House of Kwa

by Mimi Kwa

  Soon, we’re joined by David, Aunty Clara, Dad and Karen, and the five of us sit at another table while Sam keeps working. For the next couple of hours, David and I speak loudly to our elders about nothing much. We gloss over the few indirect mutterings from Francis and Clara about ‘family jewellery’ and bags belonging to ‘the family’. We exchange fond memories of Theresa, and David carefully drops obvious hints into the conversation, such as, ‘Aunty Theresa would really want her wishes to be honoured, wouldn’t she?’

  I nod in furious agreement.

  David continues, ‘Uncle Francis and Mother, she truly wanted to save you both any headache to do with her estate. It’s such a complicated process to apply for probate and to administer a will. And there’s all that longwinded and expensive talk with lawyers and government departments.’ He yawns dramatically. ‘Oh, what a bore. Aunty Theresa thought better to let the younger ones take care of the hard work while you two can relax. Right?’

  I’m the only one nodding. Sam keeps tapping away at his computer. Karen sips her twelfth cup of Chinese tea, not having said a single thing this entire time; I wonder what on earth she must think of all this.

  It’s late. David indicates he’s ready for bed with more dramatic yawning and stretching. We’ve drunk and small-talked the old siblings under the table, and we breathe a sigh of relief as Clara, Francis and Karen leave.

  Sam looks up from his laptop and smiles. ‘Can I stop standing guard now? I really need to go to the bathroom.’

  In David and Sam’s hotel room, we lay out Aunty’s jewels on the bedspread. David has another brilliant idea, but before he’s able to share it the phone rings.

  It’s Clara. ‘David, David, where are the jewels?’

  David takes a very deep breath. ‘Mother, don’t worry, they are all very secure. In fact, they’re locked up in the safe downstairs at reception under my and Mimi’s joint names so only we can access it. So it is all very safe. Just have a good night’s rest, and we’ll speak tomorrow.’

  David gestures for Sam to pour more wine, and his eyes roll in my direction as his mother continues ranting in his ear.

  ‘Yes, Mother dear, Mimi has gone home. We thought we would sort out the jewels tomorrow when we are fresh . . . Ohhhh, you would like to be there to sort through them? Right. But Theresa said they are for Josephine and Mimi to share, so they must be the ones to do it . . . Yes, I understand that you and Francis are older, but Jo and Mimi are adults now, they are not children . . . Yes, Mother, I realise that Josephine is your child, but she is not “a” child . . . Yes, Mother, but Jo has asked me to sort out her share . . . Yes, Mummy, you are right, you should be there when we sort it all out. Okay, I’ll call you when Mimi gets here in the morning. Okay? . . . Alright, Mother. Very tired now.’ Dramatic yawn. ‘Good night.’

  Clara keeps talking as David hangs up, his clever idea now solidified.

  ‘We will allocate the real rings and necklaces, brooches and pearls to you and Jo, Mimi, and leave just enough costume jewellery for Mother to go through with you that she will be convinced of her inclusion. We will re-stage this event again in the morning, for her benefit.’

  DISC AND DUMPLINGS

  I WAKE UP WITH A THUMPING HEADACHE. I’M NOT LOOKING forward to going back to the Shangri-La at ten, to go through the costume jewellery with Aunty Clara. Running my hand over the bag of my inherited precious adornments, I wonder if it will be safe here at the condo. What if Dad gets past the guards while I’m gone? What if he bullies Brigit or Jay into letting him in without me here?

  As I’m eating breakfast, Tessie calls to tell me my father has requested a meeting with her and Letty that afternoon. Can I please attend at Letty’s apartment? Light lunch will be served. Of course, I agree.

  I decide to wear a gold disc pendant Clara gave me two years ago. She put the 24-carat chain around my neck and fastened the clasp, looked me in the eye, squeezed my hands and said, ‘You are Kwa. You remember that. Kwa is strong. Kwa is good. You are Kwa. True Kwa. You have the name, but I also see the Kwa in you.’ She held my hands and my gaze for some time, and I was deeply touched by both her generosity and remark. Today I hope the necklace will be a sign of peace, and I fasten the chain carefully to make sure the small gold Chinese symbol faces outwards. ‘It means happy – happy and good luck,’ Clara said with my hands in hers. ‘You are happy. You are Kwa. I love you.’

