Steeplechase

by Krissy Kneen

  ‘Ni hao,’ my sister greets the shop assistant, says something else in Mandarin. A smile and a response. My sister has managed to learn some of the language, enough to have a quick conversation. I remember the lessons she used to run at the side of the house when our grandmother was not watching and feel the wave of memory reach up and lift me away, the unfamiliar sound of Mandarin replaced suddenly by the odd clipped Elvish syllables.

  In bed some nights Emily would read to me. We had finished The Hobbit and we had moved on to The Lord of the Rings. There was a wonderful secret pleasure in knowing a language that only existed in books: a language shared between the two of us and barely anyone else in the world. Elves were her favourite. They are quiet and lithe and beautiful and they ride their white horses bareback, which is how she wanted to ride if she could have ridden at all. Our grandmother knew three languages. I once reminded Emily of this and her mouth hardened to a pencil line of condescension. Even if our grandmother knew twenty languages she would not be invited to share in our Elvish. This was something for my sister and me alone.

  The shop assistant quickly presses a button and I hear the low whir of an airconditioning unit cranking up.

  ‘They only put the aircon on for westerners,’ Emily tells me as if this is a fact that needs no explanation. I wonder at her ease with this odd racial inequality.

  She picks up a hanger, a high-waisted green dress with cute little straps. ‘Try this on.’

  I feel my chest tighten.

  ‘What size is it?’

  ‘It says large. It’ll fit. It’s way too big on me. I think it will fit you nicely. Try it on.’

  I look at the round swell of her hips, the thick set of her shoulders. Surely she must be the same size as I am now. Maybe I am deluded. Maybe I am even bigger than I think. I feel myself swell to the size of the most obese person I can imagine. I could be the size of a baby elephant, I could be a whale. My sister certainly thinks I am the size of a whale.

  ‘I don’t need clothes. I have clothes.’

  ‘I want to get you something. For the opening.’

  ‘No. You’ve given me too much already. I didn’t bring you anything.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’ve got all this money. People pay me stupid prices for my paintings now. Do you know how much they sell for? It’s ridiculous. I know how much they pay you at university.’

  ‘Emily,’ I snap, more forcefully than I intended, ‘I’m not going to try clothes on.’

  There is a flash of the old Emily, the dark brooding stare, the potential for damage. I find myself shrinking away from her. I remember a time when she picked up her cupboard and threw it over to my side of the room, the terrible crack as something broke, what was that? A plastic container filled with oil pastels, I think; the sound has stayed with me anyway.

  Then there is that half smile. Emily holds the emerald dress up to the light.

  ‘It’s nice. I think it’s a Collette Dinnigan. Or a reinterpretation of one. I saw it in Australian Vogue. I think. Or maybe it was Who Weekly. How’s that? Vogue or Who Weekly. Interchangeable. Talk about a global village.’

  ‘Emily.’

  She smiles vaguely at me.

  I tell her, ‘I’m sorry, I just don’t want to try dresses on right now.’

  ‘Have you got something to wear to the opening?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not a red dress I hope, I am going to wear red, or maybe it would be good to dress the same, matching red dresses to prove that we are sisters. What colour is your dress?’

  ‘Black.’

  ‘Maybe I should get a black dress to match.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ I tell her.

  ‘Collette Dinnigan.’ She checks the tag. ‘For two hundred kuai. Do you know what that works out to? Thirty bucks—something like that. Collette would vomit, don’t you think?’

  Emily puts the dress back on the rack wistfully. ‘Chinese girls are little sticks,’ she says suddenly. ‘No tits.’ I glance at the stylish shop assistant who seems unfazed by my sister’s rudeness. ‘You got tits so early. I was always jealous about that.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You’ve let your hair grow.’ She reaches out with one finger as if she is about to touch a stray lock of my hair. I am not sure which one of us flinches first but her hand is snatched back before making contact.

  ‘I liked the asymmetrical thing better. I think.’

  And it seems impossible that she would know about the asymmetrical haircut I endured for a handful of months.

