I MUST SPEND HALF THE WEEK WITH DAD AND THE OTHER half with Mum – but only under my grandparents’ strict supervision; Dad is very specific about that. Another of Dad’s rules is that I have to attend Sunday school on Mum’s time, so technically I have only three days a week with her.
Switching houses twice a week has its perks: I have two of everything. And its challenges: ‘This is an English custom.’ ‘This is a Chinese custom.’ I try to see the bright side – I’m the only child I know from a broken home, let alone a multicultural one. What a trailblazer. Things are now complicated by the fact that Dad has a new girlfriend. Twenty-six years younger than Dad, Angela is a nurse from New Zealand who is now part of the eccentric life of Francis Kwa.
Mum’s bones have healed since her car accident a year ago but she has terrible scarring on her face. She refuses additonal plastic surgery and instead religiously massages vitamin E cream into her right cheek, chin and forehead twice a day in an attempt to reduce the unsightliness. Today Mum brings me to Dad’s place at the usual time, right after compulsory Sunday school. She has packed a picnic of white bread, cheese and Vegemite sandwiches, and she lays out a rug in Dad’s backyard on the dry patchy grass between the kitchen and his shed. It was her backyard not so long ago, and although this is a deviation from Dad’s rule to leave me at the front door, it seems like a harmless idea. I’m pleased to spend an extra half-hour with Mum.
Then Dad’s girlfriend, Angela, flings open the back flyscreen door, and Mum and I look up from our sandwiches. Angela is furious. ‘Get lost!’ Angela yells.
Mum suddenly seems terrified and hurriedly gathers up her picnic blanket and sandwich container. She opens her car door and flings her things onto the passenger seat. She has that look again where she sees right through me, and drives off without saying goodbye.
After that, Mela refuses to come onto the property – into the house designed and built for her – ever again. Instead, every Sunday she drops me at the top of the driveway. Sometimes Dad and Angela are home, sometimes not.
One day after Mum has dropped me off, I’m mucking around on an old skateboard that Dad picked up from roadside rubbish, trying hard to balance – I’m getting better the more I practise – when I’m shoved in the back. The skateboard shoots out from under me and I fly, headfirst, into the brick wall near our front door. My scalp starts bleeding. It hurts, and I can hear kids laughing as they run away. ‘Smackhead,’ one shouts and he’s not referring to heroin – the inference is that my Asian features make me look as though I have been smacked in the head. ‘Hahaha. Dishpan!’ Apparently, with a dishpan. These are common racist insults in Scarborough. Towards me at least. I didn’t think anyone was home – no one answered when I called out earlier – but now Angela appears and wraps an arm around me. I sob while she bandages my head, enjoying this rare tenderness from her. I often feel like a ghost in my own home so I soak up the attention.
One Sunday when Mum drops me home, I find wedding photos strewn across the kitchen table. They are Dad and Angela’s. I examine them one by one in puzzlement and disbelief, recognising many of the guests, and noticing most of all that I wasn’t there and – missing out on every little girl’s dream – wasn’t asked to be a flower girl. I didn’t even know they were engaged, and suddenly I have a stepmother.
By the time I am eight I have been to Hong Kong every year of my life, sometimes twice. I used to go with my dad and mum, then for a while it was just Dad and me, but the last couple of times it’s been Dad and Angela, and me.
This trip we’re catching up with an ‘old friend’ of Dad’s at our hotel. Her name is Evelyn, and she instantly beguiles me with a dazzling smile. From beneath a plush fur coat, she reveals a hand shimmering with diamonds and holding a large plastic doll with blonde pigtails, dressed in a white skirt, collared shirt and classic Mary-Janes. ‘For you, Miss Mimi.’
The doll is just what I’ve been wishing for, and wishing to be. ‘Thank you, Evelyn.’
She grins wider and pats me on the head. ‘Oh, darling, please call me Aunty Evelyn.’
We all go to yum cha – Evelyn, Dad and Angela, and me. Afterwards, at Evelyn’s insistence, I browse shops alone with her while Dad and Angela go back to the hotel.
‘I want to marry your father,’ Evelyn tells me in a matter-of-fact way, as if this is the most normal conversation to have with an eight-year-old. ‘And you can help me.’
Once Evelyn releases me from her clutches, I return to the hotel, loyally keen to alert Dad and Angela to her plan. ‘Evelyn says she wants to marry Dad,’ I blurt.
