A Ghost in my Suitcase

by Gabrielle Wang

  Soon Ting Ting comes out wearing a jacket. Slung over her shoulder is a long grey bag. She winds the rainbow scarf around her neck and wheels her bicycle to the front gate. ‘Tell Por I’ve gone to Mrs Wang’s,’ she says to me. Then they ride off up the lane.

  I hear the whirr of wheels and the rumble of tyres on the stones. Then they turn the corner and all is suddenly quiet.

  I go inside the house and down the hall to the secret room. It’s strange, but I feel as if there’s something in there that belongs to me. I put my hand on the doorknob and turn it. But the room is locked.

  ‘Hui lai le! Hello, I’m home,’ Por Por calls out from the front of the house.

  I walk quickly up the hall.

  She puts down her handbag and takes her jacket off. ‘I’m sorry I’m late but there was such a queue at the station. I’ve bought the tickets and we are all set to leave for the Isle of Clouds tomorrow. Did you have a good time with Ting Ting?’ Por Por looks around. ‘Where is that girl?’

  ‘She went with Mrs Wang,’ I say.

  ‘Mrs Wang?’ Por Por suddenly looks worried.

  ‘Yes, the lady wanted to speak with you first. She said it was urgent, something about the wretched thing being back. Then when I told her you weren’t in, she started to cry. So Ting Ting went off with her.’

  ‘Aiya!’ Por Por puts her jacket back on.

  ‘Is there anything wrong?’ I ask.

  ‘Get your coat, Little Cloud. We have to go over there immediately.’

  As I follow Por Por down the hall to my room, I see her take a key from her pocket. She opens the door to the secret room, then disappears inside.

  When we meet back at the front door, Por Por is carrying something long and thin, wrapped in black cloth. It looks very similar to the bundle Ting Ting was carrying.

  ‘Quickly, we have no time to lose,’ she says, her eyes suddenly steel sharp.

  We step out into the alleyway. A fog has rolled in from the river. On either side, high white walls with dark doorways stretch off into the mist like an eerie corridor to the end of the world. The streetlights glow – white balls of finely spun silk.

  Por Por walks quickly with short, silent steps – like a hunter stalking its prey. I’m surprised at how fit she is even though she’s old. I have to jog to keep up with her. I stay close, scared that I might get lost in the fog. The network of lanes at night feels like a dark maze.

  After twenty minutes of fast walking, we come to a wide road. Everything is washed in darkness, but it looks like a rich part of town because the houses are huge. Por Por stops in front of a two-storey mansion. The house is like a one-eyed monster staring down at us. Only one light flickers in an upstairs window.

  I follow Por Por up the path to the front door, my heart beating in my chest and throbbing in my ears.

  When Mrs Wang opens the door, her face is ghostly white. She clasps Por Por’s hands greedily and pulls her inside. Then she points up the stairs, her eyes filled with fear.

  The whole house feels strange. As if it’s holding its breath, waiting. But waiting for what?

  My mouth goes dry.

  From upstairs comes a noise like nails scratching across a blackboard. I freeze.

  ‘Is Ting Ting up there?’ Por Por asks, quickly unwrapping the black bundle.

  Mrs Wang nods nervously.

  To my amazement, Por Por pulls a sword from the cloth. It’s one of the coin swords I saw in the secret room. It has a strange white glow around it. It’s weird but it’s as if I already know how the sword would feel in my hand – its weight, its power. My fingers clench and unclench.

  I shake the feeling away.

  ‘Stay here, Little Cloud,’ Por Por says to me, holding the sword in front of her and moving up the stairs cautiously.

  I hear a man shout angrily. And then Ting Ting screams back, ‘I can’t understand you! Speak Chinese!’

  An enormous crash shakes the whole house. It sounds as if the man has pushed over something solid and heavy, like a wardrobe or a bookshelf. Mrs Wang and I look at each other.

  Por Por has reached the top of the stairs and disappeared into the darkness.

  ‘Ting Ting, get out of the room,’ I hear her order.

  ‘But I can do this, Por,’ Ting Ting replies. ‘Please, let me have a go.’

  ‘Leave, now!’ Por Por’s voice is harsh.

