Steeplechase (15 page)

‘May I?'

She nods. I lift and turn the first canvas. It is taller than I am and heavy. I lean it against the wall. It is our grandmother. It is such a shock to see her this way. Her face is perfectly symmetrical, without any slackness or drooping. Our grandmother before the stroke. Our Oma. Her mouth has that same tightness of lip that I remember, her gaze sharp as diamond. She is sitting on a throne and dressed in Chinese robes, yellow silk. It is not a colour that flatters her; the softness of the fabric somehow underlines the harshness of her expression. The robes drop down over her lap and the hem hangs just above where her ankles are, bony furred ankles, hard cracked hooves beneath. This little detail changes the image from something that might be a tribute to something born out of the darkest corners of mythology. The hoof of a demon, the hoof of a sprite in human form.

‘For the exhibition?'

She shrugs. ‘No. They're for you. Happy birthday.'

It is overwhelming. I glance at the stack of canvases, five of them, four still burying their faces against the blank wall.

‘I can't take these.'

‘I've already booked the courier and paid for it.'

‘Emily, it's not about the money, it's just…' John's voice in my head,
Do you know how much these are worth?
‘Don't they have to go to a museum or something?'

Emily snorts, ‘It's not like they're heritage listed.'

I reach out to turn the second canvas but she struggles out of the soft white lounge chair and grabs my arm.

‘Come on, you'll just embarrass me if you look at them now. Wanna go see some China?'

‘Sure.'

‘Not too tired?'

‘No,' I say, although my limbs ache and if I closed my eyes now I would be asleep in seconds. ‘Not too tired yet.'

She squeezes my arm so hard that I flinch. ‘It's good to see you, Bec. I really have missed you.'

‘I've missed you too,' I say.

I gulp the last of the coffee, which burns the roof of my mouth a little. When I put my empty cup down on the side table she hands me a heavy D lock and a key.

‘Right-o,' Emily says. ‘Let's get on our bikes.'

Riding a bicycle in Beijing is taking a leap of faith. There are road rules, it seems: most of the cars stick to one side of the road. When there is a red light some of the cars stop. There is an area at the side of the street that seems to be reserved for bicycles and mopeds except sometimes a car pushes down the narrow space and then the motorcycles and bicycles crawl to a stop, people step off their vehicles and drag them up onto the footpath which also seems to be a place for bicycles and mopeds and the occasional car.

It has been years since I rode a bike and this one is too low even for my short legs. The chain is rusted. When I put the brakes on, which is something I do every ten feet or so, there is a loud screech. When I reach for the bell, which is also a constant necessity, I have to let go of the handlebars briefly and the bike wobbles. At an intersection I step off and wait for my sister to lead the way. It seems the push of traffic is endless.

‘Sometimes,' she says, ‘I close my eyes and just ride out into the traffic. It's the only way to get across. There's one unshakable rule in Beijing—don't hit anyone. You have to trust that the cars are trying not to kill you. Okay,
now
,' she says, and it seems that several bicycles have chosen this moment to make a break for it. I follow, weaving slightly, keeping an eye on my sister's back. If I lose her I will never find my way to her house. I am overwhelmed by the size of this place, the sheer volume of cars all sliding to a halt to avoid the bicycles.

Emily stops suddenly, resting one foot on the sidewalk. The English words Aroma Fashion are printed on the window under a string of Chinese characters. She locks her bike and I lift mine up onto the footpath beside it.

‘This girl's okay,' she steps up over the entryway. ‘She designs and makes the stuff. Mostly ripped off from pictures in magazines. But at least she picks good magazines.'

It is quieter inside this shop. The woman sitting behind the counter is wearing red chiffon. Her hair is pulled back into a severe bun. She is the first carefully dressed Chinese woman I have seen. I realise now, as I look at her neatly tailored silk shirt, that the streets are packed with people who seem to have dressed in their oldest functional clothes. Ugly cotton prints, loose shorts, old patched sandals. Something about her neatness is jarring. There are patches of dark sweat in my armpits, a vague damp smell from under my hair. I can feel a fine layer of dirt gathering on my skin.

