CHAPTER 7
On Tuesday morning, when we stop by Henry’s house on the way to school, the clean pot from the dinner we dropped over on Monday night is there on the front porch, plus the usual finished envelope of homework. Mum’s face suddenly changes when we reach the school gates. ‘The pot!’ we both say at the same time, looking down at the clean metal saucepan in Mum’s hands. It’s one of her medium-sized ones, but it’s still big.
‘If I come back from school holding an empty pot, he will see, and ask questions,’ Mum exclaims, troubled.
‘It’s too hard to explain,’ I agree, ‘what you’re doing, going for a morning walk with a huge pot. Let me put it in my schoolbag.’
‘It will be too heavy,’ Mum replies fretfully in Chinese, wringing her hands.
‘No it won’t,’ I reply firmly, already shoving the pot in under my PE clothes. ‘It won’t be any trouble at all.’
It is heavy, when I shove the bag into my locker in the morning. And it’s awkward trying to fit stuff in around the pot all day without crumpling things too badly, but I’ll do anything to keep that look off Mum’s face. I swear to myself that I will never allow that expression to cross my own features.
When we drop an envelope of fresh homework to Henry’s house, ringing the bell once and sliding the envelope under the door like we always do, Mum hurries us away quickly. ‘I have a lot to do,’ she says, and her voice is distracted, the way it always is on Tuesdays.
After we get home, I slide the pot out of my bag and into its usual place in the kitchen. Then I practise halfheartedly, but quietly, on the second-hand electronic keyboard in my bedroom and vaguely wave my violin bow at my horrible, scratchy school-issue violin for the minimum amount of time I can get away with, before sitting down at the kitchen table to do my homework. The whole time Dad relaxes in the sitting room, in front of the TV, which is on very loud.
Mum turns the heat up slightly under the rich broth she’s been simmering all day out of pork ribs, fish bones, dried scallops, dried figs, dried black mushrooms, slices of ginger and a curl of dried tangerine peel. I watch as she drops handfuls of dried beancurd skins into the soup before busily preparing a fillet of white fish for steaming in a bamboo basket with soy, shào xīng wine and a handful of garlic, ginger, coriander and spring onions seasoned with black pepper and sesame oil. There’s a mound of sliced beef for frying with onions, a plate of green vegetables to be tossed in a searing wok with oyster sauce and garlic, and there’s rice, perfectly measured for three hungry people, already cooking in a separate claypot. A piece of pork belly is roasting in the oven, the crackling already nice and bubbly, the fat rendered out. At the back of the stove, a claypot containing chunks of sticky, marinated pumpkin with dried shrimp is being kept warm, while beside it another claypot full of pork mince, spring onion and chunks of tofu in a light gravy is simmering on a very low flame.
While I frown and mutter through two pages of probability, percentages and decimals, Mum is a blur of chopping, stirring, ladling and straining, her spatula repeatedly striking the surface of the smoking wok like the hooves of a mythical beast striking an iron roadway.
She finally turns off the exhaust fan over the stove.
‘Call your father to eat,’ she says anxiously, taking her black apron off and hanging it on its customary hook by the kitchen door. I rise, shoving my homework into a dark corner of the kitchen bench, beside the fridge, so that no one will ask to see it and helpfully point out every single one of my errors.
The doorbell rings before I even reach the TV room. Skin prickling with alarm – visitors that aren’t Jehovah’s Witnesses or LED lightbulb salespeople being rare at our place – I watch from the hall as Dad answers the door.
It’s Nikki Kuol, standing outside our wire security screen, and my face breaks into a smile. She’s holding a colourful piece of paper in one hand and looking around – at our small front yard where Mum grows Chinese vegetables in neat rows in one bed, at the palm-sized red, green and gold octagonal mirror that Mum placed on our security door when we first moved in, that is now worn and peeling from years of exposure to the elements.
I reach the door behind Dad as Nikki says through the wire, ‘Hello? Wen?’
She’s still wearing our school sweatshirt over the same denim skirt and runners without socks that she had on today at school, but she’s let her amazing hair down. All the long, glossy black braids are falling across her shoulders and spilling down her back. Nikki’s voice sounds puffed, as if she’s run all the way from her house.
‘Yes?’ Dad says icily, not opening the security door.
