How We Disappeared

by Jing-Jing Lee

  I spun around, ready to scream but the soldier was already leaving, pulling the door shut behind him. I heard the heavy drop of the padlock against the wood, then footsteps as he went down the corridor.

  The room was no bigger than three by four paces and separated from the ones next to it by thin plywood. At the end of it was what used to be a window, but with the glass smashed out and boarded up from the outside. Most of the space was taken up by a rattan mat. Next to it was a small rag and a dark bottle filled with clear liquid. I uncorked it and sniffed. Disinfectant. Then I sat down with my knees up, my back against the far wall. For hours, a steady stream of people went back and forth along the corridor and I froze each time the sound of footfall stopped outside. Once, I saw boot tips underneath the door and I drew myself backwards, wanting to push myself into the concrete, holding my breath until whoever it was went away.

  That was how I sat the rest of the night; I couldn’t sleep for the orchestra of noises outside the house. I could hear the hum coming from the woods nearby, of insect song and later, the woeful cry of the koel, which meant the sun was setting. As the scratching of crickets peaked at sundown and wound down into a high-pitched whine, the strip of daylight beneath the door receded slowly into the glow of lamplight. Eventually, someone extinguished that as well and I heard the heavy grind of a lock being turned, like a warning. Then darkness, solid and unrelenting. I sat with my back in a corner, eyes wide and staring into the tarry dark, imagining light and shapes where there were none and trying to tell time from the sounds I heard. I dropped in and out of sleep but started awake from time to time, because louder than everything else was the silence of girls like me, in rooms next to mine and rooms next to that, afraid and waiting.

  Kevin

  The funeral lasted three days on the ground floor of our apartment block, far away from the mailboxes so that our neighbours wouldn’t have to walk past my grandmother and the tables and cheap plastic chairs laid out for the visitors every time they went to collect their post. They had covered up the open, empty space of the void deck, dressed all the walls with thick blankets coloured cobalt blue and gold and black, and curtained off the open bits that led outside. My mother said it was to let us mourn without strangers watching and so that passers-by wouldn’t have to see the coffin and funeral things without meaning to. I asked her what was wrong with looking at the casket. She said some people didn’t like that, some people thought it was bad luck. She once pointed out an ongoing funeral to her mother and got a smack on her head for it, she said, nodding, as if to say that’s what you get for not knowing better, it was only fair.

  All throughout the three days, we pretended that Ah Ma could still hear us, that she was still there. At mealtimes, we laid out a bowl of whatever we had to eat, rice or noodles, topped with curry and vegetables, and reminded her to eat. ‘Ma, chi le,’ my father called out, the way he used to when we were all sitting at the dinner table, waiting for her while she finished listening to an opera, or was done snapping the thread off a bit of sewing.

  My only real job during the three days was to make sure that every visitor left with a piece of red string to ward off any bad luck from the funeral. I tied them around the wrists of my numerous cousins, all black-clothed and sombre-faced, pushed them into the hands of aunts and uncles, held the strands out to the neighbours as they got up from the tables to leave. Albert was there, with his parents and siblings. His mouth was red, as if his mother had rubbed chilli into his lips again for lying. I’d seen him once, standing outside after dinner, tears and snot running down his face. Then, for no reason at all, he turned and we locked eyes for a moment before I let the curtain drop. It was soon after that evening that he turned his attention to me and began to call me names. Now though, he held out his hand for the string. There were a few people from the market as well, a fishmonger who used to take delight in pretending to be insulted by my grandmother’s haggling, and a fruit seller who kept aside perfectly ripe mangos for her, wrapped in layers of Chinese tabloids. There was no one else. No one else from her family. No siblings or cousins, no family friends.

  The leftover string formed little scarlet nests in the middle of each table and I tied them around myself that first night, making the tips of my fingers bulge red and purple. When my mother noticed, she took my hands and unwound the string from my fingers, one by one. ‘Nothing red for you. It’s your grandmother’s funeral.’ As if I didn’t know it already, as if I didn’t know anything at all.

