The noise will wake celestial dragons. When they fight, there will be thunder and rain needed for crops.
After lunch, my father asks Ah Wong to row us ashore in the dinghy. Frankie shoves past me as she scrambles to sit next to my father at the stern. My mother stays on board the junk to tidy the picnic.
Besides inducing rain, the races commemorate the death of Chu Yuan, a famous third-century poet who drowned himself in a river after being exiled by the emperor, my father tells us.
‘When they heard the news, fishermen raced out in their boats to try to find him,’ my father says. ‘They scattered rice on the water as offerings. But the poet’s ghost appeared to them, complaining that a greedy sea monster had eaten it all. He asked the fishermen to make special cakes, wrapped in iris leaves and tied with silk threads in five colours.’
We row through a flotilla of junks, shrouds strewn with colourful banners, lanterns and signal flags. Smoke wafts out from cooking fires where sweet-smelling feasts are being prepared on board. Sampan ladies call out, offering cut fares to ferry people ashore. Others row sightseers out for a closer view of the races. Three boys swim out and shimmy up an anchor line, the same way Frankie and I like to.
The pier is so crowded, we have to scramble across several boats moored side to side to get ashore. There’s a five-tiered grandstand set up along the waterfront for important visitors. On the top tier, the statue of Tien Hou presides from her red throne. She’s been carried out of her temple for the day.
Tien Hou is the fishermen’s goddess. Her shrine has a place in the cabin of every Hong Kong junk. When she was only a girl in Fujian Province, she rushed down to the beach in the middle of a raging storm and, pointing to her family’s fishing boat, magically guided it home.
My father photographs two lion dancers, arriving on a lighter. The huge, colourful, pug-faced head thrusts one way, then another, eyelids fluttering. He squats down to photograph children eating the special Chun Tze rice cakes and others with candied apples on sticks. He photographs the ramshackle village, men betting on dice games. He climbs to the top of bamboo scaffolding set up for a travelling night opera to get a better shot.
‘Let’s hope it’s strong enough,’ Frankie says darkly. My father says it’s marvellous to photograph people celebrating for a change.
Frankie’s my secret sister but not when my father is home. Late in the afternoon, we follow the winning team up into the Tien Hou temple. Inside it’s so full of joss, people crushing, it’s hard to breathe. My father extends his littlest finger, which is how we hold hands. But Frankie grabs hold first, draws herself close, blocking me out.
Frankie would happily leave me here, I think, among the gongs, the banners, the smoke-blackened deities, the huge coils of joss hanging from ancient wooden beams, the fearsome dragon boat’s prow and tail, which are carried in behind us to be stored here for the year. Just to have him to herself.
I peer into a side room. There’s a mop, a low wooden stool, a bucket with bottles of cleaning fluids, wood polish. I would like to sit there. After everyone left, the old caretaker would shuffle over. He wouldn’t ask me any questions. He’d squat down, pour us tea.
He’d tell me the story of the temple bell and drum, which once belonged to the Chinese pirate Chang Pao. The story of the blackened, moth-eaten skin that hangs on the temple wall. The last tiger shot in Hong Kong, killed by Japanese soldiers just outside the temple in 1942. The story of how, when the Japanese attacked Stanley from the sea, two shells fell right into the temple grounds. Hundreds of villagers crowded here, seeking refuge. The bombs could have killed them all. But miraculously, neither exploded.
Then he’d grow quiet. We’d sit in silence, contemplating the greatness of Tien Hou, a young girl who rescued her family from a storm at sea.
˜ ˜ ˜
Before the main altar, the triumphant rowers present Tien Hou with their prize: a glistening roast pig. Still wearing T-shirts and bandannas, sweaty from the heat, they lower the huge platter on to the altar table, nudge it between brass urns full of joss sticks, bells, wooden fish gongs, candelabras. They bow three times, knocking their heads to the floor, to thank the goddess for their luck and her patronage. Painted carvings along a screen that edges the table show Tien Hou. She rides on the back of a giant fish, pulling sailors from the sea.
twenty-nine
My father opens his suitcase on the bed. Six small packages nestle between his shirts like eggs, wrapped in newspaper with Vietnamese script. Inside are tiny lanterns, about six inches tall, made of light green glass.