  There is silence as I imagine Ting Ting backing out of the room. I wonder if that person upstairs is a madman.

  ‘It will be all right. It will be all right.’ Por Por’s voice is now calm and soothing as she talks to the man. ‘I can help you.’

  I hear a sound like glass breaking and then a huge thump that rattles the windows. The man starts yelling again, his voice growing louder and louder. I feel his anger spreading throughout the house, room by room. He sounds dangerous, and all Por Por has to protect herself is a harmless sword made of coins. I wish she would call the police.

  I turn to Mrs Wang. ‘Call the police,’ I say. ‘Please. My grandmother could get hurt.’

  But Mrs Wang just stands there, gripping the post at the bottom of the banister as if she’s frozen to the spot.

  I look around for a telephone. I don’t know if you call 000 or 911 in China, but I can try.

  ‘I don’t know what you want,’ I hear Por Por say. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t understand French.’

  At the sound of the word ‘French’ I spin around. Of course, that man up there is speaking French. Now I can hear it.

  I yell up the stairs, ‘I can speak French, Por Por! I’m half French, remember?’

  Por Por’s small head appears.

  ‘Come up slowly, Little Cloud,’ she says, ‘but don’t come into the room.’

  The last thing I want to do is go into that room. I gulp and climb the first step.

  When I reach the landing at the top, I see Ting Ting leaning against the wall, scowling, her arms crossed over her chest. It’s freezing up here. I begin breathing out white puffs of air as if I’m inside a giant fridge. I move past Ting Ting, closer to the doorway. I can only see half the room – an empty fireplace, a window with green curtains, a round-backed armchair and a lamp. The door is blocking the other half from my view, but the man must be there because Por Por is looking in that direction. And she’s holding up her coin sword. What good will that do? I wonder.

  ‘Stay where you are, Little Cloud,’ she says. ‘Just tell me what he’s saying.’

  ‘Les papiers, the papers, they must be destroyed,’ I hear the man say.

  ‘Quels papiers, what papers, monsieur?’ I ask.

  ‘Vous parlez français?! You can speak French?! AT LAST!’ the man shouts excitedly.

  ‘Je parle un petit peu, I can speak a little,’ I say. ‘Where are the papers you want destroyed, monsieur?’

  ‘Là-bas, over there. In that big fireplace. Search for the loose brick. You will find them behind it.’

  ‘Je le dirai a ma grand-mère, I’ll tell my grandma. Wait, okay? Don’t get angry at her anymore, please. She is only trying to help you.’

  I turn to Por Por. ‘The man says there are some papers in the fireplace behind a loose brick. He wants them destroyed, Por Por,’ I say.

  ‘Tell him I will find his papers and destroy them. Then he will be able to rest.’

  I wonder why he hasn’t found them himself. Then I think he must be sick in bed and not able to move, maybe he’s even paralysed. No wonder he’s angry and frustrated at everyone.

  The fireplace is huge. Por Por doesn’t even have to bend her head, but walks straight in. She starts feeling around the walls, touching every brick.

  ‘Là, oui, cela!’ the Frenchman shouts.

  Por Por stops and feels carefully. ‘Yes, the brick here is loose,’ she says. She pulls it out and places it on the ground. I see her arm disappear inside a hole, right up to her armpit. I hold my breath. I would never put my arm in a hole in a wall. No way. Who knows what might be inside?! Por Por is so brave.
<
br />   Slowly she draws out her arm, then her hand. But all she comes out with are scraps of paper. Whatever was written on them has completely rotted away. She lets the pieces fall to the ground like confetti, then she reaches in for more.

  The Frenchman starts laughing, then crying, then laughing again. I don’t know if he’s happy or sad or what.

  Por Por puts her hand in three more times. The floor of the fireplace is covered in bits of paper.

  ‘Hao le, that is all of it,’ she says, wiping her hands together. ‘Ask monsieur what was in those papers, Little Cloud.’

  I think Por Por is being a bit rude. If the papers were so important to him, she shouldn’t really be asking what was in them. But I do as she says.

