Ghost Forest

by Pik-Shuen Fung

  Does that make you think about Dad?

  It makes me think about the infusions, the tubes, the cuts, the ventilator. I can still hear the sound of that ventilator breathing after he died. Why didn’t I say something? Why didn’t I ask Dad what he wanted? When he first admitted himself to the hospital, he thought he would be there for only a month and he was there for almost a year until he died. But then I also think, I didn’t know any better, how was I supposed to know? And why didn’t the doctors say something to us? Why didn’t they tell us what his chances really were?

  But maybe he wanted to live. You know those stories about old couples, all their hair has gone white, one of them dies and the other dies not long after. Dad probably could have let go a lot earlier if he had wanted to.

  I guess so.

  What do you think Dad’s best possible day would have been like?

  DREAM

  Last night I had a dream.

  In the dream, my dad’s face surfaced. It was healthy, and blurry around the edges.

  He spoke to me without making a sound.

  I chose to die, he said.

  I woke up, with warm tears running down my face, forming a cool damp patch against my cheek on the pillow.

  Then I fell asleep again.

  AN EMAIL FROM MY DAD

  While cleaning out old emails, I stumbled upon one from my dad, dated November 2006. I was in my second year of college then, applying for summer internships, worried about finding the right one for my future.

  He wrote:

  I am very happy to receive your e-mail. The letter you wrote to your grandma in Chinese is excellent. Although there are mistakes, you actually improve a lot and master the language and vocabulary confidently and beautifully.

  I have said before that the first or second job is not important and may not be your future career. Sometimes you may think or wander but don’t be too serious—especially for the summer job. We easily change. Study and enjoy!

  I stared at the screen. I had no memory of reading this email.

  Why did I remember only his disappointment in me?

  Did I ever get to know who he was becoming? Did I try?

  A MEMORY

  There is a memory I can revisit only in pieces.

  I am standing in the hospital.

  My dad is sitting up in his bed.

  Somehow, no one else is in the room.

  There is a square of yellow sunlight on the floor, a small suitcase by my feet.

  Outside, a taxi is waiting.

  In this life, my dad says.

  His voice cracks. He turns his face away from me.

  In this life, he says, it is one of my greatest fortunes that I was blessed with two daughters.

  HOME

  After my dad died, my mom’s lungs collapsed again for the first time in thirty years.

  She sold our childhood home in Vancouver, said goodbye to our family friends, and returned to Hong Kong with my grandma.

  Though it was hard when they first immigrated, after living there for over two decades, my mom and my grandma both grew to prefer Vancouver. The green, the quiet. The temperate winters and mediterranean summers. The air is so fresh in Canada, they said. But since my sister and I moved away for school and work, they found no reason to stay anymore.

  I said, I thought you liked living in Vancouver. Why are you moving back to Hong Kong?

  My mom replied, What else am I supposed to do?

  I once asked my dad, If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?

  He said, I don’t want to live anywhere else. I like Hong Kong. It is my home.

  My mom says that for a few years after we immigrated to Vancouver, every time my dad left for the airport, I cried.

  One time, a day or two after he flew back to Hong Kong, my mom volunteered to work as a translator at the community center registration evening. She signed up for it because she thought it would be a chance to learn something new.

  I don’t remember this, but my mom says that night as she walked toward the door, I started to wail. I tugged at her clothes and begged her not to go. She told me that she would be back soon, that she would be right back, she was only going to the community center for a few hours. But I cried and cried, I cried so hard that my grandma had to hold me back as my mom stepped outside and locked the door.

  I think that at some point along the way, maybe in that moment, I collapsed proximity with love.

  And as I got older, I kept moving and moving—from Vancouver to Providence to London to New York—because whenever I started to feel attached to a place or to people, I wanted, subconsciously, to make sure I would be the first to leave.

  These days, my relatives say, Hurry up and come back to Hong Kong. Why do you leave your mother all alone?

  And I am overcome with envy for the people who live where they were born and raised. Why is it that I have to choose?

  HAIR CEREMONY

  While cleaning out my dad’s closet in our apartment in Hong Kong, my mom found a box of tapes, shot with the giant black handheld recorder my parents used in the eighties and nineties.

  In the thick humidity of Hong Kong, some of the tapes grew mold over the years, like little snowflakes blossoming on the surface of the film. Some of them were damaged and had to be thrown out. Of the remaining footage, many of the colors faded, creating beautiful tinges of pink, blue, and green that shine out of nowhere.

  My mom asked her friend to digitize the footage, and brought it on a thumb drive to New York, where I was now living.

  In one video, dated October 1986, my mom sits in a wicker chair, wearing pink poplin pajamas with a white bib collar. She looks ahead at a mirror on the table in front of her, head tipped slightly forward, as her sister-in-law wraps a cypress leaf into her hair with red string. It is the night before my parents’ wedding in Hong Kong, and my mom is not yet twenty-seven.

  Are you already filming? my mom asks.