‘You’re lying,’ Angela says. My stepmother glares at me then looks to Dad for a response.
I remind myself again that it’s safer to keep to myself: quiet on the outside, a tiger’s roar within.
‘Charm and disarm,’ Aunty Theresa coaches me a few days later in her apartment. ‘Just smile sweetly!’
I’m still incensed. ‘But, Aunty, she is so, so, sooooooo mean to me.’
Aunty thinks for a moment. ‘Well then, don’t let her bother you. If she does not know how to behave, you can show her how to behave. If someone has bad manners, you do not have to have bad manners too.’ We’re sitting side by side on Aunty’s chaise longue, facing the view from her sunroom windows. ‘Now, sit properly.’ She illustrates this by straightening her posture. ‘Lift your head up, Mimi.’ She raises her chin slightly. ‘You are Kwa.’
A number of Hong Kong visits go by, all with similar amounts of family drama and a heavy dose of Aunty Theresa’s patience and calm, until one trip coincides with a visit from Aunty Clara, who is still living in England, and my grown-up cousins Steven and David. They are all often here – sometimes with Clara’s daughter Josephine as well – but our time rarely overlaps. Theresa insists Clara and I must both stay with her, that way my cousins can have a hotel room to themselves. We can share her room, and she will sleep on the fold-out bed in her study. Dad and Angela are at a hotel, the usual routine since the Evelyn incident.
Aunty Theresa is like a maypole at the centre of us all. We are connected by ribbons that we weave in and out.
‘Clara is divorced,’ Theresa tells me quietly, ‘and she’s still a “little” upset about it.’
Apart from Clara’s charming disposition, the first thing I notice is that she pinches Brigit hard on the arm as soon as Theresa turns her back. Clara obviously thinks that her sister and I aren’t looking. I blink to check my eyesight is okay, but I’m sure I saw it. Brigit just leaves the room, and I don’t go after her.
Later we all go to the mall, and without provocation or warning Clara tugs sharply on Brigit’s ponytail. Her head is yanked backwards. There it is again – so I’m not crazy. The assault is over quickly, and Brigit keeps walking with her head bowed just a little lower than usual, otherwise acting as though nothing has happened.
Clara realises I’ve noticed and tries to distract me from Brigit’s distress. ‘Look, look, Niece Mimi, wouldn’t that coat in the shop window look lovely on me?’
Brigit gestures for me to follow Clara, and I catch her wiping away tears as my aunt and I disappear into the store.
‘Brigit,’ I whisper later on, ‘you mustn’t let her do that to you. I’m going to tell Aunty Theresa.’
Brigit puts on her best confused look. ‘Do what, Mimi? Oh, Mimiiiii. You must not do the worrying, Mimi. I will be in the very big trouble if you are doing the worrying.’
That night, Aunty Clara keeps me awake with a scary story. It’s about a man who feels guilty because he stole from his brother, so he spends hours hitting his stomach against the edge of a desk until he dies. Clara does the actions against Theresa’s desk to illustrate the brutal suicide. ‘And there, that is the lesson,’ she says triumphantly.
I’m not quite sure what the lesson is, other than to never share a room with Aunty Clara again.
I lie awake all night staring at the ceiling. Is that how her father died? I wonder. My grandfather. Maybe it wasn’t poison after all – maybe Grandfather stole from his brother during the Japanese occupation, then couldn’t live with the guilt. I have no idea.
The next day Clara’s two adult sons visit Theresa’s apartment. David and Steven are twenty-three and nineteen. They tower over me, so I have to stand on a chair to be in a photo with them.
‘Hold still,’ chirps Theresa as she takes the Polaroid. She claps her hands joyfully, happy we’re all there with her, together.
‘Mother,’ says David, turning to Clara, ‘what time is convenient for you for me and Steven to meet friends for dinner?’
Clara swings around with the frightening precision of a martial artist and, to my great surprise, slaps him hard across the cheek. ‘You must ALWAYS call me MUMMY.’
A red mark appears on David’s face, made worse as he turns crimson with embarrassment. ‘Yes, Mummy,’ he says, bowing his head.
Brigit, who is standing in the doorway to the kitchen, lowers her eyes too.
‘Come, come now,’ says Theresa, putting an arm around David, ‘none of this. Clara, I have a necklace for you. Come to my dressing-room.’