My father buys some paraffin. He carries the lanterns out on to the veranda at dusk. They are the lights used in outdoor cafés in Vietnam. They remind him of Danang. They conjure quiet evenings on the beach at Nha Trang, the lull of the waves, the scratch of palm trees, the lights of Vietnamese fishing boats flickering above the dark water like fallen stars.
‘Aren’t they pretty, Marianne?’ he asks.
My mother smiles. But I can tell the lanterns make her sad. They remind her of places she cannot see.
When my father goes back to Saigon, she pours the paraffin back into the bottle and hides the glass lanterns at the back of a bookshelf, hoping he’ll forget them, forget Vietnam one day.
thirty
My father balances his camera on a tripod of driftwood, peers through the viewfinder, pulls the timed shutter release and rushes to join us.
‘Keep still,’ he says.
Frankie throws her arms around me. The shutter snaps. We all laugh as if it’s magic. Me, Frankie, the deaf boy. Behind us, my mother, Jen, Ah Bing, Lewis and Trung. It’s my birthday, August 6th. We’re at Hung Shing Yeh beach on Lamma Island, near where the deaf boy lives.
For my birthday, my father gives me two books: an illustrated copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Bottle Imp and a collection of ghost stories by Guy de Maupassant. Frankie has secretly knitted me a woollen hat. It’s striped with bright colours: orange, yellow, blue, green, pink.
‘You can wear it when we go to America,’ she says. I put it on straight away. The deaf boy gives me a tiny jade monkey, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.
My mother makes a sachertorte, my favourite cake. She keeps it cool on ice that drips from the bottom of the rattan picnic bag. Frankie and I blow out fourteen candles, one to grow on. Sea water splashes on the chocolate icing. My mother breaks the unmelted ice and drops it into tall glasses of fresh lemonade.
Frankie teases me when I ask to invite the deaf boy. I hide the monkey in my pocket. Later, when we go to America, I tie it to a string and wear it around my neck.
˜ ˜ ˜
That evening I sit out on the veranda on a large pillow that covers a rattan chair. It’s dusk. Already, two sampans are out fishing the rocky peninsula below. One carries a bright light. From the other, you can hear the sound of knocking. The light and noise lure fish into a net stretched between them.
From inside, I hear my father’s chair scrape back from the table where he’s been reading the newspapers. I tuck my feet under me. If you come out now, I urge him silently, if you come outside, where no one else can hear us, I will tell you everything. I will tell you about the butcher shop, the men from Lantau, the explosion. What happened to Frankie and me.
My father walks out through the French doors holding his camera. He squats close, looks at me through the viewfinder, focuses. I stare straight into the lens. I am sunburned from the beach. Flushed with anticipation. My heart begins to beat wildly. I lean forward.
When my father puts the camera down, I will speak. If I can just say Dad, the rest will come. Dad, a woman died, a boy was burned. Dad, I don’t know what the men did to Frankie. Dad, help me. Then whatever happens next won’t matter. He’ll look after us. I won’t have to think about the lychees any more.
The shutter clicks.
‘Kate, don’t look so serious.’ My father peers at me around the camera. My eyes begin to smart. My throat constricts. It’s the chance
I’ve been waiting for. I am thirteen.
‘Dad?’ I say.
But just then, Frankie bounds out. She must have seen us through the glass doors. My father kneeling down so close. Me, about to reveal our secrets, confess our sins. Doesn’t she want me to help her?
‘Dad!’ Frankie yelps. Leaping on to his back, she twines her arms around his neck, rubs her soft cheek against the scratchy stubble of his face, like a cat.
‘Hold on, Frankie,’ my father barks. His voice uncharacteristically sharp as if he knows I have something to tell him. Frankie drops her hands. It’s not the response she expected. Abjectly, she fondles the camera that hangs around his neck.
‘Frankie, you’ll just have to wait.’ My father starts to rise from his knees, to straighten his back. But Frankie’s quick. She won’t be put off. Before he can stand, she runs her thumbs around the side of his camera and pushes the button that releases the back, exposing his film.
Bringing up his arms, my father throws Frankie off so that she stumbles backwards. ‘Now why in heaven’s name would you do that?’ he snarls. Frankie shrugs, looks sullenly at me, as if it’s my fault. Secret sisters.