‘
Ni hao
,' my sister greets the shop assistant, says something else in Mandarin. A smile and a response. My sister has managed to learn some of the language, enough to have a quick conversation. I remember the lessons she used to run at the side of the house when our grandmother was not watching and feel the wave of memory reach up and lift me away, the unfamiliar sound of Mandarin replaced suddenly by the odd clipped Elvish syllables.

In bed some nights Emily would read to me. We had finished
The Hobbit
and we had moved on to
The Lord of the Rings.
There was a wonderful secret pleasure in knowing a language that only existed in books: a language shared between the two of us and barely anyone else in the world. Elves were her favourite. They are quiet and lithe and beautiful and they ride their white horses bareback, which is how she wanted to ride if she could have ridden at all. Our grandmother knew three languages. I once reminded Emily of this and her mouth hardened to a pencil line of condescension. Even if our grandmother knew twenty languages she would not be invited to share in our Elvish. This was something for my sister and me alone.

The shop assistant quickly presses a button and I hear the low whir of an airconditioning unit cranking up.

‘They only put the aircon on for westerners,' Emily tells me as if this is a fact that needs no explanation. I wonder at her ease with this odd racial inequality.

She picks up a hanger, a high-waisted green dress with cute little straps. ‘Try this on.'

I feel my chest tighten.

‘What size is it?'

‘It says large. It'll fit. It's way too big on me. I think it will fit you nicely. Try it on.'

I look at the round swell of her hips, the thick set of her shoulders. Surely she must be the same size as I am now. Maybe I am deluded. Maybe I am even bigger than I think. I feel myself swell to the size of the most obese person I can imagine. I could be the size of a baby elephant, I could be a whale. My sister certainly thinks I am the size of a whale.

‘I don't need clothes. I have clothes.'

‘I want to get you something. For the opening.'

‘No. You've given me too much already. I didn't bring you anything.'

‘Yeah, but I've got all this money. People pay me stupid prices for my paintings now. Do you know how much they sell for? It's ridiculous. I know how much they pay you at university.'

‘Emily,' I snap, more forcefully than I intended, ‘I'm not going to try clothes on.'

There is a flash of the old Emily, the dark brooding stare, the potential for damage. I find myself shrinking away from her. I remember a time when she picked up her cupboard and threw it over to my side of the room, the terrible crack as something broke, what was that? A plastic container filled with oil pastels, I think; the sound has stayed with me anyway.

Then there is that half smile. Emily holds the emerald dress up to the light.

‘It's nice. I think it's a Collette Dinnigan. Or a reinterpretation of one. I saw it in
Australian Vogue
. I think. Or maybe it was
Who Weekly
. How's that?
Vogue
or
Who Weekly
. Interchangeable. Talk about a global village.'

‘Emily.'

She smiles vaguely at me.

I tell her, ‘I'm sorry, I just don't want to try dresses on right now.'

‘Have you got something to wear to the opening?'

‘Yes.'

‘Not a red dress I hope, I am going to wear red, or maybe it would be good to dress the same, matching red dresses to prove that we are sisters. What colour is your dress?'

‘Black.'

‘Maybe I should get a black dress to match.'

‘I'm tired,' I tell her.

‘Collette Dinnigan.' She checks the tag. ‘For two hundred kuai. Do you know what that works out to? Thirty bucks—something like that. Collette would vomit, don't you think?'

Emily puts the dress back on the rack wistfully. ‘Chinese girls are little sticks,' she says suddenly. ‘No tits.' I glance at the stylish shop assistant who seems unfazed by my sister's rudeness. ‘You got tits so early. I was always jealous about that.'

‘Really?'

‘You've let your hair grow.' She reaches out with one finger as if she is about to touch a stray lock of my hair. I am not sure which one of us flinches first but her hand is snatched back before making contact.

‘I liked the asymmetrical thing better. I think.'

And it seems impossible that she would know about the asymmetrical haircut I endured for a handful of months.

‘But I suppose you need the length to balance a fatter face.'

My sister says something to the shopkeeper and walks out to our bikes. I gaze up into a sky that is a haze of grey. Something drips onto my cheek and I brush it away.

