SHE FEELS LESS DIZZY AFTER shambling out of the smoke-filled office into the waiting room with one hand on her forehead.
“Are you okay, Lin?” asks her friend, Joyce, who sits in an armchair and looks at her with concern.
“Not really. It was strange,” Lin responds and plops down in another armchair.
“Joyce Parry!” calls out the receptionist at the counter.
Joyce stands up and walks toward the adjoining office.
Under her breath, Lin says, “Good luck!”
Lin stretches out her arms. This is almost the same as fortune-telling in China. Twice, the fortune-teller said I had an ex-lover who had been difficult, dominating. Was he just guessing? A few days ago, Lin saw an ad for fortune-telling on a bulletin board outside her dorm room and felt curious about it. She had asked Joyce if she had ever been to a fortune-teller.
“No,” answered Joyce. “But a friend of mine went to this fortune-teller who advertises around campus, and she said he was great. Do you want to go? Next week is reading week. Let’s go, just for fun!”
This is how they end up in this room.
Lin met Joyce a year before in a psychology class. Joyce majors in social work, and Lin majors in math. Few of their classes overlap, but since meeting, they have tried to take some of their elective courses together. They both live on campus and often meet in the computer lab to do research or work on their assignments.
One night Lin worked in the lab until midnight. When she was about to leave, Joyce asked, “Would you mind waiting for me for just a couple of minutes? I’ll be finished soon.”
“Are you afraid of the dark?” Lin joked on their way to their dorm rooms.
“Not that,” she said, “but men. Last night this guy and I were left in the lab. He wanted to chat with me, saying he would wait for me till I finished my assignment.”
“Was he friendly?”
“Overly friendly. He asked me which dorm I lived in and wanted to walk me back to my room. That really scared me. I made an excuse, saying that I needed to go to the washroom.”
“Then what happened?” asked Lin.
“I made like I was going into the washroom, then took an elevator upstairs and left through another exit. I ran all the way back to my dorm. I was afraid he would show up tonight.”
Since then, Lin and Joyce have always left the computer lab together at night. Sometimes they hold each other’s hand when they walk along the alley through the dim-lit area.
***
Lin picks up a back issue of Canadian Living from the coffee table and flips the pages. She glances at an advertisement for Olay skincare. That’s the product I use, she thinks, tossing the magazine back onto the table. After selecting another glossy magazine, Fashion, she leafs through the pages, catching a glimpse of a bold title that reads, “Change Your Hair Colour as Often as You Wish,” and features a sleek background of red, orange, blonde, silver, and black heads. She fingers her long hair, and tilts her head to look at the page. Black is definitely a beautiful colour, she tells herself. She has no interest in colouring her hair.
On another page, she discovers a short article entitled, “Special Exercises for Your Breasts,” with several photos of women modelling various types of bras. It reminds her of her fussy boyfriend, who used to care a lot about the way she dressed and made herself up. He wanted her to dress up wherever they went. Chinese etiquette for women states: “Obey your father before you grow up, and obey your husband after you get married.” So, she used to dress up and wear makeup just to please him. He became insufferable, but she put up with him because her parents preached that a virtuous girl did not change boyfriends. She even got a job in a daycare because her mother said it was excellent practice for motherhood.
After years of passive obedience, she suddenly woke up. Instead of rebelling as a teenager, she rebelled as an adult. She did not care about clothing, or makeup, or motherhood anymore. She left her boyfriend and enrolled in a university away from home, majoring in mathematics. She wanted to prove to her parents that not only could girls learn math, but they could also teach math.
When she broke with her ex, he’d said, “You’ll regret it.” Sometimes Lin asks herself: Do I regret leaving him? Her answer is always no. She feels only relief that he is out of her life. Away from him and away from her parents, she lives the way she prefers and pursues what she wants.
***
She hears Joyce’s cheerful voice as she emerges from the other room. “Let’s go home,” she says, walking to the coat rack.
“How was it?” asks Lin.
“Hang on. I’ll tell you in the car.”
Placing the magazine onto the coffee table, Lin rises and grabs her coat from the rack. Pulling it over her shoulders, she follows Joyce out of the building. It has stopped snowing, and everything around them looks fluffy and white. The sunset colours the surface of the snow with crimson beams.
They climb into Joyce’s car. Joyce holds the steering wheel with one hand and shifts the gears with the other. When the car starts to move, Joyce asks, “Did you think he could see into your past?”
“I don’t think so. He asked me if I had received a college education since I seemed so smart. But I didn’t answer him,” says Lin with a sense of triumph. “When he wanted to know whether I was married, I told him to guess. He definitely had trouble guessing things right.”
“Why would you do that?” Joyce glances at Lin and raises her eyebrows. “How can he foretell things for you if you don’t co-operate?”
