Chapter 24 If She’d Loved You More
IF SHE’D LOVED YOU MORE
Thirty-three years ago …
One upside to Shek Ham Chau being small is that it does not take you long to get home. Perhaps fifteen minutes of running hard, and you finally arrive, still caked in muck. Feet sliced and battered by sharp rocks.
A vision of the underworld greets you. Ghosts drift, lumber, and throng near the house.
Some sit on the ground outside, their dripping and storm-lashed forms looking almost relaxed.
Others pick away at the garden or the roof, as if working.
Some are lost in re-enactments of their own deaths.
Most of the village is present, not just Mami’s family.
Guilt creeps over you, for ignoring your mother so much these past few months.
It hasn’t been healthy, the way she’s been drawn into the ghost life of her childhood.
And sure, it isn’t fair how Mami prefers the company of the dead to spending time with you.
She chose to reject you first. But she is your mother, and you gave up on her.
You found it easier to escape with the shuigui and let Mami speak to those who could never answer her with joy, light, or life.
That decision is on you.
“Mami?” Calling out in advance, in case she is spooked by your unexpected return. “Mami, where are you?” Up the two creaking steps, press your palm to the left-ajar door and ease in.
Mami kneels in the living room, eyes closed, surrounded by a swirling tangle of spirits.
Some caress her hair, her skin. Others speak or sing in her ear.
Some play their bamboo flutes, as if soothing her.
Mami’s skin is tinted with a strange, sickly pallor, and her body sways to a disjointed rhythm.
It is far worse than simply speaking to the ghosts; this is intimate and intrusive, grotesquely so.
You are reminded of yourself, not an hour ago, in the cavern. Standing outside the temple, charmed by a dead girl. Maybe you and your mother are not so different after all. It strikes you with a sudden cold fright that, just perhaps, both of you are equally lost in this place.
“Sung Daiyu, wake the hell up!” Yelling her proper name, because you no longer care about disturbing her, and she isn’t responding to “Mami.” Time to rouse from the nightmare. To the ghosts, you yell, “Stop dancing, you demented pieces of shit!”
The dead villagers halt their chaotic whirling, turning to look with eyes bulging from bloated faces. Being rude to ghosts is extremely shocking.
“You … are back early,” Mami answers at last, sounding drunk. But there’s no alcohol on the island, hasn’t been for months since she finished those measly few bottles of beer. “Early … why are you … early?”
“Aiyah, will you listen to me!” Can’t help it; you grasp her shoulders, giving her a hard shake. Her teeth clack from the force. “Little Sister is summoning a storm. Just like the one that drowned your village! If we don’t leave the island, we’ll be caught in it!”
“You … swam with my sister,” she says, in a flat, confused tone. “I said … I told you to stay away from the temple. The ocean.”
A hot flush is creeping through your face. “Why? So I wouldn’t find out how everyone abandoned a child to her death? Is that what you don’t want me to know? Because it’s too late for secrets!”
“We didn’t kill her,” Mami snaps, anger pulling her together. “She fell, she fell! It was an accident, Siu Yin! It could easily have been me.”
“Ghosts come back when they aren’t laid to rest!” You’re shouting and can’t stop. “Her bones are in that cavern, Mami! Why didn’t anyone bury her?”
She cringes. “Some of the men, the elders … they said it was fate. Said she was cursed, and touching her would bring us back luck. The Catholic priest spoke a prayer over her bones, and everyone thought it would be enough.”
“Well that clearly wasn’t true, was it?”
Mami buried her face in her hands.
“I deserved to know all this,” you say, wound tight with raging anger. “You’ve lied to me, from the moment we landed here.”
“I was trying to protect you!”
“By bringing me to an island of ghosts?” Fury swarms you.
“By dancing with your dead, submerging in your memories, insulting me, and chasing me away when you find me annoying?” Somehow, your voice has risen to a near scream.
“I hate being here with you! I wish Baba had come and you had stayed behind!”
“Baba is already dead!” she shrieks back.
Your mouth is hanging open. Surely it can’t be true. You want to speak but your voice seems tangled in your throat.
“He took his own life!” Mami wails, fingers knotted through her hair. “That man is a coward who walked off into the night and threw himself into the harbor. Your precious father left us alone to our fate!”
