A ghost covers one’s eyes (鬼揞眼)
THE HAUNT PROJECT IS PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH WRITERS SA, AND IS SUPPORTED BY ARTS SOUTH AUSTRALIA.
Nonfiction by Olivia De Zilva
However many years ago, my grandparents came to Australia on a Qantas flight with nothing but one hundred dollars in their suitcase. In tow were three kids, all of whom had mushroom haircuts and wore Elton John glasses. They also brought along some personal effects from Hong Kong: some black-and-white family photographs, including a stoic shot of my grandparents on their wedding day and a portrait of the children in front of the ornate teak gate of their Hong Kong home. There was, of course, a bottle of Tsing Tao (because Australian alcohol contained too much wheat) and an unloaded pistol my Agung snuck in his underpants. When they eventually settled in Croydon, there were no Asian restaurants within walking distance, except for a few family-owned delis that sold spring rolls and dim sims to satisfy the gweilos’ craving for something remotely ‘oriental’. The change in scenery was difficult for my grandparents. My Agung and Apoh, of course, missed the food in Hong Kong immensely—they were always getting bloated and constipated from the bland, processed Aussie bread that to them tasted like ‘washing machine powder’ and milk that tasted like ‘bleach and turpentine’.
When Laksa Kingdom opened on Hutt Street in 1983, Apoh begged my Agung to take the family there. After five years of subsisting on ham and cheese rolls from the Arndale bakery a ten-minute drive away and westernised Chinese food (soy sauce noodles and sweet and extra sour pork from Charlie’s Chinese Paradise in Port Adelaide), she was overjoyed at the opportunity to try something new. After my Agung got a promotion as a line chef at the restaurant he was working at, he decided it was time to take them there.
Before visiting Laksa Kingdom, my family never ventured to the city. My Apoh spent most of her day cleaning the house and preparing dinner while Agung worked all night at the restaurant. The children were sent to school where they were teased for their containers of rice and fried eggs instead of the standard Vegemite sandwich. Often, my family were afraid to venture past the square block from their home to the public park because they were afraid of getting harassed. They had heard stories of relatives being yelled at from cars and stopped by police for innocuous reasons such as sitting on the sidewalk. Going to the city was like entering a new and frightening world. Though Hong Kong was busy and bustling, my family could fit in because they looked the same as everyone else. Here, they stood out.
But because it was a special occasion, my Agung decided that he would take his family on the bus to town, warning them to keep their heads down for the duration of the journey. The kids, one of them a shy, sullen looking one being my mother, sat at the back of the bus playing cards, muttering in Cantonese while the gweilo guys around them looked at them funny. The route out of Croydon was all bricks and scaffolding with a neat row of panel vans parked along Hanson Road. As they approached the city, the run-down shopfronts and graffitied overpasses turned into neat office blocks and car parks. The bus chugged along, passing the brown River Torrens that even now dissuades living things from surviving in its waters, apart from one-legged swans that peck through the surface for mud-stained carp.
Stopping in front of Parliament House and past North Terrace, they saw more people dressed in suits, clutching briefcases as they went on to start their work day. Adelaide’s traffic didn’t compare to the madness of Hong Kong’s, which was in constant gridlock from dawn till dusk. My Agung and Apoh marvelled at the ornate buildings around Victoria Square, so squat and untouched compared to the rising scaffolding that pierced through Hong Kong’s white skies. They showed their kids the trams that zig-zagged through the city as they shuttled families to the beach and back. When they got off the bus on Hutt Street, they were accosted by the smell of cigarette smoke and engine oil. The busy thoroughfare was packed with lunching businessmen, women in miniskirts, boutique coffee shops and all sorts of cuisines that they’d never even heard of: Greek, Italian, Lebanese. Apoh took in this new world with wonder, holding her children close and hoping that they would one day understand the sacrifices Agung had made for them to start a new life.
At Laksa Kingdom, they found a table at the back of the restaurant, amused by the gweilos around them who were using plastic forks and spoons to eat their twelve-dollar chicken rice as they washed it down with a can of Coke. The kids, now bickering over who would get to finish the last sip of Fanta, were completely ignored by my grandparents who looked at each other as if they were young lovers. It was their first outing for several years. Since their move to Australia, they seemed to have forgotten about each other even as they slept side by side. Children, family, duty and honour had overtaken the most important vow in life: love. In this moment, separated by the rest of the world with a simple glance, they remembered the warmth, comfort and utterly intoxicating feeling of romance again. As my Agung was handed a steaming bowl of laksa with chunks of chicken and bean sprouts placed on top of the tamarind coloured soup, my Apoh stared at him in wonder. She was home again. Away from the kangaroos and brown snakes and the people who yelled ‘ching chong Chinaman’ at her from their cars. At Laksa Kingdom with my Agung and her kids, she felt as if she was back amongst the bustling crowds of Causeway Bay, in a restaurant on the outskirts of Victoria Park. She was back in their small apartment with one window overlooking the harbour’s busy traffic. She could make out the boats in the water, bound for Beijing, Tokyo, Vladivostok; she was unhindered by age, arthritis or fear. Laksa Kingdom was where she fell in love with my Agung again—over a bowl of noodles and unfiltered conversation.
