I made my way to the bus stop not far from the place where, some years before, I had visited the memory wall with my father. The wall had long since been destroyed and my thoughts were not of my father but of Gen. I felt a sense of anguish, as though in those moments his embarrassment and shame were my own. I clenched my fists as I willed the bus to come, and finally it did. The journey seemed sluggish, as it always does when you are desperate to reach your destination. Rain trickled down the large dark windows at the front of the bus, and beyond them the lights from other vehicles were rendered in bleary oranges and reds, which seemed to smudge and dissolve in much the same way the colours of a painting might run. In the darkness, those lights were strange and spectral – detached from their source. I watched for a while as the rain pattered against the roof of the bus.
I had never felt so angry with my grandmother. She was a force of nature, she could be belligerent, and she had the sharpest tongue you could imagine. But I had always felt that, because I was so different from her, because I was in many ways shy and quiet and uncertain, she had taken me under her wing, that she was aware of my vulnerability, and that in her gaze I could feel a softness which she rarely showed to anyone else, except perhaps my little brother. But within minutes she had blown my adolescent world apart. I realised that, although I had regarded many of the girls at school with quiet contempt as they obsessed and fretted about boys, I too desperately wanted a boyfriend.
And while, once upon a time, Gen might not have been my first choice, now that I had got to know him again – had got to know his intellect, his aloofness and the odd moment of vulnerability when he seemed like a little boy again – I realised I wanted him with all my heart. It was gushing and sentimental and ridiculous and blushworthy – but it was important to me. I was devastated that my grandmother would choose to deliberately hurt and humiliate someone of such significance to me.
The bus doors wheezed aside. I had not brought anything to cover my head, but I hardly felt the rain, such was the pounding of my heart. I had not been invited to Gen’s house, and fear formed a lump in my throat. But I had to do something. I knocked on his door. His mother answered, and when she saw me her face relaxed into an expression of bemused pity. She hustled me inside, murmuring gently the whole time. I tried to find the words. I nearly choked on a sob. Finally, I managed:
‘Is he here?’
‘Yes, he’s here. He is in his room. He came back quickly. And he was wet, like you. But, don’t worry. He is all dried off now. I am sure he will be happy to see you!’
She led me down a different corridor, away from the large rooms, the kitchen and the drawing room where I had been before. I followed her down a narrow and dimly lit corridor, the old carpet soft and doughy against my steps, until finally we reached a door. With a smile she gestured to me to enter, before slipping back into the gloom. I knocked tentatively, then opened the door.
The room smelt of boy. I don’t know how else to describe it. It was musty, verging on unpleasant, and I noticed a couple of discarded socks and T-shirts on the floor. And yet I felt a thrill of excitement: this was Gen’s actual room, and there was something intimate and private about stepping into it. My heart thrummed. I had no idea how he was going to react.
He was sitting on his bed, reading a book. I didn’t catch the title. As I came in, he looked up at me, and his face assumed an expression of gentle surprise.
‘Oh hello,’ he said, with a faint smile.
There was a wistfulness to his voice, as though I was someone he had not seen for a very long time. The irony and aloofness were gone, and what remained was the indelible image of a child, somewhat baffled, unsure of what to say but pleased, almost, by the attention. I sat down on the bed beside him.
‘I’m so, so sorry. About what happened. My grandmother’s behaviour …’ My voice was husky; it trailed away.
He wouldn’t look at me. He was staring at his feet.
‘Really, you shouldn’t exaggerate,’ he murmured with that same faint smile. ‘It wasn’t that bad. It was okay. I just didn’t feel so well.’
At that moment he seemed vulnerable and I the strong one. A lump of emotion had formed in my throat.
I wanted to tell him I understood it was more than that: that he had been humiliated, and quite unfairly, not least since his own family had shown me such courtesy and care. I wanted to tell him that I was nothing like my grandmother, that her coarseness and vulgarity had no bearing on me. But how to get these things across when your emotions are swirling and your head is spinning?
Instead I moved instinctively. I reached out and turned his head as gently as I could. I pressed my lips to his. I kissed him passionately, because I yearned to show him that I needed and respected him – that he was safe with me, and loved, and that I would never again allow him to be hurt or humiliated. We were kissing, and now all there was was the feeling of him and the warm feeling rising up from my belly.
He felt it too. I heard him moan, a low whisper of a sound, breathed into my mouth, and we were guiding one another back onto the bed. Our lips were smeared with saliva. If you had told me that about kissing, even a few months before, I would have said it was disgusting, but the intimacy of it – the sheer physicality of our connection – felt like floating away in a wave of warm heat. All my inhibitions began to evaporate before the heat and beauty of the person who was holding me. His fingers were on my arms, on my belly; they made their way to my breasts, but hesitated, and I could feel his fear, his uncertainty; there was that childlike element again, and I wanted to tell him that everything was going to be okay.
Suddenly his hands shot downwards. He pulled his trousers down somewhat along with his pants, and I glimpsed his penis, a smooth, soft brown, strange and yet somehow perfect, swollen into life, and even though I had never seen a real one before, I felt a thrill of illicit delight. For I knew it was me – my words, my touch, my body – which had made him expose himself this way, which had brought him to the point of such excitement. He touched my hand; very gently he guided it towards his penis. There was nothing aggressive in his movements, only a helpless longing.
‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Please.’
I held it in my hand almost automatically. It felt natural. I began moving my hand up and down, because I intuited this was what he wanted me to do, and he was looking at me with such longing, and everything my grandmother had done had been undone, and it was just him and me, and in that moment he looked childlike and beautiful, and as tentative about any sexual contact as I might otherwise have been, in that moment I was the one in control. As I moved faster, and as I felt his breathing become lighter and more rapid, as I felt the heat of his long, smooth erection against my hand, and the sheer intimacy of it, I too felt an intense feeling of pleasure ripple across my belly and flare between my legs.
