Andy spoke, in a broken voice about how happy he and Sue had been together and the home they had made. Maeve felt all her energy tunnelling towards him, willing him to keep talking, praying that he wouldn’t break down and cry. If Andy fell apart, then she probably would too. The effort of simply keeping it together made her feel as if she couldn’t breathe, as if she was riding a wave of tears that at any moment would overwhelm her. Sensing she was unravelling, Steph and Bianca put their arms around her, holding her in a group hug that fused the three friends together. Even though they were crying too, even though their tears were warm against her shoulder, Maeve knew they would keep her from drowning in the dark ocean of her grief.
10
A bridge of magpies
As Maeve walked through the front door, she saw Goong Goong standing in a corner of the living room, clutching a cup of tea. It was the first time she’d ever seen him inside the house. She knew she should go up and speak to him but she felt suddenly angry. Why hadn’t he ever come inside when Sue was alive? It was too late now. She pushed her way along the hall, keeping her gaze down.
All around her, people were talking about her mother. Every room was crammed with friends and distant relatives that Maeve didn’t even know she had, glancing at her with pathetic expressions. She didn’t want to see all these people smiling at her nervously and saying extra-nice things about her mother. She wanted to be alone, to shut her eyes and shut out everyone and everything. She hurried past the kitchen where Steph and Bianca were helping Nanny with the food, out through the back door, under the thick overhang of bougainvillea and down the timber stairs. She heard Ned calling her name from somewhere inside but she couldn’t stop. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, she needed to hide.
The key to Sue’s studio was hidden under the fifth potplant on the windowsill. Quickly, Maeve turned it in the lock and pushed the door open, making sure she shut it tight behind her. No one had been in Sue’s studio since the accident. Maeve could only think of it as ‘the accident’. Somehow it seemed less final, as if an accident was a small thing and not the huge and crushing event that had smashed Maeve’s world to pieces.
In the mornings Sue’s studio was full of light, but now that it was late afternoon, shadows crept across the high fanlight windows. The concrete floor was cool beneath her as she sat behind a stack of silk screens. All around her, shelves were piled high with bolts of hand-painted fabric. A huge mesh shawl with a pair of knitting needles sticking out from amidst the silvery yarn dangled over the edge of one of the workbenches. Maeve pulled a handful of the shining fabric over her head. It fell gently like a waterfall across her shoulders and gathered in shimmering folds around her.
It felt safe in the studio. She loved the sweet, oily scent of her mother’s paints, the linty odour of the bolts of fabric, the sharp bite of the inks that Sue had used to print her designs. Maeve felt her heartbeat slow, her breathing become steady again. She wrapped the shawl tight around her and pressed it to her cheeks. Everything in the studio had a different meaning to her now. Everything in it seemed fragile and precious.
On the floor beside her, tucked away underneath the workbench on a low shelf, was a pile of old journals, their wiry black spines threaded with cobweb. Maeve bent down and blew some of the dust away, ran her finger along the cold metal. She knew the sketchbooks were full of her mother’s drawings and ideas. One by one, she pulled them from the shelf and flipped through the pages. They were crammed full of designs and notes on different projects.
At the very bottom of the pile was a small book with a green cover. She prised it out from under the heavy black folios and ran her fingers over the silky fabric binding. It was older than the other journals and only a few pages had been used. Sue’s name and student number were written in bold letters on the inside cover. Opposite was a sketch of a girl weaving clouds and below her a tiny figure of a man and an ox. A wide river of stars flowed between them. On the next page Sue had written half a page of notes in English about someone called Weaving Girl and carefully drawn some Chinese characters alongside the English words. Magpies flew between the notes and along the edge of the page, meeting to form a small bridge that arched across the third page of the book. Then nothing else.
Maeve flipped through to the end. Tucked into the very last page was a photo of Sue holding a tiny baby. At first Maeve thought it might be Ned that her mother cradled so gently, but when she looked closer, she realised it was herself. She turned it over, and there in her mother’s handwriting were the date and the words, ‘My little warrior princess’. She couldn’t fight back the tears any longer. They rose up like a tidal wave, choking her until she was gasping for breath. Finally, she lay down exhausted, pressing her hot cheek against the cold concrete floor.