“No.” Head shaking, whole body rejecting this revelation. “His note said—”
“I wrote that, not him. His real note, you never saw. I read it before you woke. It was cruel, and sad. I couldn’t let you have that truth. But now…” Her strength is gone; she slumps in your grasp.
“I don’t believe you—”
“I kept the note,” she says. “It’s in my room. Inside the blue vase.”
Wordlessly, you stalk away from her, down the short hallway, and into her space. Usually it would be tidy, but dishes and dirty clothes are lying on the floor, poorly attended to.
Almost, you don’t want to find it, but there it is: a crackling slip of paper, tucked into the vase’s narrow mouth.
You read it in absolute silence. Then you read it three more times, until a veil of tears obscures the written characters. The paper slips from your fingers and you don’t bother picking it up.
I won’t repeat the last words your father ever penned. Better that they stay lost.
Though it feels like an age, it can’t be more than a few moments till you walk back into the living room, greeted by a room of ghosts, your mother almost indistinguishable among them. All eyes on you.
Poor Baba. Desperate, trapped, hurting. The thought of him dying alone, so close to your Wanchai flat and feeling like a failure, is almost enough to break you.
If only you had spoken to him that night.
If only you’d sat with him, how things might be different.
It isn’t fair to think that, but your brain can’t help seeking the blame.
And Mami, carrying that burden by herself, holding it tight in her heart. She was wrong to lie, but some truths are too difficult to share. No wonder she retreated from you, from all of reality. Sympathy and fury war against each other in your heart.
You hear yourself saying, “Obviously, you knew all along that he was never coming for us.”
“… Yes.” She slumps miserably.
“So why did you bring us here?”
“I thought it would be safer. I thought we could hide. I thought, even if my family were ghosts, perhaps they could help, or…” She dashes the heel of her hand against her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, daughter. I have failed you.
I let grief destroy me. I took comfort from my ghosts, and lost myself. I have not been a good parent.”
“Finally, we agree.” But you are crying, too. Haven’t stopped since reading Baba’s note.
Her hands flutter, useless and anxious. “I was wrong to return.”
“It doesn’t matter.” It does, actually, but there’s no more time to argue. “Mami, we need to get off the island. Can you row one of those little fishing boats?”
“I think so. There isn’t one nearby, though. We will have to cross the island.”
Thunder rolls like cannonballs, and lightning flashes in the distance. Outside, the wind is already picking up with rain smattering lightly; the storm is not far.
You look at the sky, and swallow. “I don’t think we have enough time to get there. We want to be on the eastern shore, if we are to get to the other islands quickly.”
“Then perhaps the village will help us.” Mami looks at the ghosts, eddying around her.
She kneels on the hard floor, palms held up.
“Aunties and uncles, cousins and friends, will you help us? Will you take care of your own? We need a boat, to leave the island before my little sister brings her storm. Can you bring it to the closest shore, to the east of here?”
The ghosts murmur and whisper and converge on your mother, as spirit hands stroke her graying hair and promises of aid mist into echoing words.
“They will help,” Mami says, dabbing her eyes. “Heaven bless them, they will help us.” She gets up, knees gone crimson from being pressed to wood. “The ghosts will meet us there with a boat, after they have steered it round the coast. Hurry!”
There is no time to grab more than basics. You throw a few spare clothes into rucksacks, along with some skins of water. None of the food you have is suitable for travel; best to leave it. Grab a rain cape and straw hat, and you’re set to go.
The rain is solid, the sky ink-dark by the time you both step outside again. Time for one last glance at the little house that has been a home for the past four months, and then you’re off. For the first time in what feels like forever, you and your mother have a single shared goal.
It’s another quarter hour of winding paths, mostly overgrown with so little foot traffic on Shek Ham Chau.
Many of the remaining ghosts come with you. They tumble and skip, flutter and creep as appropriate, through the steadily increasing rain. Some on both legs, some on no legs, some on all fours. None are as uniquely adapted and striking as Sea Sister, but then none are as powerful as she.
“Hurry, daughter, hurry!” Mami hisses, picking up the pace.
Soggy and sweating in the growing downpour, the pair of you arrive at the rocky beach, where the water grows deep quickly. Bad for swimming, good for boarding a boat.
“Where are they?” Shade your eyes in the gloomy half-light; only this morning, it was bright sun on crystalline waters.
Mami points. “There!”