  Aunty Theresa’s condo is right across the road from the Shangri-La. She chose the location so she could use the hotel gym and pool, but as there isn’t anywhere to cross safely and traffic is so bad, it takes a full twenty minutes to drive around the block to the hotel entrance. As guards sweep the car for bombs I think of John and the kids, wondering what they’re doing now, glad they’re not here to see Kwa at its worst.

  A doorman helps me out, then sashays ahead to join his colleague at the entrance. Together they open two heavy glass doors, just as the Sikh men did for me at the Mandarin Oriental, when I would eagerly skip behind Aunty on our way to Swatow Lace.

  ‘Could you kindly call up to Mr David Bryan’s room and let him know Miss Mimi Kwa has arrived?’ I ask the hotel attendant.

  Her eyes widen. ‘Oh. Miss Mimi Kwa?’ Your parents Mrs Bryan and Mr Kwa were here this morning asking for access to your safe. When we told them there is no safety deposit under your name anyway, they became quite upset and shouted at us. I am very sorry to have caused them any inconveniences. Please can you send the hotel’s apologies to them?’

  It takes a moment for this to sink in.

  She gestures in the direction of the restaurant. ‘They went on for breakfast and billed it to David Bryan’s room.’

  When I arrive upstairs, Aunty Clara is already in David and Sam’s room. We embrace, and Clara examines the gold disc pendant around my collar, ‘Oh ho lang, ho lang. Very beautiful’ she says and then the show begins. Sam adjusts a black velvet display tray identical to one you might find in a jeweller’s shop. Aunty Clara paws through the first few items Sam has laid out.

  ‘Now, Mother,’ says David, ‘you do realise you’re choosing for Josephine, don’t you? Not for yourself.’

  ‘Myself, yes, myself,’ she says absentmindedly. ‘But where are all the diamonds and the precious stones?’

  The duplicity in the room is a multilayered cake you could cut with a knife, and the icing is Aunty Clara’s attempt to distract me from anything of potential value. ‘Look, look at this, how it shines,’ she gasps, holding up a cubic zirconia pendant that she and I both know perfectly well is not worth a penny. ‘It is a beautiful diamond – you should have this.’ There are a few real items that we left in the collection in the end, but this is not one of them.

  She practises a little sleight of hand, shoving a genuine Rolex, with a fine black leather band, to her edge of the tray and concealing it under a flared sleeve – clearly worn for the occasion. She repeats this routine until she has accumulated too big a collection to hide, but she has gone too far to care. She puts on a gold bracelet and disappears into a reverie. ‘It’s a little big for me. I will need to have it resized. And this ring will need to be resized too.’

  I head to the meeting with Tessie and Letty, Jay and I picking up Dad on the way. Like all chauffeurs, Jay bears silent witness and pretends not to listen in to Dad’s rant. ‘The executors are very cunning. They will make great difficulty for me. It is your duty to look after my interests. We are on the same side.’ Dad is starting off with a friendly approach today, and I hope he won’t go on the attack this time. The dragon narrows his eyes, dancing gracefully around his victim.

  ‘Dad, the issue with Aunty’s will is that it doesn’t say you get everything like you are telling everyone. It just says furniture and fixtures.’

  The dragon’s blood ratchets up to a boil. ‘Shut up. You do as I say! If you don’t back me up, then everything is gone. They will take it all.’

  Dad and I take the lift to Letty’s apartment, travelling in silence. He seethes, and I
recalibrate for the next round.

  Letty and Tessie are on the balcony, sitting at a lavish stone dining table surrounded by succulents and statues. The view is of a condominium courtyard shared by elite Manila residents; it is even more gentrified than Aunty Theresa’s wealthy neighbourhood. There is more of a Spanish influence at Letty’s.

  Two maids subtly bow and exit backwards as if I might be the Queen herself, and Dad and I sit down. The maids return with Chinese tea and plates of simply delicious dumplings.

  Dad kicks me under the table. I lower my gaze. I had forgotten to assume a meek facade, my only way to get through lunch without fuss.

  Dad speaks with the executors as if I’m not there, pontificating about seniority and asking Letty and Tessie their ages. ‘I am at least ten years your senior. You are just young girls.’