Surprising myself, I reach around Dad and unsnib the lock, opening the door wide enough so that Nikki can see us, and we can see her, properly.
None of my friends has ever come to my house before.
Nikki blinks at the sight of the two us standing there and smiles. ‘Hi Wen,’ she says quickly. ‘Mr Zhou.’
Dad doesn’t reply, but a huge grin breaks across my face as Nikki hands me the piece of bright paper in her hand. It’s an invitation. I’ve heard some other girls talking about Nikki’s party for the last couple of weeks, always stifling a spurt of jealousy that Nikki hadn’t bothered to ask me, even though we hang together all the time.
Nikki’s words tumble out, as if she, too, can feel the wave of coldness coming from my father. ‘It’s my birthday party on Sunday. Just at the scout hall?’ Nikki points down the road. ‘From one in the afternoon. There’ll be a live band, Wen, and my cousin, Bol, he’s just come back from a world skateboarding championship in Japan and is showing us his new promo video! He’s got a new sponsorship deal. His Korean girlfriend, who’s a skater too, is coming. It would be amazing if you could, uh, join us. You too, Mr Zhou – Mum and Dad would love to meet you and Mrs Zhou, and there’ll be plenty of food. It will just end when it ends. You could leave whenever …’
Nikki’s voice trails off as Dad pulls the invitation out of my fingers, scanning it quickly. He folds it over and doesn’t give it back to me. ‘Thank you, Nikki,’ he says pleasantly, ‘but Wen will be helping her mother at home that day. She will be too busy to come.’
Then he gives Nikki this tight little nod, pulls the screen door out of my hand and shuts it in Nikki’s face. Her shocked expression is probably the exact same one I’m wearing.
‘Thanks, Nikki, see you tom—’ I just manage to get out before Dad shuts the wooden door and cuts me off completely.
I spin around, so angry that I feel as if I’m going to burst into flames.
Dad seems to fill the hallway. It’s him staring down at me staring up at him and I’m so rage-filled, and sad, that I almost hear something inside me … separate. Like my mind has gone outside my body completely, and is looking at it wondering what it’s going to do next.
Dad has this half smile on his face – the same half smile he always wears just before he loses his temper, or lashes out with whatever he’s holding, or slams his hand into the surface of a table or a door or a wall, and I know what he’s going to say before he even says it. The words seem to come at me in slow motion, or as if I’ve already heard them, and I’m just standing inside a memory; because I’ve been hearing them all my life.
‘This is for your own good, Zhou Wen Li,’ says Dad, in the same bland and pleasant tone he used on Nikki. ‘No parties. This is for your own protection. It is your job to obey, my job to keep you safe.’
From what? The dangerous dangers of a birthday party? I want to shout.
I actually have to bite down, hard, on my tongue so that no words come out.
‘Wen?’ Mum calls anxiously from the kitchen doorway at the end of the hall. ‘Jin? Dinner’s getting cold. What are you two doing?’
Not forgetting! I almost scream, my fists clenched so tight that my nails are cutting deep half-moons into my palms. I am in the process of not forgetting any of this, Mum, for the rest of my life!
Instead, I turn on my heel, entering the kitchen before Dad does, in silence. I want to punch a wall, too, slam my fist into the surface of the kitchen table. But I don’t, because it doesn’t help anything, and who knows what would happen if I did?
You are not him, I tell myself over and over so that I do not cry, and you will never be like him. Make sure of that.
As Dad seats himself at the kitchen table, carefully dressed in the buttoned-up business shirt and pressed trousers he insists on wearing even though it’s his day off, Mum places all the dishes she’s been trying to keep warm on the table with exaggerated care. One Tuesday night, she dropped a full tray of roasted chicken at Dad’s feet, by accident, the pieces going all over the floor, which he then refused to touch, pointedly eating just rice and vegetables; even though she rinsed and reheated the chicken, almost in tears. Mum has never done that again.
She slides a bowl of mounded steamed rice in front of each of us now, inviting us to eat, picking up a serving spoon while she waits for Dad to pick up his chopsticks. She always serves Dad and me first, before she turns to her own meal.
Dad’s eyes narrow as he surveys the table. ‘There are only seven dishes,’ he says flatly.
