by Yoyo Chan
With his back still facing her, he broke the news. He’d proposed to a local woman, who willingly given her consent, and they planned on registering in two months. She needed no further explanation, for she had heard similar stories many, many times before. She was not angry. She was envious, not of his future wife, but of him. Free from black market labour, free from claim rejection, appeal against rejection and further rejection, free from fear of repatriation, free from hanging in limbo. He had been given the chance to cast a life of precariousness behind, a chance that was almost surely inaccessible to her.
She’d rarely talked to him since then, at most a greeting when she’d picked up Naija after their reunion every other Thursday. It was her first time asking him to spot them. Now that he had a stable income, she should feel less imposing to urge him to take care of their daughter, but her feelings had more the colour of defeat than shame, the defeat of falling short of an ideal that captured for her the duties of motherhood.
He arrived shortly before midnight and lounged on the other end of where Naija slept. He handed her a bulging envelope, then walked out for a cigarette. The recycled envelope contained everything needed to keep Naija in school for at least another school term. She was relieved but also overawed. After all, he’d never offered to pay anything, not even a single diaper.
She joined him on the balcony and he said how much he missed her signature dish. Cooking crumbled firm tofu with dried coconut and spices was the only way he would eat tofu. He lit another cigarette, reading her hesitance, to tell her that he had time. The weight on her neck lowered her head and set her eyes on cutting banana leaves into pieces of the same palm-size. Brief steaming brushed the leaves with a stroke of bright emerald and softened them for wrapping. Half way through heating the parcels in the slightly scorched pan, he returned with a dozen cold beers. For old time’s sake, he said and passed her a can. The yeasty whiff tangled with the sweet, nutty aroma from the charred banana leaves in the air.
They sat next to each other on the step at the balcony door, each unrolled a smoking leaf parcel. When was the last time the two of them, just the two of them, had dinner together, she could not remember. She watched him break a piece of microwaved lontong into half, smash it with crumbled tofu, then push the whole chunk into his mouth with his thumb. No better way to eat, he mumbled as he sucked the orangey oil off his fingertips, then gobbled and washed it down with beer. They both liked eating with their hands. A knife and fork always left a metallic tang on the tongue. Chopsticks might be better but could only hold so much each time. Nothing could beat warm fleshy fingers for this most primitive act of pleasure. He gave her a huge grin. The wide gap between his large front teeth was stuffed with red flakes of ground chillies and coconut shreds stained yellow by turmeric.
Yoyo Chan is a Hong Kong-born writer and translator. Her debut book Song of Her Open Road 《異鄉女子—十個命運自主的真實紀錄》, true stories of ten remarkable female expatriates in Europe and Africa, was published in 2016. She is working on her second book, tentatively titled The Other Cookbook, which features recipes and stories collected from female refugees and asylum seekers in Hong Kong. Her current translation projects include Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ and Dreams of A Toad, an artist’s storybook by Au Wah Yan.