  The executors are looking to me for guidance.

  ‘You do not understand,’ Dad says, as we eat beautifully decorated, ornate desserts. ‘It is all mine. You women do not understand the Kwa family.’ I chew on a strap of mango garnish. ‘You do not interfere in our House.’ The chocolate fondant on the miniature cupcakes is delectable. ‘And my daughter is only a girl, how could she know anything?’

  At this point, the highly educated and successful women entertaining us have clearly had enough.

  Dad shakes with anger in the lift as we leave. The dragon’s eyes are red with rage. ‘You know nothing, daughter. You do not know what you are dealing with.’

  The doors open, and I get out before the fire breath can burn me more.

  BANK AND BRIDGE

  OBTAINING PROBATE IS TEDIOUS. BUT I’VE JUMPED THROUGH the hoops before, as executor of Paw Paw’s will, and I know what to do. It should be easy: the only thing in Aunty Theresa’s Australian will is a property in South Perth, an established, upmarket riverside neighbourhood. She sold off all her other Perth assets, over the years, or Dad sold them for her, and I’m fortunate to have the least complicated of Aunty’s wills to manage. Theresa bought her apartment in 1971, and now her investment of a few thousand dollars is worth over half a million and she wanted the proceeds shared between my brothers, Angela, my mum and me.

  A couple, Allan and Maria, have rented Aunty’s apartment since the early ’90s. I call them and ask that they maintain payments into Theresa’s account as usual. But once probate comes through and I pay a visit to Westpac bank, I find no rent money in Aunty’s accounts.

  Dad picks up my call. ‘Oh, dear daughter. The tenants like me. I own the apartment. It was your Aunty’s will. It is not your place to make decisions. You cannot and will not outsmart me.’

  And just like that, I am plunged into a hell I thought I had escaped long ago, one I ran from and hid from in my career – and in my children, my husband, my friends – but there it is, here it is, the dragon’s jaws open to swallow me, the tiger exhausted beneath the jungle canopy. The dragon circles and swoops; there was never going to be any escape.

  I put the kids to bed, inhale half a bottle of wine, call John’s dad – the magistrate – and cry. ‘What do I do, Len? He’s my dad, but Aunty left the apartment to my brothers and me, Angela and my mum – probably knowing Dad would never look after any of us.’

  Ever since Francis walked on Len’s back, claiming he was a ‘Chinese doctor’, and ever since Francis called Len day and night for legal advice that he never followed, Len has been rather unimpressed, so there is little to no convincing required for my father-in-law to help me. There was also the time Francis took Len out to a Chinese vegetarian restaurant where the chicken, beef and pork were all tofu; Len never got over that.

  Len says my best bet is to file against Dad to recoup the rent, which if nothing else will keep him busy and off my case while I sell the apartment.

  I fly secretly to Perth. It’s only a secret from Dad, and it feels weird because usually I’m flying to Perth to see him but, instead, I must deal with the tenants in person. The little girl in me struggles with the weight and complexity of who we are to each other: I feel such a deep sense of obligation to him but he doesn’t seem to have the same dutiful concern for me. The woman in me clings to a moral compass, magnetically twitching an arrow to ‘right’.

  I relate the whole Manila episode to my brothers and former stepmother, Angela, who is my host tonight at her rented villa in the fashionable suburb of Subiaco. She’s happier than I’ve ever seen her, softened. She has prepared five dishes for our dinner, and regardless, I’m grateful for the effort. I drink wine and relax.

  I’m looking out for Angela’s interest in Aunty Theresa’s will, but I cannot believe that’s the only reason she embraced me when I arrived. The fact that Theresa left both Francis’s ex-wives part of her estate is not lost on anyone. Great-Grandfather left First Mother behind in China and abandoned Number Two Wife and Number Three Wife for heaven, and Theresa wasn’t letting that happen again.

  We four share stories about Dad. We could write a book – and maybe I will one day, I think.

  My brother Jerome has his feet up on the couch. He had a minor motorcycle accident yesterday. Angela picked me up and we rushed to the hospital because the only one he wanted to see was me, to sit there silently through injections and examinations. I held his hand just like I held Mama, Ng Yuk’s, hand decades ago.