  The question doesn’t seem to bother him at all. ‘Many years ago,’ he replies, ‘I was the best French chef in Shanghai. When I closed my restaurant down, I hid my secret recipes in this fireplace. When I heard that Mrs Wang was going to rebuild the house, I grew worried that they might be discovered. Each one of my recipes is a work of art. That rascal Dupont was always after them. Ha!’ he laughs. ‘He won’t be able to lay his hands on them now, will he?’

  I tell Por Por what the Frenchman said.

  Por Por smiles. ‘Tell him, Little Cloud, that his wonderful creations made many people happy.’ Then she takes a few steps towards the man and I can’t see her anymore. ‘You should rest now,’ I hear her say, gently. She whispers softly as if she is talking to a baby and I feel the room grow warm. A peace falls over the house.

  Por Por comes out carrying the coin sword and a mirror, which she wraps in red cloth and ties with a gold cord. She quickly slips it inside her coat and closes the door gently behind her.

  Ting Ting pushes herself off the wall without saying a word. She slings the long grey bag over her shoulder and digs her hands into her pockets.

  ‘You will have no more trouble, Mrs Wang,’ Por Por says as we all come back down the stairs.

  Mrs Wang takes Por Por’s hand. ‘Thank you, thank you so much, Mrs Bao.’ I see her slip Por Por a red envelope, then we go outside. As we cross the road, the lights in the house go on one by one. And the once lonely light in the room upstairs switches off.

  Ting Ting is as sulky as a rain cloud about to burst. She dawdles five paces behind us.

  ‘I could have done it,’ she yells at Por Por’s back. ‘How do you expect me to learn anything if you never give me a chance to prove myself.’

  ‘You need to learn discipline and self-control first,’ Por Por replies calmly, without turning around.

  ‘You think I’m not good enough, don’t you!’ Ting Ting screams. ‘It’s because I’m not one of your own like … like she is!’

  Por Por stops this time and turns to face Ting Ting, but Ting Ting has run off down the road into the night.

  ‘I’m sorry, Little Cloud,’ Por Por says. ‘She doesn’t mean what she says. She’s just over-emotional sometimes.’

  I feel like telling Por Por about all the other times Ting Ting has been mean to me, but I don’t. I just say, ‘Will she be all right?’

  ‘She knows how to look after herself. Has done so since she was little. But often she’s too smart for her own good,’ Por Por replies.

  The fog has lifted. We walk on in silence for a while, back through the network of laneways. There are so many questions I want to ask Por Por. I want to know more about the Frenchman and why Mrs Wang called her instead of the police or a hospital to deal with him, and what the coin sword and mirror were for. I would like to ask her about the secret room, too, but she doesn’t know I’ve been in there. So I begin with the Frenchman.

  ‘The house used to belong to him once,’ Por Por says.

  ‘So is he just renting a room from Mrs Wang now?’

  ‘In a way, yes. This whole area of Shanghai used to belong to the French for almost a hundred years. They built houses just like their houses back home. They even had their own police force and everybody, including the Chinese, had to obey their laws.’

  ‘But why did France own it when it’s in China?’

  ‘It all started over two hundred years ago. At that time, China was very weak, so countries like England, France and America decided they would come in and grab a share.’

  ‘But why was China weak?’

  ‘No country, and no person, can be strong forever, Little Cloud. They are strong for a time, and weak for a time. It’s a cycle.’

  ‘That man must be very old then. Is that why he has to stay in bed and couldn’t get the recipes himself?’

  Por Por nods.

  ‘And what about the sword and mirror, Por Por? What did you use them for? A sword made out of coins would be no protection if that man had attacked you.’

  ‘It’s late,’ Por Por says. ‘We’re both tired.’

  I can see that Por Por is avoiding my question so I don’t ask again, not tonight anyway. There is something very strange going on and I’m determined to find out what it is. Por Por is not just any ordinary grandmother, that much I know.

  When we arrive back home it’s almost midnight. Por Por takes out the money from the red envelope Mrs Wang gave her, and puts it into her purse.

  I expect to see Ting Ting and I’m surprised to find she hasn’t come home yet. I’m glad she didn’t come back with us. And I’m glad she’s not here now.

  ‘Time for bed. We have an early start tomorrow,’ Por Por says, yawning. ‘It’s a long journey to the Isle of Clouds.’

