Preloved (14 page)

My mother had told me stories about hanged ghosts with long red tongues lolling out of their heads, wandering ghosts looking for their murderers, water ghosts looking for someone to drown in their place. All of them lost and aimless. But what she should have scared me with was a story about a shut down, defensive and sarcastic girl who couldn’t move ahead with her life because she was dead on the inside.

I ran as fast as I could, hoping to leave Logan behind. But I couldn’t run away from the fact that Logan had seen through me, took hold of my greatest fear and shown it to me.

It had taken someone who wasn’t alive to recognise that I wasn’t either.

I ran because it was the only thing I could do.

I left a trail of invisible red footprints.

I knew they were red because they were made from my blood, as the contents of my heart dribbled out.

And all the time, I kept the locket pressed deep into my skin.

Chapter 9

“What do you really think of the shop, Ollie?” Mum asked the antique taxidermy owl as she gently dusted his chest. “I need your honest opinion. Do you think people these days are only preoccupied with everything being bigger, better and brand-new?”

“You do realise you’re dusting a stuffed owl with a chicken feather duster,” I said as I opened the door gently and slipped in. My voice sounded steady.

I had just done a quick, two-minute cry out the front, and I was sure I had it all out of my system. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. All I felt now was low and sinking, wallowing inside a heart of wet cement.

“Well, they are both deceased,” said Mum in her defence and she put the duster down.

“It’s weird, that’s all,” I said quietly. “Not a good day?”

Mum held up the price tag around Ollie’s neck for me as I walked over. It now read $140. Yikes – a $41 price jump in one day.

“That bad, huh?”

“It’s just that even though I’ve been surrounded by people all day, I feel lonely. Like he’s the only thing I can connect to. Even though he’s not real. Does that sound strange? If someone decided to buy him, I honestly don’t know what I’d do.”

I don’t know who it was that stuffed that owl, but with the menacing expression and outstretched wings, Ollie would be the last thing I wanted to be friends with. But I understood exactly what Mum was saying: we were both completely alone in our own worlds.

“You’re back early,” said Mum. She screwed up her nose in the same way that I knew I did all the time. “I thought you were on a mega shopping spree with Rebecca at the new mega mall.”

“I decided it wasn’t for me. Y’know, too big, too shiny, too much commercial wankery.”

Mum smiled wryly as I ran my fingers along the old glass-topped counter, feeling the grooves and dings in the wood. They felt calmingly familiar, as if I knew each one by heart.

Mum blew some hair out of her face and chewed on her pen as she tapped away on her calculator. The screwed-nose look came back.

“Did you sell all the Eighties dresses today?” I looked at Mum’s beautiful pale-green store and the empty racks that had earlier today held an explosion of multicoloured dresses shining like big awesome fun.

“Yup,” replied Mum. “But I don’t know if it’s enough. I just wish your dad would at least think about you and give–”

“Dad is a dick! The grand pooh-bah dictator of all dicks.”

“Amy! I don’t care what your liberal Western education teaches you, but as a young Chinese woman, I demand you have some respect for your father.”

I rolled my eyes and stomped out to the back, not bothering to take my shoes off at the point where our home started. All the boxes labelled “Evening Dresses – 1980s” had been cleared out. All except …

The box in the alcove under the stairs was still there, tucked tightly into the corner. It didn’t do anything when I pressed my palm against it. It just sat there like a dead thing. My heart felt disappointed.

I thought I’d just drag it out into the store. Except it was heavier than I had expected. I huffed and groaned and finally kicked the box on its side and let the contents spill out onto the Persian carpet in the middle of the store. I sat down and pulled the dress closest to me into my lap.

Mum gave me a funny look. Then she walked over to the front door, turned the “Open” sign over and came to kneel down beside me.

I heard her knees crack.

“Oooh, old age.” Mum grimaced. “No way can I do a go-go dancer squat these days.”

“What’s a go-go dancer?” I asked, but I couldn’t even manage a spark of playful sarcasm and it came out flat.

“Amy,” said Mum, all serious now. “I don’t want you to blame your father, because it was me who decided to leave. I made that choice. No one forced me to.”

