I wondered whether Ma could sense beyond my silence and hear the tremors within me. In her own face I could see the lines of tiredness, and of age — lines which had only deepened since Ba had gone, lines which mirrored the cuts embedded inside both of us. Yet we had kept going — with a different routine, in a darker, emptier household.
Could we still keep going now?
I wove past our spindly chair and dining table — we had little furniture in our cramped flat — and down the stairs into the store.
The metal sign outside was becoming chipped at the edges, yet the black letters Ba had carefully painted — Lei Herbalists — remained bold, proclaiming our presence to the street. Inside, shadowed in the dimness of the early morning, were tightly-packed rows of jars, boxes and drawers. The scents of sweet, earthy and dry herbs seeped out, tangling together in the air around the shelves.
I retrieved the iron boat grinder, the brass scales and the mortar from behind the counter, and placed them before me. There, I measured out the aged tangerine peel, and my hands fell into a rhythm as they pushed the plate-like grinder back and forth. A steady, calming rhythm, as I pictured Ba there beside me. I could almost feel the warmth where his hands had once wrapped over mine, guiding me.
The usual multitudes of people that filed through Little Bourke Street were yet to arise so early, with the dawn only starting to subside. As I finished preparing, checking and packing the last of the herbs, I glanced at the window every time I heard the sound of footsteps and wheels. Finally, I sighed in relief and made my way to the door — the wrinkle-faced pedlar Ah Lam waved to me as he pulled his cart to a stop outside. His black queue of braided hair flapped behind him in the wind, unlike my own short hair, and his eyes reflected their usual cheeriness, whereas I could only force an expression of calmness.
‘Do you have all the offerings ready?’
He bowed his head and gave me his usual smile. ‘All here and ready, Jing mui-mui. I was sure to put everything aside for you.’
A relief — here were the essentials: the thin yellow sticks of incense, and the zi bok: gold joss paper folded into chains of miniature boat shapes, to be sent to Ba in heaven. Ah Lam had brought the other items I’d asked for, too — spirits, and certain sweets Ba had always liked.
I thanked him and began counting out the money for the offerings, only dimly noticing my mother’s footsteps as she approached from behind me. As I handed the coins over, it was clear Ah Lam’s eyes were probing me more carefully than usual. I looked up. ‘What is it?’
‘Have you and your mother thought again about leaving?’
There it was. The same question again. The one we’d been asked so often in the past few months. My eyes turned back to the offerings I was holding, and I chose not to meet his gaze. At that moment, I became aware of my mother’s presence at the door — she’d silently slipped to my side.
Ma placed a hand on my shoulder and nodded at Ah Lam, her gaze friendly yet defiant. ‘We’re staying. It’s what he would have wanted.’
I fought down the prickles of unease that arose every time my mother gave this answer. I had to trust her, didn’t I? It was she who had ensured we could keep the store running after Ba’s death. It was she who had organised his funeral when we couldn’t return to Hong Kong to bury him at home, and had made sure we’d followed the traditions as closely as possible. It was she who had pushed me to stay strong, when Chinese men around us showed disdain and told us we should be working inside the house, not taking over a man’s business.
Yet, like Ah Lam and everyone else, I’d combed through both the English and Chinese newspapers and their reports of day-to-day developments surrounding Federation, tracking what it would mean for us. Since the Immigration Restriction Act had passed in December, I’d heard more conversations of whispered urgency, more people in Chinatown genuinely wondering whether they should go. The focus of the shipping lines whose advertisements appeared in the newspapers had shifted slightly — to cater to passengers who wanted to leave, rather than cargo which wanted to arrive.
For so many, it made sense to leave now that the new law had come in, now that no more of us could come here. Falling leaves return to their roots, as the Chinese saying went. Eventually, our people sought to return home — whether this was at death, something we had failed to fulfil for my father — or when the new land we had come to live in wanted us no longer.
In the most deep-seated parts of me, I was also wondering whether that should be true of us.
I looked up at Ah Lam, whose face still had the same concern from earlier. ‘You’re going, then?’
‘Ship next week.’
