A Trick of Light

by Deborah A Rogers

  Perhaps tonight will be the night he nods off and we all go up in flames.

  The next morning I write secret letters to my friends back home. I know that if I ask my father to send them he will say yes then secretly throw them away so I go across to The Lee Garden Hotel, buy stamps from the concierge and drop the letters into the hotel post box.

  But no one writes back.

  *

  On the first day of school, I sit at the back of the class and do not say a word. My classmates shoot sidelong glances to check me over. I look out the window and count the pylons running the spine of the steaming hill. It is muggy and hot and my new uniform sticks to my back. I think of a sharp, Canterbury frost and the crunch of grass under my feet.

  It is nearly the end of the school year and they are preparing for exams, A levels or O levels, some English system I know nothing about, and I cannot follow the lessons.

  There is one boy, a prisoner of the motherland, called Thomas Pike. He laughs at my accent when the teacher asks me where I’m from.

  “New Zealund!” he says.

  I tell him he really shouldn’t do that if he wants to survive.

  “Or what sheep-fucker? whatcha gonna do?”

  There is also a chubby American girl with a mop of curly hair and sweaty top lip.

  “I’m Georgia,” she says. “Sit with us at lunch.”

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  I hunt for a place to smoke instead. But there are no back fields or bike sheds and the toilets could have informers. I wander the out-of-bound stairwells and find a door leading up to the roof.

  I step through and blink in the light. All around, open skies, hills tops, a glinting triangle of the South China Sea. The sun is beating down, but I manage to find a wedge of shade beneath a humming steel box.

  It is good to be alone.

  Twelve

  I FEEL LIKE a refugee. A stranger in a strange land. There is the oversized cafeteria and its boxes of chocolate milk, the girls and their talk of Lane Crawford sales, the Muslims who must pray five times a day.

  It makes me think of when my mother went to a refugee camp to teach Vietnamese women basic English skills, how to buy something in a supermarket, and what an escalator looked like.

  In the camp, many children did not have parents and my mother wanted to adopt a girl called Ly and a boy named Bao. The two of them did not speak English and I wondered if I would have to share my room with the girl. We took Ly and Bao to the park and McDonalds. They liked the zoological gardens very much. They pointed and laughed at the pink flamingo standing on one leg, and shuddered at the black panther pacing its cage.

  Ly and Bao especially liked the melancholy orang-utan, with its leathery fingers poking through the wire. They also lived behind wire, in barracks, like the army.

  In the end, we did not adopt them because my parents split up. Ly and Bao went to an outback farm in Australia instead. I wish I was in an outback farm rather than here, at least it would be closer to home.

  *

  I begin to see the school nurse a lot.

  “My stomach hurts,” I tell her.

  She makes me lie down and presses her fingers into my abdomen, holding her head to one side.

  “That cafeteria ought to be shut done,” she says.

  She gives me a pass and I catch the bus home.

  Celia is watching a repeat of Hunter on TVB Pearl. I give her the note from the nurse and go to my room to sleep.

  The next day, I am back.

  “What is it this time?” says the nurse.

  “Diarrhea.”

  And I am on my way home with another note.

  *

  Everyday I feel sick. Everyday I see the nurse.

  Everyday I get on the bus and go home.

  “She’s here again,” says Celia into the phone.

  *

  My father soon grows angry.

  “I can’t help it,” I say.

  We go to see a Chinese doctor.

  “Where does it hurt?” he asks.

  “Everywhere,” I say.

  “Are you sexually active?”

  When I don’t answer my father says –

  “There was a boy back in New Zealand.”

  “I see.”

  The doctor tells me I must have an ultra-sound. He makes me drink lots of water until it feels like my bladder will explode. I lie down in a dark room and he switches on the machine and probes my belly with a sticky device.

  He and my father search the screen. The doctor shrugs.

  “Nothing.”

  My father just nods and breathes out through his nose. On the way home he tells me that cost a lot of money.

