IV. Explanations
[I called LAX the next morning. After stopping at Watsons, she met me for the train ride towards the Island. We stood at one end of the car and talked. What follows is both translation and transcription. Arthur]
I got the name LAX while I lived in California. San Francisco, mostly. My aunt gave it to me almost as soon as I arrived at the airport. I said I wanted to see Hollywood. I said this in Canto. And she laughed at me, supposedly a warm laugh, but it’s safe to say I already knew better. She spoke in English to me, even, most often, when it was unnecessary. I never should have left whatever home was mine.
“This is the wrong airport, you should have gone to LAX!”
It was not what I had been expecting. America was not what I had been expecting. Whatever in extremis: the name grew wings and crossed the ocean. I had to choose a name when I began applying to work at bars. I do think of it as a form of protection. Beyond this, I’ll attach no significance to it, not important.
My mom announced the move by email. It was as if she’d forgotten I had already returned from California, and was only at school. She wasn’t sure how to talk to me anymore—American had made it harder. But, whatever, within a couple weeks it was done. There were the movers, dad’s growing neurosis, the bottles of 7-11 whiskey that lined his mantle to be disposed of. I hid in Mei’s and my room, door pulled shut, the street whirling up to me through the open window as I sat cross-legged on the bed. The air conditioner silenced, I tried to meditate, but instead I began inventorying everything I’d miss. In America, I’d gotten so sick of the overdose of space, the long, silent, carpet stifled halls from bedroom to bedroom. Lonely, homelessness. Here, I could reach out and nearly touch both dull walls.
Those last few days I would move back and forth between our illegal storeroom, a cancer lump on tower’s back, and the long bug poles out front for the laundry, trying to fix it like a photograph. I looked my skin over in the bedroom mirror, scratches running its length, and tried to taste it. Strange, sexy neighborhood voices echo down the stairwell. A rosewood bench in the dining room corner, long covered in old newspapers, emerged to dust in the light. An ancient mahjong set turned up from beneath a table leg. From beneath the beds, or maybe between them, that tiny space, came dust, old pink diaries, a Keroro doll. I sat on the mattress and stared out the open window at a Church add printed 16 stories up across the alley. And my armoire. The pale red print above the caligraphized wallpaper. The metal supports of the bed. The antique dining room, salvaged from an uncle with colonial pretensions. I guess I suffer from the same delusions—new territories, new speech, New Woman—all so bland, bland, bland, inhuman :(. I think I could see the storm rolling in. The people caught in the center probably have the right to kill themselves—Leslie Cheung, Yuan Ling-yu, Kurt Cobain. That’s what else I did—I christened home, on it’s way to oblivion, with Nirvana. West Coast habit. Not that I really expected to get anywhere by meditating or trancing out—LOL—maybe it doesn’t matter. It is the trance that matters. The street ceased speaking.
Mom understood, something.
“We should have moved a long time ago.”
“Ok-la.” Without enthusiasm.
“You don’t think so?”
“I’ll miss the Souls for Christ.”
“What? You mean that weird stuff across the street? You’ve never been over there, have you?”
“We’re getting rid of uncle Li’s furniture too.”
“Why are you dragging the Viceroy’s ghost into this? He wouldn’t care. You’re allowed to be sad—but isn’t this just a little silly? Unjustifiably, you think?” She pouted and over-pronounced the endearment, Viceroy, in English. I kicked absentmindedly at the rosewood table leg, its complex, decaying, hand-fashioned design. Mom continued to look at me weirdly, so I put my hand on her shoulder. My new bed, I knew, would be more comfortable. Can I not imply that I am a masochist, that I am Chinese? And I respected my mom, just a little, for what she did not say, nothing about the time I’d spent in America, supposedly getting an education but really just fucking it up.
“I ran into Mei and Wing downstairs.”
“How were they?” She turned towards me again, wrinkles creasing around her eyes.
“They looked happy. They were eating some tofu…” I paused for a second and looked down at my toes. “She wants him to buy a her a bird from the bird market…some kind of parrot. For the new apartment, he was teasing her about how they eat grasshoppers.” I let my hand drop from her shoulder.
“Mei has such good luck with boys.”
“Mom?”
“What?”
“I’m thinking of going back to my job at the bar.”
“You don’t need the money do you?”
“No, I need the work. I’m bored.”
“Mei is almost in lower six now.”
“And I should be a good example for her…but she doesn’t need an example. Here I am…entertain me.” I sang in English.