I watch the colour rise in Mum’s cheeks as her eyes fly around the serving bowls and plates in the centre of the table – soup, beef, fish, roast pork, vegetables, pumpkin, tofu. You don’t ever count the rice as a dish; it’s just an accompaniment, not a main. Mum has miscounted. Seven is an unlucky number of dishes. Even I know that.
Quickly rising, her cheeks flooded hot with colour, Mum grabs a small serving plate from the cupboard beside the stove and places some of the slices of roasted pork onto it so that there are now eight dishes on the table in front of us. Her hands are unsteady as she picks up her serving spoon again, repeating her careful invitation to us all to eat.
Giving her a hard look, Dad indicates with a nod of his head that he wants a serving of fish first. He begins eating steadily, telling Mum that the soup isn’t salty enough, but the pumpkin is too salty. ‘The beef is tough,’ he notes, ‘and very roughly sliced, and the vegetables are overcooked, as is the roast pork. And this fish!’ he exclaims. ‘Couldn’t you buy a whole fresh fish? There’s barely enough for one person, let alone three.’
Mum seems to have grown smaller in her chair. ‘We never finish a whole fish,’ she murmurs. ‘I didn’t want to waste any food, like we always do.’
‘You’ve run out of housekeeping money again, haven’t you?’ Dad asks. ‘Haven’t you? What are you spending my money on?’
He gets up and opens the fridge door and we can all see straight through to the back. There are a few pieces of fruit in a bowl, half a loaf of sliced bread and some slices of ham for my school lunches, a few spring onions, a piece of meat defrosting on a plate under clingwrap, a container of milk, a packet of dried scallops and a half-empty bag of dried black beans. He looks in the freezer. ‘What have you done with all the money I gave you for this month? There’s barely any food in the house!’
Mum is about to answer, looking like she’s about to blurt out everything we’ve been doing for Henry and his dad when I interrupt cheerfully, ‘I’ve eaten it!’ My voice sounds unnaturally loud in our fake-wood-panelled kitchen. ‘All the food! Growth spurt. You should see me after school, Dad. Whoo.’
Dad looks me up and down, suspiciously, before closing the freezer door and sitting down again. He picks up his rice bowl in his left hand, chopsticks in his right. ‘You don’t seem any different to me,’ he says sharply. ‘And neither do your maths results. Finish eating, Wen, and help your mother to clean up.’
When Dad’s done, he just pushes away from the table, walks out of the room and sits back down in front of the TV like he always does. I hear it go on, a studio audience somewhere far away, screaming with laughter.
As I carry our rice bowls to the sink, Mum pulls washing gloves on with hands that are shaking slightly. ‘Every day is like a test,’ she mutters as she begins filling the sink with washing water, ‘a difficult test it is impossible to study for. Especially Tuesdays. What are the questions?’ Her laughter sounds strained as she scrubs at the rice bowls, piling them up on the draining board for me to wipe. ‘What are the answers? Who knows?’
She leans forward for a moment, gripping the edge of the sink with both her gloved hands, and murmurs in Mandarin, ‘Only with death does the road come to an end. Is that not long?’
‘Mum!’ I reply in English, sharp with fear, thinking of Henry’s mum, how she must have taken those words, written more than two thousand years ago, completely literally. ‘Honestly! Now you’re beginning to sound like Dad with all the unrelenting negativity. Stop it.’
But my hands are shaking too as I dry all the things she’s washed. Handwashing dishes takes forever on Tuesdays, even though it’s just the three of us. The effort never seems proportionate to the meal – it feels like three bites and it’s all gone and what was all that really for? Before the endless washing begins.
Mum continues to stand there, staring down into the washing water, her eyes very bright, the bubbles breaking and reforming.
I want to ask her if there is a different way to be. Where you can take all the good things about what you are, what’s expected of you, and leave behind all the stuff that holds you back. But I’m afraid of the answer; I’m afraid of being so disappointed that it will feel like my heart is being ripped out, so I don’t ask.
Mum returns to washing the dishes, not speaking.
Remembering, I put down my dishcloth for a moment, scooping the leftover rice on the sideboard into a plastic container with what’s left of the tofu and minced pork, slices of roast pork and sticky braised pumpkin. ‘It’s not much,’ I say, working quickly to pile the leftovers in beside the rice so that Mum can wash all the serving plates, ‘but at least it’s something.’