‘Marianne!’ my father bellows. Snapping his camera shut, he winds in the film, extracts the roll and buttons it safely in his shirt pocket – away from Frankie.
‘Marianne!’ he shouts.
‘It’s all right,’ my mother reassures, trying to smooth things over. ‘Only the last shots will be ruined. The others will be fine.’ I look down, finger the books my father gave me, The Bottle Imp and ghost stories by Guy de Maupassant. I try not to cry. My mother thinks I’m upset about the film, the photographs of my birthday. She doesn’t know what I want to tell, a revelation that could have changed everything, saved Frankie.
But most likely, I wouldn’t have been able to say anything. Just as I don’t say anything now. And maybe, he couldn’t have helped us anyway.
˜ ˜ ˜
The next morning at breakfast, my father gives me a present, a photograph, one he stayed up late to develop even though he’s leaving for Saigon. It’s the one on the junk, me in Frankie’s hat, with Frankie’s arms around me.
thirty-one
Kuan Yin is the Goddess of Mercy, the Virgin Bodhisattva. Like Ah Bing, Kuan Yin refused to marry. She was a princess who rejected riches and marriage in order to live the life of a hermit. She was a holy person who could have reached nirvana, enlightenment, but stepped back because she heard the cries of the world.
‘I am Kuan Yin. I won’t eat meat and I won’t marry!’ Ah Bing recites Kuan Yin’s vows. If you don’t eat meat, your blood will be weak, her parents told her. If you don’t have children, you’ll be a hungry ghost.
Kuan Yin’s father was so enraged he sent his soldiers to her temple to burn it down, but the fire would not burn. He sent executioners with swords to kill her, but the swords broke in their hands. Finally, he gave in. He worshipped her, a mere girl. She became a great goddess, more loved than Buddha himself.
From Hsiang Shan, the temple of immortals, on Putuo Island, Kuan Yin heard news of her father’s illness: horrible ulcers covered his body so he could not sleep day or night. She instructed the king’s messengers to gouge out her left eye, cut off her left hand. Only a remedy made from these ingredients would cure him. When the messengers returned to the king’s palace, Kuan Yin’s mother recognized a black scar on her daughter’s hand.
Kuan Yin hears the world’s cries, the cries of the poor and the hungry, the orphaned, the maimed, the napalmed. Invoked by mothers in childbirth, by unmarried daughters, by nuns. Ah Bing’s mentor, her saint, her saviour. She comes down from heaven like Jesus, performs miracles, heals the burned boy’s scars.
When Kuan Yin told Ah Bing to leave her missee’s house in Singapore, it was not the only time the goddess saved her. The goddess also came to the Coolie House, a workers’ hostel, where Ah Bing stayed when she first came to Hong Kong after the Japanese left. Ah Bing lay sick on the straw mat she rented for a bed.
‘Aya, Kate, my legs were swollen as wide as watermelons,’ Ah Bing says. ‘I talked like a crazy person. Then Kuan Yin floated into the room. She floated in midair. She wore a blue dress. She was the size of a teacup. “Get up,” Kuan Yin ordered. “How can I?” I asked. “I think I will die.” “Sit up,” Kuan Yin said. After that, I got better.’
˜ ˜ ˜
I’m alone in Ah Bing’s room. My mother and Frankie have gone out to buy some clothes for boarding school. My father’s gone back to Saigon. Ah Bing’s on the back patio, sweeping. I stand in front of the Kuan Yin altar. I light three joss sticks. Holding them in my hands, I bow three times.
Ah Bing’s Kuan Yin is a diminutive white porcelain statuette, only eight inches high. Not as regal, or as forbidding, as the polished wood statue at Lantau. Fragile, dainty, she sits behind a soup tin full of burned joss, a chipped bowl of waxy oranges piled in a pyramid, a plate of longans, three hard candies individually wrapped in colourful paper, left as offerings.
Can you help me, Kuan Yin? Can you protect me from dead bodies floating up in the sea; from the Viet Cong hiding in the hills; from my body changing; from the lychees I carried; from Frankie?
