So I pick up this thing that he loves so much, this third person he can’t live without, and go over to the fire. I unscrew the lid and tip the bottle, just a bit to scare him. The fluid lists to one side. He looks at me as though I am about to throw a baby into water.
“Don’t,” he says.
I pause to look at him as he tries not to appear too desperate. But it is written all over his face. I put the bottle down, back on the coffee table, on top of the doily, next to the dish of potpourri and go to bed.
*
When it is time for him to go back to Hong Kong, he comes round to say goodbye.
“Have a good flight,” says my mother.
He shakes my stepfather’s hand, gives my sisters and brother a hug. Then he looks at me over here, leaning in the doorway.
“Be good,” he says.
I do not reply. I simply offer a disinterested shrug and he turns back to the others looking foolish.
I watch from the lounge room window as he backs the car down the driveway. He misjudges, and the rear left wheel misses the curb and goes into the gutter. My stepfather has to help push him out, then he is off down the road with a wave out the window and toot-toot of the horn.
*
In May the telephone rings. It is Celia. My father is in hospital. He has had a heart attack.
“Thought you should know,” she says.
It is a shock. He is a father and therefore ceaseless.
*
I worry that I have been too harsh. I send him a card.
Dear Dad, I'm going to write a book. It’s about gangsters. Get well soon.
When we call Celia to see how he is, she says he has been sitting up in bed eating black jelly beans.
*
On Sunday I awake to find my mother crying at the foot of my bed.
“He died,” she says.
*
I am in a windowless room. There is no way out. No matter how I sit, what I wear, what I say, what I do, who I call, I cannot make him alive.
*
They send him home in the cargo hold of the plane.
*
I go to see him in the funeral parlour. By now the body is two weeks old so the skin is grey, except for the face, which is orange because of the make-up. The Chinese undertaker has gone to town. Black eyeliner rims my father’s eyes and there is rouge on his cheeks. His lips are stained red. He looks like a Chinese opera singer, a Chinese opera singer in a western suit and tie.
There are items in his coffin. A paperback. Some hell money. Chung Si’s Snoopy dog. I want to touch him but am too afraid.
Suddenly I am heavy with grief. Until now I thought it had been a mistake. There are strange moans that belong to me.
*
The funeral is held in a little catholic church in Addington. There is a priest with a purple sash and two altar boys. The priest swings a silver bowl filled with smoking incense over the coffin.
One of my father’s brothers delivers the eulogy. During the speech, his voice cracks and he bursts into tears. I have never seen a grown man cry.
After the service is over, his brothers carry the coffin to a shiny black hearse. I see Fleur and her mother in the crowd outside. She is wearing her school uniform.
We drive very slowly to the cemetery. When we get there, they lower him into the ground. I do not get too close because I do not want to fall in. The priest says ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust, and I think of my father’s leather-bound priest manual.
A small trowel is passed around his brothers and sisters, and they each sprinkle dirt into the hole. Aunt Brenda offers me the trowel but I shake my head, I cannot do it, I throw a pink rose into the hole instead.
*
They also hold a memorial service for him in Hong Kong. Many friends and colleagues attend. They send us clippings from the South China Morning Post: ‘Commissioner Dies.’ ‘Terry Rogers dies, Wan takes over.’ The newspaper says he was forty when he was really forty-two.
*
Every night I break into hot sweats. My nightee clings to my back and my hair sticks to my neck. One day I wake up to find my throat on fire and I cannot speak. My sister takes me to see the doctor.
“Could be stress,” he says.
He gives me pills to take.
*
I build a little shrine next to my bed. I stick photos of my father on the wall so when I turn over, he will be right there, close to my face. Outside my bedroom door I hear my sister whispering to my mother. She thinks it’s unhealthy.
“Give it time,” says my mother.
I try and picture the room where it happened, the look on his face, whether he knew it was coming, what his last thought was when the second heart attack struck, whether he was alone when it happened.
I imagine my card propped up on the bedside table, alongside flowers and a carton of Mr Juicy, then a nurse rushing in, finding him already gone.
I think of the last time I saw him. And that callous single shoulder shrug.
*
My little brother comes into my room and catches me crying. I yell at him to go away.
Later, I find him in his bedroom holding his Mr T doll. My father bought it for him from a shop in Ocean Terminal. There is a cord on Mr T’s back that you pull to make him talk. Say your prayers! Drink your Milk! Obey your parents!
I want to tell him I’m sorry, but I don’t. Instead we just sit there in silence and look at the doll, with its stupid mohawk, gold earring and angry face.
*
Celia does a tally. There are debts to settle. He owes more than he's left behind.
*
After awhile I go back to school. People whose names I don't know say sorry.
“That's okay,” I tell them.
I take my seat in English class and open my book. They have been studying Shakespeare while I’ve been away. I notice Ryan, over there by the window, looking at me with sober eyes.
Now there are two of us.
*
I decide to keep a diary. I have tried this many times before, but usually lose interest after writing only one or two entries. I write the date at the top of the page and begin – Dear Diary. But I do not write about how sad I am that my father has died, or that I wish I could turn back the clock or say a proper goodbye to Celia and Chung Si, whom I’m not sure I’ll ever see again. Instead I write, Dear Diary, today I went on a diet.
*
Two months later, they decide to go ahead with the wedding.
“He would’ve wanted it that way,” says my mother.
I go to Nana’s for a final fitting. It is a cold night and she has turned on the heater in the spare room for me. I stand on a stool so she can pin the hem.
“I never really knew my father,” she says, taking a pearl-headed pin from between her lips. “He died soon after the war.”