  ‘Yes, Por Por,’ I say.

  As I lie in bed, I think about the last two days. So much has happened since I arrived. So much weird stuff. I close my eyes, my thoughts sprinting ahead. I wish my brain was a dog. Then I could train it to lie down and go to sleep on command. I gaze at the swirling black shapes and wait for sleep to take me away. But there’s that same big empty space where Mama’s love should be.

  The early morning sky is heavy with rain clouds as we head west by train towards the Isle of Clouds. Por Por left Ting Ting’s ticket on the dining room table because she still hadn’t come home.

  I can’t help feeling sorry for her even though she is so horrible.

  There’s a narrow table jutting out from under the window where we put our snacks – watermelon seeds, cans of iced tea, a bag of toffees. I’m not very good at cracking the watermelon seeds but Por Por is an expert. She puts the whole seed in her mouth and, half a second later, spits the empty shell into her hand. When I try it, I end up with a soggy, mangled seed sliding around my mouth.

  Por Por points to fields filled with water. ‘They are fish and rice fields,’ she says. ‘The fish are raised there in winter. They eat the weeds and the insects, so that by the time the rice is ready to be planted in summer, the fields are very healthy. Sometimes the farmer will grow baby fish and rice at the same time. It is a perfect system.’

  Fish and rice living together, helping each other grow. Papa would like that idea – farmers working in harmony with nature. Since Mama died, though, he’s not as caring about the environment as he used to be. If he was, we wouldn’t be eating so many frozen dinners and takeaways.

  A man comes through our carriage pushing a metal cart piled high with food and drink. Por Por buys some hot buns filled with pork and chives. The dough is a bit chewy but otherwise they taste delicious.

  While I write in my diary, Por Por reads a book that looks ancient. The pages are yellow and sewn together with cotton. There are drawings of hands in different positions, and swirly symbols – the same symbols I saw around the fish pond and on the ceiling of the secret room. I wonder if Por Por is some kind of witch. She puts the book on her lap and closes her eyes.

  As she sleeps, I look at her face, so peaceful and calm now. So different from how it was last night. She can be serious when she wants to be. And scary, too. Mama never talked about that side of Por Por.

  After a while, there’s an announcement over the loudspeaker.

  Por Por wakes up. ‘We get off at the next sto
p,’ she says, packing away the snacks from the table.

  ‘Are we there already?’ I say.

  ‘Not quite. Now we have a three-hour bus ride across the mountains.’

  The bus stop is next door to the train station, which is good since rain clouds are gathering fast. But what’s not good is that the bus is old. I mean really old. It’s one of those old-fashioned buses that looks like a fat sausage. And there are lots of rusty bits on the roof and some of the windows are cracked.

  We find our seats and put our bags up on a wire shelf above our heads. Soon we are travelling down a narrow, winding road with fields on either side. In the corners of some of the fields are little straw huts. Some of the huts are decorated with plastic flowers. I wonder who lives in them – they’re so tiny. I ask Por Por and she laughs.

  ‘Oh, they’re not houses, they’re toilets,’ she says. ‘The farmer decorates them so that a passing traveller might be tempted to use his toilet instead of his neighbour’s.’

  ‘But why would you want a stranger using your toilet?’ I ask.

  ‘The poo can be used on the vegetable fields. The more they collect, the more fertiliser they have and the healthier their plants will be.’

  ‘You mean … the vegetables we EAT?’

  ‘Nothing ever goes to waste in China,’ Por Por says proudly.

  I sit back in the seat thinking about home and how much stuff we waste. But I can’t imagine people collecting poo and putting it on their vegie gardens. Yuck! I can’t wait to tell Robbie about it.

  The man on the other side of the aisle gives a loud snort as the bus jerks. He’s fast asleep already and snoring so loudly the sound alone could drive this old bus.

  I’m starting to feel sleepy, too, so I lean my head against the window.

  I wake to something cold dripping on my head. When I look up I see a gaping hole in the roof right above me, and rain is pouring in!

  Por Por stands up, pulls her bag down from the wire shelf and takes out an umbrella. She opens it up over our heads.