  On the last night of the funeral, it came to me what I had to do. The knowing of it crept into my bones as the hired monk sang the final prayers with his eyes shut, as I helped my father pile the paper offerings onto a steel platform until it creaked and sagged: joss money, designer clothing, a chest full of jewellery, a chauffeured car, a villa and its two accompanying servants, all the things Ah Ma never had while she was alive. A few scraps of joss paper floated away from the pyre like butterflies lit aflame. ‘Get them before we burn down the building,’ my mother said. So while the money and villa and meticulously kitted-out paper Mercedes crumpled away to black and ash, I danced on the pavement and grass patches, slapping the rubber soles of my shoes against the charred runaways, knowing how foolish I looked, trying hard not to smile after days of not moving my face except to say thank you and goodbye. The effort of not smiling made my mouth crumple up and my eyes start stinging again, but it was okay. If anyone asked I would say it was from the heat of the flames, or that something had gotten in my eye. But no one asked. They were all busy staring at the fire. My parents and a few of the neighbours Ah Ma would sit with while she waited for my school bus to drop me off in the afternoon. They were just watching the whip of the smoke, the little figures in the villa and paper car twist and shrink, their painted faces vanishing into black; watching to avoid speaking, like the news was on, or a drama serial. As they did I rubbed and rubbed my eyes, wanting and not wanting someone to see me. Wondering if it was okay, at my age, to go to my mother and want to use her sleeve as a handkerchief. I would do it, go to her if she turned and looked at me. And then I would tell her about what Ah Ma had told me. My mother would know if it was okay to tell Pa or if it would be better to keep it to myself/ourselves because it would send him into his Dark Place again. There were things we kept from him because of that. The thing about Albert. About my mother taking money from her sister to ‘tide us over’ when my father lost his job. I watched the small crowd to see if anyone saw me rubbing my eyes.

  No one did.

  It was 2:00 a.m when we finished. I was falling over from sleep and my father’s face had lines in it that I hadn’t seen before, not just under his eyes and across his forehead but in the lower part of his face – two brackets framing his mouth, like he was going to say something loud and important. I was taking my shoes off when my mother made us stop by the front door.

  ‘Wait, wait; wait here.’ She uncovered a shallow basin of water, wide enough for me to step in. There were flower petals in it. Chrysanthemums and something smaller, pink. ‘Wash your face. All up your arms as well.’

  I bent over the basin and splashed. Petals stuck themselves to my cheeks.

  ‘More, more.’ Then she explained that the water was supposed to wash away anything from the funeral that might follow us home.

  I cupped water with my hands and dashed my face with it, once, twice, splashing hard. My mother picked a few velvet petals off my head and gave me a towel. Then she helped my father, bringing the water to him in her palm and dropping it over his head, his arms. My father closed his eyes. When he opened them again I saw a glimmer of the Dark Place that he had gone into a few years ago. Right after he lost his job during the recession. He had disappeared for months, almost half a year. That was when I was ten. I remember because of the exams I had to take that year. My mother had yelled at him one evening because he was ‘not helping’. ‘Those exams will determine the rest of his life,’ she had said, shout-whispering the way she did when she was really upset.
‘And you’re just scaring him. You’re not creating a Stable Learning Environment.’

  My father had cried and my grandmother tried to distract me by telling a story about her life during the war. I missed it all because I was eavesdropping on my parents and only caught her saying, ‘… it was so tough for so many years. I thought I was going to die just like everyone had. But everything was fine in the end. See? This is nothing. Everything is going to be okay.’

  After that night, my father disappeared a little more. That was when I learned that it was possible to disappear and still be there, that it was possible to disappear even further than he had. To be emptier than empty. Blacker than black. It took him half a year to come back again and when he did, he acted as if it had never happened, just came back home one day and told us that he had found a new job working for a pool company. That they were even going to give him a company van. I smiled when I saw him smiling but I was afraid too, after that, every single day, fearful that any little thing might make him go into his Dark Place again.