  When Ng Yuk, Dad’s mother, refused to go for blood tests in Hong Kong, I would go with her. She couldn’t speak English but to say, ‘Your daddy, no good. No good.’ And I could not speak Chinese but to say, ‘Mm goi. Thank you.’ We held hands as nurses took blood. ‘Good boy,’ Ng Yuk said to me in English. ‘Good boy.’ I watched Kwa blood fill the vial. Slowly rising.

  When I was a teenager Mama celebrated her 86th birthday and Aunty Theresa reserved an entire floor of a Hong Kong restaurant to fit the hundreds of guests from around the world, Kwas paying their respects to the last living wife of Ying Kam. Ng Yuk wasn’t actually eighty-six but it’s custom to add a year for each generation after you, so she was really only eighty-three. I wasn’t long out of primary school, and of all the guests, she wanted me to sit at her table. At her funeral a year later, I stood behind David in a long line of mourners to view Ng Yuk’s open casket. Her frail body and tiny feet were finally at peace. Aunty Theresa asked for donations of blankets for the poor rather than flowers and, after the Catholic service, immediate family, like me, attended a Buddhist one where a monk cut the throat of a live chicken to protect Theresa as next of kin, after the almanac revealed it was double death day. I watched the red liquid drip onto the altar and pool on the floor.

  I lodge Magistrates Court documents over Dad’s rent collection, and predictably he is not happy. His text messages are like tiny swords.

  I have Aunty’s ashes in Melbourne and hope to hold a service somewhere in Australia once Dad has settled down. For now, all I can do is steel myself while he’s on the warpath.

  ‘I have plenty up my sleeve,’ he rants. ‘Don’t think you know me. I will teach you.’

  After a while, Dad perhaps becomes irritated by my numb responses – I am behind in his game – and out of sheer frustration throws me a bone. It’s buried deep in a ten-screen-long text.

  There is an ABSOLUTE CAVEAT on the title of your Aunty’s apartment. This PROHIBITS you from selling it.

  What?! That can’t be right. I do some yoga stretches to help me absorb this information and call the titles office from a forward fold position.

  ‘No, Madam, I cannot disclose the details of the title without proof of your grant of probate or evidence of your interest in the property.’

  I stand upright and book another flight to Perth, this time to go to the land titles office.

  ‘Hmmm, let me see.’ A helpful elderly man looks at me over his spectacles. ‘It’ll just take me a minute.’ He shuffles behind shelves and emerges with a folder. ‘Yes. There is a caveat on that property. A title cannot be transferred with a caveat.’ He smiles sympathetically.

  ‘How did the caveat get there?’
>
  The bespectacled man hands me a form, upon which is Dad’s signature, dated three weeks before Theresa died.

  There’s no record of how Dad managed to prove a caveatable interest in his sister’s property – maybe he took an old bank statement with his name on it, or old letters from Theresa mentioning maintenance – and it’s at the discretion of the titles office clerk to decide if a caveat is warranted before they approve it. You only need to provide proof of an interest in the property then they record the caveat but not why it was placed.

  Dad texts me. You can never win. I am the King. It’s all mine.

  I want the bitterness to wash from me to the furthest corners of existence, and most of all I want to relinquish my executorship. But if I die, John is the next in line, then Adrian, then Jerome, then five other people before any mention of Dad at all. Theresa did not want him in charge.

  Dad gets even more furious when he goes to collect rent from Aunty’s tenants and finds an empty apartment. He then sends essay-length messages on my birthday. I read his messages multiple times and feel depression creeping in.

  Dad sends physical letters too. They arrive by the dozen: news articles highlighted in yellow to show Dad ‘knows best’, pages of prose to show Dad is ‘all powerful’, and notes to tell me, You will never win.

  I resolve to fight back with love, compiling a beautiful hardcover hundred-page photo book filled with pictures of Dad and me and his grandchildren. This tactic helped to get Mum well, so maybe it’ll work with Dad. I write of family and harmony, and Adrian delivers it to Dad.

  Please lift the caveat. Please let me do what is right. Please let me be free to do the job Theresa has asked of me. You have four beautiful grandchildren, three loving children. Look around you. We don’t need to fight.