I felt a pang in my chest — so many of our friends and neighbours were leaving on that ship, taking the two-month journey to Hong Kong. Every departure of someone I knew bit away at me. Chinatown was still a bustle of activity now, but it was draining away. Eventually, how many of us would be left clinging on?
And yet, if we were to leave, the fear would stay with me too. Melbourne was all I had ever known, and I could barely imagine life in a distant land where both soil and sky were unfamiliar.
My thoughts must have shown on my face, because Ah Lam’s expression hardened. ‘You should reconsider. You know we’ll forever be outsiders here.’
I knew the truth of that. Like him, I had watched with horror the first time I’d seen a grocery shop robbed and left almost destroyed, with slurs etched onto the doorway. I saw it in the way they mocked us week after week in the English newspapers. And sometimes, when looking into the eyes of white businessmen passing through the streets, I would sense it too: the way they saw me as not like them, as something to expel. But that would only ever last for a moment and fade, to be replaced with the image of Ma sweeping the floors, or Ba packing the shelves, and I would wonder: how could they not understand that we were as normal as they were, that we simply wanted to live, as they did?
Ma waved Ah Lam away then, and placed the offerings together in a basket. I did a final check of the store before we turned to leave — to visit Ba’s resting place, one of the few in the Chinese section of Melbourne General Cemetery.
My eyes swept across Chinatown as we set off. The street was waking with each step we took, its hum building with the sun’s passage into the sky. Autumn leaves were scattered across the rooftops, as well as forming trampled layers beneath our feet — a sight which warmed me in the morning chill. We passed by grocery stores, restaurants, and underneath the two-storey shadows of the Chinese Mission Hall — the priest there would always stop me and offer help, especially in the days after Ba had passed away. Children, too, were hanging by the doorways, maybe to squeeze in a game together before their parents chased them inside.
These same sights had called to me when I’d gazed out the window, also in the early hours of the morning, a year ago. For the first few days after my father’s death, I’d barely left the flat, or paused to wonder about everyone else who’d known him. When I’d eventually taken a look a week later, however, I’d noticed so many familiar people — friends and customers and patients of Ba’s — standing outside in this same, familiar streetscape.
On that morning, the whole street had appeared to be holding its breath. Even the lanterns had fallen still in the breezeless air — as if they too were waiting, with a tinge of hope, for Ba to appear.
To reach the Chinese section of the cemetery, we had to weave our way south. The multitude of crosses, the statues with their bowed heads, and the gravestones of varying sizes formed a jagged landscape of white peaks against the earth: swept with leaves of yellow and orange and red.
Ba and I had never been here together. If we had, perhaps we would have paused and examined the inscriptions on a particularly grand gravestone, or been awed by the statues of mournful-looking angels. Or perhaps we would have simply taken a long, quiet walk together, immersed in the stillness and deep in our own thoughts. On another day, in another life, I may have done this on my own.
Not today, though.
Ma’s steps clicked beside me as we proceeded towards a small, fenced-off section of gravestones. Trees spread their fingers over us as we approached, thick with the richness of their autumn finery. The wind swirled past us and I closed my hand tightly around my jacket; otherwise, it was still.
And there it was. Ba’s headstone. It was white and curved across the top, and the characters of his name Lei Jung were carved into it, along with the dates of his birth and death. Together, my mother and I swept the leaves and fallen branches away.
Seeing the white headstone brought back another memory — the feeling of the rough white linen my mother and I had worn on the day of his funeral. Ba had been dressed in a white robe, too, and white envelopes containing paper money had been placed inside. I’d long seen, growing up, that white served as the colour of mourning, but only when it was my turn had I truly felt the emptiness it reflected: of life scraped blank of colour.
My mother began setting up all the offerings we had brought. Several fruits, the bottle of spirits and the sweets were placed on the sides in the space in front of the gravestone, and a bowl was placed in the centre. She then struck a match and lit three of the incense sticks, which she handed to me.
‘You first,’ I murmured. My eyes were still fixed on Ba’s grave.
