Ghost Forest Read online

  THE SCRIPT

  After my mom called to tell me that my dad was in the hospital, I decided to take time off work. I knew my parents would tell me that there was no need to fly all the way from London to Hong Kong, that my work was important, and that I shouldn’t worry. But when I imagined my dad in a hospital gown, feet and belly swollen, all I could think was that I never visited my grandpa before he died.

  When I talked to my boss, he said, Take some time off and go tell your dad you love him.

  I realized I’d never told my dad that before. No one ever said it in my family. I decided to call my childhood friends, the ones I grew up with in Vancouver.

  Have you ever said I love you to your parents? I asked. Have you ever said it in Chinese?

  No! they said. Why would we?

  But for the rest of the day I thought, What if I never had the chance?

  After I got home from work, I sat down on my couch and looked out the window. A streetlight flickered as a red double-decker bus hissed to a stop below. I waited for my dad to pick up, shifting my phone from hand to hand so I could wipe the sweat off from my palms.

  When my dad answered, I told him I was going to visit, I’d already requested the time off work, and would be flying to Hong Kong in two weeks. Then I talked about the weekend, and then I talked about the rain.

  Finally, he said he was tired and needed to rest.

  Wait! I said. I love you.

  Thank you! he said. I could hear him smiling.

  Two weeks later, I boarded my flight to Hong Kong. The first night I arrived, I sat at the dining table while he watched the news. I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water and drank it, and then I poured another one. As I waited for my mom to take a shower, I pretended to watch the news with my dad. Finally, he stood up, got into his bed, and turned off the light. His door was ajar, so I poked my head in.

  I love you, I said.

  There was no answer. I didn’t know if he was asleep. I walked back to my room and plopped facedown on my bed.

  Days later, my dad’s belly began to bloat again, so we went to the hospital. I had used up all my vacation days and had to fly back to London that night. A few of my aunts and uncles came to check on my dad, and they were standing around the hospital bed. I didn’t want to say it in front of them. But as I was about to leave for the airport, I turned to my dad one more time.

  I love you, I said.

  He looked back at me, eyes blank.

  A month later, I called him and said, Every time I said I love you, I was kind of disappointed you didn’t say anything back.

  You’re getting a lot of western education, my dad said. We’re Chinese. It’s not important for us to express our feelings. Underneath this sky, all parents love their children.

  I thought, I should let this go. He told me that all parents love their children, what more do I want?

  Then I thought, no, I want to hear it. So I decided to come up with a script.

  THE SCRIPT

  Hi Dad,

  Happy Father’s Day! (Coincidentally it was Father’s Day the next day)

  我爱你! (I would say I love you in Cantonese, even though it would sound extremely weird because nobody ever said it in Chinese, not even in television dramas)

  Do you love me?

  Can you tell me? (In case he replied with only Yes to the last question)

  I rehearsed the script in my head all next day at work, and called him in the evening.

  Hi Dad, I said.

  Hi, he said.

  Happy Father’s Day!

  Thank you!

  我爱你.

  I love you too! he said in English.

  Thank you! I said, hanging up right away.

  The next day I woke up laughing.

  MOTHERS

  All those western people, my mom said over the phone, they use the word love for everything. They say it like they say hello.

  When I didn’t answer, she kept talking.

  She said, I know you’re upset at me, but that’s how it is, I get upset at your grandma too. And your grandma got upset at her mother all the time. Maybe it runs in our family.

  MY MOM SAYS:

  She was beautiful, your great-grandmother, when she was young. Nose a little high, eyes a little big.

  But she drank this stuff. I had to buy it for her once. You had to go to a special pharmacy and say, I want to buy cough syrup, and they would give it to you from a room hidden in the back. I don’t know what it was, I was only a child then, but it wasn’t alcohol. It was clear, and she drank it from the plastic bottle. She was always drinking from that bottle.

  We lived together in the same apartment for many years, the one where you also lived when you were small. One time, she went out to play mahjong with her friends and forgot her keys. She called someone, who called someone, who called me. I was at the office, I had so much work to do, so I took my time getting home. She was sitting in the lobby, shaking. That’s when I realized she needed her bottle.

  I was at the office when she died. Only one of your aunts was at the hospital to watch her go. At the time, your grandma was in a different hospital because she’d just had surgery. She was so angry none of us told her that her mother had died.

  But she’d just had surgery, what else were we supposed to do?

  FIFTEEN

  My grandma told me her mother arranged for her to meet my grandpa when she was only fifteen. He was twelve years older, tall and thin, with slicked back hair and tinted half-rim glasses, a tailor. They watched a few movies and had a few dinners.

  What did you think of Grandpa the first time you saw him? I asked.

  Nothing, my grandma said. I didn’t think any thoughts.

  Did you want to marry him?

  I was only a child. I did what my mother told me, so I would have food to eat.

