The Pause Read Online Free Page B

accident. Though looking at her beautiful face in the photo, she doesn’t appear too happy. But the weird thing is, as I look at all the other photos on the walls and cupboards and so on, I notice that the Christmas photo is the only one that contains Lisa, and even in that one it looks like her sister is holding onto her, trying tokeep her in the shot. Maybe she’s kind of like the Harry Potter of the Leong family.
    The whispered debate wafts in from the kitchen along with the smells. They speak in English: it’s The Kraken’s way of telling me that she knows what I’m up to. Lisa had told Mummy that her friend was coming over to study. The same friend who has been helping her with her English studies on the phone. Mummy acknowledges that this was indeed the case, however Lisa neglected to mention that this particular friend was in possession of a penis. All Lisa’s friends have boyfriends! But Lisa shouldn’t have boyfriends. When Lisa’s mother was a girl, she never had any boyfriends. Lisa counters with the slightly heartbreaking chestnut that I’m not a boyfriend but a boy-space-friend. Mummy replies that Lisa shouldn’t have either a boyfriend or a boy-space-friend. Lisa tries to shush Mummy and this escalates an already tense argument. Mummy argues that she is in her own home and will not be shushed by anyone, particularly her selfish, ungrateful, horrible, shameful, good-for-nothing daughter who doesn’t give a damn about her own mother. The same shameful, disgusting, ungrateful, good-for-nothing daughter who has no respect at all. At this point I’m forced to lose interest in the debate when it switches to Cantonese. I keep an ear outfor gweilo (white devil) which, apart from yum cha and my goat-tennis-racquet greeting, is the only other Cantonese word I know. I don’t hear it. But I guess I don’t need to.
    Eventually some sort of compromise is reached and Lisa and I are allowed to study at the kitchen table, which is where I expected us to be located anyway. Hell, if I’d been The Kraken (and it’s the sort of thought that could wake me up screaming at night) I wouldn’t let me study in Lisa’s bedroom either.
    The Kraken makes herself scarce (though unfortunately not extinct) for a while and Lisa and I get down to deconstructing To Kill a Mockingbird . We decide that Atticus Finch was a precursor to Clark Kent/Superman, choosing to ignore the fact that Superman actually appeared first. We discuss the Deep South, we discuss slavery, we discuss what’s happening now – the demonising of boat people for political gain – and we arrive at insights into racial issues that no one in the world has ever thought of before. We are so clever we can hardly contain ourselves. We determine that as the races continue to interbreed (though we hate the term ‘interbreeding’), eventually there will be no such thing as racial purity (another term we loathe) but one big, happy race, so humanity will have to find other things to go to war over – borders, religion,oil, wealth. It’s at this point we look at each other and go ‘Duh’, though mine comes out more like Homer’s ‘Doh’.
    Occasionally I attempt a couple of sneak attacks to brush the back of Lisa’s hand, but she’s too quick. She pulls away and stares at the doorway in case The Kraken has suddenly materialised. I notice the faint red welt marks on the back of Lisa’s hand and now I think I know why there’s a single chopstick on the piano, lying next to the gag-cracking Buddha.
    The Kraken keeps suddenly materialising but she’s not using the irregularity of Chinese water torture. You could set your watch by her: two minutes between security sweeps. Maybe she’s working off some sort of ancient astrological chart that’s informed her that it is impossible for a man, even a red-blooded, depraved gweilo , to get her daughter