If You Still Recognise Me, page 20
What if she knows that and is afraid of me?
But she can’t be. She’s Joan. Surely she’d understand what it’s like for a girl to have a crush on another girl, even if she can’t like me back. I think of all the times I averted my eyes in the changing room at school before and after PE lessons, terrified that someone might think I’d looked at them a second too long and work out that I was queer.
Joan wouldn’t be afraid of me – she’d know that I’m the one who’s afraid.
I clutch that thought to me and hope that our friendship is still intact in the morning. Just when it’s dawned on me at last that we might be possible, it turns out that we aren’t. I don’t think of you in that way. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t still be best friends. Keeping her in my life is all that matters.
The rain sounds more comforting now, more like nature’s lullaby.
I close my eyes and let myself imagine her in this bed with me. I let myself imagine how, in my sleep, I might unconsciously drift closer and closer to her.
I let myself imagine her hip against mine, an unbearable warmth.
Morning, when it comes, is still grey, but it smells like scrambled eggs.
I’m not sure if I actually slept or not. I probably did but it feels like one of those nights where I stayed up reading a fifty-chapter fanfic only for it to end badly, without warning, in a beloved character’s death.
I tiptoe into the living room but Joan is already awake, sitting on the sofa with her knees drawn up to her chest and a cream blanket rumpled beside her like the frothy foam on a cappuccino. She’s watching the news on TV, the volume low. Her hair is a mess, without any product in it yet, and the shadows under her eyes are deep. She looks up at me and smiles. “Morning.”
“Hey,” I reply, and now I feel guilty. Guilty for thinking of her the way I did last night, imagining the heat of her skin. She doesn’t think of me in that way. The panic on her face last night returns to me, but there’s no sign of it now. Her smile has all the smoothness that her hair does not. But it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Had your morning coffee yet?”
“Just about to.” She springs up from the sofa and heads towards the kitchen. “I think your uncle’s making some kind of luxury breakfast in there.”
I follow her. “Did you sleep well?”
“The sofa was very comfy, as your uncle said.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Joan shrugs, slipping into the kitchen where Kevin is just plating up the scrambled eggs, and I can see the pink flakes of smoked salmon he’s added to it. In another pan, he’s also frying pancakes. There are punnets of gleaming strawberries and plump blueberries laid out on the kitchen worktop, and a squeezy bottle of honey, presumably all to go with the pancakes.
“Wow, Uncle Kevin, you didn’t have to make all this,” I say, though I’m salivating. Barely sleeping has made me really hungry.
“It’s not every day my niece comes to see me and also comes out to me!” Kevin flings his arm out with dramatic flourish, spatula in hand. “It’s an occasion worthy of celebration.”
“So this is a coming-out breakfast.”
That should’ve been a little absurd but instead it makes me feel luminous with a kind of whirling joy, like I’m arriving at a theme park, all its whizzing colours spread out before me. I’ve never needed pancakes as much as I do in this moment.
“Yes, a coming-out breakfast!” Kevin says. “I wish I’d got to have one.”
“This is your coming-out breakfast too,” I say. “You came out to me.”
“I can’t make my own coming-out breakfast.” He retrieves the toast that’s just popped up from the toaster and puts a slice on each plate with the scrambled eggs. “Now, if I come to visit you next time, and you make me breakfast in return…”
“So you’re going to come and see Po Po?” I ask.
The idea of it makes me feel conflicted. I’m angry at her on Kevin’s behalf, but it’s his choice ultimately. And I do get the sense that Po Po wants to see him. I’d like to hope that they can reconcile.
Kevin sighs, flipping a pancake. “I don’t know. I’m still thinking about it. But, either way, she’s going back to Hong Kong soon, and I’ll definitely come and see you after that.”
“I’ll be off to uni in October.”
“Christmas then, at the latest.” He jerks his shoulder at the plates. “Go and eat the scrambled eggs before they get cold.”
Joan is fiddling around with the Nespresso machine. I take the plates into the dining room, and a minute later she sits down opposite me at the table with her coffee.
Silences with Joan have never been awkward in the past, but this one hangs between us like a wet shower curtain, as though one of us has burst in on the other naked behind the filmy fabric, and that mental image only makes everything worse.
“I’m sorry about last night,” I say, after both of us have spent too long just chewing. “I don’t know what made me ask that question.”
Joan’s face is unreadable but at this point David comes into the room, yawning and stretching, and I look up at him gratefully.
“How did you sleep, girls?” he asks.
“Really well, thanks,” I say automatically.
“Not bad,” Joan says. “I love your sofa.”
I glance at Joan out of the corner of my eye. Do I look as tired as she does? Does she know I’m lying, just as she is?
David is perky enough to make up for our collective lack of energy. “Yeah, it’s a darn good sofa.” He sniffs the buttery air, oblivious to the limp atmosphere between me and Joan. “Is he making pancakes too? God, he’s really gone all out, hasn’t he?”
He gazes in the direction of the kitchen with adoration in his sleep-soft eyes, an expression that crushes me. That he can still look so obviously, happily in love with Kevin when they’ve known each other for nearly twenty years seems like a miracle I’ll never get to experience.
