by Hannah Bent
Bì Yù blushed. She took a step back from the piano and made space for Mum to play. Harper leaned her ear against the instrument. The room became quiet as the pianist made herself comfortable on the stool and loosened the clasp that held her long, dark hair in place. She played Chopin’s Nocturne. The music was both quick and slow, light and heavy, filled with an energy that made the room seem large and all of its inhabitants small. I snuggled into my father’s chest and listened to his breath relax and soften.
‘Love.’ Harper began to twirl, moving like a ballerina on her tiptoes. She raised her chubby little hands high and her fingertips skimmed the air. Her shirt gaped as she bent forward, revealing a thin scar across her chest. The scar that showed her heart was weak, the scar that made her so special in Dad’s eyes. Her eyes were lit with a kind of wildness; the same wildness that ran through Mum’s fingertips as they flew across the black and white keys. Harper laughed. Her eyes were closed and her body moved faster to the rhythm of the music. I couldn’t take my eyes off her; it was like she had been transported somewhere I could never go.
What could she hear that I couldn’t?
The room was hot. I closed my eyes and listened to the steady beat inside Dad’s chest. It was a sound that I could understand, a sound that made me feel safe.
There was a loud crack, followed by the boom of thunder. I sat upright, my body heavy and sweaty with sleep. Dad was gone, and there was a pillow in the place of his knee. I turned. The front door was ajar, and through the window I saw my family standing outside on the street, staring at the sky.
‘No bang!’ Harper, hands over her ears, shouted. ‘No bang!’ She didn’t like loud noises.
The living room was empty. I had been forgotten. There was another explosion, and then a shower of glittering gold. As I ran out the front door, the cold air bit at my bare throat. I grabbed hold of Mum’s leg.
‘Hello, darling.’ She lifted me up, grunting with effort, and held me to her chest. ‘Look how beautiful the night is. Let the noise frighten away all the bad spirits. This year will be a good year.’
Dad placed a hand on Mum’s shoulder. ‘Maybe we should go inside. These homemade fireworks are so bloody dangerous.’
‘Aī yā,’ Wài Pó interrupted. She said he was being silly.
‘What did she say?’ Dad asked. Instead of translating what my grandmother had actually said, I told him she thought he was handsome.
‘Hú shuō!’ She smacked her thigh and told him that even though he’d married her daughter years ago, he was still a foreigner in this city.
‘Don’t worry so much,’ Wài Pó told him. She launched into the old story about Wài Gōng, my grandfather, who’d had a stroke and gone to heaven. ‘His mind was far too active and his body responded to the stress,’ she explained.
It began to snow heavily. Mum took the scarf from around her neck and wrapped it around me. I noticed a cluster of small bruises just above her collarbone and thought that was a funny place to have knocked herself.
‘Photo time!’ Uncle Bĭng Wén made us huddle together while, in the background, bright colours burst in the sky. I grabbed my mother’s hand and directed my best smile at the camera.
‘One… two…’ He lowered the camera, frowning. ‘Where’s Míng Huà?’
Everyone looked around.
My mother put me down abruptly and started running through the snow, breathlessly calling Harper’s Chinese name: ‘Míng Huà!’ Her voice was as sharp as the icicles on Uncle Bĭng Wén’s roof.
‘I’ll get the torches,’ Aunt Lĭ Nà said, and she ran into the house.
‘Harper!’ Dad shouted. He sprinted down the dark street. I tried to follow, but a hand grabbed my arm. It was Wài Pó.
‘You go back inside,’ she told me. ‘You are too young to be roaming the streets.’
‘But I can help,’ I insisted. I knew where Harper had gone; I always knew.
Bì Yù pulled me by the hand towards the house. ‘It’s not safe,’ she told me. ‘There are monsters in the night that eat little girls like us.’ ‘Kuài diǎn, kuài diǎn.’ Wài Pó gave me a forceful shove through the front door and quickly shut it behind us.
As soon as Wài Pó was out of sight, I told my cousin that I was going to get Harper. I hurried into the kitchen, where I knew Aunt Lĭ Nà usually kept the window ajar, and climbed out. Bì Yù dashed after me. ‘Bú yào zǔo,’ she shouted. Don’t go.
