Chapter 15 #3
Old Yan brought Gigi steamed pork patties, saucy beef noodles, congee with salted fish.
Once, she asked him how he paid for the beef, the tins of preserved dace.
He shook his head and said, “They left this house filled with beautiful things that are probably worth far more than a fresh chicken. If we had more time, we could find the best prices for the silks or the rugs, but the baby…” He nodded at sleeping Bette, wrapped in a blanket that was once bright with a print of sea coral that now was no more visible than the spit-up stains dotting the fabric.
“She cannot eat unless you also eat. So here we are, with food.” It was the most Gigi had ever heard him say at one time, and she almost wept at his words.
At thirty days, she still could not walk up and down the stairs.
At sixty days, the baby was running a fever and sniffling with a runny nose.
It would have to be one hundred days, then, before Gigi could walk through the streets with Old Yan, carrying Bette in a sling on her back, both hands full with bags of burp cloths and dresses, her notebook, and anything she could stuff in that could be sold.
It was fine, it would be fine. She had not seen any ghosts since the birth; her head was clear with plans for a future she had been waiting for. She could wait a hundred days.
On the ninety-ninth day, Gigi carried Bette to the library window at sunset, so she would see the light through the small panes of glass, see the oranges and pinks repeated in each square.
Bette was now solidly chubby, both soft and firm in Gigi’s arms. Her skin was smooth and glowed warm in the light.
“You see past those trees? That’s where we are going tomorrow, to find another, better life. You will be strong because you will never know what it feels like to be weak, to be the target of someone else’s anger or fists. Tomorrow, Bette. It will all begin tomorrow.”
Bette gurgled and reached out, her fat fingers on the cool glass.
Gigi turned away from the window, ready to take a step toward the hallway, to finish up all of the packing.
But then she had a thought. She gently put Bette on the floor on her tummy, pulled a burp cloth out of her pocket, and then wrapped it around her fist. With one swift movement, she punched through one of the windowpanes and the glass shattered like ice, falling into the open air and down into the garden below.
One by one, Gigi punched every pane in that window, until all that was left was a gaping hole, like a face left unfinished, or a face caving in on itself.
She shook off the cloth, picked up her baby, and walked out of the library for the very last time.
in the morning, gigi stood in front of her packed bags and went through everything she had placed inside.
Every piece of jewellery that had been left behind, by Auntie or one of the girls, rolled into underwear or socks.
A pair of trousers a soldier must have forgotten in his haste to get to his posting on time, in case she needed to work somewhere dirty or dusty.
Dried mango, roasted nuts, the salted prunes she liked best, the ones that made her pucker as soon as she popped one into her mouth.
At the bottom, her notebook, with her every thought and memory, every task list she had made, every story she had told to the other girls to pass the time, to scare them just a little.
Tucked into its pages was the old photograph the soldier Tatsuo had taken of her, her face so round and smooth, her body turned toward the floor lamp, as he instructed, so she would get the best light.
Gigi could see that she was beautiful, as he had said.
So there was one thing a soldier had told her that hadn’t been a lie.
When she looked up, she saw something glinting in the light.
It was Auntie’s old set of keys, the heavy brass ring with every key that could open every lock in Nam Koo.
Gigi lifted it off the post of her bed and dropped it into the smaller bag, where it sank into the rolled dresses and aprons, coming to rest beside her Noel Coward record.
Maybe she and her daughter might come back here one day, when it didn’t feel so sharp and raw, and they would need all the open doors they could get.
Bette, wrapped in a blanket on the bed, woke up crying, and Gigi fed her on the old chaise.
She was a beautiful baby with long straight lashes and a perfect red mouth, shaped like a heart.
Gigi knew, better than anyone, that nothing was ever easy for a beautiful girl, and her chest ached with what might befall her daughter.
Her life had not started with any luck at all, but maybe there was a secret cache of luck waiting for her, years from now.
Gigi knew it was up to her to make this luck, up to her to become the seamstress and then the fashion designer as she had planned.
She wished for all the energy, all the hardness of rock and resolution, all the immunity to pain or poverty or bad men to propel her forward toward the brighter, wealthier life she dreamed of.
In the kitchen, she found Old Yan. “I’m taking the baby outside to see the garden one last time,” she said as she set down one of her packed bags on the floor. “I’ll only be a little while and then we can leave.” He nodded, never taking his eyes off the buns he was wrapping in a clean dishcloth.
The stone bench was still there, beside the bird bath.
The trees growing around it were mostly short maples with thin branches, but there was one red pine, just behind the bench, where the smallest birds, the sparrows that looked like round dumplings, perched every morning, singing madly.
Today, their song was repetitive and collective, their high-pitched voices all shouting together, It’s done, it’s done, it’s done .