My mother sat down heavily, kicking off her plastic slippers. I tried to stretch my hand towards her again, but she brushed it away. So instead I ran it over my shoulder, casting around the room to avoid her eyes. My mom tries so hard! There is nothing I can say to her. There is nowhere I can go for her. My sister will have a good, well-behaved, human boyfriend. I work in a bar, all the more now, since I just paid for a friend’s bad deal. But I can’t tell her that, just like she can’t tell me that something went wrong in America. And something did. I feel like I have something to explain, over and over again, something to tell, something to let out, and I can’t. I just can’t. It is a form of protection, but it’s digging into my skin, the skin I know, the skin I can see in my mirror. I went back to my room, and began to pack. I went back to my room, the lights beginning to go on below, and I began to pack. I’m beginning to feel that not only can’t anyone understand me, but that no-one even wants to. And only the tiniest part of my mind, if I have one, says no, and how can I make someone, let someone in, how? I need. So desperate, so desperate, I need.
Wendy stopped by after dinner, our last at that table, the room in crushed disorder, crawling dimly lit around us. A medical textbook from 1967 holding up one leg. We ate as a family infrequently. Too much work, but, naturally, tonight was special. Nobody spoke much. Wendy texted me when she arrived in front of the apartment, and caught me in a huge, surprisingly rough hug when I stepped onto the street. We fell back into the passage, banging my head against a mailbox.
“It’ll be sooo weird. You not living here anymore.”
“Yes!”
“I’d say—I’ll miss you—“ but Wendy had already moved to Ma On Shan. Her dad had fallen just short of the salary he felt justified Happy Valley, and had thrown the weight of his money in the opposite direction. She’d been disappointed. We ran up the stairs to the elevator landing, she pausing for breath, and finally rose up the elevator shaft to the apartment, where my parents and sister were hunched around the table, surrounded by fake plants and detritus, wall paper from the 60s, a vision itself of Hong Kong, I thought, a tiny patch of overburned territory, old dishes and cooking smell—a trace of cigarette smoke in the walls. Wendy and I nodded at everyone, grabbed some noodles, and, with Mei still eating, closed the door to the girls’ room.
“You’re still pissed about your dad, aren’t you?” I spoke about her, not unusually, somewhat to avoid speaking about me, angling myself into the stolen office chair that sat at the foot of my bed.
“It’s so unfair! He deserved a waaay bigger raise than that and…”
Her eyes welled up ever so slightly. I leaned back into the thin chair frame, plastic, and twirled my hair. Wendy blinked quickly, abruptly, and went back to staring at me. I wish I could have seen a mirror, but I didn’t want to turn. Wendy flopped down on the corner of Mei’s bed.
“This time it isn’t unfair, it just is. And I was just getting to know the place again. Should I be so unhappy about it?” I asked, without whining, and shivered slightly. My voice. My voice. Speaking in Canto, my voice.
Wendy twisted her face from me to the window. Were she honest, she would probably have said ‘no.’ Wendy didn’t have much use for crowds, the mere fact of mass. She didn’t eat the bread from the first floor bakery down the street, the real best anywhere. She liked being able to sit up on the podium top and read, or make out, or dream of making out, without anybody bothering her. But Wendy knew me well enough to say ‘yes’ and change the subject. She turned back and smiled at me.
“You remember when you’d just gotten back from America, and you were still talking about that boy who lived near you, LA?”
“He never looked at me.”
“He should have. Stupid American melon. Can I tell you I wish I was half as tough as you?”
I laughed like a knife cuts. It sounded weird in my throat, and the next second I felt more alone, more alone and homeless than ever. Wendy left an hour later, to meet her boyfriend in lower Hung Hom. I went to the bar to chill, stopping at an HSBC to get some cash first, bright white light floating all around. That light followed me, it felt, all the way down the block.
The day of the move, the rain splattered down across our faces, forearms, luggage, all over. A puddle formed in our illegal sunroom. I sloshed my feet through it, then took one last walk through my own spaces, over soon, bare, overlit even with heavy sky—naked metal and wood. A hole I’d knocked into the wall after a fight with mom, covered by the armoire, totally exposed, and already someone else’s for it. Across the street, Christ’s signature implored me forlornly. Smell of mold and rain and down below, a giant smudge of false twilight neon. Wendy stood shivering in the doorway, a clear plastic rain slicker pulled over her head. I walked out uncovered. Except for that moment after, sodden and shivering, I don’t really mind the rain.