“I hate Dad and he hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate – Amy, what’s really wrong?” Mum looked down. I realised I was cuddling the dress in my arms like a teddy bear.

“Nothing,” I replied, and maybe for once in my life I was speaking the truth. Maybe it meant nothing if all of it was happening inside of me.

“Is it boy trouble?” probed Mum. Then she added, “Although, speaking as a Chinese mum, I do forbid you to date until you’re thirty-one.”

“When are boys not trouble?”

Mum thought about it. She nodded to herself. I smoothed the dress down and held it out in front of me.

“This is quite beautiful, actually,” I said, surprised. It was a strapless black thing with a sweetheart neckline and pleated ruffles that fanned out into a train at the back.

“What about this one?” asked Mum, holding out a gold, one-shouldered minidress.

“That’s actually really fashionable,” I had to admit.

“And this one?” Mum picked up a mint-green dress with mega shoulder pads and a giant black velvet bow.

“Okay, two in a row is probably considered a very lucky run.”

I prodded one of the shoulder pads. I couldn’t help but crack up a little on the inside, even though at the same time I could feel fresh tears forming in my eyes. Mum gave me an encouraging smile. Then we fell into an awkward silence. It felt weird without Logan – the little-angel-and-little-devil rolled into one – over my shoulder. I felt so alone.

“Do you believe in reincarnation, Mum?” I found myself blurting out.

“Why the sudden interest?” replied Mum. “I thought you youngsters didn’t believe in gods or demons these days.”

I don’t think anyone believes in
anything
these days. It was good to know that we’re not stupid enough to burn women at the stake for being witches; that if you told someone you heard the voices of angels in your head, they wouldn’t think you were going to become the next saint, but would take you straight to an asylum for your own good. It made us smarter and savvier, but why did accepting that we were a chance occurrence on the face of the cosmos, like some random pimple, make me feel so empty and lonely?

“It’s just that you love telling me ghost stories.” I stared at Mum with hopeful eyes.

“Let me show you something.” Mum placed her hand on my elbow and lifted it.

“You want to show me … my own arm?”

“Humour me for a sec, won’t you? Roll up your sleeve.”

I raised my eyebrows at her, but did as I was told. I pulled up the edge of my T-shirt.

“Look at this.” Mum poked her finger into my skin.

“That’s a birthmark,” I said. “Uh, we should both know it’s there. Especially you. Since you’re my mother.”

“It’s an unusual birthmark, isn’t it?” interrupted Mum.

I examined the surface of my skin. I had a dark imperfection close to my shoulder, in the shape of an almost perfectly round dot.

“There is a practice in Chinese culture that if a child dies, the mother might make a small mark somewhere on their body so that if the child was reborn into the world, she would be able to recognise and know that they had come back safely.”

In Human Bio, Mr Haq had insisted birthmarks were not marks of the devil or what old superstitions would have people believe. They were caused by irregular cell migration during development in the womb. I glanced down at my birthmark again.

“It depended on how desperate she was. Some mothers would cruelly dot their children’s faces, but others would leave an inconspicuous mark somewhere, like an upper arm. I saw it the very moment they put you in my arms, Amy.”

Mum had one of those looks on her face that sat between composure and falling apart, like the split second before a biscuit soaked in coffee crumbles in half.

“I believed this story, which your
ah ma
told me, so much that I was scared that if you had been taken too young from your mother in a previous life, the same would happen to me. And who knows how many generations this has gone on for, it could be a curse.”

Mum lost it then, and tears rolled down her face. She covered her face, embarrassed.

Well, that explained a lot. It explained all the superstitions she was so determined to let me know. I felt filled with love for Mum then. I wished I could hug her, but it would be awkward to start a hugging tradition this late in life.

I wondered if it was true that somewhere out there, a mother I had in a previous lifetime was looking at all the teens walking by and wondering if any of them were me. I wondered if she went on to have more daughters. It made me feel ashamed that in moments of anger and frustration, I often thought that no one cared about me. When in fact many people were in the process of loving or having loved me or would one day love me. Maybe there were even people I was completely unaware of who loved me too.

