Marlowe

Cousin Bì Yù’s phone call came like clockwork. She always called on Wednesday morning my time, which was Wednesday night Shanghai time. We hadn’t seen each other in nearly a year, not since my last trip back to Hong Kong. Whenever I went home, I always visited Shanghai for a few days with Harper and Wài Pó to see Mum’s side of the family. Bì Yù had pink hair then. I wondered what colour it would be now.

‘Mèi mei! Did you see the latest episode of 90210?’

Mèi mei… Whenever cousin Bì Yù called me that, it felt like a weight was lifted from my shoulders. Although I wasn’t officially her younger sister, it was good to know that someone had my back, even if she was halfway across the world.

‘You’re still watching that trash?’ I asked.

She giggled. ‘You know me. It helps me to sleep at night.’

She brought me up to date, taking great pleasure in the characters’ juicy romances. Although she was older than me, Bì Yù had never had a serious boyfriend. There was something about her that was so wise and so naive at the same time.

Suddenly she stopped her recount to ask, ‘Why are you so quiet? Is something wrong?’

She had no idea about Harper, I realised. Dad and Wài Pó must not have told the family in Shanghai yet. I wasn’t surprised that Dad hadn’t contacted them; Irene didn’t like him to be in touch with Mum’s side of the family. But why hadn’t Wài Pó said something? Perhaps she didn’t want to worry them until we knew for sure what was going on, I speculated. Or perhaps it was too hard for her to talk about.

Haltingly, I filled Bì Yù in.

Immediately, she said, ‘I’m coming. I’ll come to Hong Kong to be with you.’

‘No,’ I found myself saying. When Mum was sick, the family came when it was time to say goodbye to her. We weren’t saying goodbye to Harper. ‘I’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. Besides, you’ve just started working for your favourite designer – we both know how hard it was to land that job. You stay where you are; there’s no need for you to come now.’

‘I’m worried about you all.’

‘There’s no need to be, honestly. We’re seeing a doctor on Saturday and I’ll let you know how it goes. I’m sure everything will work out.’ It had to.

I could hear her anxiously tapping the phone with her finger.

‘If you’re sure.’ She sounded doubtful. ‘But if you need anything, anything at all, please call me.’

I promised her I would.

That night it began to snow. From the warmth of our bed I watched talc-like clusters collect on our window ledge. The purr of Olly’s breath landed at the base of my neck as he slept, his arm slung over my waist. I was comforted by Olly, his touch, the stillness of the night, the silence.

Yellow light from a streetlamp outside illuminated the powdery sky. Although the view outside my window was pleasing, I knew that this was something Harper was more likely to notice than me. I was seeing through her eyes again; we would be together soon and she was becoming more alive to me, her presence more vivid, as if she was in me, with me, until her gaze and mine were one. If she were seated next to me I wouldn’t know where she began and where I ended. As a child, I experienced that sensation so often that I thought it was normal, but this was the first time I’d felt it since moving to London. I wasn’t sure I liked it.

I placed my hand on top of Olly’s, which was lightly pressed against my belly, and listened to his slow, stable breath. Predictable. Safe. Outside our window, snow fell in thicker clumps, blown sideways by a strengthening wind. The glass rattled. The air howled. I felt small when nature displayed its strength. I tried to understand it in my work, tried to outwit it by finding ways to conserve its most delicate creatures. At times like these, though, I wondered if one could ever really outsmart nature, or grasp the phenomena of the physical world in its entirety. And if not, did that mean my work was fruitless? No. I stopped myself. That train of thought wouldn’t lead me anywhere worth going. And so I forced myself to return to a simple appreciation of the thickly falling snow.

I had just turned eight and was sitting on a couch watching snow gather on the window ledge. A fire was hissing nearby and I could feel its heat on my cheeks. My mother was giving Bì Yù a piano lesson on my uncle’s piano. My parents had decided to spend Chinese New Year at Uncle Bĭng Wén and Aunt Lĭ Nà’s townhouse at the edge of Zhōngshān Park, in Shanghai. Bì Yù’s sound was loud and clunky as she struggled with Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Dad had told me I must always be quiet when Mum was at the piano. I turned to look. Bì Yù’s pigtails bobbed up and down with the movements of her hands. I wanted to laugh at her mistakes and had to bite my lower lip to stop myself. Even though Bì Yù was three years older than I was and much better at maths, she would never play piano as well as my mother.

