by Hannah Bent
My fingers touch all the post-it notes. Making decisions is hard, especially when I have the nerves in my body. I practise deep breathing like Wài Pó taught me.
With my eyes closed, I see Marlowe the very first moment she arrived home from London in the United Kingdom. Her hair was messy and her face looked tired because of swollen eye bags. She took my hand inside hers and I noticed that her touch was empty and loose.
Sometimes the body can be present without the spirit. That’s what Wài Pó says. I think this is true.
Eyes open, my thoughts are clear now and I choose a pink post-it note. I write my message:
We are such stuf as dreems are made on and our litle life is rounded with a sleep by William Shakespeare from the Tempest. Said by Prospero the majican. First red to me by our dad James Eve who explaned these words are somthing to do with the dreem of life. Love from your sister: Harper明华Míng Huà Eve.
I wiggle all my toes and all my fingers. For the first time in a long time they feel warm. This is because I am getting better. I always knew in my heart that I would.
Marlowe
I unpacked, putting my clothes into the same drawers they would have gone into years ago. I put my hairbrushes on top of the mahogany dressing table, which had belonged to Mum. She had given it to me before she died. Whenever I sat in front of it, I imagined it was her face I saw in the mirror.
Mum rarely wore make-up or gave much thought to her physical appearance – unless she was performing in a concert – but she did take care of her hair. When she was at the piano she wore her hair loose and sometimes it would brush her fingertips as they flew across the keys.
I used to love sitting with her when she did her hair. Her secret, she said, was to wash her hair with rice water several times a week, ‘as the Yáo women do in China’. She would comb morning and night with two different brushes: one made with goat hair and wood, the other was plastic and wide-bristled (to increase scalp circulation, she explained). Often, she would tilt her head back ever so slightly and let me do the brushing. When I touched her hair with my fingers it felt like water.
One day, when I was eight, I came home from school and found her seated at her dressing table. I ran to her but stopped as soon as I saw her face reflected in the mirror. She was pale. Her eyes were puffy.
‘Why are you crying?’ I asked.
She was holding a pair of gold scissors. The sight of them caused a flutter in my belly.
‘What are those for?’
She put them down on the table and I climbed onto her lap.
‘Míng Yuè, there’s something I need to tell you. I’m sick.’
I put my hand to her brow. It was covered in a light sheen of sweat. ‘Yes, I think you have a fever,’ I said.
She turned her head to look out of the window. ‘It’s not quite a fever, darling.’
‘Do you have a sore throat?’
She shook her head but didn’t speak.
‘Mā ma? What is it?’ Still she didn’t say anything. Was this the reason she had strange marks on her skin? ‘Even if you have a funny rash, don’t worry, I still think you’re very beautiful.’
Her gaze fell to the scissors.
‘If you’re sick,’ I told her, ‘then you should take medicine so that you can feel better.’
‘Yes,’ she said in a daze. ‘You’re right.’ She kissed me and gave me a little nudge to get off her lap. ‘Now go and help Wài Pó in the kitchen. I’ll be down soon.’
I left the room, pulling the door closed behind me, but not all the way. I stood in the shadows watching her.
It all happened so quickly. She took the scissors and, with one quick snip, cut into the side of her long hair.
Aghast, I burst into the room.
‘Stop, Mā ma! You can’t!’
But she didn’t stop. Like a robot, she kept cutting mechanically. Clumps of her hair fell to the floor.
I didn’t realise I was screaming until Wài Pó came into the room and lifted me into her arms. All I remember was the feeling of her hand on my back, patting in a steady rhythm, and the feeling of wanting to be sick. Soon, I was lowered onto my bed. Wài Pó was talking to me, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I realised that my hand was curled into a tight fist. Opening it, I saw that I’d been clutching a lock of my mother’s hair.
Harper
When I stand at the door of Marlowe’s room I can hear that the shower is on in her bathroom. I go to her dressing table and stick my post-it note onto her mirror.
