapped her hands with glee every time I emerged from the change room modelling something new.

  I read on. Aunty has drawn a little smiley face with slanted eyes. Do you remember the club sandwiches? she writes. How is baby Royston? How is John? How is your mother? Aunty has filled the entire page, keeping flourishes to a minimum to fit in all her news. I turn it over, and her words occupy every available space on the back too, though she has shown great care not to stray onto the glue flaps.

  I can come to see you, but why don’t you come up here to Manila to stay for a while? I have many, many new friends here. One lady owns a whole university. All of it. You can meet her. Brigit can cook for you. My new driver will pick you up.

  Much love, Aunty Theresa xx

  This is the call of Kwa.

  John and I decide to take a trip to Manila and bring thirteen-month-old Royston on his first trip overseas.

  I’m used to people staring at my mixed-race looks in Australia, Hong Kong and everywhere else in the world – belonging and not belonging anywhere – and I know the kind of reception John gets when we travel too, standing out in China, Thailand and the Philippines, where there are few expats: a tall, rugged white man with his mixed-up girlfriend. Schoolgirls on a bubble-car ride behind us at the Window of the World theme park, in far southern China’s Shenzhen, ran up to John with notepads one time, calling out, ‘Bluce Lillous!’ But these experiences didn’t prepare us for the attention Royston would receive.

  Our little blond boy squeals with delight as John carries him off the plane, and we’re enveloped by the soggy humidity as maintenance workers stop what they’re doing to stare at my child. A sea of local ground crew flood the lounge entrance, move out of the way, and then, realising there’s a baby, surround John and Royston while I follow with our bags. ‘Ooooh, he’s so cute.’ A young worker touches Royston’s chubby hand, bouncing it up and down in hers. ‘Yes, he’s so cute, mister,’ a man says to John. ‘May I touch the hair? The hair is so white.’ By the time we arrive at the gate, having collected our check-in luggage, Royston has been fanfared the length of the terminal.

  We head for arrival gate K for Kwa, where we find Aunty Theresa’s driver holding a small whiteboard that says MISS KWA. Aunty is so excited about our visit that she has travelled with her driver to greet us – not all Aunty’s guests receive such a welcome. I fling my arms around her for a warm hug. She beams, claps her hands, and bobs up and down to elicit a smile from Royston. ‘Aunty Theresa,’ I say. ‘Aunty Teessah,’ he repeats.

  I am elated. As I sink into the leather car seat, I feel I’ve come home. This is Manila, of course, not Hong Kong, but Aunty is here, and that’s home to me.

  The air conditioning is on, but beads of sweat still run down our faces. It’s hotter than Hong Kong, so Aunty gives John the front seat to be nearer the air con, and she sits in the back with me – to be nearer Royston. Aunty chuckles, holding my son’s tiny hand and then pulling hers away, hiding it beside her so he can’t see it beyond the booster seat she has so thoughtfully arranged. He laughs as he and Aunty play this game all the way home.

  I watch the scenery change out the window: shantytown, slum, condominiums, highrise; shantytown, slum, condominiums, highrise. We stop at traffic lights, and a boy, six or seven years old, knocks on my window, holding up a bunch of bananas and nodding at me expectantly. I shake my head. Another child, this time a little girl, skips across the main road between cyclists and mopeds with a cotton bag, slung across her body, holding mangoes.

  ‘You want?’ Aunty says.

  ‘No thanks, Aunty.’

  A young man in a grubby and torn singlet top, fit and shining in the heat, walks between two lanes of traffic and stops momentarily at each car. He’s selling water. ‘Water, water,’ Aunty says to her driver. He pops open the ashtray and reaches for a few coins before winding down his window just enough to make the exchange. He is ex-military; in the Philippines, most personal drivers are. They double as security guards in troubled Manila where the elite feel they must protect themselves from being robbed or kidnapped or worse.