“Anyway,” said Mum, smiling through her tears. “Your Aunt Veronica – when she was heavily pregnant – fell stomach-first into wet cement at a construction site, and when your cousin Amos was born, he had a huge grey birthmark across his entire forehead. Tell me you have a logical explanation for that! Luckily it disappeared though after a year …”

I reached into the depths of the box and pulled out another dress. It was soft and crumpled and, unlike the colourful pile, it was white.

“Mum! Look at this.”

I shook the folds of the dress out in front of me. I had to stand up in order to display the thing in its full glory.

What a dress.

It was strapless and made of a beautiful fabric that gathered at the bodice, crisscrossed at the waist and then flowed out into gentle drapes to the floor. And I knew by holding it against my body that it was just my size.

“Oh my,” said Mum, going quiet. ‘That looks exactly like the dress that Princess Diana wore to the 40th Cannes Film Festival in 1987. I am sure I can sell this for a very nice price! But wait – you’re going to the ball, aren’t you, Amy?”

You betcha I am!
My brain screamed. I was going to enter the room in this dreamy white number and everyone was going to stop dead in their tracks and turn around to stare at me, really see me for the first time. Like a princess I’d walk past all of them and straight to the boy of my dreams, stand in front of him and …

“I’ve changed my mind,” I said to Mum. “I’m not going to the ball after all. Rebecca’s found a boyfriend, and three’s a crowd.”

I walked to the front window display and I started setting up a mannequin, slipping the dress onto her body and then attaching her arms. I looked around for the steam iron.

“Oh gosh, I’m sorry to hear that,” said Mum, approaching me, but standing too far away to touch.

“It’s fine,” I reassured her. “What are you planning to do on the night?” I didn’t have a boy of my dreams to complete my fantasy sequence anyway. Not one that was real.

“I’ll tell you what,” replied Mum. “Why don’t we put on
The Princess Bride
and I’ll whip up my famous icing-sugared popcorn and we’ll make the most of it?”

“Thanks, Mum,” I replied and I really meant it. “I haven’t had any of that popcorn since I was little.”

Mum’s eyes misted over, which meant she thought it was a good thing.

I gave the mannequin a pat for good luck, brushed her long dark hair with my fingers and stood her up in the window.

“Do you know,” said Mum, touching a finger to her bottom lip, “that white is the traditional colour for mourning the dead in our culture?”

I guess if I was subconsciously considering going to the ball with a ghost, that dress would be the perfect colour. And if I was a living ghost, then I would love to wear it to mourn myself.

“You know what, Mum,” I said, “this is probably the first and last time you’ll hear this from me, but I really do like and appreciate all those little things you tell me about ghosts.”

Then, for some unrelated reason, I burst into tears.

“Oh gosh,” said Mum. She looked to the space on either side of her as if she was lost about what to do. “Come here, Amy. Come back over here.”

I walked over towards Mum, still bawling my eyes out. She took me by the sides of my arms and sat me down on the big pile of dresses in the middle of the floor.

“Don’t cry now, Amy. It makes me sad to see you sad.”

I could feel Mum’s arm just touching my back, coming to rest on my shoulder. It felt comforting. It wasn’t a hug, but it was … nice.

“Do you want me to sing you a song? The Life Story Song. It used to be your favourite.”

I’d discussed earliest childhood memories with Rebecca once. She claimed that her earliest memory was when she was a year old, sitting in her high chair. No one believed her, of course. My earliest is of Mum singing me this song when I was about three years old. She sang it to me until I was in primary school, when I made her stop one day ’cos I said it embarrassed me. Then she never sang it to me again.

I was glad to hear it now, and at the same time even sadder that I had upset her years ago by making her stop. I added a few more tears to my collection. I love that song. In Hokkien Chinese the words for “beginning” and “end” are the same as “head” and “tail”, so even though the song was about a beginning with no ending, I thought of it as a head-but-no-tail song.

So I always thought of sorrow as a little half-creature.

I was sad for all the half-things in this world.

My family.