‘You shouldn’t be walking around so much – you’ll run out of breath.’
Stepmonster is standing by the door. I think in my mind about how I was keeping Stepmonster’s move into our home a secret from Marlowe. A secret is a dishonest thing, and I feel guilty in my heart about it, but Stepmonster changed the air in our house the day she moved in, making it electric. Some parts of my mind were worried that if I told Marlowe while she was in England, she wouldn’t ever come home.
‘Do you need help getting ready?’ Stepmonster asked. ‘We’ll have to leave for the hospital soon.’
‘I’m much better. I don’t need to go back to the hospital now, because I am fine.’ I say it in a snappy way because I want her to leave me alone and stop bossing me around like I am still a child.
Stepmonster’s eyes become small and tight, like she is about to have a bad mood. I know she wants to frown, but she can’t because she has a stiff face. Marlowe says this is what happens when someone has plastic surgery. I think a lot of her face must be full of plastic now.
‘We can’t be late today, Harper. This meeting is very important.’
She turns and walks back down the stairs.
Late. I hate that word. Everyone is always rushing me, even Louis. I don’t like it when people always tell me to hurry hurry hurry.
Over her shoulder, Stepmonster shouts, ‘Your sister will help you down the stairs and into the car. Please start getting ready.’
She always makes my body feel closed and tight, ever since the first day I met her. She was younger then, and her face wasn’t so plastic. She had long brown hair that was in a shiny ponytail. She had a red dress that showed her long legs and when she spoke I could tell she was from a part of London that my grandpa hated, where they don’t care about bugs and trees and flowers and they like to go to the shiny shops and kiss the air when they see each other. I remember thinking in my brain that she was nothing like my mother. Mum was the earth, the night and the moon. This woman is the city, with its sparkly buildings, and she looks like money. When she first met us, she smiled at me and Marlowe, which is a nice human action, but when she turned her back, her smile went away. I looked into her eyes and her heart was hard to find. Something about her reminded me of Snow White’s evil stepmother, the wicked queen. Every good story has what is called a villain. This is a bad person. In my story Stepmonster is the villain.
I go back to my room and to my desk where I take out my brand-new book for writing stories. It is a little bit like Marlowe’s notebook she keeps for her bugs, but mine has some magic in it. The front cover is full of my decorations in patterns, colour, shapes and glitter. This is something I am good at: writing and colour.
The Storybook of Miss Harper明华Míng Huà Eve
That is what it says on my very first page. I have to think about what to write next. I remember in a book that Dad gave me called Storytelling 101 the author said to ‘start by writing what you know’. Dad explained that this means I can use my life as inspiration. I can use what happens in my day as something to make a big spark in me, send a special electricity from my arms and fingers to my pen.
The Speshel Hart
Once there was a beutiful young lady.
She had a problem with her hart but not in a romanse way becos she was good at loving –
Her hart was sick but she still new how to love.
The beutiful yong lady had speshel doctors who always helped her get beter, a speshel family, a speshe
l sister and a speshel boyfriend.
This is the story about how they all made her hart well agane.
Now all I need is for something to happen so I can write it down. I pack up my notebook and put it in my bag ready for the hospital.
There is a lovely pink rose on my bedside table. I take it out of the vase and slide it into the top of my bun. Looking into the mirror, I arrange the flower in a nice and special way. My fingers tremble as I am fixing my hair, which is the colour of black bean paste. Louis tells me that I am the most beautiful woman in the whole wide world, but today my cheeks are pale and my lips have cracks in them. I used to feel proud of my brown eyes like the lady in the song ‘Brown Eyed Girl’, but now they look too dark and I think they have lost their sparkle.
The thoughts in my brain and the feelings in my heart are fast, so I hold my breath, which makes my thinking slow down. Time for some peach blush to go on my cheeks with the soft hairs of a make-up brush. I smile. A good smile deserves some lipstick, so I choose the colour ‘plum blossom pink’ and put it over the cracks on my lips. I am not as good at putting on make-up as Marlowe is, but that’s okay. As my dad likes to say, practice makes perfect.
