CHAPTER 5
The home phone is already ringing as I unlock the front door, and my heart sinks. I run towards the kitchen where the phone is, placing the unopened lollipop and the house keys hurriedly down on the kitchen table.
Maybe it’s because I don’t answer with Mum’s tentative ‘Wéi?’ that Dad snaps immediately, ‘Where is your mother? Where is she?’ Instantly suspicious that there is something not right in our little world, something is different. Mum knows to answer the telephone, every day at four o’clock except on Tuesdays, which is Dad’s one day off a week. On Tuesdays he’s always home, and the house always feels heavier.
I think quickly, answering in Mandarin, ‘She’s not feeling well. She’s in the bathroom. Food poisoning, something not fresh, that she ate.’
I’m on high alert, the words just tumbling out. This phone call has the same treacherous feeling as the impromptu debate Miss Spencer sprang on us today – on why reading is better than TV – the feeling that things could descend into chaos and shouting at any moment, without warning.
I was on the side of TV, and our side crushed the reading side because TV has more people like Nikki Kuol and me and even horrible Billy Raum in it. We pointed out that there are Aboriginal people on TV (whose land this was, is and always will be – I mean, how stupid do you have to be to think being here a few decades, or even a couple of centuries, gives you more right to this place than the people who’ve been here for thousands of years?) while there aren’t many Aboriginal people in books, at least not the books we have in the school library. My team said all that, to general cheering.
Everyone agreed that books without real people in them were dumb (their word, not mine – I would have said, possibly, boring or rather far-fetched) and even Miss Spencer was laughing by the end, although she pretended to be outraged that TV had won hands down over reading.
‘Philistines!’ she laughed.
‘But are we?’ Gabriella Amato called out. ‘Are we really, if the medium itself is refusing to move with the times?’ And we all laughed harder, feeling clever and a bit wicked.
Miss Spencer had replied with a huge smile, ‘I actually have great hope for this world yet, thanks to you people.’
‘Your mother is so unwell that she can’t come to the phone?’ Dad asks now, incredulously, and I say in English, as cheerfully as I can manage, ‘Better out than in, Dad. That’s what the school nurse always says.’
In his usual way, Dad doesn’t say goodbye, he just makes a snorting noise then hangs up.
He calls again half an hour later, when Mum is still not home, and this time he threatens to drive home to check on her, even though his shift at Hai Tong Tai has only just started and he’ll get in all sorts of trouble if he leaves. I tell him she’s sleeping now, and that I’ll get her to call as soon as she wakes up.
‘What about your dinner?’ he barks and I reply quietly, ‘She made it earlier today, like she always does, because she’s prepared, and a good mother.’
I pause, thinking about Fay Xiao and all the things people said about her before she died, and were still saying about her now that she was dead. I take a deep breath. ‘We’ll eat together as soon as Mum …’ I almost say gets back but say instead, ‘gets out of bed.’
I hear shouting in Cantonese in the distance, and Dad abruptly slams down the phone.
When he calls yet again, another precise half-hour later, I’m feeling desperate. There’s no more clever left in the tank.
‘Wake her for me!’ Dad’s voice is brusque. ‘I need to talk to her. If it’s serious, I need to take her to hospital. To see a doctor.’ The emphasis on that last word is bitter, as if he’d actually said real doctor instead of just doctor.
Having burned off the medical side of himself, Dad never tries to treat any of us anymore. I have no opinions on health matters in any shape or form, he says brusquely, when I try to ask him about a cut, or a sore throat. I’m not ‘appropriately qualified’. When Dad failed the specialist pathway exams the fourth time, I think he threw away all his textbooks and medical equipment in a fit of boiling fury, or maybe he built a bonfire with them and watched them burn down to ashes too. But deep down, he’s still a man of science, and I can tell he’s worried. It’s so out of character for Mum to be sick, or asleep any time before he gets home instead of waiting anxiously for him to return, that I know my cover story is about to fall apart.
‘I … uh,’ I reply.
‘Wake her up,’ Dad insists. ‘I want to talk to her now, Wen.’
I put the receiver down on the table and actually walk to the front of the house and pull the curtains aside and look through the windows. I even slam a few doors and open a few drawers loudly near the receiver before I pick it up again.
‘She’s in the bathroom again,’ I say bravely. ‘She’ll call you back as soon as she’s out.’
‘She can’t do that, you silly girl,’ – Dad’s voice is the iciest I’ve ever heard it – ‘because I’m in the middle of the busiest shift we’ve had this week. Get her now.’
I almost jump out of my skin – I actually drop the receiver on the kitchen bench with a bang – when Mum walks through the kitchen door with a questioning look as I’m standing there, panicking. I point hurriedly at my tummy, and my forehead, as she runs forward, seeing my stricken expression. She sets her shiny black handbag down on a benchtop and picks up the phone.
A whole range of emotions flashes across her face as Dad shouts at her down the phone like he’s not a person but a machine gun with words for bullets. I’m still standing there pointing at my tummy and making eating-with-a-spoon gestures in front of my face, pretending to retch, as Mum replies calmly, ‘Yes, yes, much better,’ and ‘No, no, I don’t need to see a doctor – it seems to have passed. The nap?’ She looks at me questioningly. ‘It did me a lot of good. I feel almost myself again.’