  ‘But I suppose you need the length to balance a fatter face.’

  My sister says something to the shopkeeper and walks out to our bikes. I gaze up into a sky that is a haze of grey. Something drips onto my cheek and I brush it away.

  ‘Is it going to rain?’

  ‘Doubt it. Oh, they spray the trees with something. You are always getting dripped on. Toxic chemicals probably, no worse than the pollution I suppose. Acid rain. You’ll notice there’s no bugs. Nothing alive at all. I try not to think about that too much. We’re breathing this shit in, I’ve been doing it for over a year. You know how hard it is to kill a cockroach?’

  She looks back over her shoulder at me. I shudder under her gaze. She looks up and then down, flattening me into my component parts. I smooth down my skirt over my huge thighs. I wish she had dragged me away to a colder country. There would be sleeves and coats and thick wool tights to hide behind.

  ‘We might have to take you to a tailor. Get something made.’

  ‘It’s okay. I have clothes.’

  ‘I want to get you something. Let me get you something.’

  ‘You got me a ticket to China.’

  ‘China. Can you believe that? China. My little sister is here. With me. In China.’

  She laughs and steps up on to the pedals and rings her bell as she launches herself out into the nightmare of oncoming bicycles. She is larger now, but still just as graceful. I follow at a halting pace, dodging, stopping, pulling over onto the footpath. It is easy enough to keep track of my sister. She is a gorgeous flash of blue shining against the drab background of shapeless cotton frocks and dirty T-shirts. She is other-worldly and exciting and for a moment I am overwhelmed with pride.

  Beijing Art

  We dodge old ladies and running children, we swerve past buses and taxi cabs. We are overtaken by an old man with a huge pile of rice bags on the back of his bicycle. Sometimes she waits for red lights, sometimes she darts through without pause. I hold my breath and follow her even when it means I am almost run over by a moped. I shout apologies and I am not sure if they are heard or understood because I am pedalling fast, trying to keep up. She pulls up outside a building in a long line of buildings. Swings her leg off the bike and leans it against a tree. She locks the wheel to the frame.

  ‘No one’s going to steal them anyway, but you can lock your bike to mine. I do that. It makes me feel a little safer.’ She sweeps her hair away from her face. ‘We have to do this lunch thing. I would skip it if I could but…’ she shrugs. I struggle with the D lock. The key is rusty and I wiggle it uselessly before it finally clicks open.

  When I turn to find her she has disappeared. I stand on the footpath and there are dozens of people teeming past. When I look out to the street there are all the cars and bikes and scooters. So many people. I feel my heart racing. I have never seen so many people in the one place. It is impossible to tell how many lanes of traffic are racing by, just a mass of vehicles and shoulder-to-shoulder pedestrians. A few shops away a small child is playing in a puddle of water, crouched down, and concentrating intensely on whatever she is picking out of the water. Glass. I shudder. There is a woman sitting on a stool near her, I assume this is her mother, and yet she makes no move to stop the child from picking up the fragments of glass, piling them up on a scrap of paper.

  The light is gently fading. I am hungry, but I can’t remember if it is late at night back home or early afternoon. I have a terrible sense of displ
acement. What would John be doing at this time? Is he in class? I have lost track of the days.

  The restaurant is packed and it takes me a minute to find her. A waiter shouts something at me. I wish I had learned the Mandarin for ‘I don’t understand’. I shake my head, hoping that the gesture and my expression will be universal. I see a flash of colour and it is her. She is sitting at a table with a group of westerners. One Chinese girl among them wearing an eighties style cropped denim jacket and high-waisted denim shorts. They are all flamboyantly dressed, most of them in structured black skirts or cute little fifties frocks. All of them slim, pretty girls in their thirties. I am reminded of my students, so carefully dressed with their outrageous haircuts. I am glad now that I let mine grow out, at least I will not look like I am trying to be one of them.

  I stand awkwardly beside my sister’s chair. There is no chair for me to sit on and for a moment I imagine that I was meant to wait outside with the bikes. The Chinese girl stands and grabs one from another table.