Dum hum da da dum hum. My hum feels strange in my chest, more like a whoosh than a thud. My head is light and giddy. I lie on my bed to catch my breath. It takes some time, but when the sounds in my body slow and my hum starts to sing, I sit up again.
Dum hum dum hum dum hum dum hum.
From inside my bedside table, I take my special beaded necklace and put it around my neck. These beads trap the light and spread it out to the world in different colours: yellow, red, orange, green, purple and blue.
Across the corridor, I can still hear the sound of Marlowe’s shower. This makes me smile in a cheeky way because this is not hurrying like Stepmonster wants. Marlowe is moving to the time of her own clock.
I put my bag and pink coat on and walk to Marlowe’s room. I sit on her bed and wait patiently. We will leave together, just like we used to.
Marlowe
Hot water trickled over my body, loosening my limbs. I inhaled steam, the moist air filling my lungs so that the world beneath my ribcage felt light and open. I imagined what breath might feel like inside Harper’s chest. Immediately, an image came to mind of a Burmese python wrapping itself around her upper torso and squeezing. My blood felt hot. I grabbed a bar of soap and ran it over my body until I reached my chest.
Shit. I was still wearing the locket.
I stepped out of the shower and, fingers trembling, opened the gold case. Inside, the photograph was damp and wrinkled at the edges.
Mā ma. This was all I had left of her. Why hadn’t I taken better care? Mā ma. Mā ma what have I done?
This happened every time I came home; something always unravelled in me.
Mā ma, come back.
The shower was still running. The splashing water reminded me of typhoon rain. So much water…
Mum loved the water. In summer she would rise early and walk down the steps at the end of the garden to the beach, and dive into the ocean. Often, she would take me with her, leaving Harper behind at home with Wài Pó. Although I cherished time alone with Mum, I hated the sea.
‘Why don’t you bring Harper? She loves the water.’
‘It’s not safe, the cold will get into her chest.’
Mum would try to coax me in, but I refused. I didn’t understand the sea. It was like her music: abstract, hard to pin down, free and unruly. If I got too close, it might snatch me and swallow my body whole.
At seven years old, and much to Mum’s disapproval, I still didn’t know how to swim. With fluorescent yellow floats strapped to my arms, I would sit by the shore, building sandcastles. I kept a close eye on her as she dipped in and out of the water, her body mimicking the movement of the waves; fluid, as if her legs had become a long tail covered in scales.
On one particular day, the tide was high. Weighty clouds hung low. It looked like it was going to rain, yet Mum kept swimming, going further and further from the shore.
I stood and waved. ‘Mā ma!’
She stopped and waved back.
Reassured, I returned to work, determined to construct a truly impressive sandcastle. I mightn’t be able to swim, but I could do other things.
It was a while before I noticed rivulets of water snaking into the moat I had made. The tide was coming in. I looked up. Clouds rolled and smacked against each other.
‘Mā ma!’ I couldn’t see her.
I ran up and down the beach, trying to catch sight of her between the cutting waves. ‘Mā ma!’ I screamed. ‘Mā ma! Come back!’ Rain began to fall, cold pinpricks against my skin. I still couldn’t see her.
I had no choice.
Jaw clenched, I stepped into the sea. To my surprise the water was tepid and felt soft; it curled around my legs like a cat brushing up against its owner. Taking a deep breath, I summoned more courage and waded further in.
‘Mā ma!’
Suddenly I felt two hands on my waist. Mum’s head, birthed from the murky green-blue, looked shiny and new.
‘Míng Yuè, why are you so scared? It’s only water.’ She was laughing!
I shook my head, fighting back tears. ‘Where did you go?’
‘I was always close by.’