  “Do not come home from school again because I will just send you back.”

  *

  I try, really try, not to be sick. But the school days are so long and the ache is always there and relief only comes when I am curled up in bed. One day my father is on the phone to my mother. They are talking about sending me to a psychiatric hospital, but decide to try a regular doctor one last time.

  She is Canadian with short black hair. There is a photograph of a boy in a superman cape on her desk. She gives me a plastic jar for my urine.

  “And a little of your menstrual blood too.”

  When the test comes back fine, she tells me –

  “Your father told me you’re having problems adjusting.”

  “I’m not faking,” I say.

  “No one’s saying that.”

  She leans back in her chair and waits for me to speak. But I don’t.

  “Hong Kong won’t be here forever, you know,” she says.

  After I leave the clinic, I walk the streets of Causeway Bay. Here is Jardine’s Bazaar with its stalls of jewellery and clothes and live chickens tightly packed into cattys. Here is Sogo department store and the hawkers gathered outside and their carts piled high with fingerless gloves and Madonna lace. And here is busy Hennessey Road and the trams shuttering back and forth all the way from Central to North Point.

  I walk into a back alley, dodging drips from air conditioners and find my favourite place, a tiny shop where a man in a white butcher’s singlet makes a confectionary called Dragon’s Beard. When he sees me, he gives me a nod because I always come here on holiday visits. I watch as he pushes his knuckles into the sweet dough, thumps it down, pulls it into strings, folds it into bite-sized nests, then rolls it in icing sugar.

  Sometimes he gives me one for free, but not today, so I buy half a dozen and walk to Victoria Park and sit under an Orchid tree. I look up at the buildings and think of the Canadian doctor and her superman cape kid and what she said. I think about how tired I am of being tired. I think about how Hong Kong is my home now, whether I like it or not, and how it is sometimes better to give in than to fight.

  Thirteen

  “We are going to The Raj for tea,” says my father.

  “No thanks.”

  “You will come and be a part of this family.”

  On the way to the restaurant, he stops at an ATM. My father has so many credit cards the leather has split on the sides of his wallet. When a new credit card arrives in the mail, he uses it to pay off the old one.

  He does not pay his taxes either, so his bill is very large. It gets bigger every year. He says he cannot leave Hong Kong until it is settled, then he will come back to New Zealand to live.

  At the ATM, he tries one credit card after the other but none will give him money. He looks in his wallet and finds forty pounds so we go to the money changer. A man in a little glass booth counts the notes and hands over some Hong Kong dollars. My father says the commission is a rip off, but there is no other choice because the bank is closed.

  We go to The Raj and eat crispy pea and potato samosas, butter chicken and beef vindaloo until we are full. Afterwards, my father says he will be going out for a bit.

  “It’s Sunday,” says Celia.

  He pretends not to hear.

  He will probabl
y go to the bar in The Excelsior. As a special treat, he once took me there and let me have a cocktail called a Snowball. There was a beautiful singer with a bejewelled throat and sequined dress. She sang Fame! When I finished my drink, I asked for another, but he gave me twenty dollars and told me to catch a taxi home instead.

  *

  The American girl from school, Georgia, invites me to her house after school. She lives in a mansion in Repulse Bay. Repulse Bay is where everyone goes to swim because it is the cleanest beach in Hong Kong, even though plastic bags somersault in the surf and there is glass in the sand.

  Georgia’s house has marble floors, ceiling fans, palms in glazed pots and cape-cod deck chairs. An elderly, golden-toothed Chinese woman meets us at the door. Georgia gives her a big hug.

  “This is Amah.”

  “Hello,” I say.

  “And this here’s Rachel,” says Georgia.

  Amah nods and grasps my hand between two of hers.

  I follow Georgia down a long hallway to her bedroom which is about the size of our apartment, and backs on to a small courtyard with palm trees. Amah brings us a large bowl of M&Ms, some Pringles and Coke. We sit on Georgia’s bed and eat. She tells me her father is a merchant banker and her mother is at the club. She tells me her sister went to school with Michael Hutchence, lead singer of INXS.

