Chapter 32 All That Remains
ALL THAT REMAINS
One year ago …
The Joyous Residential Home, as its sign proclaims itself, is full of loud echoes, but very little joy.
In the crowded games room, chairs scrape continually on a cheap linoleum floor, accompanied by the endless clacking of mahjong tiles.
Most people are smoking, including the staff, and the furniture reeks of tobacco.
Underneath that stench, the sharp scent of bleach cuts through.
Those who aren’t gambling slump tiredly on folding chairs, staring in the middle distance.
“I’d rather be dead than end up here,” you say to Wing Yun, without thinking.
“Then you’ve already got your wish, Lady Ghost,” he says, and rings the little bell on the reception desk. One of the nurses skulks over. “Excuse me, miss, but we are looking for Sung Daiyu. I’ve visited before, if you recall.”
The utterance of that name sends a quiver through your body.
“Ah! We are so glad you are here. We have been trying to reach her relatives, but not had any success. Have you found one of her family members?”
Wing Yun looks at you.
“I think I’m the only one,” you say, a little numbly. “Most died in the war.”
“I understand,” she says, with courteous sympathy. “This is very auspicious timing, in that case. I am glad you could make it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mrs. Sung has been ill for a long time. She had two strokes earlier this year, and has been very frail for weeks. She has recently stopped eating. I’m sorry, but we do not expect her to live much longer.”
You have no idea how to respond to that. Too many things are colliding in your head.
Eventually you settle on, “I see. In that case, I would love to see her as soon as possible.”
There are a few forms to sign, some explanations to go through. A few lies about being second cousins or a grandniece, something along those lines. In truth, no one probes very deeply. They’re probably hoping you’ll agree to take Daiyu away and lighten their workload.
Eventually, they bring you to a small bedroom down one of the corridors.
“She doesn’t speak much,” the nurse warns you. “I can’t promise anything.”
When neither of you say anything, the nurse makes an excuse and returns to other duties.
You peer into the dim little room. Wing Yun peers in, too.
There’s not much to see. The room is clean but very small, and not well furnished.
A small table, a folding stool, and a wardrobe occupy this end.
A narrow, iron-framed bed rests against the far wall.
There is one window, looking out onto the busy streets below.
An elderly woman reclines on the bed. She bears so little resemblance to your mother that, at first, you do not recognize her face.
Daiyu’s hair is cut short, her feet are bare, and her clothes are strange: plain, discolored shirt and trousers, almost like pajamas.
The obsidian black of her hair has grayed out, and the skin of her hands is rice-paper thin.
Rice-paper pale, too, from lack of sunlight.
From a short distance away, you stare and stare, feeling overwhelmed. It has been thirty-two whole years in total since you’ve seen Mami—three years of war, twenty-nine years of entrapment—but she looks older than seventy-five. A far cry from the stern, handsome woman who raised you.
Wing Yun touches your arm. “Are you alright, Miss … ah … Tsang?”
“How?” you manage. “How did you find her? Where has she been?”
“Diligence, and time,” Wing Yun says, keeping his voice low.
“Like I told you years ago, I had my own family to look for, as well as yours. After the war ended and the government locked you away, I spent time in former Japanese internment camps. Then the refugee camps, then homeless shelters and psychiatric hospitals. Just searching.”
He shakes his head and grimaces. “After the first twenty years, I started looking in homes for the elderly. There are a lot of them, and not all the patients know themselves anymore, or have good records. I didn’t have any luck with my parents, but I did see her name on a list. Plus, with those memories you gave me, her face looked familiar in the photographs.
I came here and tried to speak to her myself, just to be sure. ”
“What did she say?” You can’t tear your eyes away from the old woman in front of you.
“She started crying and begging forgiveness, though she wouldn’t say what for. The old lady wouldn’t talk to me much.” He shoots you a curious look. “What happened between you both? You never showed me the details. Is she the one who killed you?”
“No. She’s the one who left me to die.”
You walk through the doorway before he can respond, and raise your voice. “Hello? Is that you, Sung Daiyu?”
She looks up from the bed, making a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. “Who wants to know?”
Almost, you tell her. But you are not wearing your own skin; you are too young, too different looking, to pass as yourself. Besides, she might panic. Better to go slow.
