Days after our first date,
days after moving in with him on that same night,
still married to another man who betrayed and hurt me,
we drove in his car
to visits at my cousins,
to lunch,
to dinners.
From Fanling to Mong Kok,
From Lam Tim to Lei Yu Mun,
From Tsim Sha Tsui to Tai Tam.
Always pan-fried lo bak go, kook fa cha, lai see, and gu lou yuk for my Gweilo boyfriend.
In Causeway Bay we got pushed and pulled at the flower market.
In Shenzhen we ate like royalty:
Lobster,
Crabs,
Peking Duck.
Peking Duck turned to “Chicken Duck” when our first baby was learning to talk,
still in her bright green Stokke pram pressed up against our table,
munching her pancake wrapped duck.
My relatives showering her in red packets and compliments about her baby fat and constant smile.
Her baby sister still on my breast or formula.
Every Chinese New Year our babies bounced around the banquet table from knee to knee:
pan-fried lo bak go, kook fa cha, and lai see.
My cousins, their wives now also mothers or expecting,
my father’s sister, my guma, 小鬼, who took charge of me after my mother died when I was small,
my mother’s sisters,
and him, this man, his man bag full of nappies, wet wipes, bottles, and formula. No one was touched and moved like him when he wept for three days straight the moment baby 1 was born.
He changed our daughter’s nappies more often than me.
No one more covered in vomited milk and liquid poop than him.
Sitting in economy,
our first baby jumping from her cot to his lap the entire flight from HKG to FRA.
Me, eight months pregnant with baby 2, pressed into my seat, my bladder always full, too tired to get up to stand, to wait in line. Michelle, our OB, signed off on my flight. The shopkeepers in Sai Kung called me “always pregnant wife”, 永遠懷孕嘅老婆.
During those two years I was only not pregnant for four months.
People around me praised my fertility.
Sometimes my father, the girls’ Gung-Gung, 公公, and my stepmom, their Abu, 阿婆, would visit from Australia; sometimes we’d meet them and celebrate in Bali.
My entire clan kept tutting, frowning, and scolding me:
“Lai Yin, what are you doing? The girls can wait, he can wait, stop fussing.”
While I bent to serve them and him first.
Bent to serve,
bent to be a good wife,
cursed by the gift of obedience,
cursed by the name my mother gave me:
“Beautiful, good wife”.
His father researched the family tree for years. Four hundred years of firstborn sons. An unbroken line.
I felt it before anyone said it, the pressure to give his father a son.
By the time we moved from Hong Kong to Portugal, I carried and bore him daughter number three. He was relieved I gave him another girl.
After moving from Hong Kong, I kept CNY presents for my girls as much as I could.
I'd get him to hang lanterns.
I’d dress the girls in traditional Chinese jackets,
take them out for pan-fried lo bak go, served kook fa cha, and gave them lai see and gu lou yuk for my blended family,
my daughters identifying Chinese one moment and German the next, seamlessly switching cultures in a single breath, speaking more languages than he and I combined.
This Chinese New Year we're in an Airbnb close to the Atlantic outside of Bordeaux.
Storm winds, rain, and floods relentlessly straining the shutters and windows, just like in Porto I thought we’d left behind two weeks ago.
My first baby jetting off to Austria to spend the winter break with the boyfriend all wrong for her after extracting the airfare and train tickets from us.
I hate to let her go and know I can't stop her and keep her close at the same time.
Today is Chinese New Year. I spent the morning on the phone,
rellos in Hong Kong,
Abu in Canberra.
Happy to stay home he insisted we buy flowers.
I said: “No need“
He said: “We‘re going.”
Thank you, BB. Kung Hei Fat Choi.