They were right: it was all done. All those years of fearing what might happen every evening, all that time she spent wandering the halls, all those ghosts she saw or didn’t see, she still wasn’t sure.
No , she told herself, shaking her head.
She breathed in and out, and with each breath she grew more and more certain that she had never been haunted.
Every strange thing she saw, every ghostly woman, was just an illusion, a trick of the mind that allowed her to survive this place.
She laughed as she remembered how she thought the women were trying to warn her, tell her about what could happen, a curse for the future even.
Bette laughed too, stretching out her chubby arms toward her mother’s face.
I was out of my mind, for good reason. Gigi made a promise, then and there, that she would never try to control her daughter’s feelings.
She could be sad or scared or worried for any reason, and it would all be fine.
When she stood up, she heard a rustle of leaves to her right in the low bushes that had become wild in the last year.
She turned around and saw someone standing there among the overgrown leaves, not even fifteen feet away, someone so familiar that Gigi didn’t know if her stomach was flipping in dread or recognition.
The woman wore a green dress that had once been Gigi’s and a brimmed straw hat, and where her face should have been, there was only hair.
A breeze blew from the west, and the hair rippled.
Gigi held her breath, waiting to see what would be revealed, but the girl’s night-black hair didn’t part.
Gigi felt the wind on her face then, like the sinister caress of an old enemy just before they destroy you.
She felt the tears in her eyes, and she knew she wasn’t crying from sadness. It was fear.
Gigi tightened her grip on Bette, using both arms to hold her close to her chest, before closing her eyes and breathing deeply again.
Not now, she couldn’t be appearing now, not when Gigi was so close to escape, not when she had a plan and a baby and bags packed with everything she might need.
Not when the future that she could almost taste was here.
Perhaps Gigi wasn’t seeing her at all. Perhaps she was overcome with emotion, giddy with the idea of walking the streets of Hong Kong like a regular woman, like a woman who had finished school and attended dances and shopped for groceries at the market in the afternoon.
She had just momentarily lost her grip on reality because of anticipation. That was all. That was all.
When I open my eyes, she will be gone and I can go inside with my baby and leave this fucking place . Gigi counted to ten and opened her eyes.
The girl was still there, taking slow steps toward them, the breeze making the hair beneath her hat sway again. “Oh no, oh no,” Gigi whispered. “Please don’t come near us. Please.”
The faceless girl now stood an arm’s length in front of her.
For a moment, Gigi felt like she was fourteen again, scared and immobile, acquiescing to everything the soldiers wanted, never saying anything to the cruelty, the fake kindness, the cheap gifts she never asked for.
But then the heat began in her belly and rose up through her chest and into her cheeks.
She was a mother now; she could no longer give in to fear or confusion. She wouldn’t ever again.
“What do you want? Tell me what you want and then leave us alone.”
The girl did not reply but removed her hat, and Gigi could see that the straw had started to fray, that the inside brim was grey with dirt and grease and who knew what else. She could smell the funk of dead skin and oil emanating from her scalp.
Then the girl raised a hand and pushed her hair—that heavy curtain of shiny black hair, so straight, so seemingly impenetrable—away from her face and tucked one side behind her ear, then the other.
The girl, no longer faceless, smiled, and her teeth were like a cat’s, pointed and yellowed.
Gigi stood staring at an exact replica of herself.
Her same eyes, the same straight lashes, the same round, full mouth.
She clutched her own throat in horror, and in flawless synchronicity her doppelg?nger did the same, her long fingers just like Gigi’s. And then she reached out for the baby.
Gigi took a quick step back and stumbled in the overgrown grass.
She straightened quickly and turned, breaking into a run through weeds that brushed her skirt.
Bette began to cry, a thin, surprised wail that rose through the air.
As she ran, Gigi saw a figure ahead in the shadow of a tall camellia bush.
It was Old Yan. Gigi picked up speed, pushing her way forward as fast as she could.
Thank god . He can take the baby inside and keep her safe.
When she was only a few feet away, she saw into the shadow.
It wasn’t Old Yan at all. Gigi skidded to a stop so abruptly that Bette fell out of her arms, landing in a patch of soft grass right at the girl’s feet.
She bent down and, with her long arms and skinny fingers, picked the baby up and cradled her in her arms.
“No!” Gigi shouted. “You can’t have her.”
The girl smiled, and Gigi could hear her think, Yes, I can have anything I like now .
“Take me,” she said. “You can have me instead. Just let my baby live.”
Then Gigi closed her eyes one last time.
It was, of course, Old Yan, following the cries of the wailing baby, who found Gigi hanging from the red pine, her body tied by the neck to the lower branches with a sash of bright emerald green silk.
Her face was already blue, but she was still so beautiful, swaying in the breeze as the birds splashed in the bath below her.