‘Lucky girl.’ Uncle Bĭng Wén spoke with a British accent he had acquired from his years studying at the University of London. He patted his daughter on the head. ‘Getting lessons from your talented aunt. One day you might be like her, eh! Up on a big stage.’ He removed several glasses from his wood-and-paktong cabinet and turned to look at me.

‘What about you?’

Suddenly, I felt small, aware of how my feet dangled over the edge of his couch, a long way from the floor.

‘Still don’t like the piano?’

‘No.’ Although Mum was reluctant to admit it, I hadn’t inherited her gift for music.

‘I’ve been trying to get her to play more,’ Mum sighed. ‘My beautiful, smart girl is also very stubborn.’

My beautiful, smart girl. In her eyes, I was the one with the potential, the one who could make something of herself. ‘Your mèi mei can’t do the things you can, Míng Yuè,’ Mum would say when I refused to practise the piano. ‘She won’t have the opportunities you will.’ This was usually enough to persuade me to sit at the keyboard and thump out a clumsy tune, but today she didn’t mention Harper’s shortcomings. Maybe Bì Yù’s interest in the piano was enough for the moment.

I could hear Harper’s frustrated cries coming from the kitchen. She probably wanted to be near the music. Sure enough, seconds later, there was a patter of footsteps. Harper, who was only three, plodded into the living room, pulling Dad behind her. I noticed her lips and fingertips were tinged blue, yet it didn’t seem to affect her cheery disposition. She gave Dad’s arm another forceful tug and gestured to the piano. I would never pull him like that! A tall man, he had to bend down to hold her hand. When she let go he straightened, wiping light hair from his brow and adjusting the bow tie he always wore. He looked, as Mum would tease, ‘so British’.

Harper clapped her hands, then climbed onto Mum’s lap. I waited for Dad to tell her off, but he didn’t say anything. He just smiled and took a drink from Uncle Bĭng Wén. I crossed my arms. It wasn’t fair.

Wài Pó entered the room, followed by Aunt Lĭ Nà. My aunt, a psychologist, had an unobtrusive manner. She tended to remain on the periphery, and I was often aware of her watching us. The two women took seats near the piano and listened attentively.

Harper continued clapping along with the music, pausing every so often to push her small, round spectacles further up the bridge of her nose. I found myself wishing that I had spectacles too.

‘Hello, blossom.’ Finally, Dad lowered himself onto the couch next to me. Immediately, I crawled onto his lap. He smelled of coffee and cologne – bitter and fresh. He kissed the top of my head and I burrowed deeper into his chest. All the heaviness I had felt while watching my mother and cousin play disappeared.

‘All done,’ Bì Yù announced. The music stopped abruptly. She jumped off the piano stool and took a bow. Harper followed, bowing also. Mum shook her head and laughed. She then wiped an unusual amount of sweat from her brow.

‘Is that it? I don’t think Beethoven would have finished a lesson halfway through.’

Bì Yù blushed. She took a step back from the piano and made space for Mum to play. Harper leaned her ear against the instrument. The room became quiet as the pianist made herself comfortable on the stool and loosened the clasp that held her long, dark hair in place. She played Chopin’s Nocturne. The music was both quick and slow, light and heavy, filled with an energy that made the room seem large and all of its inhabitants small. I snuggled into my father’s chest and listened to his breath relax and soften.

‘Love.’ Harper began to twirl, moving like a ballerina on her tiptoes. She raised her chubby little hands high and her fingertips skimmed the air. Her shirt gaped as she bent forward, revealing a thin scar across her chest. The scar that showed her heart was weak, the scar that made her so special in Dad’s eyes. Her eyes were lit with a kind of wildness; the same wildness that ran through Mum’s fingertips as they flew across the black and white keys. Harper laughed. Her eyes were closed and her body moved faster to the rhythm of the music. I couldn’t take my eyes off her; it was like she had been transported somewhere I could never go.

What could she hear that I couldn’t?

The room was hot. I closed my eyes and listened to the steady beat inside Dad’s chest. It was a sound that I could understand, a sound that made me feel safe.

There was a loud crack, followed by the boom of thunder. I sat upright, my body heavy and sweaty with sleep. Dad was gone, and there was a pillow in the place of his knee. I turned. The front door was ajar, and through the window I saw my family standing outside on the street, staring at the sky.