  “See?” she says, showing me a picture of Michael reclining on a sun-lounger by the pool.

  Georgia likes to abbreviate things. She refers to Hong Kong as HK and New Zealand as NZ. She even shortens my name to D.

  “It’s okay I do that, ain’t it D?”

  I shrug. “If you like.”

  Georgia asks if I want to stay for dinner. “Amah is a very good cook.”

  But Georgia talks too much and I decide to go home.

  *

  Every day on my way to the school bus I pass the pawn shop on Yun Ping Road. There are no windows or goods on display, instead just a dimly lit doorway. A sign warns you must be eighteen to enter. It makes me think of the fountain pen my father once showed me. The pen is made of tiger eye stone and 24 caret gold. It was a wedding present. He said the pen was worth a lot of money and even came with its own silk-lined case.

  I find it on the top shelf of a bookcase at home. I figure Celia and him have probably forgotten about the pen so slip it into my pocket and head for the pawn shop. Inside there is carpet on the walls and a man behind a counter. The sleeves of his white shirt are rolled up to the elbows and there’s a Rolex on his left wrist.

  I put the box on the bench and open it.

  “How much?” I say.

  He looks at the pen in its pretty box, but does not touch it.

  “Where you get?”

  “Gift.”

  He takes another look at the pen, runs his tongue over his teeth, then looks directly at me.

  “ID card,” he says.

  “I’m 18.”

  He shakes head and points to the sign.

  “No ID, no buy.”

  I nod and close the box.

  “No problem,” I say.

  But I don’t go back.

  *

  My father calls me into the lounge. Celia is there. The tiger eye pen is out of its box and on the table.

  “You steal from us,” says Celia.

  “You followed me?”

  “This is worth a lot of money,” says my father.

  “I didn’t sell, did I?”

  “The man wouldn’t buy from you,” says Celia.

  “This is none of your business!”

  “It was my wedding present.”

  “I don’t have to listen to you.”

  “You are very impolite girl,” she says, shaking her head.

  “I don’t even know why he married you in the first place.”

  Celia looks at my father.

  “Are you going to let her talk to me like that?”

  But I am out of there, slamming the door to my bedroom before there’s an answer.

  *

  Celia does not talk to me for days. But I don’t care. She’s an interloper, a hanger-on. My mother says she is one of the women my father had an affair with while they were married. As far as I’m concerned, she gets what she deserves.

  *

  Georgia tells me about a waitressing job in Stanley. She says she would like to try out herself but her father does not want her to work so I decide to give it a go.

  I catch the number 72 bus to Stanley, a seaside tourist market with twisting lanes and stalls selling swimsuits, beach balls and bolts of silk. The restaurant is called The Old English Teahouse. It is run by two expat Englishman, John and Bruce. John is good looking and sexy. Bruce is fat and has a Filipino wife called Annie. The restaurant serves light meals, full English breakfasts and High Teas.

  “The work is for tips only,” says Bruce.

  “Okay.”

  “When can you start?”

  I start that weekend. Annie shows me the ropes and I spend that first day weaving in and out of tables, taking orders, serving food and changing table cloths. At closing time, the tip jar is stuffed full of notes.

  “Good job,” says Bruce.

  He takes half and gives me the rest – $80. I catch the bus home and wonder how much an airplane ticket to New Zealand costs.

  *

  Things with Celia have been difficult. She is still angry with me and my father. He tries to joke with her but she just gets upset. She tells Chung Si off more than usual or spends a lot of time in her room watching Chinese soap operas.

  I do my best to ignore her. If she wants an apology, she shouldn’t hold her breath. I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.

  Maybe now she will consider leaving.

  *

  I look forward to Saturdays and my trips to Stanley. The days go quickly in a blur of clearing tables and serving tea. When it’s time to close, John and Bruce go to Central to watch football at an English pub and I stay to help Annie clean up.

