Harper

Last night something strange happened. Marlowe came into my room. I pretended I was asleep, but I wasn’t really because I was thinking of my Louis and sending him love through my closed eyes and open heart.

I felt her fingertips on my forehead, brushing away my hair, making my appearance tidy. She was whispering something. I turned to move closer to her sound.

‘I’m sorry,’ she was saying. ‘I’m so sorry.’

I did not open my eyes because I could feel pain coming from her voice, so hot it felt cold.

‘Please, please, don’t leave me. Don’t die on me. I need you not to die, please.’

Her words travelled into my chest and every time my heart made one beat it hurt so bad that I had to squeeze my mouth shut so I did not scream.

She crawled under my covers with me, like I used to do with her when we were small. She wrapped her arm around my waist and held me tight and it felt so cosy I went to sleep.

When I woke up in the morning, she was gone.

A strong flame has been burning in my belly. It makes me want to leave Marlowe. Last night, I tried to go back home to my Louis, but I couldn’t. Not because I do not know how. Of course I know all about calling up a travelling agent and with my words telling her I will be getting on a plane, economy class, to Hong Kong International Airport. I have seen my dad do this. But he uses a card from his wallet and reads out the numbers on it to pay for a ticket. I do not have these numbers.

But that is not the reason I didn’t go. Deep in my heart, when I tried to leave Marlowe, I felt something inside me pulling and pulling.

It is like we are magnets, and right now the powerful forces and energies between us keep bringing me back to her.

This morning the phone rang early. Bì Yù answered it and had a conversation that sounded angry. And then she and Marlowe started shouting. I didn’t like the sound of the loud voices so I went to my room, but even though I shut the door, I could still hear them.

‘I don’t trust him, Marlowe. He can keep delaying all he wants. He can just run off with all the money now.’

‘It’s only one day. Don’t overreact.’

I wondered what was happening in one day, but I knew I could not ask this right now or Marlowe’s flames of anger would hit me and maybe mine would hit her.

‘Ugh, you’re so frustrating!’ Bì Yù said. ‘You’re not thinking clearly anymore. He could keep saying one day forever.’

‘I don’t need to listen to this. I’m going out.’

Then I heard the door slam. It made me jump. After a while, when I felt the air in the house drop to the floor like sinking dust, I crept out of my room and into the living room. I was getting a bit bored in the bedroom to be honest.

Now, lying on the couch with my warm, pink socks on, I feel my fire burning. Its flames are on low for now because Marlowe is still out. The house feels peaceful without her, but this is personal private information I will keep locked in my head. I am tired of the anger anger anger that is swimming around her whole body, inside and out. She can’t see it, but I can.

An envelope arrives via a Speedy Gonzales postman for Marlowe and Bì Yù opens it. Inside are some cut-outs from a newspaper and a letter. I know this is not a good thing to do. Mail is personal and private. If your name is not on the envelope, that means you should not read it, but Bì Yù does. She reads the newspaper cut-outs first and I can tell she is holding her breath because her chest is still. Then she puts the cut-outs down and reads the letter. Suddenly she runs to the kitchen. I can tell she is making a phone call because I hear her say, ‘It’s Bì Yù. Marlowe’s gone out and I opened the letter you sent. I need your help.’

I think to myself that I have not heard Bì Yù ask for help before.

‘Harper was due to have her procedure today,’ she says, ‘but it’s been moved to tomorrow. Marlowe’s already paid the money, but… I’m just not sure about it anymore.’

I wonder what she means by the word procedure and think I must look it up in my dictionary soon.

‘I know Marlowe is desperate to get this done, but my gut tells me it’s wrong.’ Bì Yù’s words are fast and shaky. ‘I couldn’t work out how the hospital can have so many organs available for transplant at such short notice, while in the rest of the world people have to wait years. I didn’t think we executed that many criminals.

‘But one of those articles, you sent said that it’s not just criminals who are being executed – that it’s political prisoners and people from labour camps too. Do you think it’s possible that the organs…’

I don’t want to listen anymore. There are too many words that don’t make sense and it is making me tired. I go back to my room and crawl into bed.

After a while, Bì Yù comes to my room and asks me to sit with her at the kitchen table. She shows me a book called The Anatomy of the Human Heart. There is a photo of a heart and lots of words. Some of the words are a bit strange and long, but Bì Yù explains the meaning of it all: that my heart is a muscle inside my chest and I need it to be full of life. When it stops beating, this is called dead. I tell Bì Yù that I already know about the human heart and I tell her that I am not going to be dead because the doctors are going to fix me. I also explain to her about dead. I tell her that just because your body becomes dead, your hum is not gone. Like my mum. Sometimes she is with me. When I am in the garden by the jasmine bush, I can smell her perfume.

When I finish speaking, I notice something different in me. I am calmer now; the dead word doesn’t scare me so much today. I said this word three times out loud and it didn’t upset me.

‘Don’t you think the heart looks like a plum, with vines and roots that reach all over your body?’ I ask.

Bì Yù looks at me. ‘Your heart is sick, Harper. You know that, don’t you?’

I nod my head. Not this conversation again. Does everyone think I am stupid in my brain or what?

‘And Marlowe wants to get you a new one from another person. This is why she has brought you to Shanghai.’ She leans her body in so she is close to me. ‘I don’t want to scare you, but she wants to get you a heart in a very bad way.’

Bì Yù’s eyes look a bit small and sideways, like she is doing something secret.

‘I already told Marlowe I don’t want the transplant thing. I don’t want someone else’s heart and I don’t want it in a bad way.’

I ask Bì Yù to get me a glass of apple juice and she does. I drink it in one go.

She looks at me, and her eyes are soft.

‘Harper, if you don’t want this heart transplant, you have to be firm with Marlowe.’

I think to myself that Bì Yù does not understand a few things. First of all, even though I keep telling Marlowe that I don’t want someone else’s heart, she will not listen. This is something that happens a lot in my life, maybe because I am not as quick at speaking out my words as someone who doesn’t have the Up syndrome. Marlowe used to be someone who listened, but now she has forgotten how, just like everyone else. The second thing is that now I think I understand in my heart and in my mind why Marlowe won’t listen. It has something to do with the pain that she whispered to me last night when she thought I was sleeping.

I decide it is best not to use words to say any more to Bì Yù, so I lift up my glass and ask her for one more apple juice.

I go to my room, take out my autobiographical storybook and open to the page where my pen was last touching. I read it again:

There was a beutiful lady who onse upon a time had a sore chest and was sick. She didn’t know it yet but she had corage. Even though the yung woman was sick in her chest, she found her corage and desided to go on a jorney. Her body filled up with power like a leeping white tiger.

It is time for me to add in a few more words. I can feel them running from my brain and into my hand. I needed to find my plum heart before it was too late.

There was a dark forse that was trying to stop the brave woman from finding her plum hart.

I close my eyes and see a faceless man wearing a large black cape. In his hand is a glass globe, spinning.

The dark forse was a man called deth. He had no eyes to see and no fase to be toched. He held a glass world in his hand, it was moving rond and rond and rond. He told the lady her time was runing out. And then she culd feel a drumming thumping drumming all the way from her roots, up her trunk and to the sky. In this moment she relised how brave she was for she was not scard of deth. But she new she needed to protect her hart, before he took it for himself.