Home Truths

Part Two

It was like she was wearing shoes for the first time. They were killing her. Blanche was short of breath and couldn’t get excited about reaching the top for the sensational view.

She panted up the wide stone steps after her mother and sister to the luxury Hong Kong apartment. Blanche’s mother, Lauren Lee, looking smart in white pants and a shirt with hot pink, orange and lime-green swirls, rang the bell.

A chain clinked and the door opened as Blanche caught up and wiped her patent leather shoes on the doormat.

“Oh, there you are!” said a slender woman who wore her long hair straight and sleek.

“I’m sorry we’re late.” Lauren gave her daughters a prod on the shoulder that said ‘say hello.’

“Hello Mrs Lau!” Felicity said and presented a beautifully wrapped gift to the hostess. 

“You shouldn’t have, really. You’re too kind!” She led them through a large, airy living area filled with potted palms, polished furniture and paintings in fan-shaped frames. Long windows looked onto a leafy garden with a pavilion and lotus pond. In the distance came the sounds of children shouting and the roar of deep, warm adult laughter. 

Felicity ran outside to join the squealing children. 

“Come on, Mei-Mei. The others are outside.”

Blanche didn’t move. The birthday party had nothing to do with her. None of the parties ever had anything to do with her. 

“Well, if you won’t go outside, you can stay here on your own.”

Blanche was eighteen months younger than Felicity, round-waisted and chubby but equally tall. Strangers often mistook them as twins because their mother dressed them alike. This afternoon Blanche was wearing a Swiss costume of puff sleeves, paisley-patterned red skirt and short black vest with a laced-up middle, like Heidi. But even as a seven-year-old, Blanche knew she was far from the rustic simplicity of Switzerland. She lived in a skyscraper in one of the most populous cities in the world. 

“You can play with Ignatius,” said the hostess, indicating a boy sitting alone at the dining table.

Blanche recognized the boy from another party. Fat and over-stuffed like Humpty Dumpty, he was pushing a matchbox car along the table to a flat rendition of an ambulance siren.

“Have a finger sandwich,” the hostess suggested.

Blanche glanced at the array of sandwiches, delighted by their gourmet fillings, just like at the Mandarin Hotel. All the crusts are cut off and each piece was the exact same size and height, either a triangle or rectangle, meticulously sliced and laid out in perfect rows. 

Her eyes wandered as she ate her third sandwich.

She gasped, seeing a bookcase in complete disarray. 

For reasons she couldn’t quite understand, Blanche was obsessed with tidiness. Here was her opportunity to bring order to disorder.

She set to work, rearranging every book by height and thickness, from the bottom shelf up, as far as she could reach. She stood each book on its spine, pushing them close together so no space was wasted. Mindful of colour, she selected carefully before putting each book back in the bookcase. As she gathered the remaining volumes, a hand fell on her shoulder. She started. It was Ignatius.

“I want to show you something. Come with me.”

Reluctantly, she followed Ignatius down the dark passageway to a room with dark wood panelling, dim lighting and soft pile carpets. 

He pulled from a bottom drawer an expensive-looking magazine with thick glossy perfumed pages. Blanche stared in disbelief at the naked young woman on the cover displaying oversized breasts. 

“Look at this!” Ignatius turned the page. 

A man was cupping a woman’s bare bottom, kissing her fleece of dark curls. Blanche stared with fright, her heart beating in a queer way as Ignatius kept turning the pages. She caught glimpses of men, hairy as monkeys. Her cheeks flamed at huge appendages that seemed bigger than her whole world. Ignatius quickened his pace, flipping pages that displayed frills and knickers, bellies pressed against bottoms, licking tongues and eyes half closed in secret pleasure… 

Stupefied and uneasy, Blanche heard footsteps in the corridor and froze. She peered out the door. An amah was carrying a tray rattling with bottles of Coca-Cola and 7-Up. She quickly withdrew. The rattling stopped. She looked out again to see the amah in the corridor, looking at her. She withdrew sharply just as someone called out “Ice-cream!”