Maeve was still clutching the photo and the green journal when Por Por came into the studio. Instinctively, Maeve froze, not wanting to be discovered. She watched from her hiding place as Por Por walked around the room, touching the bolts of coloured fabrics, bending down and resting her face against a pile of half-finished lengths of painted cloth.
Maeve shut her eyes and tried to stay still, as still as a mouse, and not move. She felt Por Por’s footsteps draw closer. Then she realised Por Por was crying, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Maeve lifted a corner of the silver fabric and gently touched her grandmother’s knee.
‘Por Por,’ she said in a small voice. ‘It’s me.’
‘Siu Siu! Little darling, what are you doing in here all alone?’
Por Por knelt down and took Maeve’s face in her hands, wiping away tears with her thumbs.
‘You and me, we both know the place to cry, don’t we?’ she said. She sat down on the floor beside Maeve and picked up a corner of the silver shawl. She didn’t seem worried that her immaculate white skirt might get dusty. She brushed the shawl against her cheek, just as Maeve had, and her neatly coiffed black hair fell forward, hiding the sadness in her dark eyes.
‘My Weaving Girl. I can’t believe she’s gone,’ said Por Por.
‘Weaving Girl?’ asked Maeve. ‘Mum drew a picture of her, I think.’ She held out the notebook at the page showing the girl in the clouds.
Por Por touched it with her fingertips, tracing the outline of the floating girl, then she took the book and turned the pages, looking at the words and images hungrily. Finally, she sighed and gave it back to Maeve. ‘She must have been just pregnant with you when she drew this. August, near the Chinese lovers’ day. Like St Valentine’s Day, but more romantic.’
‘More romantic? What do the Chinese bits say?’ asked Maeve.
‘It says Milky Way Girl. The same as Weaving Girl. She wove clouds,’ said Por Por, covering her eyes with one hand, as if the sight of the book had hurt her. ‘In Chinese tradition, Weaving Girl was a goddess who fell in love with a mortal. He was a cowherd, a farmboy, and they had two children together. But Weaving Girl’s grandmother, the Heavenly Mother, came and found her and took her back into the sky.’
‘But why?’ asked Maeve.
‘Because Weaving Girl belonged in Heaven. The cowherd and his children, they tried to follow, but the Heavenly Mother made a swirling river that they couldn’t cross.’
‘That’s so mean. She was taken away from her family for ever!’
‘They were only separated. Every seven years, a bridge of magpies formed between Heaven and Earth and the cowherd and the children, a boy and a girl, crossed over to meet her.’
Maeve stared down at the picture. She tried to imagine a bridge that she and Ned could cross to get back to their mother.
‘Was my dad – was he like the cowherd?’
Por Por grew very still. ‘He wasn’t the right man for Suzy. It wasn’t like the story. None of us were gods. Your grandfather knew it wasn’t going to work from the start.’
Maeve felt her insides grow hard. She shut the green book and held it against her chest.
‘Goong Goong doesn’t even care that Mum’s gone,’ she said angrily.
‘He wanted Mum to be a boy. And because she wasn’t a boy, she didn’t matter. She couldn’t worship the ancestors, or at least it didn’t count. He thought me and Mum didn’t count. Because we were girls, because she was an artist. I know all that. I heard Mum and Andy fighting about it.’
Maeve bit her lip to choke back the other angry words that were bubbling inside her and trying to escape.
‘That man, that Andy!’ said Por Por, almost spitting his name out as if it was a bad taste in her mouth. ‘How can he say these things! He doesn’t understand.’
Por Por put her arms around Maeve and gently stroked her hair, just the way Sue used to. ‘It’s so hard for your grandfather,’ she said softly. ‘Not like for you and me. Siu Siu, I’m like you. I grew up here in Australia, so I know you can have things of the old world and of the new. All your grandfather wanted was for Sue to belong to his world and his traditions. Is that so terrible? To be frightened of losing the child you love?’