  ‘Park your arse, Bec,’ she says in such a broad Australian accent that I suppose I look startled. The Chinese girl laughs. ‘Yeah, and I don’t speak any Mandarin either. You should see some of the locals, shouting and shouting, then I say “G’day mate” and they look at me like I’m an alien.’

  I sit on the chair she offers me. She knows my name but I don’t know hers.

  ‘How’s the flight?’

  Another girl, a pale blonde curly-haired angel. She is smoking a cigarette and ashes it onto the floor. There are people smoking at some of the other tables too. I can hear the sound of crickets chirping. I turn to see where it is coming from but there are just other tables, locals shouting at each other as if they’re angry. One old woman leans away from her chair and spits onto the floor. I feel light headed.

  ‘Okay. Long. I got some reading done.’

  ‘You’re a teacher right? Teach art?’

  They know all about me and I don’t even know their names.

  My sister looks past them. I remember that look, that distant preoccupation like she is watching television, captivated by something happening outside the parameters of the world. I shift nervously in my chair.

  ‘Yes. At university.’

  ‘The next wave,’ says a little nuggety, spike-haired girl in a mean singlet top. ‘Discovered any geniuses yet? Genii? Anyone we should look out for?’

  I think about John. I could tell them about John, drop his name, pave the way for him, but I know that I will betray my feelings if I even mention him so I shake my head.

  ‘Couple of good artists in the making. Some good work. Lots of not-so-good work. You know how it is.’

  They laugh. The smoking girl lights another cigarette off the first.

  ‘Hey, congrats on your exhibition. Awesome review, Nancy would have been green with jealousy. I went to uni with Nancy.’ She rolls her eyes.

  I am so startled that I can’t think of anything to say. Ed told me to get the papers. I wonder what they said.

  ‘So you all got the floor plan?’ She turns back towards the table in general.

  The Chinese girl sighs. ‘I want to order first. I’m hungry. Is anyone else hungry?’

  Some nods, some shrugs. I pick up the menu in front of me and there are photographs with Chinese characters beside them. Nothing is familiar. I look towards Emily but she is still staring off into the middle distance. She is the same age now as our mother was. Same age, same overblown flesh, same vacant stare. I feel a little leap in my chest and glance down at the menu once more.

  The girl with the cigarette shouts something and I flinch at her tone, so confident and perhaps a little condescending. She waves her cigarette in the air and a waiter races to her side. I listen to them ordering, everyone with words for what they are after. When it comes time for my sister to order she turns to the waiter slowly and drags herself back into the real world. This is the sister of my childhood and I remember. I can feel a growing sense of unease settling on my shoulders tightening into a knot at the base of my neck.

  She speaks to the waiter quietly, calmly, she points in my direction and there are more words in Mandarin. The waiter laughs and nods at me. Emily shrugs and talks and then when she is done she smiles vaguely and says, ‘I’ve ordered a few things you might like unless you had something particular…?’

  ‘No,’ I tell her, and, ‘thanks.’ She smiles at me briefly and I lean towards her. She is my anchor here.

  When the orders have been placed and the menus collected, the girl with the cigarette slaps a folder down onto the table.

  It is a familiar conversation, logistics, meterage, hanging requirements. She produces a spreadsheet and I glance at the paper that is put in front of Emily. Some of the names are familiar. Artists. I have seen some of their work in magazines. A who’s who of the brave new voices on the Australian scene. Emily will have the whole of the lower floor.

  The girl with the cigarette takes out an iPad and a keyboard and there is some discussion about the placement of Australian artists within the context of the wider Asian community. I read the major arts magazines. I understand their arguments, I can even interpret the impenetrable language, but I feel my vision clouding and I am certain that my vague half-smile is the same expression as my sister’s. Just us against the world.

  Our food arrives and Emily stirs. She places her hand on my thigh, a sign of camaraderie. She points to each dish and explains what is being placed on the table: jasmine flowers stir-fried in a spicy sauce, deep fried cheese from a particular province, grated potato, chicken, beef, fish.