“I think a fortune-teller is supposed to just know things. What kind of fortune-teller has to ask his clients for information?”
“Like a psychiatrist, he needs to talk with you and analyze your situation. Then he can trace your past and define tendencies in your life,” explains Joyce with patience. “He read me very well. He told me right away that I hated my father and feared men. He even knew I’d experienced something severely painful.”
“Severely painful?”
Joyce nods. “It was my first experience with a man. The fortune-teller drew a human figure on the table with a piece of chalk when he spoke to me. Staring intently at the Tarot card I’d pulled from the deck in his hand and given to him, he moved his finger around the sketch. I think he was trying to match what he’d read from the card with his diagram on the table. Finally his hand paused beneath the figure’s abdomen. Then, he asked me, ‘Were you in too much pain to speak at that time?’ I think he must have sensed the pain I’d felt ten years earlier with my boyfriend at the time. I didn’t want to have sex with him and he got a little rough with me. I broke up with him afterwards.”
Lin nods with what she hopes is a comforting smile on her face. “Would it be okay for me to ask why you hate your father?” she asks.
Joyce is silent for just a moment. “He raped my mother when she was only fifteen years old. At that time he was already in his fifties…” Joyce’s hands tremble and the car abruptly shifts, crossing the road’s yellow line before veering back. “I was sent to an orphanage after my birth. That’s where I spent the first years of life, before I was finally adopted.”
“How do you know this?” asks Lin under her breath.
“My adoptive mother told me about the orphanage and where I could find it. As an adult, I went back and they gave me information about my background.”
“Have you found your parents? I mean, your mother.”
“Yes. My mother’s married, and has two other kids. My father was arrested and put behind bars. He died in a nursing home many years later. Every once in a while, I thought of going to see him, but I didn’t have the courage…” Her voice starts to quaver.
“I can’t imagine how painful that must have been for you.”
“I hate my father because he both created and destroyed my life at the same time. I’m his blood, but he’s my shame. And it is because of him that I can’t be with a man. Thinking of him just makes me feel sick. I really…”
The car starts to weave again. Lin feels Joyce’s anger, and knows that she is no longer focusing on the road. She tries to calm her down. “There’s a gas station ahead. Maybe we should stop –”
Lin does not have time to finish her sentence. A car is coming straight for them. Joyce’s hands shake on the steering wheel. Lin grabs the wheel from her and steers toward the road’s shoulder, narrowly missing a head-on collision.
The car hurtles over an embankment. Lin is thrown against the window and then back against her seat. When the car lands with a thunderclap at the bottom of the ditch, she loses consciousness.
Lin feels as though she were floating in the endless, black sky. A gentle touch makes her sense warmth. She opens her eyes slowly and finds herself in Joyce’s arms. She utters, “Yong, where are we?”
“We’re in the ditch, Lin. The car is wrecked, but you saved our lives.” Joyce’s soft voice resounds in her ear. “We’ve got to go get help from the gas station, get them to tow the car out of the ditch.” Joyce’s voice strains with concern, but she manages a weak smile. “Lin, are you okay? Who’s Yong?”
Lin shakes her head. She is confused and rattles. “Yong ? Did I say Yong?” Her face flushes. “He’s my ex-boyfriend.”
The fortune-teller’s words suddenly come back to her, “Your lover is nearby and is waiting for you.” What did the fortune-teller mean? A lover nearby?
The scene of rainbow flags floating over the heads of people marching along the path winding up Citadel Hill flashes in her mind. The parade was earlier that summer. She and Joyce watched the parade from the sidewalk that was crammed with spectators. “Let’s walk with them,” Joyce said on the spur of the moment. Grabbing Lin’s hand, Joyce pulled Lin seamlessly into the middle of the parade. They were welcomed by a group of women chanting and singing in unison as they waved a bright pink flag in their hands.
Lin’s face feels hot. She is conscious of the warmth of Joyce’s body enveloping her. Raising her fingers to her head, Lin traces the small scratches on the side of her cheek. She stammers, “I … I need to see the fortune-teller again.”
Surprised, Joyce asks, “Why?” She strokes Lin’s back lightly. “I don’t want any more fortune-telling. I think a person’s fate is destined at birth.”
Lin sighs and leans her head on Joyce’s shoulder, aware of the sweet fragrance of her hair. She is surprised to hear herself murmur, “I wonder if I can find happiness here, in this new place.”
“I know you can. We can.” Joyce says, running her fingers slowly through Lin’s hair. “Let’s get going. I’m thankful neither one of us is seriously hurt.”
They help each other climb out of the car. Dusk has fallen. The gas station looks like a tight handful of stars glowing, just ahead of them. They make their way towards the station with hope, hand in hand. The streetlights turn on, casting their washed-out light on the snow-covered road. The two shadows merge into one as they move toward the lit oasis.