My mother stepped to the centre, before the grave, and bowed three times in succession. ‘Look after us in the challenging days ahead,’ she said. ‘And help us to continue helping those around us.’ She placed the incense sticks upright in the bowl in front of the grave, and stepped aside for me to come forward.
How can you be so certain, Ma? Why can’t I feel that, too?
My eyes flickered to the smoking incense sticks. Long and gold, they reminded me of the pillars of myth, standing at the ends of heaven. Avoiding my mother’s gaze, I said: ‘How can we keep going, here, without Ba? Especially now?’
It had already been one year, but now — the days would only get harder as they went by. Though many others were yet to leave us, knowing how close they were to doing so was a reminder of how I had felt after Ba’s death all over again: alone in a way I hadn’t realised it was possible to feel. Alone in a way I didn’t want to admit to my mother.
There was a momentary silence, and when I looked up, Ma’s smile was warmer than I expected. She seemed to have heard the unspoken question in my thoughts: How can you be so sure that Ba wanted us to stay?
‘Do you remember this, Jing?’ she said. ‘Lok jip …’
‘… gwai gan.’ Here it was again. Falling leaves return to their roots. ‘I know, Ma. What everyone here wants.’ I shivered at the thought of the dead so close to us, potentially uneasy — because their bodies, like Ba’s, had not returned home to the land of their ancestors for their burials.
‘But which roots would they choose to return to?’ Ma said with a smile. ‘Your Ba said that once.’
There was something she wanted me to understand here — her voice was hopeful, like the encouragement of a teacher whose student was edging towards the correct answer. I looked up at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Your father sought something different from most falling leaves. This …’ — I followed my mother’s gaze as she turned her eyes back to the gravestone — ‘had always been his desire, from the first days of his illness.’
I paused as her words slowly sank in, and when they did so, I staggered with the weight that hit me in the chest. My voice was a tight whisper when I forced it out: ‘Ba wanted to be buried here? Even though we couldn’t afford to go back with his body … it was his choice from the start?’
She spread her arm around my shoulders, nodding in answer.
I turned back to the gravestone, swallowing against the shock coursing inside. My vision blurred as I released the tears, and a rush of memories from his funeral came flooding back. Amongst the smoke and chanted prayers, a young woman from Beechworth, children clutching her arms, had told me of how far Ba had travelled to reach and treat her. The editor of the local Chinese newspaper had spoken of Ba’s kindness when his family couldn’t afford a remedy they desperately needed. The voices of multiple other friends and customers had ebbed like tides around me, speaking of the conversations with Ba which still lingered with them, despite his parting.
So this was what my father had wanted. I had been so sure of how much we needed him that I’d missed something simple all this time: that he’d needed Melbourne and Chinatown just as much. Everything he’d worked for and envisioned had been here, in the adopted homeland where he’d been laid to rest.
Another orange-gold leaf drifted to the ground beside me, joining the clusters which already lay at the foot of the tree. Falling leaves return to their roots — I knew the truth of that. But when leaves stray far from the tree, perhaps new roots can be created. These were the roots I’d sprung from, and grown entwined with — and would continue to hold on to, like my father.
When my breathing was steady once again, I bowed before the grave as my mother had, then helped her start the fire that began the burning of the joss paper. From their golden chains, the smoke rose in tendrils — carrying riches to Ba, in heaven.
For that moment, however, he felt much closer. The earth under which he lay quivered beneath me, filled with the richness of his presence. It promised me strength for the days ahead — here in the land that had become a part of us; here in the life we had chosen together.
Author’s Note: According to the Chinese Museum in Melbourne, the number of Chinese-Australians declined sharply as a result of the Immigration Restriction Act — from around 50,000 in the 1880s to around 9000 in 1940. Throughout those years, Melbourne’s Chinatown survived. Few of its residents were women, though there were certainly real figures like Jing and her mother amongst them, who worked in business and were integral to the community. Note, however, that I’ve used some creative licence in making Jing an only child; this would have been unlikely at the time.