“It’s cold.”
“YES. Couldn’t you have chosen a better day for moving?”
“We didn’t know it would be this bad. Thanks for coming by.”
“Get out of the rain! You’ll catch cold!” Wendy grabbed me and pulled me inside, out of the street. But it was too late, I did catch cold, coughing worse than when I got back from three days in Beijing. We brought some fish balls at the corner and rode back up. The grease splattering everywhere as we rushed across the road. I could almost taste the smog, the rain falling on, through, and in. Wendy by my side. For a step or two she kept her hand above my head, guarding me against the little slivers of water that came streaking down and over, cutting the day up into so many little pieces, even in her slicker she got so frosted and wet. The fish balls were cold by the time we got to that illegal, crumbling sunroom. The puddle had grown, a single leaf—and from where?—had blown in and floated onto its oily surface. In the light from the street, the water was almost a bright, sickly green.
“It’s like—not like you never lived here but almost.”
“The new place is bigger. No holes in the wall or old wallpaper. It doesn’t smell either.”
“You’re leaving the table.”
“Ikea sells.” I smiled widely and made a V with my fingers.
“Ohhh—gross.” But she didn’t say it like she meant it.
I began patting the cold walls, testing, wondering if behind the paint and wallpaper they were hollow.
“Hong Kong is getting destroyed, Wendy. The Japanese have come back—jealous—and they’re tearing the city down. They want revenge.”
“LA? Can I tell you that you’re making no sense at all?” Wendy looked at me again for a second, her teeth flashed for a nervous second over her lower lip, and then her eyes traveled along the walls. “Haih-a.” But she didn’t say anything else. Her eyes lighted on that leaf, as it sank, crawling itself down into the depths, the puddle. I stamped my foot, if only lightly, and felt the impact rebound and echo, as if into the concrete eternity beyond those thin walls. The tarp overhead split back even further, sheets of water pouring in. Wendy covered her mouth with one hand, nails painted pink. The ripples of water cascaded around the concrete, rain strafed us, I shivered. Wendy stared at me for a long moment, hand still over mouth. The ripples on the wall the same sickly green as the water, the room beginning to smell, beginning to smell very old.
“You should have moved a million years ago. This is gross.”
And she nearly gagged. I don’t know if all that’s true. It wasn’t HK getting destroyed, just my little corner of it. And a girl named after glitter city should understand. I’d been in America for a year. I shouldn’t have cared the least. Voices called up to me, from where? A bad round at a mahjong table, maybe a call from the second floor, maybe not. The echoes rippled strangely, following the water, casting across the walls. The wind shifted, rain raking unevenly across my face. I didn’t matter. But that night was the first time I though I might get lost—become nothing in the city where I was born. The first time I began to think, how many ‘me’s’ are there here? How many in this tower alone? Can I check every apartment for the similarities? Can I now? My family watched TV. A teli-romain. Stars along Nathan Road—behind them the people simply kept on moving. Anonymous and unfocused, every one and once glaring back. The girl smiled and pouted, rolled her shoulders like a whahkiuh—she was human, so human. Crystallized everything, in one roll of her shoulders, and she’s human. My new Ikea bed, in clean white sheets, I wasn’t comfortable but I slept—in the morning my face in the mirror laughed and pouted but it meant nothing. Only I saw and I knew I was acting. Without street noise, I had to play Nirvana quieter. The smell grew harder and harder to bear, by the time we stepped back into the apartment I too had nearly started gagging. Wendy smiled at me, looking relieved. I tried to smile back.
“You’re so sensitive LA.” Her eyes flashed slightly and she turned away. I didn’t answer.
The rain poured on, unceasing, all through the day, but by sundown it was over, a brief moment of sun and I looked out from our new windows. A view longer, though it too ended. More buildings just like mine, unedited. Below us, along an older tower’s podium, I could see little illegal roof huts, flapping tarp, exposed bamboo. For a brief, sterile moment, I wished I lived in one. Wished I could have jumped, from tower to tower, when I took one last look at the flooded storeroom and saw, across the alley, a girl in white leading a boy by the hand. I placed my phone on the nightside table, small, clean, solid and light. Nightside table in my own room. I could see the river. My phone could ring, and only I could hear it. Like in California. But I don’t think I really liked California!
[And her phone rang, a Fiona Sit song, as we left Causeway Bay Station. For the record, how on earth can she like Fiona Sit?]
