Ghost Forest

by Pik-Shuen Fung

  Otherwise, we had to go to the bathrooms by the stairwell in the middle of the H. There were men’s and women’s bathrooms, but there were no doors, just open cubicles. After you walked in, you didn’t know where to step because the kids pooped all over the floor, and sometimes bad men would peek inside. I can’t seem to let go of this part of the past. Even now, those bathrooms give me nightmares.

  A SEPIA PHOTOGRAPH

  My grandma said that even though their apartment was one of the biggest in the H-shaped building, there was only one bedroom. She and my grandpa slept in the living room behind a curtain, and put bunk beds in the bedroom for the other seven.

  There were nine of you? I asked.

  There was me and your grandpa, she said. Your mom, your five aunts and uncles, and my mother.

  Your mother? What was she like?

  Not good. But she was very beautiful.

  Do you have any pictures?

  My grandma shuffled into her room and came back out with a sepia photograph, torn at the edges and creased all over. In the photograph, two young women with wispy bangs, wearing plain dresses with high collars, stand in front of a painted landscape, facing the camera. My grandma pointed to the tall one with the piercing gaze.

  Back then, she said, many Chinese men were sold like piglets to the West, to build railroads and to work on farms. My great-grandfather was sold as an indentured servant to a fruit farm in Tahiti. In Tahiti, the farm owner’s daughter fell in love with him and followed him back to China. She eventually learned to speak the local dialect, but the villagers called her gwaipo for the rest of her life. That’s why my mother was so beautiful—she was the granddaughter of a Tahitian beauty. She was so beautiful, and she gave birth to me, so ugly. Maybe I look like my father.

  MY GRANDMA SAYS:

  I have a square face and a big mouth. One of my eyes has a monolid and the other has a double lid. But at least I’m pretty clever, right? Did you know I was the one who got us the big apartment in the first place? Before that, all nine of us lived in a single room in the Jordan neighborhood. Outside our building, there was a medical van, with a doctor we could go see. One day, I went downstairs to the van to see the doctor. Coincidentally, the nurse was not working that day. I said, Why isn’t there anyone here to take names? The doctor said, Well, do you want to do it?

  The pay was one hundred and forty dollars, including cleaning the van. The van was a bit bigger than a seven-person van. Inside, there was a desk and a long chair for patients to sit. It was really easy to clean the van and to sign people in. The doctor saw that my handwriting was nice, so he hired me.

  Soon after, a talented female doctor started working in the van. She’d just moved to Hong Kong from the mainland and couldn’t work in a hospital yet. She taught me how to give an injection. You break the needle at the top and then you flick the needle. You poke the butt cheek one-third of the distance from where the bone is. She said, I’ll let you practice on my fat butt!

  It’s easy to put a needle in a fat butt. But then someone came in to get a shot, and it was an old person, whose butt was very wrinkly. It was so hard to put the needle in.

  Then there was a different nurse who prepared the medicine. One time, that nurse went out to lunch and told me to prepare the medicine for her. Back then, I didn’t even know the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. An old lady came in to pick up her prescription. The doctor had decreased her dosage from one pill to half a pill, but I didn’t see clearly what the doctor wrote, so I gave her one of everything. Afterward, when I looked at the prescription again, I started sweating and sweating. After that, I was more careful.

  One day, the area official came in to get a hormone shot. While I was poking the needle into his butt, I thought to say, There are nine of us in my family living in only one small room, and I want to apply for a better one. I don’t know how, but he helped me apply for that apartment in Wang Tau Hom, the one your mother just told you about.

  How come I remember the past so clearly? These days I walk into the kitchen and forget what I wanted to eat!

  LUNAR NEW YEAR

  Every year when my dad came to Vancouver for Lunar New Year, our house had to be clean and quiet. For two weeks, everyone tiptoed up and down the stairs, and watched television with the volume on low.

  Before every meal, my sister and I had to address each adult at the table, starting with our dad. We couldn’t watch Cantonese detective dramas or talk with food in our mouths, so we ate in silence, only the clink-clink of chopsticks against our porcelain bowls.

  Gwaai, my mom would say. Be gwaai for these two weeks. Your dad works so hard for you in Hong Kong.

  But the real reason we were quiet was because my dad was jet-lagged, and whenever he couldn’t sleep, he got angry, his eyes reddening behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He never raised his voice though. His anger was the cold clenched kind that left the room in silence.

  My mom says that for a few years after we immigrated to Canada, every time my dad left for the airport, I cried. But I don’t remember that. When I think of Lunar New Year growing up, I think of the black lacquer box my mom filled with salty watermelon seeds, candied lotus root, and milky White Rabbit candies. I think of sitting cross-legged on the carpet with my sister and laying out our red pocket money. And I think of counting down the days until our house could be itself again.

  SUMMERS

  Everyone says Vancouver is best in the summertime—not too hot, not too cool, not a drop of rain. But we were never there to enjoy it because as soon as school got out, my mom, my sister, and I packed our suitcases and flew to Hong Kong.

