Winfred Wong: Son of the Tank Man

“I mean I’m going to leave this country and start a new life at somewhere else, probably dad’s home country. I miss the food there badly.”

She twisted her face and resumed going up. “Why would you want to go back to that uncivilized country where dad was shot dead? He sacrificed his life for us and the people. Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten what he had told us on the phone before he passed away. He told mum to get us out of there because the situation was only going to get a lot worse, which turned out to be true, and it was even worse than what he had predicted. And he warned us never to return to that place. He worried about us even he got a bullet in his stomach.”

“Yeah, very nice of you to remind me of that. I’ve already forgotten he was the hero, The Tank Man,” I said. “And that’s been decades ago. Just get over the past, will you?”

“I don’t understand you. Who would want to leave this beautiful country while everyone is looking forward to the big change?” She looked at me and tilted her head right against the wall like what a curious dog would do when she got to her bed.

“Beautiful, hum, beautiful, what a beautiful country,” I repeated and reached out for the radio. “Perhaps I just don’t see it that way.”

“Don’t you dare touch it!” she barked, and I drew my limb back with pursed lips, not because I thought she was more important than listening to the radio, but because she would definitely continue to yell aloud had I switched it on again.

“But the people there will discriminate you. Racism is entrenched in their society. And I have no doubt about this.” She lowered her anxious voice this time.

“They won’t. I was born there.”

“Let me remind you of another fact now because, apparently, you have also forgotten your mother is from Europe, and we were not issued a permanent resident card just because of it.”

“You don’t have to remind me of everything. I am well aware of my identity, and I’ve already got myself a visa. Approved easily.”

Then I remember she rolled her eyes in frustration before speaking again, and there was the tiniest bit of sarcasm in her voice. “Well, it seems nothing can stop you then, Mr. Son of The Tank Man. When are you planning to leave? By the way, are you going to visit the Door of Heavenly Peace?”

“I don’t know yet. I don’t have a schedule yet. But no. I am not going back there, even though it’s a tourist spot now.”

Then she pulled out a dubious face, one that made me think she didn’t believe me when I said ‘I don’t know yet’, and after a quiet minute of pondering, she said, “Are you still angry at what happened to you? Your vote? Is it the reason why you want to leave?”

I had never felt worse when someone saw through me with something like that, something like a Jedi mind trick. Quietly hissed to give vent to my boiling discontent engendered by the fact she reminded me of the reason why I couldn’t go to cast my vote, I had to draw in a deep breath through my nostrils in order to contain it because I knew I cared about it so much, so much that on that night I had wept overnight until my tears had dampened half of my spongy pillow only because of the unenviable outcome of the plebiscite, which was passed in favor of the dissolution of the government by a ratio of 4:1, a landslide victory for the obstinate freedom-pursuers, who didn’t have the foresight to envision what would happen when the maintenance of order in the country was broken and the so-called freedom they had been striving for became dominant.

“What would you have voted if you had the chance?” my sister went on, disrupting my thought.

That wasn’t the first time she asked me about it, but I just didn’t feel like answering her because I knew what she had voted – this magically didn’t have any impact on our relationship, I basically just accepted it with a nod when she told me about her decision – and so, I darted a quick sidelong glance at her, stood up, quickly swilled down the glass of warm water like I would do every morning, put the empty glass next to the radio like I would do every morning, grabbed my old-fashioned laptop bag lying horizontally on the sofa like I would do every morning and headed for the door, knowing it’s almost about time to go if I wanted to be punctual.

“Hey, talk to me,” she said, her impenetrable blue eyes fixed on me with her head sticking out of the railing of her upper bunk.

And I pulled open the pale yellow door in front of me and said, “You know what, I don’t want to talk about it now because I am going to miss the bus, which is very undesirable, if I don’t go now, and if I miss it, I will probably lose my job. So, maybe next time, and one more thing, I don’t owe you nothing.”

“Hey, I need my ‘fe-fee’ today!”

I could hear her clearly, but I then instantly hopped out into the dingy, narrow corridor that stretched wider to the right, and I walked down it slowly until I skidded to a halt in front of a decrepit elevator door and jabbed the down button. Then I glimpsed at my mechanical watch featuring a navy blue leather strap on my left wrist, which was the ‘fe-fee’ she was talking about; she called it ‘fe-fee’ because when it ticked, it sounded more like it’s ‘fe-feeing’ and she loved it, though this morning, when she came home, drunk, she almost smashed it against the corner of the dining table and that’s why it was on my wrist now. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to give it back to her – it was something like a heirloom mum gave her a day before she died of cancer – but I would probably be late for work had I stayed arguing with her.

We lived on the twenty-fourth floor of an apartment with no balcony, one bedroom, and only one porthole-like window, and there was only one elevator for the entire thirty-story high-rise, which was erected straightly in front of an abandoned pier built on the seashore where I had spent most of my childhood running around and having fun with my friends like Brian and Mike, albeit I never found the waiting mundane. To me, the creaky journey downward in the elevator had always been like an express train bound for Shangri-La because the air outside wasn’t as stuffy as at home and the outside world was properly governed until that day, but on that day, I felt it was more like a one-way ticket to hell.

My heart thumped, and I froze completely when the elevator door slid open with an absurdly quick speed like an athlete sprinting. There were three people inside, two men, probably friends because they were both champing on a ham sandwich like horses munching on hay in a stable, and a nice-looking young woman dressed formally with a silky, long white dress that unfortunately accentuated her paunch. Seeing that I was as still as a rock after the door was open, they all had their eyebrows drawn down and stared at me in a peculiar way, with disdains sparkling in their eyes, and I could tell they thought I was wasting their valuable time just by their looks.

“Good morning, Ashton,” the woman said, as she tucked away her dissatisfaction behind a forced smile smacked of hypocrisy, though it was as rigid as it could be. “Are you coming in?”

I bet she didn’t really care about me going in or not when she asked because her middle finger had never separated from the door close button since the door had begun sliding open, not to mention that she had never actively started a conversation with me before. It was apparent that all she desired was not to miss the bus to go to work, just like everyone else.

And by now, you might have already been wondering why on earth we were all rushing to work on the first day of a new year, which was supposed to be a holiday. The answer is simple. There wasn’t a thing called holiday back then. The foundation of the rapid economic growth mentioned by the Prince was entirely based on people’s perspiration, but that’s something I’ll need a whole different book in order to explain. Anyway, my point here is that we, the citizens of Port Aroma or simply, workaholics, had always been in a rush all our life and we hated it when someone got in our way.