There was a plum tree that Harper loved in Zhōngshān Park. Its long branches reached into the air, filling the space between its neighbouring trees with the rich colour of its magenta blossoms. By the light from nearby streetlamps, the fallen petals looked like drops of blood in the snow. The air was thick with smoke from the fireworks; it clung to the back of my throat as I walked towards my sister.
As if she could still hear Mum’s music, Harper was twirling under the tree. Her lips were tinged blue again. She had stuck out her tongue to catch the falling snow and wore a blossom in her wet hair. She looked like something from another world.
My footsteps crunched in the snow as I ran towards her.
‘Harper!’ I grabbed her hand, which was as cold as the snow on the ground beneath us. I felt my own body go cold. Rubbing her fingers hard, I tried to give her all the warmth I had left.
Her body became still and she blinked, then giggled. ‘Ma-ma,’ she said, unable to pronounce my name. She pointed to the plum tree and smiled.
‘Harper, we have to go. Your heart doesn’t like to get cold, remember?’ The fireworks had started again, a storm of light and noise in the sky. She quickly put her hands over her ears and lay flat on the ground, like she always did when she heard a loud noise.
Using all my strength, I heaved my sister up and lifted her onto my back. She put her cool cheek flat against the base of my neck, sending a wave of goosebumps down my spine. I stumbled back to the house as fast as I could while the fireworks cracked loudly above us – much louder than the sound of my sister’s breath.
Harper
The doctors say they want to keep me in the hospital a bit longer, until my fever has gone. This is a good thing for two reasons:
They are making me well again, like they always do.
Tonight I got to make a new friend.
I was in my hospital bed, resting. Over the beeps of all my machines, I could hear the sound of voices arguing. I pressed the ‘up’ button on my bed so that I was sitting, tidied up the colourful wires on my chest and reached over to pull open the curtain around my bed.
A young woman with a sweet apple face was standing in the doorway of my room, talking to my nurse. She was holding the handles of a wheelchair, which pushed an old lady. This old lady had no teeth and her dark eyes were empty.
‘I do not want my mother in this room,’ the young woman said.
‘I’m sorry,’ the nurse said, ‘but this is the only bed we have left. The ward is full.’
The old lady was making chomp chomp eating movements with her mouth. I know all about this bodily movement because my friend Tam does this when he is nervous. I wanted the old lady to stop worrying, so I tried to be friendly by waving at her and smiling. It took a while, and my hand was a bit sore because I had a needle stuck in it, but after a few waves, the old lady looked up at me. When the light went into her eyes, I saw that they were the very same colour as mine: chocolate brown.
‘We have the same eyes, you and me,’ I said.
The young woman started talking faster to the nurse, her voice louder. ‘I’m willing to pay for an upgrade to a private room.’
‘It’s not about payment. We simply don’t have the beds.’
‘I do not want my mother in a shared room with her.’ She pointed at my bed and I looked around, wondering what was upsetting her. After all, this was a very nice hospital.
‘There’s nothing wrong with my bed or the room,’ I told her. ‘This is a very nice hospital and the sheets are comfy and soft.’
The young woman stopped talking
. Her mother laughed, her mouth wide and happy. She had lines like the whiskers of a cat spreading out from her eyes. I thought she was beautiful.
‘It would be so nice if you could stay here with me.’ I was careful not to tell her that I would be going home in the morning. I didn’t want her to be disappointed.
Marlowe
My stomach lurched as I turned the corner from the departures hall into immigration.
Don’tlookbackdon’tlookback, a voice inside me repeated. As I watched the queue of slow-moving bodies in front of me, I kept picturing Olly as I had seen him only moments ago. His solid hands were sunk deep into his pockets and his shoulders were hunched. There was a hole in the sleeve of his thick maroon sweater. His wide green eyes were gazing at me intently. I could feel myself blush. I was sure he must be seeing the ugly emotions I wanted to keep hidden – the shame, guilt and grief I felt whenever I had to leave someone I loved.
