Chapter 9 #3
She didn’t have much time. Auntie would soon see that her belly was growing, that her breasts were overflowing the cups of her brassiere, that she was sneaking to the kitchen at night for snacks—the saltier, the brinier, the better.
Maybe she had a few more weeks of being overlooked if she was lucky.
If Gigi stood at the east window in the library, she could look in the direction of her old home.
There was nothing familiar to see, only the tree canopy and the roofs of other buildings, not hers.
She didn’t know if the apartment was still there; if her brother had come home, discharged or injured; if her father had come looking for her but there was no one waiting for him, only an old bedroll and a box of cheap jewellery.
Tucked underneath a loose footboard in her old bedroom, Gigi had hidden her most prized possession, a Noel Coward record that she had found on her way home one day, lying on the road as if it had fallen out of someone’s bicycle basket.
They didn’t own a record player, but most nights, after her mother had fallen asleep, Gigi pulled the record out of its hiding place and gazed at the photograph on its cardboard sleeve, Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence in an almost kiss, their eyes closed.
Gigi closed her eyes, too, and imagined a sophisticated gentleman holding her elbows so delicately, her wide sleeves drooping with fur.
“If I went back, could I live there?” Gigi whispered to her four reflections, one in each leaded windowpane.
Perhaps she could be a single mother like her own mother, except she would not be so rushed, so anxious to keep order that she could not see the beauty in a messy roadside flower stall, or enjoy the smell of fish ball soup as it wafted unexpectedly in through the open window.
Gigi imagined a life for herself and her baby in their old apartment, painting over the dark green walls she had never liked with a pink so light it was almost not pink at all.
This could be her story, she thought, and the warmth of it filled her from the belly out.
Then she remembered her mother’s old worries—money, food, loneliness. A baby could solve one, but not the other two. Her mother would have been a loving, kind Poh Poh, telling only Gigi all her anxieties, leaving her best self for the baby. Maybe she would be ashamed. Maybe not.
In the glass, she saw a double reflection.
Even the windows are mirrors in this place , she thought.
There was the Gigi who was repeated in all four panes, the one who was wearing the same dirty white apron and housedress that she had put on that morning to weed the garden.
But there was another figure, floating behind the four, whose face came in and out of shadow, flickering maddeningly like a film reel spinning at the wrong speed.
One moment her face was blank, and the next she looked just like Gigi, the same curled hair, the same sad mouth.
But as soon as Gigi blinked, she was back in shadow, a featureless girl who could have been anyone.
As Gigi stared, the girl lifted her hands above her head, waving wildly, as if worried she might disappear at any moment, as if this was her only opportunity to be seen.
Just as Gigi leaned in closer to the glass to see past her own quadrupled reflection, she heard the door behind her open. It was Auntie. In her hand, she carried her ring of keys. The jingling brass made a sound like bells but sinister, the opposite of melody.
“There you are, little sister. Old Yan tells me you have been emptying your chamber pot in the flower beds. He followed the smell.”
Gigi looked upward at the ceiling with its pressed tin panels.
So much detail for a part of the room that no one would ever touch, that hovered above sightlines and tarnished darker every year.
She itched to turn back to the window, to see if this other version of herself was still there, waiting to speak.
“I think we will have to take you to the doctor tomorrow, to solve this little problem.” Auntie patted Gigi’s belly with a hand stacked with rings.
Gifts, Gigi knew, from soldiers so grateful that money wasn’t a grand enough expression, or so cheap that they gifted jewellery that had been stolen from the dead.
“In the meantime, let’s go back to your room.
I will lock the door, so you don’t make a hasty decision to leave the comfort of this place. ”
Gigi only nodded, then turned back to the window quickly. There was no one there, just the tops of the trees, the same blue sky, the same hot sunshine she used to walk under on her way to school. When the pregnancy is over , maybe I will no longer be so fucking crazy.
She allowed Auntie to guide her down the long hallways back to her room where the men had never asked what she wanted, where she wore clothes she had not chosen, where she slept dreamlessly each night because she was exhausted and sore, and those deep sleeps could somehow be mistaken for a sense of home.
She lay down and Auntie tucked her in, careful to pull the blankets tight around her shoulders.
“There now. You are quite safe here. Just rest your brain, and all will be back to normal soon.”
Gigi wanted to laugh. Normal. She didn’t know if that’s what she wanted anymore.