The four of us can hear the sisters shouting at each other, and we awkwardly make small talk. Theresa emerges composed and calm, but Clara looks angry. She cuffs David around the ear and ushers her sons to the door, then turns to hold my ten-year-old face in her hands. ‘Pretty, so pretty. Ho lang, ho lang. You must be careful and smart too. You are so pretty.’ She pauses. ‘And little bit fat. So be careful your waistline too. Ooooh, so chubby fat. Fat. Fat. Fat.’ She squeezes my cheeks and laughs at her own joke, moving towards the door again before stopping with an expression that suggests she’s forgotten something important. ‘Ah, but Brigit, you are the one who is the fattest. Must be the happiest then, huh?’ She looks at Brigit, who is in the corner, clearly trying hard not to meet her eye. ‘Jolly and fat, haha.’
Brigit rushes over and gives Clara’s black patent leather Chanel loafers a quick polish with the shoe kit kept religiously at the door for just such an occasion, before bending over to help Clara put them on.
‘Goodbye, Mrs Bryan, thank you for coming to visit us,’ she says earnestly, honouring Clara’s decision to retain her married name since her divorce fourteen years ago.
‘Ugh.’ Clara treads on the sleeve of Brigit’s cardigan and holds her foot there just a fraction too long for it to be accidental, then walks out the door.
David and Steven pull Brigit to her feet. Each young man gives her a warm, apologetic hug as they leave. Clara, halfway to the elevator, doesn’t see David shoot me a wink – my favourite cousin is telling me not to worry, it’s all okay.
I can tell that Aunty Theresa is flabbergasted by Aunty Clara’s visit. Still, she speaks no ill to me of her badly behaved sister. Perhaps to Theresa, what she and all her siblings have been through is more than enough reason for a little madness.
That night, Aunty sings to me as Brigit tucks me in. I’ve reclaimed the sofa bed in Aunty’s mahogany study, where, surrounded by ivory and jade statuettes, I lie on plush, tasselled velvet cushions, snuggled under a featherdown covered in embroidered silk.
Brigit’s small, plain room with her small, plain bed is just on the other side of the wall.
Aunty sings the Doris Day song ‘Que Sera, Sera’ as I drift off to sleep. She loves singing me this carefree song about letting go of trying to control everything in your life. When she sings it my worries disappear. We can’t control or predict the future – we can only resist or surrender and, either way, what will happen will just happen.
There’s a sense of calm tonight in Peace Mansion. This is the only world I need, and I wish I could live in it forever.
Back at Mandarin Gardens, I receive a letter from Aunty Theresa every few weeks. But one day when I check the letter box, I see her handwriting on a letter addressed to Dad, so I take it to him.
It is so terrible, she writes. Patrick and Elaine need to get out. They have two daughters. You can help them. I will pay for you to go. I think you can get them out.
When Kwa blood calls, there is no refusing it. Dad announces he is going to ‘rescue’ some Chinese relatives from the Communist party in China and he will bring them back to Perth. He prepares sponsorship documents to bring his half-brother’s family to Australia, then flies to Beijing to meet the Kwa family of four – Elaine and Patrick and their two daughters, Gar Ping and Gar Hong. The girls’ Western names are Karen and Cathy. Patrick is eleventh brother and son of Grandfather Ying Kam’s wife number two. In other words, Patrick is Dad’s half-brother.
During the Cultural Revolution in China, art and artefacts were defaced and destroyed because they represented the ‘old way of thinking’. Patrick and Elaine and their neighbours hid Chinese art under the floorboards and behind false walls, but the Red Army unearthed most of it and set it alight. Patrick and Elaine have only a few pieces left.
Francis arrives in China carrying an almost empty suitcase with a false bottom.
He and Patrick meet for the first time since they were boys. Francis meets his past; Patrick meets his future. Francis asks for the art, and stuffs the ‘priceless’ paintings into the false bottom of his suitcase, covering them over and praying they won’t be detected. Not much escapes the Cultural Revolution, and the penalty would be long-term imprisonment, even death, a far greater cost than the paintings are worth. Francis takes the risk anyway, and returns home with the artworks, having lodged the migration documents with the Australian authorities.
Very soon, the family’s visas come through and, as promised, they move to Australia, staying in our Scarborough house for a time while they try to adjust to the new language and culture. Patrick and Elaine are so grateful they cry tears of relief.