‘No bang!’ Harper, hands over her ears, shouted. ‘No bang!’ She didn’t like loud noises.

The living room was empty. I had been forgotten. There was another explosion, and then a shower of glittering gold. As I ran out the front door, the cold air bit at my bare throat. I grabbed hold of Mum’s leg.

‘Hello, darling.’ She lifted me up, grunting with effort, and held me to her chest. ‘Look how beautiful the night is. Let the noise frighten away all the bad spirits. This year will be a good year.’

Dad placed a hand on Mum’s shoulder. ‘Maybe we should go inside. These homemade fireworks are so bloody dangerous.’

‘Aī yā,’ Wài Pó interrupted. She said he was being silly.

‘What did she say?’ Dad asked. Instead of translating what my grandmother had actually said, I told him she thought he was handsome.

‘Hú shuō!’ She smacked her thigh and told him that even though he’d married her daughter years ago, he was still a foreigner in this city.

‘Don’t worry so much,’ Wài Pó told him. She launched into the old story about Wài Gōng, my grandfather, who’d had a stroke and gone to heaven. ‘His mind was far too active and his body responded to the stress,’ she explained.

It began to snow heavily. Mum took the scarf from around her neck and wrapped it around me. I noticed a cluster of small bruises just above her collarbone and thought that was a funny place to have knocked herself.

‘Photo time!’ Uncle Bĭng Wén made us huddle together while, in the background, bright colours burst in the sky. I grabbed my mother’s hand and directed my best smile at the camera.

‘One… two…’ He lowered the camera, frowning. ‘Where’s Míng Huà?’

Everyone looked around.

My mother put me down abruptly and started running through the snow, breathlessly calling Harper’s Chinese name: ‘Míng Huà!’ Her voice was as sharp as the icicles on Uncle Bĭng Wén’s roof.

‘I’ll get the torches,’ Aunt Lĭ Nà said, and she ran into the house.

‘Harper!’ Dad shouted. He sprinted down the dark street. I tried to follow, but a hand grabbed my arm. It was Wài Pó.

‘You go back inside,’ she told me. ‘You are too young to be roaming the streets.’

‘But I can help,’ I insisted. I knew where Harper had gone; I always knew.

Bì Yù pulled me by the hand towards the house. ‘It’s not safe,’ she told me. ‘There are monsters in the night that eat little girls like us.’ ‘Kuài diǎn, kuài diǎn.’ Wài Pó gave me a forceful shove through the front door and quickly shut it behind us.

As soon as Wài Pó was out of sight, I told my cousin that I was going to get Harper. I hurried into the kitchen, where I knew Aunt Lĭ Nà usually kept the window ajar, and climbed out. Bì Yù dashed after me. ‘Bú yào zǔo,’ she shouted. Don’t go.

There was a plum tree that Harper loved in Zhōngshān Park. Its long branches reached into the air, filling the space between its neighbouring trees with the rich colour of its magenta blossoms. By the light from nearby streetlamps, the fallen petals looked like drops of blood in the snow. The air was thick with smoke from the fireworks; it clung to the back of my throat as I walked towards my sister.

As if she could still hear Mum’s music, Harper was twirling under the tree. Her lips were tinged blue again. She had stuck out her tongue to catch the falling snow and wore a blossom in her wet hair. She looked like something from another world.

My footsteps crunched in the snow as I ran towards her.

‘Harper!’ I grabbed her hand, which was as cold as the snow on the ground beneath us. I felt my own body go cold. Rubbing her fingers hard, I tried to give her all the warmth I had left.

Her body became still and she blinked, then giggled. ‘Ma-ma,’ she said, unable to pronounce my name. She pointed to the plum tree and smiled.

‘Harper, we have to go. Your heart doesn’t like to get cold, remember?’ The fireworks had started again, a storm of light and noise in the sky. She quickly put her hands over her ears and lay flat on the ground, like she always did when she heard a loud noise.

Using all my strength, I heaved my sister up and lifted her onto my back. She put her cool cheek flat against the base of my neck, sending a wave of goosebumps down my spine. I stumbled back to the house as fast as I could while the fireworks cracked loudly above us – much louder than the sound of my sister’s breath.