  I’m filming! my uncle shouts from behind the camera.

  I’ll smile prettier, then, my mom says, and her face breaks into a grin.

  Off-screen, my grandma chuckles. Then one of our elder female relatives steps forward and picks up two wooden combs. As she runs them through my mom’s hair, she says:

  Yat so, so dou mei,

  The first comb, combs to the end,

  (May your marriage last a lifetime)

  Yi so, ji syun mun dei,

  The second comb, to have children and grandchildren everywhere,

  (May you be blessed with children and grandchildren)

  Saam so, baak faat chai mei!

  The third comb, for white hair and white eyebrows!

  (May you be blessed with longevity)

  My mom bobs her head happily as everyone claps and cheers. Then two hands appear in the camera frame, placing two Coca-Cola cans on the table. In each red can stands a flaming red candlestick.

  Now what happens? my uncle’s voice asks.

  Now we wait until they burn to the end, someone replies.

  That’s going to take so long! my uncle says.

  No, it won’t take long. It won’t take long at all, someone else replies.

  As the video clip ends, the room is full of the warm chatter and laughter of my mom and her family.

  The night before my own wedding in New York, my mom came to my apartment with a set of hair ceremony tools that she brought over from Hong Kong.

  Laid out on top of a red piece of card paper and wrapped in flimsy clear plastic, the set had two red dragon phoenix wax candles on wooden sticks, a pair of scissors with shiny golden handles, a red ruler, a mirror with a handle wrapped in red brocade, a spool of green thread, a spool of red thread, and a round wooden comb.

  I asked my sister to film
it for me.

  In the video, I sit in a gray chair, wearing a pale pink T-shirt and pink and white striped boxer shorts, facing an open window where I can see the moon. On the coffee table in front of me, all the items from the hair ceremony set are laid out. The pair of red wax candles stand upright in an empty jam jar, flaming.

  Beside me, my mom bows three times. Then she places three glowing joss sticks into the jam jar next to the candles. Pinching a bobby pin between her thumb and forefinger, she slides a cypress leaf with red string into my hair. Then she leans back to take a better look, tucks some of my hair behind my ear, and hands me the mirror wrapped in red brocade. Thank you, I say. I hold the mirror with both hands. She picks up the wooden comb, smiling, and says, You’re grown up now. I wish you good health and happiness in your life.

  According to tradition, the bride is meant to look at her own reflection in the mirror all throughout the hair ceremony. But as my mom slid the comb through my hair, I couldn’t help but angle the mirror so that I could look at her face instead, so attentive, as she recited the same three blessings given to her thirty years before.

  TEA CEREMONY

  My grandma flew to New York for my wedding too, but she missed my hair ceremony. She was at her hotel, jet-lagged from the sixteen-hour flight, resting.

  For years, whenever we talked on the phone, I would say to my grandma, You have to take care of your health so that you can see me walk down the aisle!

  And she would say, I know, I’m taking my vitamins every day. I hope you get married soon so I can meet your baby!

  Then she would let out her low-pitched cackle.

  The day before the wedding, we held an unconventional tea ceremony, as my family and my husband’s family gathered together in our apartment. Since my husband’s family is not Chinese, one of my aunts explained every step in Cantonese, then I translated it into English for them.

  One after another, our elder relatives took turns sitting on the couch, sometimes as a couple and sometimes as an individual, as my husband and I, kneeling on bright red cushions on the floor, offered them pu’erh tea.

  Two of my aunts stationed themselves by the kitchen sink, washing the teacups after every round, and my younger cousin scuttled back and forth with a tray, taking away the used teacups and bringing us fresh ones.

  When it was finally time for my mom’s turn, as she sat down on the couch alone, I couldn’t help but imagine my dad beside her.

  And when it was my grandma’s turn, as she lowered herself onto the couch, I was struck by how small her body was, surprised by how fragile it appeared in the moment that as I lifted her a full teacup with both my hands, I couldn’t stop the tears from running.

  GRANDMOTHERS

  My grandma says that, of all the people she has known in her life, she misses her grandma the most. She says, I cared about her, but I didn’t know how to appreciate her. She was kind and hardworking, and she suffered so much. But I asked her to cook for me even when she was very old.

  When my grandma tells me this, she is staring at the ground, her gray-white hair backlit against the sunny window. I feel, in that moment, a feeling I cannot put into words. As silly as it sounds, it somehow never occurred to me you could miss someone when you’re that old. She has missed her grandma for over fifty years, and that is so much longer than I have been alive.

  A STICK OF INCENSE

  After the wedding, my husband and I flew to Hong Kong and went with my mom to the columbarium where my dad’s urn is housed. By the entrance, a shop sold all kinds of paper offerings, from clothing to sports cars to abalone and roast goose. We picked out a green sweater, a white button-down, gray pants, and brown Converse shoes.

  Among the wall of little portraits, we found the picture of my dad, the one I took of him at the beach all those years ago, the one where his eyes crinkle. We each lit a stick of incense for him and bowed three times. Then we went over to the furnace to burn his new outfit.