It was the most wonderful, strange and delicious feeling. I’d had premonitions of it before, of course, but never to this degree of obliterating intensity. It was a yearning I didn’t quite know what to do with; a joy which was also momentarily painful, for there was no release. All at once I felt Gen shudder; I felt something warm spatter against the palm of my hand, and I heard him gasp as though he were struggling for air. In the same moment, he pulled the material of the sheets against my fingers and his thing, trying to wipe away what was there.
I giggled.
It happened involuntarily. As excited as I was, there was something about the absurdity of our feelings and our bodies, about this whole scene, which struck me as comic.
He turned away.
I realised I had made a mistake, I tried to reach for his mouth again, and was able to brush my lips against his, but even though he smiled, his smile was empty now, and it was as though all the life had been drained from him. He pulled up his trousers and his pants.
I had the feeling that I had done something very wrong. But I couldn’t talk to him about what had just happened, the intimacy of it. Because that wasn’t something I could even put into words. So instead I murmured:
‘Are you okay?’
He had turned away from me on the bed. His voice was detached and cold. The same aloofness, the same sullenness, only now it seemed more pronounced than ever.
‘Yes, I am perfectly fine. I am glad you came by. And I thank you for your visit. But we do have school tomorrow. So maybe we should …’
He let the words tail off.
And it felt like being punched in the face.
A panic reared up in me. When my voice came, it was small and timorous, pleading almost. I hated myself for that.
‘Is this … is this because of what happened with my grandmother?’
He turned his head and looked at me for the first time. He made the effort to smile.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be abrupt. It’s just that I am a little tired. It’s been a long day.’
I was lost for words. All I could manage was repetition.
‘This is about my grandmother, right?’
His face settled into a more confident smile, firm and reassuring.
‘No, it’s nothing to do with that. It wasn’t the perfect dinner, I’ll grant you that. But I also know that your family and my family come from very different places. So I guess some type of friction is to be expected, don’t you think?’
I nodded dumbly. I couldn’t find anything else to say. But those words, that ‘your family and my family come from very different places’ – despite the amicable tone in which they were delivered – hurt me deeply. I couldn’t deny that my grandmother had behaved appallingly to Gen. But what he said pained me nevertheless.
A few minutes later I was on the bus as it swished through the darkness, my thoughts swirling like rainwater.
Eventually I stepped out into the gloomy drizzle, which spattered my hair and left cold, clammy drops clinging to my skin. A feeling of sorrow had opened up inside me. Some part of me desperately wanted to cry, but a numbness had fallen on me too, and a cold hopelessness that sealed off my inner world from the outer one. I wanted to cry, I felt the need to, but the tears would not come. Instead I trudged on, feeling the rainwater on my face and yet not really feeling it at all, all sensation somehow abstract and distant.
I got home. I could hear my brother playing noisily and happily, engrossed in the world of his own imagination, bashing one toy against the next with jubilant, clumsy hands. I could hear my mother washing up in the kitchen, the hot water from the tap steaming and splashing, and although these sounds were familiar they were at the same time strange, as if coming from a great distance.
I knocked on my grandmother’s door, then pushed it open. She was sitting in the old chair which had been so favoured by my grandfather towards the end of his life, the place where he would sit while she cut his hair. She was rocking gently back and forth, working in the shadow, the soft light from a candle casting its smooth glow over those weathered stubby fingers, which nevertheless moved so dexterously across the material of the leather with needle and thread. She was humming under her breath, the sound soft and croaky and oblivious, and a lump formed in my throat because in that moment she seemed vulnerable, so unlike the wild and furious figure that had physically imposed itself on Gen, humiliating and reducing him. In so doing, she had hurt me badly, and despite my numbness and incomprehension, I felt certain of one thing. It was her fault Gen was angry with me.
I stepped closer. She sensed the movement and raised her old turtle’s face; a leathery smile creaked across her lips as though nothing had happened. I felt myself trembling, my anger severe and acute, clearing my head. I stepped closer still. Measured my words.
‘You were cruel and unpleasant at dinner. And I don’t understand why.’
She looked up at me as though she had been slapped. Blinking, baffled. I had never spoken to her in such a way. I felt my voice falter but the words came nevertheless.
‘You were nasty to Gen. He was our guest. My guest. And you treated him so badly. I don’t understand why you would do that … to me.’
My words trailed away and now I felt like I was about to cry. Her expression narrowed, the anger sharpening in those dark eyes.
‘Ah yes, him.’
She turned back to her material, though her fingers had never really stopped moving.
‘Him?’ I whispered in exasperation. ‘Is that all you have to say?’
Her head snapped up with violence.
‘That boy is a worm, a creepy-crawly, and he is beneath you.’
Her voice lowered into a malicious whisper, harsh and grating.
‘But then you always wanted to climb the greasy pole, to move up in the world, to leave your family behind, didn’t you, Pin Yin? And his pole is no doubt greasier than most!’
She gave a salacious wink, but there was no humour in it, just the bleakest contempt. My tears were flowing as I backed away. The lewdness of what she said, the ugliness of it, made me reel. The memory of lying on Gen’s bed came to me, of moving my hand up and down on him, the look of disdain in his eyes, then the sight of the frog’s meat smeared across my grandmother’s bulging purple gums; all these images whirled and swirled in my head as I staggered out of the room, blinking away my tears.
It wasn’t until I got to my own room, closed the door, and fell on my bed, pulling the covers around me, that it came to me. As I lay there, my breathing slowing, the pace of my heart relaxing, I realised. In her sudden outburst of emotion, my grandmother had called me Pin Yin. That was my mother’s name. Not mine.