Ignatius dropped the magazine and tore out the room. Blanche flew around, amid cries and howls and the sounds of chairs scraping against the parquetry. She was scrambling to find the right drawer for the magazine. There seemed more drawers in the dark wood panelling than before. 

“Blanche! Where are you? Don’t you want ice-cream?”

Panicking, she threw the magazine on a chair and ran out. 

Children were crowded round the dining table. Blanche squeezed herself into a narrow space between two high chairs. Sweaty and red-cheeked, the children leaned forward, each demanding their favourite flavour.

“Come now, don’t crowd me!” cried the amah opening a large tub of Neapolitan.

“I want chocolate!”

“Vanilla for me!”

“One at a time, please,” said the amah, jabbing the scoop in the tub. “There’s enough for everyone.”

Two columns of blue-and-white rice bowls stacked at Blanche’s eye level were quickly filled. 

Blanche was waiting for her mother’s secret sign giving permission. But she was deep in conversation, oblivious to the ice-cream distribution.   

“Marmee…”

“Anyone having that extra bowl?” Ignatius cried.

From the kitchen, Blanche heard a crash of crockery, a high scream, a series of shouts and angry voices. And then, clear and high, came the voice. “Who took it?”

A small, wizened woman with pouches under her eyes pushed her way forward, thrusting the parents aside. Blanche recognized the amah.

Looking venomous, the woman demanded, “Who’s been in Master Lau’s study?”

“Why? Is something broken?” asked a parent.

“Someone has removed a magazine from a drawer in the room!”

Everyone was suddenly quiet. 

Discussions arose as to who could possibly have taken it. Surely not at a birthday party! Are you sure the magazine was in that room?

“I want to talk to you,” said the amah, grabbing Blanche’s shoulder.

Stunned, Blanche turned to her mother who came forward, elbowing a parent aside. 

“What are you doing? You accusing my daughter?” she said in a sharp Cantonese.

“No one is accusing anyone. She was seen in the study.”

“Who saw her?”

Just then the amah caught sight of Felicity in an identical puff-sleeved blouse and vest, scooping up her ice cream. Startled, she said, “Was it you poking your head out the study door?”

“Me? No way. I was ‘it’ playing chasey!”

Lauren turned to Blanche. “Did you?”

Blanche lowered her eyes, feeling shame rising in her face. She opened her mouth then shut it. 

Ignatius blurted out, “You were in the study. Don’t lie!”

“Who asked you?” Lauren looked at the fat boy, ice cream dripping down his chin. 

Blanche was marched out the room before she could say a word.

Three amahs were waiting for her. The head amah questioned her. 

“Admit it!”

Blanche swore she never took the magazine from the drawer. 

The second amah, who was in charge of cooking and the pantry key, checked Blanche’s pockets and found they were empty. 

Again, she told her story but was not believed. 

“What were you doing in the study?” demanded the amah who had carriage of child-minding.

Startled, Blanche could only lower her head in shame.

“What is it, Mei-Mei?” asked her mother. “Was there someone else with you?”

Blanche’s voice was like a mouse. 

“Ignatius.”

The third amah shook her head.

“Such tales you spin! Ignatius is a good boy.”

The amahs stood there, immovable and solid. There was a silence, then, with renewed confidence, the head amah turned to Lauren and spoke into her ear. Lauren’s eyes widened and she looked almost sick.

“You mean to say… it was left on the chair?”

The head amah nodded.

Lauren turned to Blanche as if she didn’t recognize her own daughter.

Blanche tried again. “But I-I didn’t…” she began.

Lauren refused to hear another word. She said, “I’m so sorry for all the trouble.” Bewildered and breathless with fright, Blanche felt herself bumped out the door, followed by accusing eyes.

Blanche realized it would be impossible to reverse the injustice. Back home, her mother told her grandmother about the incident. Enraged, the old woman raised her head from her abacus and, keeping a finger on her sums, hollered, “Paw! Just like her to make us lose face!” 

The matriarch’s anger confirmed Blanche’s inferior status in the family. Second-born and known as Number Two, none of her efforts were up to the mark.