After she puts down the phone we stare at each other for a long moment, caught out in a shared act of subterfuge, or self-protection, maybe our first ever. Then Mum seems to give herself a mental shake, moves her handbag to a kitchen chair, takes off her red jacket – looking more crumpled and stained than it ever has before – and straps on her black apron.
‘Get the packet of lā miàn from the refrigerator,’ she says as she turns up the burner flame on the soup she’s been brewing all day, taking out a separate pot to boil the noodles in.
Mum is very quiet as we walk towards Henry’s house after dinner. When we get there, it’s a lot later than the time we stopped at the Xiaos’ house yesterday. Mum says fretfully, ‘I hope they haven’t already eaten. Ring the bell, Wen.’
I ring the bell and nothing happens for a while, so I ring it again. Standing there, on the dark front porch, Mum and I wonder if anyone will even come to the door today.
I know the set of three steel food carriers Mum is holding is heavy. She hasn’t just made dinner for Henry, she’s made enough for his father too.
In the bottom tier of the carrier is the rich broth Mum has made from the gǒu qǐ or goji berries, lotus root, carrots, mushrooms, dried longan, dried scallops and fresh chicken. She even added a handful of dried white fungus for nourishment and for clearing the lungs, she said. In the second tier is the boneless chicken meat she shredded for them, together with the other ingredients. And in the top tier are the glistening white noodles, or lā miàn, that Mum boiled for less than two minutes, so that they won’t be too soft to eat when the hot broth is added to them.
I’m about to press the doorbell one more time when the light over the front step snaps on. The wooden front door behind the security door opens and a faint bit of light streams out around the slightly bent figure of a man watching us from behind the wire mesh.
‘Zhou Tài tài,’ the man says heavily. Mrs Zhou.
Dad once explained to me that Tài tài is an honorific that means ‘rich lady who does not work’ because no one would consider housework and raising children actual work. It’s just what women do, Dad had added, snapping his newspaper open.
I remember, quite distinctly, thinking to myself, Well, no one’s ever going to call me Tài tài, if that’s what it means.
‘Wen,’ Henry’s dad adds politely but warily, still not opening the screen door, just studying us through it.
Mum addresses him in formal Mandarin. ‘Mr Xiao,’ she says in a rush. ‘Apologies for our rude intrusion, but would you take the trouble to eat the dinner we have prepared for you? It is not what you are used to, it is very plain and ordinary, but we would be grateful if you would at least try some. And Henry. Wen says it is important that he keeps his strength up. For study.’ She lifts her burden of cooked food a little higher so that Henry’s dad is forced to look at it, through the wire door.
‘I’m not sure if study is what is harming Henry, or keeping him from harm,’ Mr Xiao rasps in reply. ‘He will not eat. He will not sleep. He will not leave his bedroom. The only food he has taken for the last two days was the piece of fish you kindly left him yesterday.’
‘There’s an entrance exam,’ I remind the dark silhouette through the wire, afraid that Henry’s dad will shut the door before I can make him understand how important it is. ‘It’s just over a week from now. If Henry wins that place, Mr Xiao, anything is possible. The best education, but for hardly any money. Our teacher, Miss Spencer, says that Henry can get in, that that school will give him wings. Did you know that he wants to build aeroplanes one day … ?’
‘Ahhh,’ Mr Xiao murmurs when I falter to a stop. ‘I had forgotten the exam. Henry and I never talk much, you know. He is like me, not very talkative and now …’ I hear the deep sadness in his voice.
Beside me, Mum hefts the steel food carriers a little higher, her thin arms straining with the weight of the rapidly cooling food.
Mr Xiao finally unlocks the screen door and opens it a fraction, not wide enough that we can see all of him, although what we can see of his face and person is pretty bad. He looks very pale, unshaven, his short, salt-and-pepper hair uncombed and standing on end, wearing a stained T-shirt and trousers as if he’s come straight from the market, although it’s almost bedtime.
‘Hot broth,’ Mum explains quickly as she urges Henry’s dad to take the steel food carriers from her. ‘A bit of meat, vegetable, noodles, all healthy things. Put all the food in a bowl for you, a bowl for Henry, and pour the broth over the top. But it must be very hot,’ she adds. ‘And tell Henry to drink all of it – the soup is very good for you, very nourishing. I made it especially for him, because he is growing.’
Mr Xiao takes the carriers from Mum, and I see her shoulders droop slightly in relief. She hadn’t expected him to take them. Everyone knows that the Xiaos are very poor, but also that they are very proud; though not in a bad or boastful way. They’ve just never asked anyone for help, even though Fay Xiao was clearly struggling, Mr Xiao can’t afford to buy a car and drives his second cousin’s vegetable delivery truck everywhere, and Henry’s always looked like a gust of wind will blow him away.
‘Thank you, Mrs Zhou,’ Mr Xiao says quietly. ‘We will not forget your kindness, Henry and I.’ His grip on the food carriers is awkward as he holds the screen door open with just his foot. ‘Henry did mention before my wife, before Mrs Xiao …’ He doesn’t finish the sentence, but starts another one. ‘Henry did mention that you’re sitting the exam together, Wen. I’d be honoured to take you both to the school on the day of the exam. It will save your parents the long drive.’
I go instantly hot, not daring to look at my mother beside me.
Mr Xiao turns away and locks the security door once more, murmuring through the wire, ‘Thank you, thank you,’ before shutting the wooden door. The light over the front porch snaps off.
Mum turns to me slowly in the dark, wide-eyed. ‘What entrance exam?’