Dapper in a topcoat and tails, feet moving fast and graceful as birds skimming still waters, he whirled and swooped, catching my mother, still young and slim, by the waist, bending her backward. She ... [+]
My father died of heart failure the same Chinese New Year girls began to draw my eye over my ire. I wasn't present for his death but figured us square since he wasn't present for my life.
Though we all lived in Hong Kong—Kowloon, to be specific—we no longer lived together, with mom claiming that the case even when we did. During the period he roamed within our walls instead of a few kilometers away, he worked for people who only addressed him in grunts and snaps. One grunt for tea. Three to open the door, five snaps to get out and close it behind him. And he never looked at his superiors because his eyes were always closed as he smiled, bowing until they passed. They never looked at him because they were superior.
He smiled so much at work his face seized into a frown at home. He never talked to us when he spoke aloud, and never spoke aloud when he talked to us. Orders were given with grunts and snaps, and if ever we caught his eye, we had gotten in his way.
Nights, he'd drink bottles of baijiu, then snap his fingers for his jacket. He'd slam furniture, slam doors, slam progeny as he left amidst my mother's pleas to stay. He'd return the next morning smelling nothing like her fragrance and carrying a bottle of Dynasty XO a few sips shy of dry. Mother would weep in sorrow, then rage, screaming he was nothing but a disgraceful eunuch. I always looked away before she hit the wall, and always plugged my ears before she hit the floor. Then all was silence and silence and silence while we waited for his snores.
The end began with what I didn't know was his way of bonding. Drunk, he mussed my hair and told me the proudest moment of his life was as a boy smelling Bruce Lee in person. He'd had the opportunity to shake his hand, but when the star passed, he could only smile and bow, eyes clenched in what would become his greatest strength. "The Little Dragon's cologne was so strong," he said, eyes closed to stanch the welling. "It was the smell of a great man."
Then one day he left without a grunt or snap and never returned. It took forever to clear his stench from our home and from our heart.
The last time I saw him alive was a Sunday morning. Mom and I had yum tsa in Tsim Sha Tsui, then afterward walked the Avenue of Stars where I saw him standing in the shadow of Bruce Lee's statue. Staring out at the junks crossing Victoria Harbor, the South China Sea like dark dragon scales in the chop. I yelled his name several times, but he closed his eyes, lowered his head, then faced the statue and walked away.
Heart failure was listed as the COD, Mother said, because "failure" was insufficient on a death certificate. At his wake, a family wearing white cried. Mom and I wore red and did not.
It is Chinese tradition that if a son is not present at his father's death, he must crawl toward the coffin wailing for penance. So with Taoist chants around me, I lowered to palms and kneecaps, then crawled toward the man who'd always run away from me. Every millimeter closer I left more of him behind. Clenching my eyes, I wept with laughter at the proudest moment of my life. And the scent of formaldehyde was so strong. It was the stench of a failed man.