  ‘When you look in the rivers around here you can sometimes see the fish,’ she whispers to me. ‘Huge fish, gasping at the surface. You could reach out and pick them up in your hand. Sometimes I want to scoop them out just to put them out of their misery, but they are huge, the thickness of your arm or bigger. Somehow they have struggled this way through a long and difficult life. And quite a lot of industrial effluent.’

  ‘Thanks Emily.’ The woman with the cigarette drops the butt on the floor and tamps it out with her foot. She picks up the plate of fish fillets. ‘Anyone for the seafood?’

  They laugh, but I sense that they are wary of Emily. I lean closer to my sister to underline the fact that we are together. My sister picks up her chopsticks and picks some fish off the plate, a piece for me, a piece for her.

  ‘Should we have ordered rice?’ I ask her.

  ‘No. Rice comes at the end if we’re still hungry when all the food is gone. Rice is just to fill you up. If you’re rich, like we are, then you shouldn’t need the rice at all.’

  I look around the room. The other diners are dressed in dowdy house frocks, crumpled old shirts, T-shirts with faded pictures on the front of them. We are like a table full of peacocks and I notice that the locals glance in our direction as if we were the floor show.

  The food is good, surprisingly good. I am not a fan of Chinese food back home, which is often too glutinous or salty for me. Here the flavours are delicate and when the bill comes I make the conversion in my head and am surprised by how cheap it all is. We didn’t need rice at all. I am full, and, suddenly, exhausted. I take out my wallet but Emily waves it away. She pays for the whole table. No one argues. I suppose, like John, they have all heard about Sotheby’s.

  ‘Okay chums. See you all when we saddle up.’ Emily grins and I know she is taking the piss but they don’t seem to realise this.

  The sound of crickets becomes an almost deafening shriek and I look up to see a row of little bamboo cages hung above the doorway. I am too short to see into them but I assume the insects are trapped inside.

  It is dark outside but no cooler. I struggle with the D lock. Whole families are sitting near the doors of their still-open shops, squatting on tiny stools, fanning themselves, playing card games, chatting. An old lady is bent over her embroidery. A young man digs at a machine part with a metal tool. A toddler jumps up and down in a plastic tub with some water in the botto
m, clapping his hands as his shorts soak up the wet. We step onto the bikes and this is nice, this riding beside my sister.

  Perhaps I am disoriented, but it seems that we have turned the wrong corner. I have a sense that we are not heading in the direction we came from. My sister rides a little way ahead of me and no matter how hard I pedal I can’t seem to catch up. She turns down an even smaller lane. Doors flank the way, some of them with candles sputtering in jam jars in little alcoves. I am completely lost. She hops off the bike while it is still in motion, cruising to a stop perched on one pedal. I come to a careful halt, my brakes squealing horribly, and there is all that fuss with the bike lock to go through.

  Qingdao bar is tiny and empty.

  ‘Hey.’ Emily nods to the Chinese bartender.

  ‘Hey,’ she grins back.

  ‘Isabel, this is my sister.’

  The woman leans over the bar and shakes my hand. ‘Nice to meet you, sister.’ A strong, firm grip. Another Australian accent from an Asian face. ‘What can I get you?’

  Emily steers me towards a table. ‘Two Mao specials for me and my sister.’ Isabel takes out the equipment, a bowl, some herbs, a mortar and pestle, a shaker and a tray of ice. She reaches for the bottles of alcohol and a plastic container of juice, lime juice perhaps, the stuff is a lurid green colour.

  ‘You’ll like this,’ Emily tells me. ‘Not sweet.’

  I try to imagine back to our childhood. There was never a drop of alcohol in our grandmother’s house. I am not sure how she knows that I don’t like my cocktails sweet.

  She says, ‘Do you remember when you ate that whole nutmeg because I told you it was used as a drug in some countries?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You grated it up, the whole thing. And then you said you were stoned.’

  ‘I don’t remember. It doesn’t sound very much like me.’

  ‘You were always doing stuff like that. Like when you did that steeplechase?’