  Everyone says Hong Kong is worst in the summertime. It’s so hot you sweat as soon as you step out of the shower, so humid that it’s hard to breathe. And on top of that, summer is typhoon season, so it’s often pouring rain.

  THINGS STRANGERS IN HONG KONG SAID TO ME EVERY SUMMER

  Are you back for summer holiday?

  As soon as I saw you, I could tell.

  Where are you back from?

  My friend’s niece is also in Canada, but she’s in Toronto, very cold.

  You speak Cantonese better than she does though.

  Will you come back to Hong Kong to look for jobs when you’re older?

  You should come back, or you’ll grow roots over there.

  How did I know you grew up abroad?

  I can tell from your innocent face!

  LUCKY BAMBOO AND MONEY TREES

  At some point in high school, my dad moved into a new apartment in Hong Kong. Unlike the old one, the new apartment was clean and bright. It had a balcony that looked out on the sea. In the living room, a beige couch faced the television, and a second couch sat perpendicular. Ten dark wood chairs surrounded a long dining table, with my dad’s chair at the head. In the corners and along the walls, lucky bamboo grew in clear water vases that glinted in the sun, while braided money trees rose from white and blue porcelain pots. My dad beamed as he gave us a tour of his new home.

  During the day, when my dad was at work, my mom, my sister, and I walked around the malls, soaking in air-conditioning. Sometimes we went to lunch with our aunts, and sometimes we went to see the herbalist. In the evenings, while my dad watched the news, my sister and I bent over our laptops, chatting online with our friends. We spent the whole summer this way, and then, at the end of August, we flew back to Vancouver, carrying suitcases of clothes still damp with humidity.

  YELLOW TULIPS

  When I was in grade eleven, my grandpa felt a sharp pain in his jaw, and when my mom shined a flashlight into his wide open mouth, she saw a ball of pink flesh growing inside.

  After my grandpa checked into the hospital, my dad and all my aunts and uncles came from Hong Kong to Vancouver to see him. My mom said I didn’t have to visit him since I was nearing finals and it was important that I study hard.

  A
nd when my grandpa died, everyone attended the funeral, everyone except me because I had an exam that day. I remember that night after they came home from the funeral, I sat on the couch watching a Cantonese comedy, maybe with an aunt or two. I remember laughing extra loud, I wanted to hear my own laughter, I wanted it to travel through the house.

  My dad told me it was vulgar of me to be so loud at such a time. He said, Who knows what your relatives are thinking of you now.

  The day my grandpa died, he converted to Christianity. As he lay in the hospital bed, he turned to my mom and asked her to call the nuns. I don’t know how my mom knew these nuns. When the nuns arrived, they stood on each side of him, and said prayers as they held his hands. Then my grandpa closed his eyes.

  They say the funeral was joyous. My mom said she had never been to a funeral like it before. The nuns sang prayers, and the room shone with light. My sister said at one point everyone stood in a circle and sang to celebrate his life.

  When my mom thinks of her father, she thinks of how he rushed back to Vancouver as soon as he found out my mom was pregnant with my sister. She thinks of all the steamed buns he kneaded with his hands because she was so hungry then. And she thinks of a Cantonese saying: Trees want to be still, but the wind won’t stop blowing. When children want to care for their parents, it’s already too late.

  When I think of my grandpa, I think of the jolly old man who befriended all our neighbors in Vancouver, who made the juiciest pork and vegetable dumplings, and who planted yellow tulips in our backyard in the spring. I think of his bright face, wishing me good morning, every single morning, with the enthusiasm of a child.

  THE PAINTING OF HORSES

  In my last year of high school, my mom asked me to make a painting for my dad. The Feng Shui master advised my dad to hang one in his apartment, on the wall behind his chair at the head of the dinner table.

  The painting has to have nine horses, my mom told me. They have to be galloping.

  I went to the art store and picked out sturdy stretchers and thick cotton canvas. I bought a new set of Windsor & Newton oil paints and different sizes of soft sable brushes. I bought a brush cleaner jar with a metal coil inside, and a new can of odorless mineral spirits. I searched online for an image of nine horses galloping, but I couldn’t find one, so I took an image of six horses galloping and an image of three horses galloping from the same perspective, and photoshopped them together. Then I painted the canvas with a ground of yellow ochre, sketched the outlines of the horses with burnt sienna, and blocked out the dark areas with raw umber.

  When I started hearing back from colleges, I stopped painting. I couldn’t sleep at night. My hair fell out when I touched it. I didn’t look in the mirror because every day my face grew a new pimple.

  In the end, I was accepted to two colleges. Deciding between the two, I called my dad to ask for his advice.

  It’s up to you, he said. Both are good, but neither one is Harvard.

  When my mom saw me slouched over my desk that night, she said, Choi yung sat ma—do you know what it means? It’s a proverb about an old man who was sad because he lost his horse. But it was a good thing in the end.

  Why was it a good thing?