Mother and grandmother discussed the magazine. 

“Why on earth would you have something like that lying around?” said Lauren.

“I wouldn’t put it past the amahs being behind it,” said grandmother. “You know how malicious they can get.”

Finally, mother said, “I’d better take her to see Dr Ma.”

“Gawd, a waste of money!” grandmother retorted.

But Lauren had made up her mind. “We should tell the pediatrician. I’ve always felt there’s something wrong. You know, that individualistic, do-as-you-please attitude. Just like a gwei…”

Blanche’s was about to protest when the doorbell rang.

Father was home. He listened to the story with a frown, hand on his chin, nodding sagely.

“No need to see a doctor. Today’s environment is unhealthy,” he said. “When I was their age I was always outdoors. Children these days are up to no good and overweight.”

Blanche gazed at her waist. She knew she was a little fat but eating was one of her few pleasures. 

Father’s frown cut deeper into his forehead, when mother leaned in to speak into his ear. He turned his gaze to the ground and his expression indicated profound dissatisfaction. Blanche could tell they were talking about her.

"They can’t be moved…” Her mother’s voice was low.

Blanche knew they were talking about getting a security box for their precious jewelry, stashes of American dollars, multiple passports and identity papers. Now that she’d been taken for a thief they’d be taking no risks, lest their plans to escape to America, Australia or Canada be jeopardised.

By dinnertime, Blanche was certain the papers would show she was adopted. She was the only person in the family who was tubby. Father wolfed down char sui, pork chops and pancakes and never got fat. Felicity and her mother kept pace with him. How could she be related to grandmother, who smelt of money and who sucked so loudly on the vertebrae of the fish in the congee? She was quite sure she didn’t belong to these people and imagined a secret passport that would show her photograph with a different name. Her real surname was probably Wong or Au Yeung or something strange like de Jong or Beauchamp.

“Paw! Why are you sitting there like a dead Buddha? Come on, eat up!” her grandmother began poking and turning over every piece of chicken with her chopsticks. 

“Here’s your favourite, Mei-Mei!” She dropped the parson’s nose into Blanche’s rice bowl, bursting into raucous laughter. 

The girl stuffed enormous mouthfuls of soong into her mouth before she’d swallowed the last. Then sinking her teeth into the fatty rump, her eyes slid towards her parents’ bedroom...

***

A shrill din in the kitchen roused Blanche from her contemplations. Her parents were at parent–teacher interviews with Felicity and she was sitting at the dining table wrinkling her nose at the aroma of ginger, garlic and soy sauce wafting through the apartment.

In the kitchen her grandmother shouted, “More salt!” as she gave furious instructions to the amah about the soup for dinner. “Scoop off the fat!”

Blanche could see her grandmother working herself into a state, her eyes darting between pots on the stove, as she dunked her finger in the soup. 

“Why d’you choose such small eggs, Ah Sarm? Gawd! They’re like bloody pigeon eggs!” She continued to shout as she tossed the beaten egg mixture into the wok with a loud sizzle. “You got gypped, again, Ah Sarm! Why don’t you answer me?”

The heat from the stove was overpowering. Grandmother was getting red in the face leaping about scraping up the omelette. Blanche resumed her daydreaming. 

She saw herself having a splendid time stringing beads, plaiting and weaving, making jewellery with other children. On a long plate, little cakes shaped like houses were scattered, decorated with bright leaves and petals. Blanche wanted to stay her whole life there, snacking, dropping food on her dress front, hugging people who fixed their eyes on her with big, amiable smiles. 

In rapture, seized by an impulse, Blanche stood up and went to her parents’ bedroom. She pulled opened a drawer of the dressing table full to bursting, rattling the vintage glass perfume bottles crowding the marble top. She moved to the next drawer, feeling on the edge of some new life. Her real identity, she was convinced, was hidden in the drawer, in the bag of costume jewelry with the big turquoise stones.

The drawer was empty.

“Marmee must have put the jewelry away. She must have stashed it in the top shelf of the wardrobe.”