  What was it like when you got married?

  We never got married. Your grandpa came to Hong Kong when he was nineteen to escape a marriage, but when his father was dying, he went back to his hometown and his family arranged a wedding for him. When I met him, he had left behind a wife and children in Shanghai. I was seventeen the first time I gave birth. I had all six of my children by the time I was thirty.

  MY GRANDMA SAYS:

  Your mother was my last birth. I was living in Guangzhou at the time, taking care of your five aunts and uncles, while your grandpa worked in Hong Kong. When the veins were big and my belly was big, the doctor said, If you have another one after this, your veins will burst. He said, Don’t have any more!

  I insisted on getting my tubes tied right after I was going to give birth. The doctor said, Aren’t you afraid that this is dangerous? Who’s going to sign your papers? So I got my grandmother to sign the papers.

  Coincidentally, it was 1959, the Soviet Union and China had a bad relationship, and they forced China to pay its debts. Hospitals didn’t have the usual supplies and medications. They injected half a cc of anesthesia into my belly, and opened it with a knife.

  Above me: a big bright light. Half a cc of anesthesia. I could see in the reflection what the doctor was doing.

  It wasn’t that painful, but it was so, so sour. The doctor hooked the tube out and tied it, while teaching two students. The doctor hooked the left one out, then hooked the right one out, then tied both ends.

  It was so, so sour. Sweat like I went swimming. Since that day, I can’t stop sweating.

  Years later, after we had moved to Hong Kong and I was in my fifties, I was menstruating and it lasted nine days. Usually, it was only three days. It wasn’t a lot of blood, and it was very thin. But I went to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and told the doctor. Actually, it was menopause, but I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t have cancer or tumors or anything.

  Stil
l, the doctor said, Let’s remove it then!

  They cut out my uterus and removed my fallopian tubes too.

  After the surgery, you’re supposed to take hormones every day until you die. But after taking it once or twice, my throat felt a bit sore, so I stopped. I’d heard that taking hormones could cause breast cancer. So I didn’t take them, haven’t taken them since.

  That’s why I’m always sweating. Sometimes I sweat just from drinking a cup of hot tea. When I go out to buy groceries, I put a towel on my back, and it gets completely wet. I have to go home and change my clothes. After I change, I start sweating again.

  FRESH TOWELS

  Wherever my grandma goes, she carries extra towels and plastic bags in her purse. In the bathrooms of malls and restaurants, she lifts up the back of her shirt, removes the soaked towel, and folds it into a plastic bag. Then she shakes out a fresh towel, tucks the edges under her bra straps, and smooths her shirt back down.

  SLEEPING PILLS

  The doctor prescribed half a sleeping pill to your dad, my mom said over the phone.

  He didn’t take it, right? I said.

  Your dad was the one who asked for it. He told the doctor that he hasn’t been able to sleep. He asked the doctor to help him.

  But Dad hasn’t been able to sleep for years. I thought he was against sleeping pills.

  I thought so too.

  So he’s been taking them for the last two months?

  No. After taking half a pill, he would sleep for only two hours and wake up again, so he wanted the doctor to prescribe the whole pill after a few days. Soon, he started to say things that didn’t make any sense. The nurse said maybe his liver couldn’t metabolize it. One night, when he asked me to give him the sleeping pill, I told him I already gave it to him. He fell asleep soon after.

  Then what happened?

  I started giving him a foot massage whenever he woke up because every time I give him a foot massage, he falls asleep right away.

  What happens when he wakes up in the middle of the night?

  I give him a foot massage every night from eleven p.m. to two a.m. because that’s when the liver renews itself. After that, I go to sleep.

  You give him a three-hour foot massage every night?

  What else can I do? I think the nurses started suspecting something because the other day, the doctor asked me if the sleeping pills were working.

  What did you tell him?

  I told the doctor that your dad was sleeping fine without them because I was giving him a foot massage every night. Then one night, in the middle of the night, a nurse came into the room. I think the doctor sent her to see if I was telling the truth. Luckily I really was giving your dad a foot massage at the time.

  Mom, I can’t believe you’ve been giving Dad three-hour foot massages every night! You have to take care of your own health too!

  Don’t worry. It’s not like I’ll be doing this forever. After he gets better, I’ll have plenty of time to rest.

  A SIMPLE LIFE

  A week later, I flew to Hong Kong too. When I landed at the airport, the sky was white. I took a taxi from the airport straight to the hospital, and found my dad awake in his bed.

  After I recover, my dad said, I’m going to retire. I want to take your mom on vacations.

  Where will you go? I asked.

  I want to go everywhere. I won’t be picky about it.

  Where would you want to go first?

  Maybe Greece. And when I get better, I want to live a simple life. And I want to try pizza.