  I don’t remember, but the point of the proverb is, what you think is bad might be good, and what you think is good might be bad. Choi yung sat ma, that’s what it means.

  I spent the months after that studying for my provincial exams, driving around with my friends, and packing my suitcases. Then I left for college.

  Four months later, when I came home for winter break, my mom asked me when I was going to finish the painting.

  I don’t know, I said. I don’t make realistic paintings anymore.

  So my dad went to a painting factory in Shenzhen and hired a painter there to make one for him.

  In the painting, nine horses gallop through a lush forest clearing, their manes gilded orange by the rising sun. My dad hung the painting in his apartment, behind his chair at the head of the dinner table, in a three-inch carved golden frame.

  THE GAME

  The first time I flew to Hong Kong by myself was the summer after my first year of college. My sister was still in high school, so my mom stayed in Vancouver with her. I’d applied to ten internships and gotten one at an advertising agency in Hong Kong. It was the first time my dad and I would spend a full month together without my mom and sister.

  It was the summer of 2006, which meant it was the World Cup. I knew my dad liked the Brazil team, so I asked if he wanted to watch their match together after my first day at work. I called to let him know I was heading home from the office. It seemed like something a good daughter would do.

  Hello? he said.

  I’m coming back now, I said.

  Who are you talking to?

  I’m talking to you?

  When I got home, he was sitting on the beige couch, staring ahead through his wire-rimmed glasses. The television was off.

  Why didn’t you address me? he said, still staring at the blank television.

  What are you talking about?

  When you called, why didn’t you say, Hi Dad?

  Are you serious? I called to tell you I was coming back.

  I lay down on the couch perpendicular to him and stared at the ceiling.

  Look at me when I’m talking to you, he said.

  I counted the ridges in the pale yellow lamp above me.

  Look at me, he said.

  Why are you making such a big deal out of this? I said.

  He stood up and walked out of the room, slamming the door.

  I went to my room, took out my laptop, and crawled into bed. Half an hour later, I heard a quiet knocking. I got out of bed and stood there, facing the closed door.

  The World Cup is starting in a few minutes, my dad said.

  I imagined him standing on the other side of the door, facing me. Maybe he would be looking at his feet.

  I don’t feel like watching it anymore, I said.

  I listened to his footsteps padding away.

  I got back into bed and watched the game from my laptop, not leaving my room until the next morning.

  MY HARD HEAD

  My mom says I had a hard head even before I was born. She says it’s because she drank herbs throughout her pregnancy, prescribed to her by a miracle herbalist in Hong Kong. So that when she was in labor in the birthing ward, and the doctor sucked me out with a vacuum, all the nurses gasped at how round my head was, how the skull was already formed.

  That’s why you’re so stubborn, my mom says. And you inherited your dad’s bad temper too. But at least your head isn’t pointy.

  SIR

  That summer, I got to meet my dad’s college friends. There were six of them, including my dad, the entire class in the Department of Business Management that year. My dad picked a nice buffet restaurant so that everyone could eat as much as they wanted.

  So what was my dad like in college? I asked, as soon as we sat down with our food.

  Everyone respected him.

  He was president of this, president of that.

  Student council.

  Volleyball team.

  A good student.

  A good person.

  Our nickname for him was Sir.

  I looked over at my dad, who was sitting at the other end of the table, laughing as his classmate patted him on the shoulder.

  The night before, as I was walking toward the front door of our apartment, I saw his one place setting at the long dinner table. There was a white porcelain bowl on a white porcelain plate, a pair of wooden chopsticks, and a white porcelain spoon.

  I thought then of my mom, my sister, and me, in Vancouver, sitting around the dinner table eating pizza pockets and giggling on a Saturday night. My mom would say, Your dad must be awake by now, give hi
m a call later. And I hoped she would forget, or my dad would be in the bathroom when we called, or lightning would strike the telephone lines across the street. What was I supposed to say to my dad, if I didn’t have any new accomplishments to tell him? And why did I always have to do all the talking?

  I looked back at his place setting on the table. I saw, in one moment, all the other times it sat there. With the news on, while a typhoon lashed rain against the windows, as a fly buzzed around the room. During the green spring, through the humid summer, in the white morning light of winter. For most of the year, he worked all day, came home to eat alone, and couldn’t fall asleep at night.

  I turned the doorknob and shouted, Dad, I’m going out to meet my friends now!

  Okay, enjoy! he said, from somewhere in the kitchen.

  As I descended in the elevator, face-to-face with my reflection, I counted all the seconds it took to reach the ground.

  MY MOTHER CALLS FROM CANADA WHILE I’M IN HONG KONG

  I talked to your dad on the phone the other day, my mom said. He couldn’t sleep. He said he was regretful.

  Of what? I asked.

  He regrets that we raised you and your sister in Canada, while he worked so much in Hong Kong.

  Why?

  He said you don’t have Chinese roots. He said a Chinese person should know the Chinese language, culture, and history, but you and your sister don’t. He said you don’t even know to address him when you call.

  Are you serious? Then why did we move away in the first place?