  I went to the bedroom, lay down on my left side (away from the other bed, from the other things that did not belong to me, did not belong to anyone now) and closed my eyes. The tape was in my bedside drawer, pushed under a few comic books. It was there and I could picture it, rattling among discarded pens and half-filled notebooks, even as I dreamed about the monk and the chanting and the wailing music.

  Then I was awake again, staring at nothing. Something had woken me but I couldn’t tell what. A car alarm? I thought. Maybe a neighbour, getting home late and shutting the door too loudly. Then I heard the words, soft, as if she were breathing right into my ear.

  ‘I found you.’

  I pushed myself up into sitting and put the bedside lamp on, then clicked it off at once. I didn’t want to see whatever it was, if it was there.

  ‘I found you.’

  I shook my head and counted to ten, then I switched the light on again and turned to look at her half of the room. Her bed was untouched. The bedclothes were still on it, her blanket pulled up until it covered her wooden pillow, the way the nurse had pulled the hospital blanket up over Ah Ma’s head so that only the top of her hair, mostly scalp, showed. The way she did it was like a curtain falling, completely. The End, the blanket was saying.

  ‘Ah Ma?’ I whispered.

  No answer.

  I lay back down and waited, startling when a neighbour’s dog began to bark. It was no use. I sat up and put the light on again. I got out of bed, opened my drawer and took out the tape, the recorder, and a pen and some paper. Then I went to my grandmother’s bedside drawer. There was a stack of tissue paper in their thin pillow cases, a pot of tiger balm, a few tubes of Po Chai Pills she kept around for her nervous stomach, and sheaves of papers and letters. When I found her flashlight (kept for emergencies, blackouts, and ‘just in case of war’, my grandmother had said) I rewound the tape and played it, pen in hand. Through the crackle of air between my grandmother and the recorder, this was what I heard: ‘I found you. Pease don’t baneme… Ifoundyou and tookyouawaay. They were dead ormowheregobemouuuuund…I…dinnnnow. Eerbuddyelsewasgoooh…and…I…waadoondydyingdohell…I…wanndeddosaveyou…Youwerejusababy, soniddle. I wannded to look forem, I did, but ondmund begamedoendend idbegame dooyears. EndnafterdatI just cuddent. I couldn’t.’ There was a pause here and I heard her breath, rough and dry through her throat. Then, ‘Dooyouvergeefmee? I tried to look forem. Ayr reelly did. Eyydunwanyada blammee weenyfindoud. Pease forgeef me.’

  Silence. And then, my own voice, ‘Ah Ma…’ soft and high like a child’s, and another pause before I asked, ‘Who? Who were you looking for?’

  Her answer – ‘Your parents’ – made no sense to me that night and I stopped the tape right there, knowing what was going to come after and not wanting to hear it: her pleading, my deception. I wound it back and played it again, writing down what I could make out of her speech. When I looked down afterwards, this was what I had:

  I found you. Please don’t. I found you and took??? They were dead or more ??? I ??? Every ???? Go and I ?????? I one ???? You were just a baby??? I wanted to look for them I did but ??????????? And after that I just couldn’t. I couldn’t. Do you ??? I tried to look?? I really did????? …blame me ???? Please forgive me.

  I played the tape nine times in total. The fluorescent arms on my clock were pointing to twenty past three when I finally had all the words. I remembered the way she had gripped my hand and I was relieved, now more than ever, about how I had lied to her. How I let her have that at least, even though I couldn’t be sure what she was saying, I only had the faintest idea. Because this was what Ah Ma said the day she died, the last time I heard her speak:

  ‘I found you. Please don’t blame me. I found you and took you away. They were dead. Or nowhere to be found. I didn’t know. Everyone else was gone and I was only trying to help. I wanted to save you. You were just a baby, so little. I wanted to look for them after the war, I did, but one month became two, and then it became a year, two years. And after that I just couldn’t. I couldn’t. Do you forgive me? I tried to look for them. I really did. I don’t want you to blame me when you find out. Please forgive me.’