After my grandfather died in 2015, this story was told to me by my Apoh, who managed to capture this moment between them in a film photograph. Though the colours and shapes had bled into a faded grey, their faces remained radiant and alive. I remember seeing the photograph for the first time when I was very young. Unlike the severe black-and-white wedding photos displayed around the house, this one was intimate. Looking at it, I felt as if I was intruding on a deeply personal and private moment. When my Agung passed, I noticed my Apoh sitting at her vanity for hours, doing nothing but gazing upon this photo, transfixed and transported to a time she could never recapture. In her darkest moments, when her grief for Agung became terminal, she warned me to never fall in love unless I wanted to be haunted by the loss that came with it.
‘Protect your heart, Fa, don’t let it be cursed like mine,’ she told me.
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I never planned on falling in love. Afraid of my grandmother’s warnings, I avoided it for a long time, because she told me that the unbearable pain of losing someone was like tearing your soul into a million pieces. But when I look at you sitting in front of me at Laksa Kingdom many years after my Agung and Apoh’s first sojourn there, I have the same enamoured feeling as my Apoh had for my Agung. Falling in love with you, I am reminded of home. Though the destination is unclear, I feel like I belong somewhere: to this moment, and to you as you smile at me and squeeze my hand. In these moments, I feel connected to her. Through her stories, her memories, I feel a familiar love that seems to have been living, breathing throughout my whole being. It is during these moments that love does not feel like a curse.
Duty 天職
My Apoh’s love was tender, alive, but always came with a sense of duty and struggle. It lived in the halls of her house, a spectre that lingered when my Agung was sick, haunting her until she died. I remember her praying every night as I stood next to her as a young child, holding burning incense and pleading to the ancestors that her love would be enough for her husband. I felt this weight transfer to me when she could no longer carry it.
It lingers over my head as I sleep at night and hold you close to me. Her voice is whispering so softly in my ears, to take care of you, to hold you, to ensure I give my whole life to you like she did with my Agung. I stare at the picture of them at Laksa Kingdom above Apoh’s vanity, now displayed by my bedside table, and see it moving—although it could very well be a trick of the light. They dance, they sing, and she holds onto him as if her life depends on it. Apoh had always described Agung as a man that was determined above all else to love her. Burdened by this, she felt as if she had a debt to repay.
‘Do not forget to make sacrifices, Fa,’ she would warn me.
And now, I stare at you next to me in bed, a man who has given his heart to me without expecting anything in return. I watch your chest rise and fall and hold you tight so I can feel the warmth of skin and heat of your body. I close my eyes and feel my Apoh’s duty of love weigh heavily on my own soul. What can I do to repay you for loving me? Will it ever be enough?
When my Agung was dying, Apoh traced his thin body with her fingertips and felt the bruising, protruding bones, breathing in the sallow sweat that dampened their bedroom. She stared at the photograph hanging above the mirror and wished she could have done more to save him. She blamed herself for not praying hard enough, for letting her husband wither away into nothing. As a child, watching them from the crack of the doorway, I felt my Apoh’s pain latch onto me, as if it was alive, as if it was something that could only be shared between us.
When my Agung was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, we were all present at the appointment at Flinders Medical Centre. My mother had to translate what the doctor said to my grandparents, who didn’t understand how my Agung could be sick because he was born in the year of the Ox; strong and persistent. He worked till his feet bled so his family could have a bowl of rice. Though I was much younger then, I could feel Apoh’s pain. I watched her care for him every day until his body became broken and useless. On the nights when she thought I was sleeping, I was actually listening to her sing to him, as she stayed up until the wee hours of the night cooking him jook, frying a runny egg to put on top of the plain rice porridge so he could finally eat something. I felt the arthritic pain in her hands as she scrubbed the floors after he lost control of his bladder, the headache that lingered behind her eyes before she could fall asleep again. Later, when she could not stand up, I held her in the shower. Even then, she clung to her integrity, laughing it off and telling me that she was just a stupid old woman, but I could see the fear in her eyes. It was as if I was looking at myself, as we shared in the same feeling of fear and powerlessness.
