Antiques And Ashes by Barbara Kuessner Hughes
My inheritance had just been delivered and was clogging my little house. Pewter, porcelain, teak. Sandalwood, silver, batik…
I watched my seven-year-old niece’s eyes dart from curio to curio.
‘These things belonged to your grandparents,’ I explained.
‘Roderick and Helena. They’re dead,’ Lucy recited, jiggling.
Dad ran a grocery import business in Kuala Lumpur. I don’t know how; he was always elsewhere, haggling. The objects traced a map of his movements around Peninsula Malaysia. Ipoh, George Town, Melaka, Kelantan…
Lucy poked a green-and-yellow rattan box.
‘Your grandma got that in Port Dickson, when I was little,’ I said.
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Midday heat saturated the shade of the restaurant. Dad poured himself another beer, his heavy jaw and iron-filing hair radiating sullenness. Mousy chignon turning to string, Mum abandoned her fried rice and fled the table. My brother Thomas faked obliviousness. My sister Miranda whimpered. We watched Mum, fragile in a tulip-print shift, flit across scorching sand and encounter the box’s weaver, a shrewd-faced Malay matriarch who discerned her distress.
Lucy twirled towards a red lacquer basket embellished with gilt.
‘That was for carrying wedding gifts in the old days,’ I explained.
In the shop, Dad’s accusations of stinginess confronted Mum’s anxiety. The Chinese shop assistant looked perturbed by Dad’s lack of decorum.
“Let’s hope the original couple who received it had better luck than us! Let’s hope Mrs Khoo or whatever her name was, wasn’t as stultifying as you,” Dad told Mum.
People forget that they hold their children hostage.
Lucy pointed to a Dutch ceiling lamp of wrought iron. ‘Can I stand on the chair and dust that?’
I didn’t want to be Boring Auntie Who Always Says No, so I held her legs and supervised her flourishing with a feather duster. The lamp swung wildly.
“Helena, you’ve got to see this! It’s a bargain…”
“Darling, we can’t afford it!”
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“You’re so bone-achingly pedestrian!”
“If Mr Ramasamy throws us out because we owe him rent, we will be pedestrians! And it’ll be your fault!”
Just for once, Mum’s eyes turned tar-black with anger, making Dad recoil.
Whenever Mum tried to leave, something got snagged. She must have felt lost in the rainforest: oppressed, frightened, enervated.
Until Dad met tempestuous French Irène on a flight to Singapore and was entranced by her air of entitled flamboyance. He died cash-poor but surrounded by opulence.
Back on the ground, Lucy stroked a Chinese screen adorned with phoenixes, all plumy buoyancy and no terrestrial concerns.
“I love phoenixes,” Mum said, her gentle eyes bright. “Fresh starts!”
But Mum never managed to get her phoenix act off the ground.
Suddenly I thought, Lucy, my little light, why have I never seen it before? These objects are shrouded with spectres of discord! I married the most benevolent man, but never dared to have children. Memories always held me back.
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Selling Dad’s trophies raised enough for a memorial.
Next to my garden pond, graceful wings outstretched and lovely as Mum, a marble phoenix heads for freedom.
Barbara was born in Malaysia and grew up there and in Singapore. She now lives in England. Publishers of her work include Ad Hoc Fiction, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Reflex Fiction, Cranked Anvil, Anak Sastra, East Of The Web and Flash 500.
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Photo – Stephen Kennedy – flickr
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