  Come get your stuff! my mom and I shouted, as my husband stoked the flames.

  SO MANY QUESTIONS

  There are so many questions I want to ask my dad.

  What were you like when you were a kid?

  What are the things you wish you’d known?

  What makes you sad?

  And what makes you happy?

  People ask me why I’ve been recording my mother’s and grandmother’s stories.

  I asked them questions only after my dad died.

  THE HALLWAY

  There is a memory I held against my mom for years, one that took place in our childhood home in Vancouver. In this memory, our house is dark except for the dimly lit hallway between my mom’s room and the bathroom. She and I are standing in this hallway, and I am looking up at her, the lightbulb above us casting deep shadows down her face.

  She screams at me, and I don’t know what I have done wrong. She yells, I should just die! If I die early, your life would be better, wouldn’t it!

  For years, I thought, why would anyone ever say that to a child?

  Only recently did I think to ask my mom what it was like to give birth in a foreign land, so far away from her husband, to a baby that wasn’t expected to live.

  MY MOM SAYS:

  After your sister was born, the nurses drew her blood every day for testing. Since she didn’t have enough platelets, she bruised wherever they poked the needle, and, after a while, her skin was purple all over. So they shaved off some of her hair and drew from her head.

  Then the nurse said they would have to put in a central venous line. After they gave your sister a platelet infusion, they took her downstairs for the surgery. I waited upstairs, I didn’t know why it was taking so long. Then they told me they’d given her too much anesthesia, so she was still asleep.

  Your aunt came to Vancouver to help me. She stayed overnight in the hospital to watch over your sister, so I could sleep in my own bed. One day, she saw that a nurse accidentally pulled out the central line by one or two inches while cleaning the area. Your aunt started crying because she was so scared. The doctor said they would need to give her another platelet infusion and redo the surgery.

  Platelet infusion is very painful, more painful than blood. Your sister screamed so loudly.

  After we got home from the hospital, I sterilized the central line every day and replaced the gauze and tape. You have to keep it really clean because it can get infected. I was so afraid of dirtiness. If I went out and bought a box of tissues, I wiped the box with rubbing alcohol as soon as I got home. I washed my hands all the time. I was like that for a few years.

  Every day I waited for the results of the blood test. Your dad was in Hong Kong, he was very worried, and every day he called me and asked for the report. But sometimes the hospital didn’t have the results ready, and whenever I didn’t have an answer for your dad, he got mad at me.

  During this period, I got angry easily. Sometimes my brain thought, I need to leave this place, I need to go away.

  When your sister was two and a half and fully recovered, we went back to Hong Kong for the first time since immigrating. Your dad still lived with his mother and sister in their old apartment, and that apartment was so dirty. The two of you slept on the floor next to our bed, and you stepped all over the blankets with your dirty feet. I worried your sister would get an infection. So I decided to mop the floors myself. The first time I mopped the floors, the bucket of water turned black, so I mopped it a second time, and the water was still black, so I mopped it a third time. I barely slept because your sister was jet-lagged and ran around the apartment in the middle of the night. I remember one night I followed her into the kitchen, and when I turned on the light, cockroaches scattered across the floor, and your sister started crying. Then she got chicken pox too. I was so tired, looking after the two of you. That summer I threw stuff and punched the bed.

  All day, your da
d was at work. One evening, he came home from work and we took the two of you out to have dinner at Snow Garden Restaurant. There was a long wait, so I decided to stand outside by myself. I was so tired from mopping that my legs felt like jelly. Your dad came outside to ask me what I was doing.

  When he saw that I was upset, he got upset at me. Who was more upset? We sat through dinner competing.

  WHY NOT SPEND IT HAPPILY?

  When did you get better? I asked.

  My mom said, Back then, I was always thinking, I don’t want to stay here, I want to go somewhere where I am alone and there is nobody else. I think I was better after I stopped having those thoughts. I don’t know when it was. I never saw any doctors because I didn’t know there was anything wrong with me. Nobody noticed either. I only realized later, years after I’d gotten better.

  Did Dad know about it?

  I didn’t tell him and he didn’t ask me. We only spent time together once a year when we came back to Hong Kong for the summers, and every time he got angry at me about something. Every year I wanted to tell him, and every year I waited to do it. Then I didn’t have the chance to tell him anymore. That’s why I want to say something to you now. I see you only once a year, and every time you get angry at me about something, just like your dad did. I know everyone has different tempers, so I haven’t held it against you. I’m not blaming myself and I’m not blaming you either. I know very little. I didn’t get as much education as you, so if I do something wrong, you can tell me and we can talk about it. It’s very hard when you get angry at me every time we see each other. I never got the chance to tell your dad, so now I’m telling you. I don’t want to keep it in my heart. We spend so little time together, why not spend it happily? I wasn’t going to say anything, since I knew you wouldn’t want to hear it, but then you’ve been asking me all these questions about the past.