Agung died in December 2014 at Tung Wah hospital. Every part of his body had atrophied except for his eyes, which were so wide, so scared of what might come next. We wore masks and surgical gowns as to not infect him with the outside world; he was so weak. As we stood by his bedside, Apoh held my hand. As he was looking at us peacefully, the heart monitor went still and my family and I could hear an inaudible whisper linger, each second of stunned silence prickling at our skin. I was holding Apoh’s hand and felt an inexplicable jolt. Turning around to look at her, I saw her staring off at a distant horizon that only she could see.
Now, with you, when you cry, collapse and feel like it is all too much, I feel my grandmother’s arms hold you, her lips kiss your forehead when it is feverish. I sing the same melodies she would when you stir in your sleep because it is the only way I know how to love you. When I am with you, I feel her watching me, possessing me with the will to carry your pain; it is now my duty. When we fall asleep, the faded photo of Agung and Apoh looks over us, mirroring a love that lingers through our sheets, our touches, our kisses in the dark. In these times, I see my Agung, too. It is only in dreams that he talks to me—telling me he loves me, telling me thank you, telling me that he is safe wherever he is. I reach for him in the ether, but he is so far away that I can barely hear him. I wonder to myself if these dreams are meant for me, or for Apoh, wherever she is—as far away and out of reach as he is. Or if in that moment, I am her and these are no longer my dreams. I can never be too sure because they never last long enough before I am roused from sleep. Whatever it is, I feel overcome with a love for you, the man sleeping beside me. I kiss your head, reach for your hand and whisper the same songs Apoh did for Agung. You stir and hold me close, saying, I will always be with you. And for a minute, I am not sure if it is you, and I am not sure if I am me, but we are here and that is all that matters.
Struggle 掙扎
Apoh told me that she was not loved by her Maa Maa, who resented Apoh because all of her other children died in the famine after the Second World War. Their ghosts lived in the broken picture frames that hung over the altar at home, adorned with golden idols and incense. Apoh could not get a cup of water in the night for fear that one of them would look at her, so she would always run down the hallway with her eyes closed. She would hear them shout her name whenever she had a nightmare, causing her to run to her mother’s room, only to be thrown out for her childish nonsense. She walked through this earth with them attached to her back and would feel them, see them, breathe them, especially when she was completely alone. Their absences constantly stirred like black waves in the deepest depths of the ocean. When she felt their ghosts swirl around her, usually late at night, they would engulf her in their shadows. Apoh only saw them when she was at her lowest, crying into her pillow after her mother shamed her for wearing her skirt too high, cooking the rice for too long. Nothing was ever enough.
‘It should’ve been you,’ they howled, though only she could hear them.
Falling in love with Agung, she could never truly let herself be happy because of the burden she carried on her shoulders. Agung and Apoh first met at teenagers at the grocery store near Apoh’s home. She was smitten with him because of his tidy crew cut and the attention he paid to each food item he considered purchasing: as he felt the crunch of the watercress, tasted the salt off the freshly cut roast duck and listened to the crisp of the bread baked daily by the shopkeeper. Agung reminded her of her father: how he would bring her to the corner store on his shoulders, asking her to sniff and taste the various flavours before they were purchased for dinner that night. Agung noticed her watching him and told her that, if her mother permitted it, he would love to make her a meal someday. When Apoh told Maa Maa about this, she laughed.
‘No man will ever love you because you are haunted,’ she told her teenage daughter.
When they married, years later, far away in Guangzhou, after Maa Maa died, Apoh said she saw her siblings’ ghosts sitting amongst the guests at the wedding—their faces were distorted, heartbroken, yearning for her to join them. A tear fell from her eye; my Agung thought it was from joy. Her Maa Maa was present and sat with her siblings as well, translucent in a black dress, weeping and blaming Apoh for the harrows that had been inflicted onto the family.
Coming to Australia fifteen years later, she thought that the ghosts would finally leave her. But they found her nonetheless, amidst flickering candle lights, catching her glance whenever she felt particularly homesick or lonely. When she locked herself in the bathroom for two days not long after arriving in Australia, my Agung took her to the hospital where she was diagnosed with depression. The doctors there stared at her as if she was an alien, asking her questions she could not comprehend: Do you ever feel like committing suicide? Are you at risk of hurting yourself and those around you? Do you have trauma from your childhood? Sitting on a plastic stool, their conversations covered only by a flimsy plastic curtain, Apoh did her best to answer their questions with the help of her husband, whose English was, at best, at a third grade level . She did not understand any talk of depression or mental health and believed that she was simply cursed. After all, this is what her mother had told her, even her own Apoh, who would often tell her that it should’ve been her who died.