‘But he did lose her. Not because of the accident. He lost her even before I was born,’ said Maeve, through hot tears.
‘Then you mustn’t let us lose you too,’ said Por Por, holding Maeve close to her. ‘Please, Maeve. You know we want you to come and live with us. When I was a little girl, I lost my mother too. She was sent back to China and I stayed in Australia with my grandmother. It felt terrible at first, but my grandmother, I loved her so much, she made a good life for me. Please Maeve, let me make a good life for you too.’
Maeve couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down her face. Warrior princesses weren’t meant to be so pathetic, but she couldn’t help herself. The longer Por Por hugged her, the more the strength drained out of her body until she felt she was melting in her grandmother’s arms.
‘It’s okay, little one,’ whispered Por Por. ‘Don’t cry. Goong Goong and I will take care of you. Everything will be all right. No one will keep you from us now.’
11
Hell to pay
It was cool inside the skyscraper and Maeve was glad to be out of the heat. Por Por led the way up an escalator to the restaurant on the first floor. The waiters in black and the crisp white tablecloths immediately signalled that Goong Goong’s favourite restaurant was way fancier than anything Maeve had ever been to with Andy and Sue. Goong Goong was sitting at a table near the window, keying something into a palm pilot, and he barely glanced at them as they joined him. Outside the window, the giant arc of the glass was patterned with an intricate mosaic, and an ornate clock counted off the minutes. Goong Goong began talking in Chinese to Por Por in a low, exasperated tone. Maeve studied the mosaic. It reminded her of the one all around the stove at home, how Sue had carefully laid one piece at a time in place until the blue and green pattern rippled like a river. She quickly averted her gaze, trying to steer her thoughts away to stop the memory overwhelming her.
The first round of dumplings arrived swiftly and her grandparents fell silent, intent on the serious business of eating. Maeve didn’t know what to choose. Sue had always ordered dishes that she knew Maeve would like – soft, sticky rice wrapped inside a lotus leaf and sweet egg custard buns that let out a puff of steam when you cut them open. But now there were all kinds of weird things arriving on little plates or inside bamboo steamers – marinated chicken feet, squid covered in chilli and squiggly plates of beef stomach covered in black pepper. Maeve poked at what she hoped was a pork dumpling, peeling off the translucent skin and examining the filling. She stared at the pale meat inside and suddenly wasn’t hungry any more. The hands of the clock outside the window ticked over.
‘Siu Siu, siu sum,’ said Goong Goong. ‘M’ho wan sic mut.’
Maeve started and looked at her grandfather questioningly.
Slowly, as if speaking to a little child, Por Por said, ‘He told you to pay attention and not to play with your food.’
‘How can I pay attention when you won’t speak any English?’ replied Maeve, fighting down an impulse to shout.
‘How will you ever learn to speak Chinese if you don’t hear it spoken?’ snapped Goong Goong.
Maeve stared at the napkin in her lap. She folded it up into the tiniest paper boat and watched it sailing across the fabric of her skirt.
‘Siu Siu, sweetie,’ said Por Por. ‘Once you start to understand Chinese, we’ll take you to Hong Kong with us, remember?’
Maeve stared down at her plate. Her mother hadn’t said anything about having to know Chinese to visit Hong Kong. But then her mother hadn’t needed to introduce her to a bunch of relatives who might disapprove of her.
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Maeve?’ asked Por Por.
Goong Goong spoke sharply to Por Por in Chinese. Even though Maeve didn’t understand all the words, she knew what they were fighting about. It was the same old thing. Goong Goong thought her mother should have given her a proper Chinese name, not a crazy Irish one. Maeve had never once heard Goong Goong call her by her real name, always Siu Siu which she knew just meant ‘little’. ‘Little, little’, that’s how much he thought of her feelings.
‘I don’t want to go to Hong Kong. I just want to go home,’ whispered Maeve.
‘You don’t feel well? You want to go back to the flat?’ asked Por Por, her voice suddenly soft and full of tenderness.