‘Is it going to rain?'

‘Doubt it. Oh, they spray the trees with something. You are always getting dripped on. Toxic chemicals probably, no worse than the pollution I suppose. Acid rain. You'll notice there's no bugs. Nothing alive at all. I try not to think about that too much. We're breathing this shit in, I've been doing it for over a year. You know how hard it is to kill a cockroach?'

She looks back over her shoulder at me. I shudder under her gaze. She looks up and then down, flattening me into my component parts. I smooth down my skirt over my huge thighs. I wish she had dragged me away to a colder country. There would be sleeves and coats and thick wool tights to hide behind.

‘We might have to take you to a tailor. Get something made.'

‘It's okay. I have clothes.'

‘I want to get you something. Let me get you something.'

‘You got me a ticket to China.'

‘China. Can you believe that? China. My little sister is here. With me. In China.'

She laughs and steps up on to the pedals and rings her bell as she launches herself out into the nightmare of oncoming bicycles. She is larger now, but still just as graceful. I follow at a halting pace, dodging, stopping, pulling over onto the footpath. It is easy enough to keep track of my sister. She is a gorgeous flash of blue shining against the drab background of shapeless cotton frocks and dirty T-shirts. She is other-worldly and exciting and for a moment I am overwhelmed with pride.

Beijing Art

We dodge old ladies and running children, we swerve past buses and taxi cabs. We are overtaken by an old man with a huge pile of rice bags on the back of his bicycle. Sometimes she waits for red lights, sometimes she darts through without pause. I hold my breath and follow her even when it means I am almost run over by a moped. I shout apologies and I am not sure if they are heard or understood because I am pedalling fast, trying to keep up. She pulls up outside a building in a long line of buildings. Swings her leg off the bike and leans it against a tree. She locks the wheel to the frame.

‘No one's going to steal them anyway, but you can lock your bike to mine. I do that. It makes me feel a little safer.' She sweeps her hair away from her face. ‘We have to do this lunch thing. I would skip it if I could but…' she shrugs. I struggle with the D lock. The key is rusty and I wiggle it uselessly before it finally clicks open.

When I turn to find her she has disappeared. I stand on the footpath and there are dozens of people teeming past. When I look out to the street there are all the cars and bikes and scooters. So many people. I feel my heart racing. I have never seen so many people in the one place. It is impossible to tell how many lanes of traffic are racing by, just a mass of vehicles and shoulder-to-shoulder pedestrians. A few shops away a small child is playing in a puddle of water, crouched down, and concentrating intensely on whatever she is picking out of the water. Glass. I shudder. There is a woman sitting on a stool near her, I assume this is her mother, and yet she makes no move to stop the child from picking up the fragments of glass, piling them up on a scrap of paper.

The light is gently fading. I am hungry, but I can't remember if it is late at night back home or early afternoon. I have a terrible sense of displacement. What would John be doing at this time? Is he in class? I have lost track of the days.

The restaurant is packed and it takes me a minute to find her. A waiter shouts something at me. I wish I had learned the Mandarin for ‘I don't understand'. I shake my head, hoping that the gesture and my expression will be universal. I see a flash of colour and it is her. She is sitting at a table with a group of westerners. One Chinese girl among them wearing an eighties style cropped denim jacket and high-waisted denim shorts. They are all flamboyantly dressed, most of them in structured black skirts or cute little fifties frocks. All of them slim, pretty girls in their thirties. I am reminded of my students, so carefully dressed with their outrageous haircuts. I am glad now that I let mine grow out, at least I will not look like I am trying to be one of them.

I stand awkwardly beside my sister's chair. There is no chair for me to sit on and for a moment I imagine that I was meant to wait outside with the bikes. The Chinese girl stands and grabs one from another table.

‘Park your arse, Bec,' she says in such a broad Australian accent that I suppose I look startled. The Chinese girl laughs. ‘Yeah, and I don't speak any Mandarin either. You should see some of the locals, shouting and shouting, then I say “G'day mate” and they look at me like I'm an alien.'