I first saw my grandmother cry when I was very young, when the door was ajar at our old house in O’Halloran Hill. She was crouched on her bedroom floor, carpet burn on her knees from the constant praying, as she wished for respite from the impenetrable sadness living inside her. The vision of her siblings’ dead bodies—malnourished, worn and covered in the dirt out the front of her house in Hong Kong—never left her. The feeling of rice sitting in her belly when nothing but air swelled in theirs made her want to cut out her stomach. I closed my eyes and tried to silence out her cries, but they echoed through me. My mother told me not to believe in ghosts, but I couldn’t help it when I saw my grandmother’s blank stare whenever we’d go out for dinner. I couldn’t help but feel a wound of agony whenever she cried, my dear Apoh who would grab my hands and beg me to make them go away.
Apoh said she felt guilty for being so lucky with Agung when all of her siblings had died. She showed me their pictures—they all had her face, the same sad eyes that always seemed to be lost. We were at the pond feeding ducks. I rested my head on her shoulder, trying to provide her with comfort. In that moment, we both felt at peace.
‘I know they watch our family, Fa, they are forever with us,’ she would whisper as she stared out at the water.
As they did with Apoh, the ghosts won’t let go of me. The doctor says that depression is hereditary but it was Apoh who told me that it is caused by the ghosts of others that live on in our souls. I find myself praying, like she did, but I am not sure if anyone can hear me. In these moments of darkness, I hear her muttering for strength and peace. I know Agung watches me, unseen, everywhere and nowhere at the same time, wishing for that darkness to become light. But he is blocked by an angry force that continues to drown out any cries for help. There is no love without struggle, Apoh sighed on her deathbed. I am still haunted by these words, wishing that I could give you my full heart. The ghosts surround me, though you cannot see them, and I wish for one moment to feel peace with you.
Tenderness 鬆婄
My Apoh’s love was the softest I’ve ever experienced. Though she was bound and broken, there was always a tenderness in her heart. I remember her hand holding mine whenever I was hurt or sad as a child. I would feel better because she, unlike anyone else I knew, could make me feel calm and happy in an instant.
This love is still holding me now. I don’t think it will ever let go, even though Apoh’s soul has left this earth and there is nothing left but her fading face in old photographs. When she looked at my Agung that day in the restaurant, with her children, in her new home away from home, her heart began to feel full again, even just for that single moment. Though the ghosts were still there, she couldn’t hear them because of the way he made her smile. That is how I feel when I look at you. Apoh taught me that love should feel warm even in the darkest of moments. When you hold me, there is an inexplicable glow in my body; I know that this is what she would want me to feel.
My Apoh loved to dance. In her old age, wearing an apron and house slippers, she would tap her feet to the old radio as melodies crooned through its speakers. When she thought no one was looking, she’d twirl around the room and shake what was left of her hips while she was washing the dishes. Later, when I asked her about her love for dancing, she would tell me of how her and Agung—when he was still alive and could still walk and hold her—would dance all night to the songs they listened to when they were younger, which had now gathered dust on the old turntable, despite how tired they were. I can picture them now dancing in the middle of the kitchen, careful not to wake the children. A small radio was playing a Sandra Lang song, reminding them of home before they had the responsibilities and worries that come with having children, a mortgage and life in a new country. With tears in her eyes, Apoh would look at Agung, saying that this was the happiest she had ever been. Then he would smile at her and kiss her on the cheek.
In reminiscences like these, my eyes become hers and I can see my Agung again. He is standing in front of me, laughing, cooking in the kitchen of their old home. He waves at us and chops up vegetables. We smile and know, that although this moment cannot last forever, we are thankful that it is here in front of us now. Agung starts singing and he says that he will need to get working on the garden soon.
When I dance with you, we are where we’re supposed to be. You hold my waist and kiss my shoulder. I feel as if I am floating. In our living room, with the summer plants blooming while a lazy orange tabby sleeps by the window, these are times when I can feel Apoh with me while I grab your hand and laugh at your two left feet. We dance next to the pictures on the wall, of us smiling, make me fall in love with you all over again. The hubbub of our neighbours, the cars on South Road and the W90 bus creeping up Edward Street is not so dissimilar to the scene in Croydon. The blinking light of the living room and the skipping of the finished record casts me back to a time I knew so fondly from my grandmother’s dreams and memories. When she was so unsure, afraid and fearful of her Maa Maa while trying to survive in this new home in Adelaide, Agung would wipe the tears from her eyes and make her laugh and forget, even for that one second. It is through his love that the ghosts and the darkness inside her dissipates.
I feel her smile behind mine. Don’t ever let go of me, I say in my most vulnerable moments, though I’m not sure if it is to you, or to or her.
I am home, I say, her voice echoing through mine.
屋企
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Olivia De Zilva is a writer based in Meanjin. She is currently studying a Masters of Philosophy specialising in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland. She was awarded the Deakin University Non-Fiction Prize by Express Media in 2019. Her work has appeared in Westerly and SBS amongst others. Her writing focuses on her Cantonese heritage and being a second-generation immigrant to Australia.