  Every time I visit, there has just been a spate of Chinese abductions, according to Aunty, so I must be very careful never to go out of her driver’s sight unless I’m at a shopping centre. Most of the high-end malls are off limits to locals unless they look rich; the security guards can tell, I’m told. To me it’s a bizarre feeling to walk through a familiar shopping-centre entrance when the person behind you gets turned away or their bag is searched because they don’t look like they can afford anything inside. Security can always tell I’m a tourist and usher me to the left, bypassing the metal detector and bag search that even a Chinese Filipino in head-to-toe Gucci can’t avoid.

  When we arrive at Aunty’s condo, a guard in the sentry box tips his cap, recognising our car, while another circles us and peers in the windows. ‘My niece, my niece,’ Aunty says. The expressionless guard nods us through, and we drive into a cavernous carpark then stop alongside a marbled lift well. Another guard, this one friendlier, helps our driver with our cases. ‘I can take that,’ I offer.

  ‘No, no, no, let them do it,’ Aunty insists. ‘Here, you live it up. Live it up.’

  I’m familiar with Aunty’s routine, having grown up shadowing her over so many school holidays: massage, gym, swim, eat, sleep, usually a couple of times a day and sometimes punctuated by shopping. We’ve been at her place three days now, and I am copying her routine as closely as I can. Royston adds to the schedule by sliding on his tummy across the parquetry floor. It’s almost a mirror, Brigit has polished it so well.

  ‘Mimi,’ Brigit says with a laugh, ‘why you don’t let me get that for you?’ She’s referring to the orange juice I’m helping myself to from the fridge. No other guest would ever even be allowed in the kitchen, let alone into the laundry behind it, or Brigit’s tiny room beyond that.

  ‘Mimi’ – she takes the bottle from me – ‘I juice you a fresh one. Off you go.’ I am shooed out, laughing.

  Brigit perfectly pulps the orange and serves it to me in a glass nestled in a white doily cupholder, before peeling grapes for John and Royston. John raises an eyebrow at me as if to say, She’s peeled our grapes, and I laugh. This is ludicrous and luxurious compared to our lives in Australia. It’s new to John, but I’ve been existing across galaxies since I was born.

  Today Aunty’s friend picks us up and takes us to a resort. The friend owns the resort, or has shares in it – with Aunty I can never quite tell who owns what or what
title belongs to whom, as she has a way of stringing several connections and references into her pre-introductory briefings: ‘She’s the daughter of the magnate who owns the main Telco. Her daughter is a professor in the best university. She is an owner in the island we are going to. Maaaany famous movie stars go there – even the European prince comes for a holiday. But when her son married the owner of the biscuit company – you know the one, Arnott or Nabisco or something – that was a mistake. They are divorce now. She didn’t like her, anyway. Now he has the marketing degree and he works in the head of the marketing at the biggest bank in Philippines. Maaaaany people know him. She’s a good friend. So generous. You will like her.’

  In Aunty’s orbit, it can be difficult to place who is who, but it’s highly entertaining to try. And one thing is certain: just like me, they all adore her and would do anything for her.

  After a bumpy two-hour ride in Aunty’s very nice friend’s luxury van, we emerge at a Spanish-style resort. It’s hard to imagine how the manicured lawns and trimmed hedges can survive in this heat, but they must like the humidity because the foliage is lush. We swim in a lagoon-style pool looking out over a private golf course set before a picturesque rolling landscape. I turn towards the jungle and wonder about the locals living in villages nearby, forbidden from ever setting foot in here without a worker’s uniform.

  ‘Ma’am.’ A waiter brings drinks to the edge of the pool, and John and I glide over, leaving Royston in Aunty’s arms. She’s wearing her signature bright-pink flower swim cap and a broad smile; at seventy-five, she is radiant. Royston splashes as Aunty laughs and holds him out from her, pulling him back again with an arm wrapped around his waist. He keeps splashing to the enthusiastic applause of a line-up of staff, each wearing white-and-tan uniforms with dark edging at the collar pockets and seemingly happy dispositions on their sleeves, despite their life of servitude.

  ‘Little prince, little prince,’ Aunty sings.