The Scent of the Gods by Fiona Cheong

Author:Fiona Cheong
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 1991-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

On those evenings while I was waiting for them to come home, I would go into the red room and stand at the windows, and sometimes, to pass the time, I would pretend that it was 1958, a year only my cousins could remember, but even they remembered it vaguely. I would imagine that blue-green November morning that now I sometimes heard them talk about. It had been around half-past five, when my cousins had huddled together at the window, hiding behind the bougainvillea while our parents paced up and down the veranda outside. Our parents were leaving for the airport. They were waiting for a government chauffeur to drive by and pick them up. I could imagine how they must have looked, straight thin shadows in the still dark light, their suitcases lined up and ready at the bottom of the steps. Grandma had been out there, too. I had heard Li Shin say that she had asked our fathers if they were ever going to stay home for more than two weeks at a time. I had heard him say that his father had answered, “In our line of work, you can’t tell, Ma.” Li Shin could remember his mother looking at his father, and my mother turning to look at my father. Our mothers did not work for the government, but they always accompanied our fathers on these “business trips” so that they could act as decoys while our fathers attended underground meetings, in Thailand, Japan, the Philippines, Malaya.

I would imagine the black car that Li Shin said had pulled up in front of our gate. I would imagine our parents stepping off the veranda and picking up their suitcases. I saw Li Shin’s father looking back at Grandma, and telling her, gently, that he was sorry. I saw my own father and mother walking out to the road, where the driver of the car had stepped out. He had left the car engine running, and I saw him standing by the gate, holding it open.

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