Mum’s eyes widen and her gloved hands fall still in the sudsy water when she works out what I’m doing. ‘You can’t take that to Henry, Wen. We can’t go out. Not today. It’s too hard.’
I think of Dad shutting the door in Nikki’s startled face, in mine, cutting us off from each other and all the words we were in the middle of saying, and my mouth tightens.
‘But Henry will think that we’ve forgotten him!’ I exclaim. ‘Him and his dad. Maybe he hasn’t eaten all day. Maybe they don’t have any food in the house, have you thought of that?’
‘We’ve given them what food we had in our house,’ Mum reminds me under her breath. ‘Even your father has noticed that. Henry will have to manage for one day. I’m sorry, but your father puts our family first before all others. The Xiao family is not our family, that’s what your father will say if he sees you doing this. He won’t like it. I don’t want any more trouble, Wen, please. Not for me, not for you.’
I feel anger flare up in me again, sharp and hot and choking. Mum’s right – life’s a test, and the rules are unknowable, the reasons for them just the same, and I’ll be in trouble no matter what, no matter when, so –
Test me.
If I can’t go to a party, I can at least help a friend in trouble who lives only, what, three or four hundred metres away.
I snap the lid onto the plastic container with unnecessary force and slide the box into a plastic bag. ‘I’m going,’ I say before Mum can protest. ‘I’ll be back before Dad even knows I’m gone. The TV’s so loud he won’t even hear the front door opening and closing. Make lots of noise putting the dishes away. Pretend you’re talking to me, I don’t know.’
‘Wen?’ Mum hisses fearfully, but I’m already sliding into a pair of outdoor shoes and heading for the front door with the plastic bag containing its box of leftover dinner.
Maybe I make too much noise, or maybe there’s a fiendish tracking device implanted just beneath the surface of my skin that gives out signals as to my whereabouts, but Dad is already turning and rising out of his armchair as I go past the lounge room door.
‘Wen!’ he snaps. ‘Where are you going?’
‘For a walk!’ I call from the hall, more bravely than I’m feeling, my hand already releasing the security door chain on the front door. As Dad comes out of the lounge room, I quickly slide the plastic bag I’m holding onto a hook on our hallstand, covering it hastily with an overcoat.
I give him an enquiring look, saying too fast, ‘I ate too much. I’ll be exactly five minutes. Just up to the end of the shops and back. Exercise is good for you. You don’t want me to get fat.’
Dad looks at me suspiciously. ‘It’s cold outside. And dark. It’s dangerous. I’ll come with you.’
I get the shivers, imagining me and Dad actually walking to Henry’s house, crossing that big concrete bridge over all the traffic, and me having to explain why, and us having to talk to each other about all the things I’m failing to do properly, and not talking about all the things Dad could be doing with his life instead of serving ungrateful people tea with bad grace at the Hai Tong Tai Seafood Restaurant. We don’t talk much, ever, because Dad doesn’t listen. He just tells me what to do and how to do it. No arguments.
Sure, every day might be a test, but every moment we spend together is a lecture.
I want to scream, Dad, our lives are completely joyless! Don’t you get that? Don’t you want to change it?
Before I actually open my mouth to do it, Mum hurries into the hall without her washing gloves on, her hands still red from the scalding washing water. ‘I’ll take her,’ she says quickly, reaching for a jacket. ‘You’ve been working all week, Jin, and you’re tired.’
‘It’s dangerous,’ Dad frowns, ‘to leave home – especially for people like you, and especially at night. What’s gotten into you?’
Mum and I look at each other, look down.
‘You’re not going out,’ Dad says with finality, sensing some hidden purpose, but not knowing what it is. He looks at each of us with narrowed eyes, at our empty hands and shadowed expressions. ‘You should know better.’
But what he’s really saying is, I know better.
‘Your mother’s right, Wen,’ he adds, his voice harsh. ‘I’m tired, and a walk in the cold is the last thing I want to do on the one night off that I am permitted each week! Now finish your work, both of you.’ Then he walks across to the front door and chains it firmly, before sitting himself back down in front of the television.
Mum must have retrieved the plastic bag of food from the hallway stand, because when I wake up in the morning and put my jacket on to go to school, the bag is gone and the plastic container is empty, clean and dry. Back in its usual place in the bottom drawer; below the cutlery drawer, and the one for tea towels.