Madeleine Thien: Do Not Say We Have Nothing

“And also,” Ai-ming said, turning pale, “I’m truly sorry for your loss.”

My mother and Ai-ming looked at each other. “Thank you,” Ma said. The sudden tears in her eyes stilled everything inside me. Despite all we had been through, my mother rarely wept. “And I’m so sorry for yours. My husband loved your father very much.”

—

On the first Saturday that Ma didn’t have to work, she went downtown and came home with socks, sweaters, a pair of winter shoes and a coat. In the beginning, Ai-ming slept a great deal. She would emerge from Ma’s bedroom with jumbled hair, wearing a pair of my leggings and an old T-shirt of Ma’s. Ai-ming was afraid to go outside, so weeks passed before she wore the new shoes. The coat, however, she wore every day. In the afternoons, she read a lot, sitting at the kitchen table with a stack of my father’s books. She read with her hands in her coat pockets, and used a cleaver to keep the book flat. Her hair sometimes slid forward and blocked the light, and she would wind it up and tuck the bundle inside the neck of her sweater.

One night, after she had been with us about a week, she asked Ma to cut her hair. It was just after Christmas, I remember. Since school was out, I spent most of my time eating chocolate Turtles in front of the television. Ma ordered me to come and spray Ai-ming’s hair with water from the plastic bottle, but I refused, saying that our guest’s hair should be left alone.

The women laughed. Ai-ming said she wanted to look modern. They went into the kitchen and laid down sheets of newspaper, and Ai-ming removed her coat and climbed up onto a footstool so that her long hair could fall freely into Ma’s scissors. I was watching an episode of The A-Team and the cold swish of the scissors, as well as their giggling, made it impossible to concentrate. At the first commercial break, I went into the kitchen to check their progress.

Ai-ming, hands folded as if she were praying, rolled her eyes towards me. Ma had cut about a third of her hair, and the long, wet ends lay on the floor like massacred sea creatures. “Oh,” I said, “how could you?”

Ma lifted her weapon. “You’re next, Girl.”

“Ma-li, it’s almost the New Year. Time for a haircut.” Ai-ming had difficulty saying Marie, and so had chosen the Chinese variant which, according to the dictionary, meant “charming mineral.”

Just then, Ma detached another sizeable chunk of hair. It fluttered, as if still breathing, to the floor.

“It’s Canadian New Year. People in Canada don’t get haircuts at New Year’s. They drink champagne.”

Each time Ma pulled the trigger of the plastic bottle, a fine mist shrouded Ai-ming, who squeezed her eyes tight against the cold. As I watched, Ai-ming transformed before my eyes. Even the pallor of her skin began to seem less dire. When she had cut to shoulder length, Ma began shaping bangs that slanted across Ai-ming’s forehead in a decidedly chic way. She was very, very beautiful. Her eyes were dark and unclouded and the shape of her mouth was, just as the poets say, a rose against her skin. There was a flush to Ai-ming’s cheeks that had not been there an hour before, colour that rose each time Ma gazed at her for long moments, assessing her handiwork. They had forgotten all about me.

When I went back to the other room, the credits were rolling on The A-Team . I collapsed on the couch and pulled my knees up to my chest. Festive lights shone in almost every window but ours, and I had the sensation that our apartment was under scrutiny by residents of a UFO, unsure whether to land in Vancouver or fly on. The aliens in my spaceship were asking themselves: Do they have soda? What kind of food do they eat? Maybe we should wait and return in spring? Land , I told them. People aren’t made to float through the air. Unless we know the weight of our bodies, unless we feel the force of gravity, we’ll forget what we are, we’ll lose ourselves without even noticing .

Ai-ming had been reading one of my father’s bilingual poetry books. I picked it up now, a book familiar to me because I had used it in my calligraphy lessons. I paged through it until I came to a poem I knew, words my father had underlined,

Watch little by little the night turn around.

Echoes in the house; want to go up, dare not.

A glow behind the screen; wish to go through, cannot.

It would hurt too much, to see the swallow on her hairpin.

Truly shame me, to see the phoenix in her mirror.

To Hengtang I return at dawn

Fading like light on a jewelled saddle.

I read the poem twice through and closed the book. I hoped that my father, in the afterlife to which he had gone, was also celebrating Christmas and the New Year, but I feared that he was alone and that, unlike Ai-ming, he had not yet found a family to protect him. Despite my anger at him, despite the pain that wouldn’t leave me, I could not shake my longing for his happiness.

—

It was inevitable, of course, that Ai-ming would discover the boxes under the table. In January, I came home from school and found my father’s papers completely exposed — not because she had moved them, but because she had pushed the dining table backwards. One of the boxes had been completely emptied. Ba’s diaries, spread across the table, reminded me of the poverty of the Vancouver flea market. Worse, Ai-ming could read every character while I, his only daughter, couldn’t read a single line.

She was making cabbage salad and had grated so much horseradish that I wondered whether the cabbage would actually fit.

I said that I didn’t know if my stomach could handle that much horseradish.

She nodded distractedly and flung the cabbage in, tossing it wildly. Everything flew up in the air and rained down into the bowl. Ai-ming was wearing Ma’s “Canada: The World Next Door” apron, and her winter coat underneath.

She went to the table. “Once, when I was very small, I met your father.”

I remained where I was. Ai-ming and I had never spoken about Ba. That she had known him, that she had never thought to mention this to me before, filled me with a disappointment so intense I could hardly breathe.

“This afternoon,” she said, “I started looking inside these boxes. These are your father’s things, aren’t they? Of course, I knew I should ask your permission, but there were so many notebooks.”

I answered without looking at her. “My father moved to Canada in 1979. That’s twelve years of papers. A whole life. He hardly left us anything.”

“I call this the room of zá jì,” she said. “The things that don’t fit. Bits and pieces…”

Inside my head, to calm the shivering that had started in my chest and was now radiating to my limbs, I repeated, over and over, the words Ai-ming had used but which I had never heard before: zá jì.

“You understand, don’t you?” she said. “The things we never say aloud and so they end up here, in diaries and notebooks, in private places. By the time we discover them, it’s too late.” Ai-ming was holding a notebook tightly. I recognized it at once: it was tall but thin, the shape of a miniature door, with a loose binding of cotton thread. The Book of Records.

“So you’ve seen this before?” When I still didn’t answer, she smiled sadly at me. “This is my father’s handwriting. You see? His writing is so effortless, so artful. He always wrote with care, even if the character was an easy one. It was his nature to be attentive.”

She opened the notebook. The words seemed to float on the surface and move of their own accord. I backed away. She didn’t need to show me, I knew what it looked like.

“I have my own zá jì,” she continued. “But it’s everywhere now, and I don’t know how to contain it. Do you know why we keep records, Ma-li? There must be a reason but what good does it do to keep such insignificant things? My father was a great composer, a great musician, but he gave up his talent so that he could protect me. He was an upright and sincere person and even your father wanted to keep a part of him. Even your father loved him. But they let him die. They killed him as if he were an animal. How can anyone explain this to me? If my father were alive, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be alone. And your father, he wouldn’t have…Oh, Ma-li. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”