She climbed on a chair but wasn’t tall enough. Fetching two of father’s heavy medical books, she stood on tiptoes and spotted a big plastic bag on some old clothes. Stretching and heaving, she pulled the edge of a poncho. Everything came tumbling down.

Blanche nearly fell off the chair.

She twisted round to see what had been overturned. A terrific mess lay on the floor. Shirts, jumpers, tweed skirts, belts, chokers, necklaces twisted a shambles… In the middle of it all, she found herself face to face with a well-fleshed woman smoking a freakishly long cigarette, surrounded by long-haired men, equally carefree and untethered, smoking and drinking and playing cards. They looked like they did everything together, sleeping and eating under one roof. Another young woman, underwear clinging below her belly-button, was staring back at her with familiar eyes…

“Oh!” Blanche shuddered, and her ears were pricked for the sudden entrance of grandmother or Ah Sarm. 

She gathered the photographs into neat piles on the bed, separating the black-and-white images from the coloured ones. She bent to examine the unrecognizable woman and uttered little exclamations each time she caught vast buttocks thrusting out in suspenders and lace stocking-tops. Blanche collected the costume jewelry that had fallen out of the plastic bag and folded the clothes. She wondered how to get everything back up onto the top shelf. Her grandmother and amah were bustling about in the kitchen. The strong smell of cooking sharpened her appetite.

Blanche sat down on the bed. What was she to do? There was no way out of her dilemma. Her heart began to pound.

She waited to be captured. No one came. In increasing discomfort she waited, suffering horrible torment. After what seemed an eternity the doorbell rang. Cries of relief. The interviews were interminable! Then came the sounds of hurrying footsteps and grandmother leaping about yelling, “Dinner!”

Blanche listened, paralyzed.

Suddenly a voice shrieked:

"What are you doing?”

Mother was standing in the doorway, open-mouthed, her handbag fallen by her feet.

“What’s up?” Felicity yelled, and burst into the room as Lauren hastily threw a jumper over the photographs.

“What is it? Let me see…”

Lauren cut her short.

“Leave it.”

Blanche wanted to apologize and invent some reason for the misunderstanding but could find nothing to say on the dangerous subject. 

Her father walked in and turned a bewildered face over the tidy pile of clothes on the bed and a dressing chair pushed up next to the wardrobe.

“I… I was looking for the costume jewelry…”

Everyone was leaping about, rushing at her, plying her with questions and demands and judgment.  

Dumb with terror, Blanche sat upright, too upset to protest. She was rooted to the spot, horrified. 

“Haven’t you learnt from the party you can’t go round opening other people’s drawers! Are you mad?”

“I didn’t mean to…”

“We send you to the best schools to learn about pride, honour… how to avoid shame! Don’t you value your relationships? It’s not all about you! Are you so stupid you want to keep humiliating us?”

“I couldn’t put it back…”

“Men can’t live without face, trees can’t live without bark,” Felicity burst out, repeating a Chinese saying.

“There, your sister knows,” said mother.

Blanche felt herself knocked backwards and trussed up. Her parents went on to discuss her school results.

“She’s never been good at maths. The only thing she’s good at is arts and crafts. But that’s nothing to boast about…”

Blanche felt herself going under, like drowning in a dream. 

“Her future’s ruined,” said her mother, talking about her as if she wasn’t there, repeating her worry she would be left behind. It’s time they migrated to Australia or Canada where children have less pressure placed on them.

“Don’t want her ending up like that schoolgirl who jumped off the high-rise,” she said, “just because she failed a fractions test… I can’t think what’s wrong with her. We give her the best of everything… education, food, clothes… take her to the best parties…”

Blanche could no longer control herself. Seized by a dumb anger, she charged out of the room onto the balcony.

“Where are you going? Did you hear me? Come back! Mei-Mei, it’s all right. You don’t have to go to another party. What’s wrong? Are you hungry? Here, have an egg tart. Hey, come back!”

It was too late. Tears came to her eyes. Yet something stood out with absolute clarity. With inexplicable strength, she hurled her glossy black shoes over the balcony railings.

“The wild one,” her grandmother said behind her back.