It is a Friday morning and I am home again. It feels good to be back with all my things and to be with my family (although Marlowe is not here). Most importantly, I can see Louis more. He is about to go on a special holiday to Thailand with his family, and today I get to spend the whole day with him before he leaves. I am so excited that I feel a swirling and skipping in my belly.
This will be the first time Louis is travelling in an independent way in Hong Kong all by himself. He is carrying his mobile phone and I have told him how many coins to use to pay for the bus. I know all about money skills because my kind of Up syndrome is different from his. Mrs Green at my vocational centre said I was called ‘high functioning’, which means I can count better than Louis, and I can play the piano, and sometimes I can find the right words to say how I feel in English and also Chinese. But I know that Louis is better at other things. He is better at making our friends laugh with his jokes and pretending to be Mr Bean or Basil from Fawlty Towers. Louis is also better at remembering important facts about things and people he meets. My Louis knows how to make everyone feel special, like when he notices things about Wài Pó that I don’t. One day he told her she was beautiful when she tied her hair in a lovely way so that her pearl earrings were showing, and another time he told her that her custard tarts were very yummy – she had added extra butter and it was the perfect taste on our tongues and the most clever thing to do.
Wài Pó pushes me in my chair to our front gate. This is the second time that she has had to do this today, because Louis got the wrong bus in the morning and we had to go back inside and wait one hour. I don’t mind about having to come outside again. It is always nice to be in the air that is fresh and salty from the sea, not like hospitals that have a smell like sour bodies.
I shiver a little because it is cold out here, but there is no need to worry. Wài Pó has put a beautiful blanket on my knees. She made it for me with wool in the colours of blue, yellow and white around the edges.
A minibus pulls in at the stop across the road. A few people get off, but I do not see Louis. My heart does a little hop inside my chest. I look at Wài Pó, who takes out her mobile phone and calls him. Her voice is small against the roar of the bus engine as it leaves our street.
‘He’ll be on the next one,’ she says, patting my shoulder.
We wait. Buses come and buses go. Every time one of them stops, I notice at least one pair of eyes staring at me without blinking. It is a funny feeling when someone stares, but I am quite used to it because I am a beautiful woman and I always try to look my best. Today, I think these people must also be admiring my beautiful blanket because Wài Pó put a lot of effort into her crochet stitching for me. This is a blanket that carries love.
There is a line forming at the bus stop now. A lot of people are waiting. A lot of people are staring with their eyes. I wave at some of them, but no one waves back. Wài Pó tells me not to do that, but I don’t understand why, so I explain to her that she is being very unfriendly.
‘He’s here!’ she shouts. A green-and-white minibus pulls up and I see behind the window that my Louis is sitting, waving. Oh! I lose the air in my lungs. I haven’t seen him in two days and I am feeling very, very happy. But then I realise Louis is not moving. He’s just waving at me with a big smile on his face and is blowing me kisses.
‘Get up!’ I shout, but having to make my voice come out in a loud way gives me a coughing fit. Louis is still sitting, waving.
‘Up!’ I say ‘Up!’
Wài Pó puts the brakes on my wheelchair and runs to him. She is a bit slow, because she is skinny and old, but that is personal private information that I will never say to her face.
Now everyone on the seats next to the windows have their eyes on me. I try to use my hands to tell them to help get Louis off the bus, but they just stare. Then I see Wài Pó get on the bus. She says something to Louis that I cannot hear. He smacks his hands on his head. He does this when he wants to say something like ‘stupid me’. As he walks off the bus I see that the lady next to him takes out a tissue. She bends over and seems to be wiping his empty seat from top to bottom before she moves over to take his place by the window. I am looking at her face while she does this. She has big frown lines on her forehead and her nose is wrinkled up like she has smelled a bad smell. It makes my skin prickly and uncomfortable and my head feels confused. I push my glasses further up the hard part of my nose to make sure I am seeing things in a clear way. After all, she was a lady with a soft, nice-looking face. I had been planning to give her a friendly wave to say thank you for sitting next to my Louis and keeping him company, but I am not so sure I want to now.
‘My sweet and precious flower!’ Louis runs across the road, faster than Wài Pó. ‘I did it! I did it!’ He kisses me, a big fat one, on the lips.
‘Yes! You did it. You are a clever man.’ I am so happy in my heart to see him.
But as he pulls away, I see so many eyes on us at the bus stop. I decide that I do not like these eyes; they are sharp and unfriendly.
As Wài Pó wheels me back to the house, I ask, ‘Louis, were you eating Doritos on the bus? You know you can’t eat on the bus or you might make crumbs.’
‘I was not eating Doritos on the bus. This is the truth because I ate three packets all in one go last night, at nine pm, when I was watching Friends. Now there are no more Doritos left in my house for me to eat.’
‘Aī yā, don’t worry about other people, Míng Huà. Other people shén me dōu bù dǒng.’
Normally, I would tell my Wài Pó not to speak badly of others, but today I didn’t want to. Today, something inside of me has become different and knowing. I think of the time I was craving one of Wài Pó’s egg tarts so bad, but she was too tired to bake, so I went to a shop and bought one with my money. It looked so happy and friendly sitting there in the cafe; so yellow, so buttery, so yummy. But then when I took one single bite, I had to spit it out. It was hard and too eggy and not enough sweet. Even though it looked very delightful, it was not.
Today I think that things are not always as they seem.