  That is my grandmother/not my grandmother. That is someone else’s grandmother, or no one’s at all.

  This was what I was thinking when the incinerator opened its metal mouth and swallowed the coffin whole. We were standing behind a thick glass window in the viewing gallery but I could imagine its hot breath, the way it might make the fine, beginning strands of hair on my arms curl if I were standing in front of it, but I felt nothing. I had seen her that morning for the last time, laid out amongst sheets of hell banknotes, a few flowers, then said goodbye along with my parents before the undertakers put her in the back of the hearse. If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t be imagining Ah Ma now, in the fire, feeling strange that I could sense nothing of the heat; it was this strangeness that made me shiver as we watched the coffin roll in, out of sight.

  Afterwards, a temple worker came to speak to my parents. ‘It’s going to take some time. You can come back in a few hours, or come back tomorrow. It’s up to you.’

  My father said we would wait, crossed his arms and sat down on a bench but my mother was already walking away, saying, ‘Come, let’s get some lunch.’ There was a free kitchen and she corralled us towards the temple’s incense-smoked dining hall, teeming with sightseers wearing large, staring cameras around their necks, and out-of-work men, their linty pockets turned out as if for proof. We had to share a table with two female tourists gripping splayed chopsticks. One of them was wearing a pink bandana on her head, both of them of an age I could only think of as simply ‘younger than my mother’.

  ‘Noodles or porridge?’ my mother asked.

  I shrugged. My father shrugged. She sighed and joined the queue, now past the canteen doors and trailing out onto the steps. It was some time before she came back with three large bowls swimming with vegetables and mock meat that was meant to look like char siu. She pushed one orange melamine bowl towards me. ‘Eat,’ she said.

  The noodles, wound tight as a ball of yarn, were difficult to untangle and I spent some time coaxing each neat coil onto my spoon. I was almost finished, my stomach heavy with dark gravy and vegetables and noodles when I looked up and realized that my father was bent over his bowl, quietly weeping into his porridge. My mother had laid one still palm on his shoulder. I put down my chopsticks and spoon.

  ‘Pa?’

  In response, he put out his hand and shook his head sorry, but the more he shook his head and tried to swallow his sobs, the louder they came out, like hiccups. ‘Hup, hup, hup.’ His shoulders popped up and down and he pushed his porridge away, careful even in his grief not to ruin perfectly edible food. The tourist with the pink bandana dug into her backpack and pushed a packet of Kleenex, large and American blue, across the table. All around us, people were eating. The lusty suck and sip of noodles and pulpy, broken-down rice gra
ins going into mouths and down pink-red throats. Gnashing and gulping and wiping their mouths. A lone monk came out carrying a tray laden with bowls of silky soybean curd and was immediately rushed by a tight ring of diners. ‘Eat, just eat,’ my father said, pressing several layers of paper tissue to his face. My mother whispered sorry and thank you to the two women as we got up and led my father away, and I did as well, though the women had turned a little away and were trying not to look.

  While we passed time in Bright Hill Temple, waiting for Ah Ma’s body to burn through, my father cried in the dining hall, he cried down the endless covered walkways leading from one part of the red-and-orange temple to the other, he cried sitting on a stone bench in the garden. To get away, I bought two dollars’ worth of lettuce for the turtles swimming in the large pond and tried to fling the leaves as close to their mouths as I could but most of it landed on their sun-baked shells. After five minutes, there were floating clumps of green all over the pond. As I watched the turtles, trying not to breathe in the algae stink, I thought if it might be a good way of making my father stop: telling him that I didn’t think it was his mother in the coffin after all, that she had said as much in the hospital the day before she passed away. I toyed with the idea, tapping him once on the arm only to gape the moment he turned towards me, his face pink and damp.