We spend the morning pottering round a museum. I don’t take anything in, and as soon as we leave I don’t even really remember what it’s the museum of. But pretending to focus on the exhibits at least meant that I could avoid talking to Joan.
All of us are still too full from breakfast to have a proper lunch, so we just sit down for a cup of tea, and I let Uncle Kevin and David’s chatter drift round me. They’re so warm. I always liked Uncle Kevin’s upbeat vibe but this feels like it’s on a whole new level. He and David keep getting lost in tangent upon tangent, and I’m content to just let the conversation unspool around me.
I meet Joan’s eyes across the table, and she looks away.
Before we head to the train station, Uncle Kevin says, “Oh, it’s actually Nicole’s birthday soon. I should get her something. There’s this really quirky gift shop that I like. Mind if we stop by there?”
Joan checks her watch. “Sounds good. We have time.”
The gift shop is so colourful and has lots of cool stuff. Uncle Kevin enlists me to help him find a present for Nicole but I come across Joan looking at a cute ceramic figurine of a yawning white tiger. “Are they still your favourite animal?”
She jolts at my presence. “Oh. Yeah. I love them.”
“Me too,” I say. “Though I probably like snakes more now because of Eden Recoiling.”
Joan picks up the figurine and plays with it. “How do you remember that they’re my favourite animal?”
“I dug up the card that you gave me when you left. It had a tiger on it. It made me remember how we both liked tigers when we were little.”
“Oh. Yeah. You like them because they have stripes?”
I laugh. “Yeah. And you know what? Turns out lots of snakes have stripes too.”
Joan laughs as well, just a little. She puts the figurine down and bends down to study a pile of woven rugs. I go back to trying to find a gift for Nicole.
As we exit the shop, Uncle Kevin shows David the vase that I helped to pick out, and I hold out to Joan the tiger figurine that I just bought.
“I got this for you. You never did extort something more expensive from me to celebrate your exam results, so I thought you might like this.”
The wonder on Joan’s face makes me feel like we might still be OK. She takes the tiger and cups it in both hands, more gingerly than she did in the shop. “Thank you, Elsie,” she says softly. Just as softly, she strokes the tiger’s head.
Desperately, I think about how I want her to touch me just like that.
When we get back to Oxford after a quiet three-hour train ride where Joan and I focused all our attention on our own phones, Joan heads back to her flat. I tell her that I’m going home but I don’t want to yet. My parents are going to be there. My parents, who kept Uncle Kevin’s relationship with David a secret from me for so long. And my po po. Who wasn’t able to accept her own son.
I go to Ritika’s house instead. When she opens the door, I can hear her brothers shouting somewhere. They often seem to be having a fight, usually over some video game. I asked Ritika about it once, and she said it was pretty much an eternal argument that never died and carried on when I wasn’t around.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” she asks, as I take off my shoes. “Are you staying for dinner? Dad’s making lamb curry.”
I can smell it, the spices heavy in the air and delicious. I didn’t think I was hungry but I am now immediately. “Yes, please!”
I take out my phone to message my parents that I’ve gone to Ritika’s for dinner.
We pop into the kitchen to say hi to her dad before we go up to Ritika’s room. I flop down on her bed.
“I’ve had a weekend,” I say.
“Apart from what happened with Joan?”
“Yeah. I have Theresa’s current phone number. Also, my uncle is gay! He’s married to a man! And nobody told me!”
“Holy shit. Wow. That’s a lot! Wow.”
I groan, rolling over and planting my face in the bed. “I know. And I don’t even want to think about what happened with Joan.”
“Noooo, you have to tell me what happened properly. You were kind of incoherent in your texts.”
I grab one of Ritika’s pillows and pull it down over my head like a shield against my despair. After giving me a few moments to wallow, Ritika yanks the pillow away.
“It can’t be that bad,” she says.
“It’s bad. I do like Joan, OK! You were right! I actually really like her but she doesn’t like me!” I recount my conversation from the night before as accurately as I can.
Ritika gently places the pillow back on my head. “OK. Well. That’s … pretty bad. But you didn’t say anything about how you feel to her.”
“What?”
“You only asked her how she feels. Maybe you should let her know your feelings. It’s good to make yourself clear. She might change her mind or whatever.”
“I don’t know if there’s any point. Won’t it just make her uncomfortable?”
“I honestly think you’re kind of really bad at telling people you like them.”
“Ugh, it’s not like you’ve ever done it before, either.”
Ritika thinks about this. Jake was the one who asked her out. “Yeah. You’re right. But I think I definitely could if I had to. You, on the other hand… I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell Ada.”
“I don’t know! I just couldn’t do it!”
“Have you ever really sat down and thought about why you couldn’t?”
I turn my head to glare at her, the pillow sliding off me, but a sadness touches her face the way the golden light at dusk changes a room, transports it to a softer realm.
I close my eyes. Maybe I do know. Maybe I know that what I’ve been clinging on to is that perfect glass dome my heart lives in when I’m crushing on somebody, when I get to linger in the sweetness of how I feel about them at a distance. If I don’t tell people I like them, I don’t give them the power to hurt me. If the glass dome is cracked even a fraction, who knows what could get in?