MICHELLE AUNG THIN
Michelle Aung Thin, Melbourne-based writer and academic, was born in Burma and is of a complex Anglo-Burmese (Indian, Burmese, Irish, German and Dutch) heritage. This story is a work of memoir that interrogates the process of negotiating who you are in the context of where you are. Michelle writes, ‘I think that you never find answers to questions of identity, belonging, what mobility means to people. But I also think that’s the power of writing — it helps you feel and think your way through life’s demanding questions.’
How to be Different
I have an accent, and when Australians first meet me, they often want to know if I am American or Canadian. Then, because of my looks, they want to know whether I am part Asian. And then they want to know how long I’ve lived here, in Australia.
I tell them: Canadian, half Burmese, half European, and eighteen years in Melbourne. That’s when they finally ask, ‘So, do you feel like an Australian?’
I know what they’re getting at. I just don’t know how to answer them.
I lived in London for thirteen years but do I consider myself English?
I grew up in Ottawa and spent four years living in Toronto, but while I still think of myself as Canadian, eighteen years is a long time and Australia is also part of who I am.
I was born in Rangoon, Burma, and I often describe myself as Burmese because that is how I look, with my dark skin and dark eyes, but I don’t speak the language and in Yangon (the new name for Rangoon) nobody thinks of me as anything but a westerner.
If I was being accurate, I would call myself Australo-Anglo-Canadiano-Burmeseo. But I can barely remember all that, let alone say it without running out of breath. Most of the time, I bob along, fitting in and being different, all at the same time. It’s only when I think about it, like as I write this, that I stop to ask myself all over again: What does it mean to fit in? What does it mean to be different?
The first time I remember asking these questions was back when I was in Grade Two and a new kid, Ashok, joined my class at Blackburn
Hamlet Elementary School, in a suburb of Ottawa, Canada. Our teacher, Mrs. Banton, introduced him just before show and tell; a skinny boy with great big, blinky eyes, from a place called Ceylon (which is what Sri Lanka used to be called).
Ceylon, Mrs. Banton told us, was just below India, part of the continent of Asia.
Asia! I thought excitedly. I knew where Asia was because I was born in Burma, also in Asia. And so, because Ashok was from the same faraway part of the world as me, and because I was still relatively new to the school and hadn’t found any real friends, I made a beeline for him as soon as the bell went for recess. I introduced myself as we changed our classroom slippers for our rain boots and together we walked out into the playground.
Away from the classroom, Ash was no longer a blinky-eyed, shy kid, but a seven-year-old bad-ass. He told me he was only in Ottawa for a little while and missed his school in Ceylon because of the tricks he and his classmates used to play on teachers — throwing pebbles at their backs, making animal noises in class. ‘And when they turn around, we pretend nothing has happened. The teachers are scared,’ he boasted.
I was impressed. Our teachers roamed the playground, their heads so high up you could barely tell where they were looking, let alone what they were feeling. I certainly wouldn’t throw things at their backs or make animal noises to test them. Ash seemed daring and super cool.
Ash then showed me his best trick. He flipped up his eyelids, exposing the bloody undersides, and rolled his eyeballs back into his head. Painful red-pink eyelids contrasted with bluey-white eyeballs contrasted with dark brown skin. The effect was awesome, like a zombie, or Lurch on The Addams Family, my favourite TV show. I went ‘eeewwww’ in total admiration.
It was the awesomeness that made me careless. Only when Ash was flipping his eyelids back to normal did I realize that we were being circled by the gang. And that things were about to go wrong.
The gang was the de facto authority of the playground. Sure, teachers were on patrol, stopping fights and enforcing school rules, but it was the gang who kept kids in their rightful place. They ruled by the power of social judgement based on taste and an understanding of how things ought to be. They relegated the farmers’ daughters and sons from the asphalted centre of the playground to the grassy bits under the climbing equipment, now soggy as winter drew near. They pushed the socially irredeemable out to the perimeter fence, where the water tank and garden shed were. (Incidentally, I’d once licked this water tank in mid-winter because it was pink and frosty and looked like a giant icy pole. My tongue froze solid to the metal tank and I was stuck there for the whole of recess, finally forced to rip my tongue away when the bell went, leaving most of my tastebuds behind.)
Meet Me at the Intersection Page 13