  POPEYE

  We used to play a game called Popeye, my dad and I. We stood at opposite ends of the room, facing each other, the length of the beige carpet between us. Then we ran toward each other and wrestled. I think he was Popeye because he picked me up and swung me around and poured invisible cans of spinach into his mouth. I laughed so hard my feet kicked the air. I don’t know what the point was, but it was my favorite game.

  SO HANDSOME

  My dad asked my uncle to give him a haircut and a shave.

  So my uncle arrived at the hospital with a pair of scissors and a razor. We sat my dad up on a chair and draped a few white towels around his shoulders.

  My dad, who had always been clean-shaven, now had wiry hairs, a third of an inch long, growing here and there on his chin. His hair was greasy and matted in the back. His skin had a yellow tinge.

  My uncle trimmed the hair at the nape of my dad’s neck. He leaned in close and he squinted his eyes and leaned back to trim some more.

  When he was done, we peeled off the towels from my dad’s shoulders and swept away the stray hairs.

  Doesn’t he look handsome? my mom said to the nurse who just walked into the room.

  So handsome! the nurse said.

  My dad smiled, showing his teeth.

  It was the happiest I had seen him in days.

  HAIR

  For as long as I could remember, my dad took good care of his hair. He combed it every morning and evening, massaged hair growth oil on his scalp after showering, and used the blow-dryer in small circles. Whenever he walked into an elevator, or past a shiny window, he checked his profile and patted the spot at the back of his head where his hair always stood up.

  One day, while sitting near his bed in the hospital, I asked if he wanted me to clean his hair.

  No, it’s okay, he said.

  Are you sure? Maybe it’ll help you sleep, I said.

  Okay, then.

  I took out the coconut oil, which my mom had decanted into a glass dispenser bottle. I pumped two pumps into my palm and squeezed myself into the space behind the hospital bed. I lifted his glasses off with one hand, and warmed the oil in my palms. I noticed that the whites of his eyes were pale yellow. I placed my thumbs together at the top of his forehead and pressed gently down to his temples. I continued doing this along the middle of his scalp. Then I pressed my fingers in small circles behind his ears. After a while, I filled a small bowl with hot water, dipped cotton pads into it, and smoothed them across his head to wipe off the oil. His scalp was pale and clumps of his hair came off onto the cotton. I took out the blow-dryer and dried his hair, moving the dryer around so it wouldn’t get too hot. Then I took out his wooden comb and parted his hair, combing it down on each side several times.

  THREE WOMEN

  There are three women I owe in my life, my dad said. They are my mother, my older sister, and your mother.

  Why do you owe them? I said. I sat next to his hospital bed.

  They have all been so good to me. And I’ve had such a bad temper.

  A lot of people have bad tempers though.

  No, he said. When I was a kid, I was really skinny. I’d get cold at night and wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. I shared a bed with my sister, and she could always tell when I was cold. So she would wrap her big thighs around me until I was warm and fell asleep. The thing is, she’s deaf and mute. She’s deaf and mute!

  He shook his head and looked away.

  THE FISH

  My dad said he learned his first big lesson when he was six years old.

  He said, I was really good at fishing. Out of our nine siblings, I was the best. One day, my sixth brother asked me to bring home a big fish for dinner. I said, no problem. I even invited the fat twins next door to come with me. I wanted them to see me catch the fish.

  We walked down to the docks. Not long after, one of the twins pulled a big fish out of the water. I watched it plop down right next to me. There were no more fish after that.

  I went home and told my sixth brother.

  It’s okay, he said. Now I know never to rely on you again.

  That was my first big lesson.

  VACATION TIME

  I stayed at my dad’s apartment while my mom spent every night at the hospital. Finally my aunt insis
ted on watching over my dad for a few nights so that my mom could rest at home.

  One night, my aunt woke up to my dad shouting.

  Wake up! my dad said.

  What’s going on? my aunt said.

  We’re all leaving now. Pack your bags!

  What? Where are we going?

  We’re going on a cruise!

  HAPPY MOVIES

  Dad must be so bored, I said to my mom one evening before I left the hospital. Maybe I can bring a movie on my laptop tomorrow.

  Make sure you pick a happy movie, my mom said. You know how your dad is, he won’t be able to fall asleep if it’s sad or scary. He still brings up that time years ago when your cousin was staying with us. In the middle of the night, your dad was thirsty and went downstairs to get a glass of water, and as he turned the corner, your cousin emerged from the bathroom with a white head band in his hair and a white moisturizing mask on his face. Your dad didn’t sleep for days.

  MY FATHER’S FATHER

  One day, I realized I didn’t know anything about my dad’s father. I’d never even seen a picture of him. My dad was sitting by the hospital window, eyes closed, in a chair inside a square of yellow sunlight.

  What was your dad like? I said.

  He wasn’t home much, my dad said.

  What did he do?