‘No, I mean back to Balmain. I want to go back to my own bedroom in my own house.’
‘Your home is with us now. We have decided to sell that old house. The money will be put in trust for you and Ned, for when you’re older.’
‘But what about Andy? That’s his home too! I don’t want you to sell it.’
‘That house was never in your mother’s name. It belonged to us. We will help Andy find something smaller, something for him and Ned.’
Ned. She hadn’t seen Ned for two whole weeks, the two longest weeks of her life. They’d never been apart like this before. Just the mention of his name made Maeve want to cry. ‘I want to go back and live in my home with Ned. With my family.’
‘We are your family, Siu Siu. You can’t live with that man. He’s not your father,’ said Goong Goong, his voice heavy with disapproval.
‘He’s Ned’s father, and Ned’s my brother,’ replied Maeve. She could tell her voice was too loud. People at the other tables were turning around to stare. Her grandparents laid down their chopsticks and looked at Maeve, their faces full of alarm.
‘If we could, we’d bring Ned to live with us too, but that man would never allow it,’ said Goong Goong, lowering his voice to an angry whisper.
‘Stop calling him “that man”! He has a name. He’s called Andy,’ said Maeve.
‘You see. You don’t call him your father,’ said Por Por, looking from Goong Goong to Maeve, caught between their fury.
‘I don’t call anybody “father”,’ said Maeve, turning on her grandmother. ‘I don’t have a father. You drove him away. You made Mum break off with him, just like in that story. You were just as horrible as the Heavenly Mother. You didn’t even want me to be born! You wanted Mum to get rid of me!’
Por Por put one hand up to her face, as if warding off a blow. Maeve wanted to scream at her, If it wasn’t for you, Mum would still be alive, even though she knew it didn’t make sense. She threw her serviette onto the table and ran out of the restaurant, jumping three steps at a time down the escalator to the ground floor.
By the time Maeve reached Circular Quay, she was breathing hard. Her halter top was drenched in sweat and she tugged at her short skirt with annoyance. She felt uncomfortable inside her own skin. When her mobile rang, she put it on Silent. She knew it was Por Por trying to call but no way was she going to answer. She was sick of being sensible. Of trying to be good. Of trying to make everyone else feel everything was okay when it wasn’t.
Maeve sat alone in the bow of the fer
ry as it chugged across to Balmain in the morning sunshine. Little flecks of white crested the water as it struck against the sides of the ferry and the fresh harbour breeze made her feel calmer. She pressed a hand against her chest and felt the dull thud of her heartbeat against her palm.
Maeve knew her parents had met on a ferry. Sue had told her how a man with black hair and pale blue eyes wouldn’t stop staring at her. And then he’d come and sat beside her and unfolded a map of Sydney and asked for directions. Maeve shut her eyes and tried to imagine her mother as a student, sitting beside the handsome young Irishman. She spun her iPod to the old song that her mother had always joked was about her father, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.
Maeve reached into her bag and drew out the silky green notebook. She’d carried it with her every day since the funeral, studying the pictures of Weaving Girl and the cowherd, wondering if the man in the drawing looked anything like her father, wishing her mother had written more.
Every day, she’d tried to write something about her mother in the green notebook, as if it would somehow make Sue’s story live longer. But the words wouldn’t come. Only images. She drew a heart surrounded by black knives and then, almost without thinking, began sketching faces behind the dark heart. Faces of ghosts, with their weeping, angry eyes, and their tiny mouths full of sharp teeth. When she’d finished, she put everything back into her bag. She couldn’t think about the dead any more. She needed to be with the living.
Taking a short cut up a narrow laneway littered with purple jacaranda petals, Maeve ran up the hill from the wharf. The doorbell echoed through the house and then she heard Andy’s voice, a loud whisper, calling down from the balcony above.
‘Hey, Maeve! We were just having a morning nap, me and the kid. We had a rough night. You let yourself in. I’ll be right down.’
The Secret Life of Maeve Lee Kwong Page 6