“A friend of your daughter’s,” you say, after a pained pause.
She wrings her hands anxiously. “Friend? What friend? How did you know her?”
“At school, long ago.” Too late, it occurs to you that this wouldn’t be possible. Kit Ling is twenty-four years younger than Siu Yin, and they would never have been at school together.
Thankfully, Daiyu doesn’t seem to realize this. “If you are looking for her … you are … too late. She is dead. Drowned.” Her gaze skitters around the small room, from one thing to the next. “I left her behind … like I left everything behind. The island, my husband, her … then her again—”
“Her, then her again?” you cut in. “What does that mean?”
She flinches, as if startled by a strange noise. “I saw her,” she whispers. “I saw my daughter drown … and then I saw her alive.”
Mei Chi. Your mother must have found Mei Chi, out in the world, wearing your body.
You kneel down next to the bed, and catch her wrists. “Where?”
“In the city of ghosts. Where else?” Mami sags against her pillows.
She is so sick, so exhausted. “I went to the land of ghosts, thinking … thinking she’d died.
Thinking … if her ghost was anywhere, it would be …
with the others. But she did not remember.
Not me, not the ghosts … not the island …
not even … her father.” She shudders. “But I was wrong. It was not my daughter. My daughter … my daughter is dead. I left her to drown.”
Disappointment floods you as her words sink in. This is no reveal, no sudden clue. The old woman is rambling and confused.
“If you grieve her death, then why did you abandon her?” Disgust drives your tongue to bluntness.
“It’s not … like that,” Daiyu says, weakly. “I went back for her later. Truly, I … I … I did. But … she was gone. The ocean had swallowed everything.” Her voice sinks low, barely audible. “If I could just see her again … Just one more time, oh heavens … I would ask her … No, I … I would tell her…”
She pauses, seeming to struggle with the words even more than usual. Her head bows forward and she shudders.
Unexpected tears well up in your eyes. A combination of grief, anger, and yearning. The brittle anger inside your heart trembles, almost undone by her half admission.
“What?” you manage, thickly. “What would you tell your daughter, if you had the chance?”
Daiyu remains where she is, slumped against the pillows, head tilted forward and resting on her chest. Her wrists limp in your grasp.
“Sung Daiyu?” Give her a slight shake. “Mami? Mami, what would you have told me?”
Her head tips back, eyes sightless and mouth slack. There is no pulse at the wrist, no rise and fall of the chest.
Mami is gone.
All the things you wanted to say, shout, or thrash out with her, die in that instant, dissipating alongside her spirit.
Always, your mother has denied you—first her love and affection, then her help.
Finally, she has denied you any closure or meaningful answers.
Even in the last, her heart is a door fixed shut, which you may never enter or even attempt to knock at.
There will never be a chance to tell her who you were and what happened after she left you to drown, let alone demand an apology. No reunion, no resolution. No good ending, not even a bittersweet one.
The realization is agony.
You are nothing more than a lonely ghost girl in a stolen body, holding a frail and faded corpse.
Later that day, when it’s all over, you and Wing Yun are both seated in a cha chaan teng around the corner, drinking tea and smoking while the city tramples past in all directions.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” he says, eventually.
“All things are transient,” you quote, tiredly. “Everything single moment we are undergoing birth and death.”
You find yourself wondering, for the first time in years, where your father’s body ended up. It’s not a question you ask yourself often, because there are no happy answers to it. Even so, you wish you knew.
Wing Yun lights another cigarette and says, “What will you do now?”
“Arrange for a burial.” The last thing you want is Mami returning as a ghost, with unfinished business. A good funeral and an honest priest will help with that. “There is nothing else I can do.”
“Did she have a lead for your, uh…”
“My auntie?” That’s how you’re referring to Mei Chi, since it’s factually true. “No. She said her daughter is dead. And Mei Chi had been in that body.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I don’t know? She seemed convinced, though it was hard to work out what she meant.
Her words were very confused.” A helpless shrug.
“I will say that I have never found any trace of my aunt, whenever I looked. Even you, searching all these years for me, have only found my mother. I must admit, the odds are not in Mei Chi’s favor.
It is more likely that she died during the war, especially if she stayed in Hong Kong. ”