  She likes to listen to Human League as we mop the floor and set the tables. She sings along in her strong Filipino accent – “Don't you want me baby? Don’t you want me Oh oh oh.”

  Annie tells me about the Philippines and I tell her about New Zealand. She asks me if it is true that all people in New Zealand wear bell-bottoms.

  Once or twice, she has come to work with bruises on her face. She tries to hide them with make-up. I glare at Bruce and want to give him a piece of my mind. But one Saturday afternoon after close up, Annie tells me the bruises do not come from Bruce but from John. She is having an affair with him. Bruce just thinks she’s clumsy.

  *

  I arrive late for school assembly because I have been smoking on the roof. There is a slide of a snow-capped mountain on the screen. This year’s school camp is a week-long trip to Nepal. My last school camp was tenting on Quail Island.

  Georgia sits a few rows ahead. She is talking to the girl next to her.

  “Do you know her father married a Chinese?” Georgia is saying.

  “Really?”

  “I know,” says Georgia, shaking her head.

  Fourteen

  ON THE WAY home from school, I go to Parkn Shop. I look at the Victoria Crumbles and the M&Ms and the packets of fruit jubes and jelly beans. I am here for a long time, staring. I think about the corner dairy back home, with its fifty cent mixtures in white paper bags. Here whole aisles are devoted to rice.

  I reach for a Million Dollar bar and some Nimm2 candies and put them into my pocket. I do not even look over my shoulder.

  When I get home, I lay the two items on my bed. Chung Si comes in to see if I want to play a game of Go Fish. She looks at the confectionery.

  “Want some?” I say.

  She nods so I give her the Nimm2 candies and eat the Million Dollar bar myself.

  *

  The Hong Kong government likes to make public service announcements on TVB Pearl. There is one where a Chinese boy is walking along train tracks in Sha
Tin. Words on the screen say: “Never Walk on Train Tracks. Never.” Then the boy is gone. Only his pair of scuffs remain, flung to the side of the tracks.

  There is another one where a young Chinese girl is caught stealing a notebook with a glitter cover. “Shoplifting is a crime,” it says. Then there is the girl trembling, in a dark prison cell.

  I am sure I would not go to prison because it would be my first offence. I am also a westerner so I would just get sent home.

  *

  I decide to take a large bag to the Wellcome shop at the Jaffe Road shopping block and fill it with as much as I can. A T-bone steak. A strawberry Sara Lee Cheesecake. A can of whipped cream. A bottle of Barcardi. A box of Queen Anne chocolates. A carton of Salom cigarettes.

  I select a pack of gum and wait in line. The overstuffed bag is zipped up and slung over my shoulder. My throat is collapsing in on itself and I might pass out. When it’s my turn, I manage to say: “Just the gum.”

  I watch the checkout lady, but she does not even look at my face.

  When I get home, I throw it all away.

  *

  Upstairs in the Parkn Shop in Stanley there is a quiet corner with a nicely stocked Maybelline stand. I visit every Saturday before my shift at The Old English Teahouse. Coal eyeliners. Sugar Plum lipsticks. Thick lash mascaras. Containers of loose translucent powder. All in my bag.

  One day I come home to find Celia looking through my stockpile of quality cosmetics.

  “This very expensive,” she says.

  It is the first time she has spoken to me in three weeks.

  “I bought them with my pay.”

  She doesn't believe me.

  She tells my father, but he says it’s a good thing that I’m getting out and about and earning my own money.

  *

  I have gotten quite good at this caper. Efficient. Make the selection. Out in less than three minutes.

  There is also the delight, like a plunging syringe. I yearn for it on rest days.

  Then I get careless.

  That man with the shiny face and monobrow has circled twice. I have already slipped the caramel Rolos into my jacket pocket when I spot him. It’s as if someone has squeezed all the blood from my heart.