She stands back and looks at me.
“He used to be bring us oranges on pay day. They were such a lovely treat.”
She returns her attention to the hem and there are slight tugs as she inches her way round.
“You can get down now.”
I get off the stool and she slips the dress over my head, taking care not to prick me. I stand before her in my bra and undies. When I speak, the voice does not sound like it belongs to me.
“He bought me a t-shirt from Hawaii. It was green.” There is the smell of soft talc and freshly washed cotton as she puts her arms around me. “I left it behind.”
*
Sometimes I forget. Sometimes he is just in Hong Kong. There will be a telegram on my Birthday or a visit in Autumn with suitcases full of presents from the markets.
Eventually I take down his photographs and the only reminder he was ever there is a bunch of pin holes in the wallpaper.
*
Fleur calls me, whispering.
“I have guitar lessons on Tuesdays after school in the music block, meet me there. I have to go, someone’s coming.”
*
At
night I have a dream. I am at the airport and my father has bought me a Coke. The flight is announced.
“Come on,” he says.
We walk to the departure gate, then he turns away, toward the exit.
“Don’t go,” I say.
I grab his hand. He won’t turn around. It’s as if he is frozen.
“Please don’t go.”
I grip tighter. But he fades, slowly, like a mirage, until there is nothing left.
That’s when I understand.
I adored him all along.
*
I have come to meet Fleur. I am watching through the music block window. A very fat man with curly ginger hair is teaching her a tune. She is bent over the guitar, pressing her fingers to the second and third string, with a frown on her face. I hear the strums through the window pane.
When they are finished, she comes outside.
“What was it?” I say.
“What was what?”
“The song.”
“Oh that,” she hooks her bag through her arm. “Yesterday.”
We take the bush track alongside the Heathcote river, then cross Colombo Street to get to Fisher Ave. We stop to buy a dollar mixture at the dairy and sit on the steps of the church to eat it.
“Annie Lennox took her shirt off at The Eurythmics concert last night,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“She had a red bra underneath.”
We finish the lollies and toss the bag in the rubbish bin.
“Got a smoke?” asks Fleur.
I shake my head.
“I thought I would try giving up.”
Epilogue
I AM ON a plane again. Going back for the first time. It has been twenty three years. There is an old Chinese woman in 16D. She has a gold tooth and a jade bangle on her right wrist. Her dark hair is sugared with silver. I first see her at Auckland airport, kissing goodbye to a young Chinese man with gold-rimmed glasses.
I decide her name is May. The name comes to me as we fly over Indonesia. If I knew the Chinese equivalent, I would call her that, but I don’t, so May it is.
During our eleven hour journey, she sits very straight and stares ahead like some kind of sentinel. Occasionally, she breaks this stillness to reach into a small bag of grapes in her lap. May is special because May is Hong Kong. She is the noise of the markets, the moist heat of the day, the exception to the rule that is Hong Kong (SAR). I fight the urge to grab her arm and tell her that I am Hong Kong too. But I don’t, because I am not Hong Kong, not anymore.
The plane dips and veers a hard right and I soon forget May. The keyhole window has me now. Below, gold sequins flash against a dark sea. One or two at first, then thousands, all melding together. Suddenly there is Hong Kong. A giant winking tiara. So this place was no Narnia after all.
May takes a small red comb from her pocket and runs it through her hair. She parts it until her scalp is a pink zip dissecting one side from the other. I look outside. The new Chek Lap Kok airport is unearthly white and lit up like a spaceship. It is in the middle of nowhere. Not like before, like Kai Tak, with the too-close buildings and power-line webs.
We disembark. I stick close to May. An unsmiling official gives me the once over and stamps my passport. In the baggage area, May collects a large striped canvas bag. She frowns when she sees the fastening has broken. A corner of a Sheepskin is poking out. I take my suitcase and follow her through the doors of the exit hall. A sea of Chinese faces greet us.
I look for a dark-haired European man in a faded Hawaiian shirt. He is probably late. But he isn’t here, of course, I’m just playing games with myself. May disappears into the arms of her family. There is a little Chinese girl with pig tails. The heels of her shoes light up every time she takes a step. She has something for May. A drawing. May smiles and pats the girl’s head. The little girl skips alongside as they walk toward the exit, heels alighting with every strike on the ground.
When I lose sight of them, I step outside. The hot breath of the city greets me. I’m not ready for it and my legs grow weak. I have walked back into my father’s house.
I pull myself together and hail a cab. Soon I am speeding along bridges and highways I’ve never seen before. But then I see the unchanged – the Connaught Centre, Star Ferry, Peninsula Hotel, the hard lines and coloured lights.
When we reach Central, I get out. Above me dark skies are threatening. Clouds roll together like plumes of smoke. I am running for shelter when the monsoon rain comes down in sheets, so heavy it carries the weight of flesh. I duck beneath an over-bridge.
Drains gush. Steps become waterfalls. Umbrellas open like flowers.
Everything is being washed away: dirt, bad air, a child’s shoe. Rivulets appear on concrete walls like veins on an angry temple. I think that maybe now things will get cooler. But the air remains oven-like, and the damp spots on my clothes evaporate quickly.
We all wait, in some kind of limbo, for the rain to pass. There is stillness despite the violence. Then it stops, a faucet shut off. The smell of a wet earth, drying. Drops tick, slower and slower. People begin moving again.
About the Author
Deborah Rogers lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her stories have been published in various literary journals, and broadcast on radio. A Trick of Light is her second book.
Connect with the Author
http://deboraharogers.wordpress.com
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