Olly took off his jumper and pulled it over my head. It was still warm from his body. I held the sleeve to my nose, catching traces of his peppermint shampoo. It was comforting to know my olfactory perception could bring me closer to him, even when we were miles apart. From that point on, I vowed to avoid exposing his jumper to strong smells, to preserve the scent of him.
It’snotgoodbyeit’snotgoodbyeit’snotgoodbye. A mantra to suppress the sadness that was making my limbs turn cold.
As I walked through the body scanner near the on-board baggage check, a security officer asked me to remove the sweater and put it through the X-ray machine, then pass through the scanner again. Reluctantly, I did as I was told. When I was finally cleared, I quickly pulled Olly’s jumper back over my head, gathered my things and strode past the duty-free shops and cafes, searching for somewhere quiet to sit. A baby was howling in his mother’s arms. An urgent voice sounded over the PA: ‘Mr and Mrs Williams, travelling on CX flight 161 to Sydney, please make your way to the departure gate.’ A group of Chinese tourists were shouting at one another, competing with the sound of canned music, also much too loud. The noise threatened to overwhelm me. I placed my palms over my ears, much like Harper would, but quickly lowered them when I realised what I had done.
I’m not my sister. I’m not my sister.
Noise was never something I paid attention to until Harper was born. When Mum used to turn on the hairdryer, Harper would scream, place her hands over her ears and lie flat on the ground. ‘Sensory overload,’ was how Dad described it. Very quickly, I began to develop a heightened sensitivity to her triggers.
Breathe, Míng Yuè. Mum’s voice felt like a whisper over my skin.
I stopped trying to outrun the noise and found a seat beside an oversized fake pot plant.
Breathe, my mother said again, and I did, inhaling and exhaling until I began to feel calmer. Then I opened the locket I wore on a chain around my neck. Inside was a photo of Mum and a lock of her hair. The image had faded, but I could still make out the dimples on her cheeks as she smiled. If only she could have stayed like this in my mind forever. But my last sight of her always intruded.
Yellow satin sheets were twisted around my mother’s emaciated body.
‘Ma!’ I climbed onto the master bed. I was nine, with legs long enough to earn me a new nickname: xiǎo zhà měng, Wài Pó called me.
I took Mum’s hand in mine and stroked her damp, marked skin. ‘Ma!’
She did not respond. All I could see was the slow rise and fall of her chest. A faint rattle followed as she took a breath in and let it go. No longer afraid of the ugly, bleeding marks that scarred her body, I kissed the spots that I was sure were hurting her the most. Skin to skin, I searched for her smell, which was like sweet milk and lavender. Instead I found the sour odour of decay, musty and thick.
I turned on the radio. Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 was playing; I recognised it from one of her concerts. How beautiful she had looked that night, her gown decorated with gold and blue flowers that twinkled under the lights. On stage, she was no longer my mother but ‘Wáng Hùi Fāng, the award-winning pianist with hands of gold’.
My fingertips danced over her thin wrist. Her left eye opened first, and then her right. She looked at me, but it felt like she was looking at a stranger. I kissed her again on the forehead and she relaxed. A smile formed. Dimples pricked her sunken cheeks.
‘Mā ma, the music.’
She nodded slowly, her jaw chattered feverishly as she stared into the distance, then her eyes closed again. The music drifted through the air. I snuggled closer, and my arm wrapped itself around her waist.
‘I’m glad you’re home,’ I said. ‘Soon you’ll be all better and we can pick roses in Daddy’s garden again.’
I lay next to her, watching her chest rise and fall – a slow and dependable rhythm – until the light faded and the air became cold. Suddenly, she opened her eyes and, with an unexpected burst of energy, slowly pulled herself upright in the bed. The orange bandana that was wrapped tightly around her head unfurled and trailed down her back, just like her long hair used to. Startled, I sat up to meet her gaze.
‘Míng Yuè! I have something to ask of you.’ The effort of moving had made her breathless. ‘I need you to make me a promise.’
I bit my lip. I was never very good at promises.