Part of me felt safe liking Ada because I didn’t truly believe that things were ever going to work out with her. Of course my feelings for her were genuine but they were also a sanctuary for my heart. It was beautiful to imagine us getting together because it didn’t seem like something that would happen. But Joan’s here. I see her every day. And the idea of a romantic relationship with her seemed so much more inaccessible to me because it was so much more real. My heart wouldn’t let itself be vulnerable enough to reach for it.
“I just don’t want to be hurt again,” I say. Tears leak from my eyes. I open them, but it’s hard to look at Ritika’s face, her kindness and affection too bright. “I’m afraid of what comes after I tell someone I like them. I don’t even mean rejection. But being in a relationship – that’s the part that scares me the most.”
Ritika’s hand presses against my cheek. “It’ll be OK. I know it’s scary but I’m always going to be here for you. You can count on me to have your back.”
I open my eyes. She brushes away my tears.
“Thanks,” I say, though it doesn’t feel adequate. “I love you.”
Once I’ve stuffed myself with lamb curry and a mountain of rice – that’s what Ritika and I bond over the most, I reckon, our shared love of rice, that purest and most beautiful of carbohydrates and food staples – Ritika’s mum drives me home, as she always does after dark. She drops me off, and I stand at the front door of my house like I’m about to walk into an exam. An insect buzzes as it flies past me, and I flinch.
I unlock the door and slip inside. The sounds of a movie greet me, roaring engines and screeching tyres and booming collisions. A car chase. I initially can’t tell whether it’s an English movie or a Chinese one, but a deep voice shouts, “Turn left!” in Cantonese just as I walk into the living room.
Mum is on her laptop at the dinner table – she doesn’t like action movies, which is weird because I now know that she likes action-filled manga. Po Po, on the other hand, loves them. She’s – unexpectedly? – a huge fan of explosions, and she and Dad are on the sofa, both of them avid.
“Hi, Mum,” I say.
She looks up at me with a tense smile. “Hi. How was Joan?”
The official story – the one we gave Po Po – is that I’d gone for a sleepover at Joan’s. Now I’m thinking about how I still haven’t seen where Joan is staying, even though she’s been to my house nearly every day this summer. I know that it’s an impermanent home, a sublet that would probably contain nothing of Joan’s personality, that in less than two months’ time she’s going to move into her uni accommodation, but I want to see it nonetheless. If I’d really gone for a sleepover at Joan’s, would I still have made such a mess of our friendship?
I’m so tired. It’s been a really full weekend, and so much has happened. And now I have to deal with my family, who don’t know that I’m queer, who have no idea about this part of me that’s not just essential but dear. This whole weekend has revolved so completely around the radiant sun of my queerness, something the rest of me depends upon to flourish and live.
I don’t have the energy to even interact with my parents and my grandmother right now if I have to keep shutting away the part of myself that brings me the fiercest light, the warmest strength.
“Mum, why didn’t you tell me that Uncle Kevin was married? And you went to the wedding?”
I say this in Cantonese. Horror engulfs Mum’s face. I can feel Dad and Po Po looking at me, all their attention pointing at me like a knife.
“You promised you wouldn’t tell Po Po you went to see him!” Mum says in English.
I also switch to English, just because it’s an easier language for me to be emotional in. “Why did you think I couldn’t know? There’s nothing wrong with being gay. And clearly you agree because you sided with Kevin! You went to their wedding. Why didn’t you take me?”
I fling my overnight bag down, and it skids some way across the floor. I’m running on pure exasperation right now. I just wish everybody in my family would talk to each other for once.
Behind me, I can hear Dad murmuring to Po Po in Cantonese – though it isn’t a very soft murmur, given that Po Po’s hearing isn’t optimal – saying that they should go into the kitchen and leave me and Mum to talk in private. But she stays put and asks, “Yan Yan, you went to see your uncle?”
I turn. Her face is tremulous and vulnerable in a way I’ve never seen before, like a trill held in a songbird’s throat. “Yes, Po Po, I did. And … he told me you disowned him.” I use the plural of ‘you’ in Cantonese, meaning her and my dead gung gung.
“How is he?”
I wasn’t expecting this question, which is as gentle as a leaf touching the ground. Some of my indignation fizzles out, and what’s beneath is profound exhaustion. “He’s … good.”
“And his … friend?” Po Po says distantly.
“You mean his husband.”
She makes a small noise, which could be affirmative or just her clearing her throat, and says nothing.
“David’s really nice. They seem happy together.”
Po Po nods, folding her hands neatly in her lap. “Did he say anything about coming to see me?”
“I don’t know. I think… Well, I think if he wants to see you he will. I can’t speak for him.”
“Is he still angry at me?”
“I … I really can’t say.”
I don’t think anger is the right word. If my parents disowned me for being queer, anger would definitely feature, but eight years on surely it would be more sadness than anything.
I turn back to Mum, carrying on in English. “I just don’t understand why you couldn’t have told me before. I can’t believe you kept me from something so … wonderful.”
She winces. “Maybe we can go upstairs and talk?”