Kuan Yin is dressed in flowing robes, she floats on a porcelain lotus flower. She clasps her hands resignedly in her lap, one over the other. Cross-legged. Serene. Her eyes look downward, hooded, contemplative. Like Ah Bing, Kuan Yin’s face is wide and comforting. She wears her hair in a simple bun on top of her head. But her tiny features, her pouty lips painted red, betray a quiet sensuality. It’s not just her altruism, I think, but her own earthly love that keeps her here.
thirty-two
In his room, the deaf boy asks if he can kiss me. Sea water from my bathing suit runs down the back of my legs, drips on to the floor. We’re both standing. My back flattens against the wall. My bare shoulder scratches against a cobra skin.
Outside I hear sounds he cannot hear: flip-flops passing on the cement path, mahjong pieces clattering from the house next door, the chatter of women cooking.
‘Ginger, hot pepper oil, garlic, sesame,’ the deaf boy picks out these smells. His voice warbles. ‘Jasmine, joss, sea salt, Kate’s skin.’
The deaf boy can only see, smell, touch, taste. He runs his hands over my bony shoulders, the sharp points of my elbows, shyly across my childish breasts, pointy, hard and damp under my wet bathing suit.
When I close my eyes, I hear the chop of a Huey lifting off, the distant thud of mortar. I wonder what the women next door think when they see us come in, Jen’s deaf boy and a gwaimui, white ghost girl. The deaf boy sees me listening, listening for the others who will soon arrive, back from the beach where we’ve been swimming.
Kissing the deaf boy is like tasting the sea. It’s like forgiveness. His mouth is dark and salty and wet. It licks and sucks. Unable to breathe, I pull away.
~ ~ ~
If he stays quiet, doesn’t move, I’ll lick the salt off his cheeks, his eyes, his eyebrows, his nose, his lips. Quiet, without moving. I’ll pretend we’re in the jungle, its triple canopy, along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Leeches bleed our legs. Phosphorus glows in rotting vegetation. There are tigers here. Don’t make a sound. I’ll lick him until he kisses me again. I love the deaf boy. I think of nothing else.
thirty-three
Frankie doesn’t want to go to Miss Tipley’s party, but my mother insists. Miss Tipley’s sister is visiting from London and she has a son in his first year at Cambridge. It would be nice for him to meet us.
Frankie protests with fingernail polish and mascara she stole from the Lane Crawford department store. Naked, she props her toes on the bed and leans over to paint them. Her neck stretches long. When the polish dries, she dresses in her Indian print skirt, ties the ends of her shirt provocatively to show her belly. My mother doesn’t say anything. In a fortnight, Frankie will go to boarding school. The colour Frankie stole is nice, a milky lavender.
˜ ˜ ˜
Miss Tiple
y’s nephew’s name is George. He wears a suit. He’s got an accent like the BBC World Service, though he’s only eighteen. He welcomes us into the front hall as if it were his house, not Marjorie’s, as if we were the visitors, not him.
‘You lookee Ah Mei? Ah Mei back room, kitchen,’ he informs Ah Bing, in BBC pidgin. Ah Bing could find her way without his help. Even worse is his smug grin, as if, in his few days here, he’s mastered a foreign language. He already knows how to keep the natives in order. Frankie sniggers behind his back.
‘Hello, hello,’ Miss Tipley says, panting slightly as she comes up the stairs. ‘Jousan, Bing-ah, neih hou ma?’ Hello, Ah Bing, how are you?
‘Hou hou.’ Ah Bing hurries away, suddenly self-conscious among the dressed-up foreigners, the BBC. George puts his arm around his mother, gives her shoulders a proprietary squeeze.
‘When I opened my handbag at the airport, we thought Fifi was dead, didn’t we?’ George’s mother says. Her voice is high, piercing, her question aimed at the tiny dog she holds in her arm. ‘I think I might have gone a little overboard with the sedative.’ Her laugh is nervous and too loud, as if it is directed through people not at them.
‘George, darling, would you get me a top-up?’ She wears a short red silk skirt with matching top and pearls. Behind her, on a chair in the corner of the hall, is a mannequin of a woman, completely naked.
Miss Tipley’s sister is not at all like her. Penelope wears black baggy trousers like an amah. She ties her greying hair loosely back with a simple tortoiseshell clip. Penelope looks like a man, while her sister’s excessively female. It’s as if they’ve set themselves off, one against the other.
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