‘Darling.’ She stroked my forehead, palm soft and clammy. ‘You will always look after your sister, won’t you?’ Her eyes were red. Switching to Chinese she said, ‘Tā xiàn zài gèng xū yào nĭ.’ She needs you more now. Her voice was softer, sweeter, when she spoke in her mother tongue. It reminded me of when I was small and she used to sing to me in Chinese. It made me feel safe; the language lulled me to sleep.
‘Yes, of course. We will all look after Harper.’
‘Here.’ She pulled open the drawer of her bedside table. Inside was a box, wrapped in pink.
I tore away the paper and lifted out a necklace with a small gold pendant.
‘Open it,’ she said.
Inside was a photo of her, dressed in yellow.
‘I’m always with you now.’ She fastened the locket around my neck, then subsided against the pillows.
The necklace was uncomfortable and I wanted to take it off. I waited until her eyes were heavy and her breathing was rough, then I climbed off the bed. Standing, I wrestled with the clasp, wondering about the promise she had asked me to make.
After a long struggle, I gave up. I couldn’t undo the necklace. It felt heavy around my neck.
My mother died that night. We never got to pick roses together again in my father’s garden.
Harper
It is a Friday morning and I am home again. It feels good to be back with all my things and to be with my family (although Marlowe is not here). Most importantly, I can see Louis more. He is about to go on a special holiday to Thailand with his family, and today I get to spend the whole day with him before he leaves. I am so excited that I feel a swirling and skipping in my belly.
This will be the first time Louis is travelling in an independent way in Hong Kong all by himself. He is carrying his mobile phone and I have told him how many coins to use to pay for the bus. I know all about money skills because my kind of Up syndrome is different from his. Mrs Green at my vocational centre said I was called ‘high functioning’, which means I can count better than Louis, and I can play the piano, and sometimes I can find the right words to say how I feel in English and also Chinese. But I know that Louis is better at other things. He is better at making our friends laugh with his jokes and pretending to be Mr Bean or Basil from Fawlty Towers. Louis is also better at remembering important facts about things and people he meets. My Louis knows how to make everyone feel special, like when he notices things about Wài Pó that I don’t. One day he told her she was beautiful when she tied her hair in a lovely way so that her pearl earrings were showing, and another time he told her that her custard tarts were very yummy – she had added extra butter and it was the perfect taste on our tongues and the most clever thing
to do.
Wài Pó pushes me in my chair to our front gate. This is the second time that she has had to do this today, because Louis got the wrong bus in the morning and we had to go back inside and wait one hour. I don’t mind about having to come outside again. It is always nice to be in the air that is fresh and salty from the sea, not like hospitals that have a smell like sour bodies.
I shiver a little because it is cold out here, but there is no need to worry. Wài Pó has put a beautiful blanket on my knees. She made it for me with wool in the colours of blue, yellow and white around the edges.
A minibus pulls in at the stop across the road. A few people get off, but I do not see Louis. My heart does a little hop inside my chest. I look at Wài Pó, who takes out her mobile phone and calls him. Her voice is small against the roar of the bus engine as it leaves our street.
‘He’ll be on the next one,’ she says, patting my shoulder.
We wait. Buses come and buses go. Every time one of them stops, I notice at least one pair of eyes staring at me without blinking. It is a funny feeling when someone stares, but I am quite used to it because I am a beautiful woman and I always try to look my best. Today, I think these people must also be admiring my beautiful blanket because Wài Pó put a lot of effort into her crochet stitching for me. This is a blanket that carries love.
There is a line forming at the bus stop now. A lot of people are waiting. A lot of people are staring with their eyes. I wave at some of them, but no one waves back. Wài Pó tells me not to do that, but I don’t understand why, so I explain to her that she is being very unfriendly.
‘He’s here!’ she shouts. A green-and-white minibus pulls up and I see behind the window that my Louis is sitting, waving. Oh! I lose the air in my lungs. I haven’t seen him in two days and I am feeling very, very happy. But then I realise Louis is not moving. He’s just waving at me with a big smile on his face and is blowing me kisses.
‘Get up!’ I shout, but having to make my voice come out in a loud way gives me a coughing fit. Louis is still sitting, waving.
