Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4 - 7 2018 | Page 173

People ask me if I miss my home country with genuine compassion and just-suppressed curiosity. I answer
in the same way every time- that the second the first bombs dropped, there wasn’t anything left there for
me to miss. It starts to hold true, whether I want it to or not. I smile with increasing desperation as
memories of my parents begin to waver and fade.
Recruitment managers at publishing houses and advertising companies and newspapers all nod
sympathetically at this. They flip through my portfolio and my writing notebook and promise to look up the
book I’ve published, but I never get the call back. There’s no work here for the author and no work for the
artist, not when they have no ‘legitimate’ credentials.
I swallow my pride and go to restaurants, into shops, still wearing the suit I bought with the last of my
money and shoes that cost 8 dollars but have been painstakingly buffed to a shine. The wallpaper of my
apartment starts to mildew and rot.
5.
Chen An’s in a sundress and flip-flops when I see her next. I can feel callouses as I clasp her red, raw hands
in greeting- they’re not an artist’s hands anymore, but a dishwasher and laundry-woman’s tools of the
trade.
She starts as I greet her and we sit down on the park bench. “That’s so weird- it’s been ages since anyone
called me Chen An. It’s Cecelia now.”
I look at the woman sitting with her legs crossed next to me, her hair loose around her ears and
unmistakably oriental features. A slight breeze tickles my face and presses my shirt closer to my back. I tilt
my head back and say, “You don’t feel like a Cecelia.”
“Humor me, okay?” She seems irritated with my response.
“Okay. Cecelia.” I can’t help but laugh at how strange the name sounds when attached to Chen An. “Can
I ask why?”
“It’s easier than listening to everyone pronounce my name wrong.” She says. “Helps me fit in.”
The wind changes; blows Chen An’s hair back instead of into her face. She smells of detergent and soap. She
turns her fingers ceaselessly over and over in her lap, rubbing over the cracked skin, and I see that the blot
on her wrist I’d taken to be ink is actually a tiny tattoo.
She lifts it up for me to see. “It’s a paper crane.”
“Good luck and peace, right? Is that what they mean?” I carefully take her hand in mine. It is small and
fragile, despite the callouses. One squeeze, and the veins running under her translucent skin would burst. I
let my thumb sweep briefly over the back of her palm.
“They say that if you fold a thousand, your wish will come true.” She looks at the greenery that surrounds
us, places her other hand on the smooth slats of our park bench. “I’m right where I wanted to be.” She
whispers that under her breath, reverently, like she’s still coming to terms with the place we’ve found
ourselves in,
I grip her hand tight and listen to the sounds of the birds in varying shades of gray. My fingers twitch as I
think of something I want to write down.
She eventually pulls her hand away from mine, giving me an opportunity to seize my writing notebook.
Chen An takes out her sketchbook and watches as I jot down a few sentences.