Days after our first date,
the night I said I would not sleep with him,
the night I mapped him with my mouth,
the night my hips made him spill,
the night I slept with him,
days after I moved in with him that night,
we drove in his classic cream Mercedes,
upholstered in rich green leather,
his left hand softly resting on my right thigh,
my hand holding his,
hi-fidelity music embracing me,
from a dash and boot full of custom craft,
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.
The only Gweilo I ever took inside.
In Causeway Bay we got pushed and pulled at the flower market.
In Shenzhen we ate like royalty;
Lobster,
crab,
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 pockets and compliments about her baby fat and constant smile.
Her baby sister still on my milk or formula.
Every Chinese New Year our babies bounced around the banquet tables from knee to knee,
pan-fried lo bak go,
kook fa cha,
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, my Gweilo,
his man bag full of
nappies,
wet wipes,
bottles,
formula,
our table’s shouted, excited sound-waves crashing over him.
He waves off my attempts to translate.
He says, “m̀h gán yiu, Siu Gam Yu 小金魚,”
his simple Cantonese letting him follow us shouting like traders at a wet market in Tai Po.
No one was touched and moved like him.
He wept for three days straight from
the moment Michelle, our OB, handed her to him,
the moment he placed her baby seat on the deep green leather in our Mercedes.
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 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
bent to serve 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’d create CNY for my girls as much as I could.
I'd have him hang lanterns.
I’d dress the girls in traditional Chinese jackets,
take them out for
pan-fried lo bak go,
kook fa cha,
lai see,
gu lou yuk
for my blended family,
my daughters identifying Chinese one moment and German the next,
switching cultures with 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,
storm rain,
storm floods straining our shutters and windows,
like in Porto we left behind two weeks ago.
My first baby jetting off to Austria to be with the boyfriend all wrong for her,
after extracting
the airfare,
the train tickets
the extra spending money from us for her winter break.
I hate to let her go, knowing
I can't stop her, knowing
I can’t keep her close at the same time.
He installed the airline app on her phone,
checked her in,
purchased her train tickets,
drove his first baby to the airport,
her sitting up front,
green leather and baby seats just history now,
walked her to the gate,
slipped her some extra cash,
and let her go.
I stayed at home.
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.”
We spent the afternoon with baby 3,
found ourselves in Bordeaux’s Ginko district,
by Le Lac.
We both said,
this feels like home,
like Cheung Kwan O,
like Hang Hau,
like Junk Bay.
A classic Mercedes passed us by.
He said,
“Bordeaux is growing on me.”
I said,
“You moved us here and only now you are choosing Bordeaux?”
He said,
“France works for our nervous systems, you chose the house, we chose the schools, I choose you.”
We had sushi and ramen for dinner.
Baby 3 was ecstatic.
Thank you, BB.
Kung Hei Fat Choi.