The rain felt colder now; I started to shiver. Mum drew me to her and held me close. I rested my head at the nape of her neck. Salt washed over my lips. Before I knew it, we were drifting together, weightless. Gradually, I felt my fear wash away.
In time, the tips of our fingers began to wrinkle. The rain had stopped and Mum began to wade towards the shore. I felt the weight of my body once more. When we reached the sand, she lowered me to the ground.
‘No!’ I shouted. I didn’t want to let go.
‘You can walk on your own now.’
Harper was the baby, not me, and yet I wanted to stay in Mum’s arms. She helped me to make sense of things I didn’t understand. With her I felt safe.
Someone was dabbing my cheeks with a pine-scented tissue. I opened my eyes. Harper was squatting beside me.
‘It’s okay, Marlowe,’ she whispered. ‘It’s okay.’ She pushed her round glasses up the bridge of her nose then stood up, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around me. I noticed the tap had been turned off.
She took the locket from my hands and peered at Mum’s photo, then tentatively stroked the sodden lock of hair beside it. ‘Is this Mum’s hair?’ she asked.
I nodded.
‘You know that it is a bit gross.’
My sob turned into a laugh.
She looked at me, her gaze piercing.
‘Blue suits you best.’ She walked out of the bathroom into the adjoining bedroom. I heard a dresser drawer slide open. ‘You need to get ready now, Marlowe,’ she called. I could hear her rummaging through my clothes.
‘There are no blue clothes here. Only black. Oh dear.’ After a few minutes of silence, she squealed. ‘You have a jumper that’s not black!’
She returned to the bathroom carrying a pair of ripped black jeans and Olly’s maroon jumper. I stood and took the clothes from her.
‘Thanks, Harper. Why don’t you sit down? I don’t want you to get too tired.’
‘I’m okay.’ She handed me another tissue.
I gently pushed it away.
She sat next to me.
‘Why is your heart sad?’
I swallowed hard. ‘I’m fine, don’t worry about me.’ I looked at her and put my hand to her cheek. Her skin was softer than the tissue she had used to wipe my tears away.
‘You know, when my heart feels sad, I think of all the good things in my life.’ She paused to catch her breath. ‘There’s so many things…’
‘So many things,’ I echoed. My voice did not sound like my own.
She took my hand in hers and patted it gently. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. After a few seconds of observing me quite thoughtfully, she lowered her
head and planted a little wet kiss on my left hand.
Harper
The hospital smells like mint leaves and roses. Even though I came here a while ago for my emergency fever, this is the fourth hospital I have been to this week and it is very different from the others. It has shiny floors, sesame bun–coloured walls and pink flowers that look like fluffy fairy floss.
I am in a wheelchair. I always get put in a wheelchair when I come to hospital. Even though I want to get out, I don’t, because Marlowe told the nurse that she will push me. I like it when she takes care of me. She does it best. Good things always happen when she is home.
Stepmonster presses the elevator button to the fifth floor and looks at her watch.
‘We’re late,’ she says, looking at Marlowe and me as if we are the villains of this story.
We enter the elevator and rise up up up through the building like we are in a spaceship. I feel a squeezing in my chest like I am sure all astronauts do when they lift off into the world of stars and the bursting light of souls gone from this earth.
The doors swing open and my tall and handsome dad is standing there. He wears shiny leather shoes which have been made with love and care in his factory. My dad used to always wear a bow tie but he doesn’t anymore.
‘There you are, Dad! How was your day?’
He does not reply because he is staring at Marlowe and his face goes a bit pale. This is a great time to make my second writing entry in my autobiography storybook. In Storytelling 101 the author says that ‘relationships and conflict are key to the success of a good story’. I had to ask my dad to explain the meaning of this to me and he did. Now I can feel the relationship and the conflict in the space between him and my sister.
‘A Hospital Meeting’
A father sees his first dauter after a long long time of not seeing her. Insted of giving her one big hug, he puts his hand on her back. His eyes are full with things to say. Insted only 4 words come out of his mothe.
