Monica Kam: l o s t

At night, in the back of your van, we fell asleep to the sound of crickets only I could hear, stridulating lustfully with their wings. The next morning one was stuck to my back. You peeled it off and said, is this what you wanted? Its wings falling into the green of your faded tattoo, ink bleeding and feeding the skin, fattening the roots of a tree, the flight of a sparrow, once young.

I hunched to hide my birthmark as though still on the run. If only my disquiet could be taken off like a sweater before wading into the sea. Against the sun, the prints my feet left in Normandy show my knees knocked together as I ran, naked amongst the tourists. You like when the waves hit you, you said, because nature takes its rightful place, and we must succumb. A lightness in your chest and in my navel again, its stretched mouth shrinking, untying its knot.

In wet clothes we drove through Paris. A woman stood hunched over: her legs, back, walking stick forming a square with the pavement, in line for the pyramids. An advert for a folding phone hiding an old church. Chanting from a chain of children in hi-vis gilets. A comic book shop you used to spend time in. A Trondheim comic where a duck’s superpower was knowing how many children a person would have. It’s funny, you promised.

Words you taught me on the way: me, you, yours, mine, my name, navel, your heart, it blinks, like eyelashes, like wings, a cricket, the waves, its own song. Moi, toi, mon nom, nombril, ton coeur, ca clignote, comme des cils, comme des ailes, un grillon, les vagues, sa propre chanson. And the ones I’d forgotten: god, grandmother, can I touch it, your dress? I can feel it kick.

Your grandmother sat tall as an American asked for her steak tartare medium, her husband’s well done. S’il vous plaît, I said, swallowing my l, o, s, t.

I collected hints of words as your cousins drank coffee from bowls and blushed in the sun. The bride held onto her belly and left the party early, the bouquet never thrown. You tore off a petal and pressed it into my palm.

*

It’s raining ropes outside. The wind whips them sideways like a schoolyard game, tripping us into the house.

Taking my coat off, I knock a bauble from the tree. The family embraces you and I am on my knees, searching. Fire-warm shoes and the prickle of pine. I find a baby on the floor, a wet bauble rolling towards me. We send it back and forth, and when we are called for dinner, neither of us knows what to say.

A stone is sitting in my throat. Conversation hopscotches the table, skipping me. The loudest sound I make is from my Christmas cracker, arms crossed. Am I the hair in their soup? I watch the family exchange idioms like cats and dogs, but I don’t recognise even a bark. Ronronne is the cat’s quiver. The boar on the wall almost escaped because of a dog’s clabaude. It’s the rabbit that stands you up, your uncle says. I smile as though ready to speak but without speaking. There is a joke on a piece of paper that I don’t know how to tell him. Our fingers touch in the finger trap toy, and shocked he says it’s cold as ducks, no? I have carried the cold inside with my hands. Tu n'es pas dans ton assiette, he says, searching my face. I look at the baguette we have all pulled apart. You’re not on your plate, are you?

My napkin sits with foie gras collected in the folds. I look to you from across the dinner table. Between our glassy eyes and blushed cheeks there is some stained message written in wine. Elle n’aime pas le bleu, you say. Some pause as your grandmother shaves veins from cheese before passing it down the table to me.

You wink at me but you’ve never winked before, closing both eyes in slow motion, one after the other. Your smile reaches to both sides. I look left then right, droite et gauche could be in either palm, as could the heart, your uncle again, reminds us, orange peel is his smile too, another orange warming in his hands, the smiles going around. I put one in. A sourness coats the inside of my mouth. Our crowns have fallen from our heads without us knowing.

Remember to drive on the right, I’d said earlier that afternoon. You took a hand off the wheel and gripped mine, swerving out of the tunnel into light.

After dinner, the baby tries to latch on, leaving a wet patch on my jumper. She pulls my hair like bells, presses into my chest as she looks for her mother. Eh? She says, trying to stand, wanting to know what is next. How do you know, already, to silence your t’s? We flick through her book. The words I learn are: dog, cat, ball, Christmas tree, joyous and frozen. Chien, chat, boule, sapin, joyeux et congelé.

The morning is silent. I am awake before them, repeating words, touching the wallpaper and brushing dust off old photos to see the faces, for any trace of you.

At the breakfast table the family complains that the tea tastes of porcelain. It’s me, you say, exchanging toi with moi, even though I had cleaned it. They talk over each other: the stains are a seasoning, the coats of past breakfasts, past conversations, past people, some now dead, who once drank from this same pot, thickening it with their touch, their time, a bitterness, an understanding, in every pour. Now washed away.

In the afternoon, your grandmother directs us to plant the tulips. You slice some worms in half every time you sink her trowel into the soil. Even severed, some move on. I stomp on the soil with the bulbs resting inside. We see them in spring, she promises. They are the colour of this sunset. When I lean my head to your shoulder, your head falls to rest on mine. Its weight, like the sun, collapses into me and the earth, holding briefly then losing its heat.

*

You will carry wine from Kent and your cousins will grow silent as it is poured. They will lift it to the light. I will predict the next moment of laughter and take part in its overflow. Not because I know its origin, but because I will sense it coming, like the air telling the weather with its charge.

Don’t learn French from zis guy, your cousin will say, rubbing a split olive around the rim of a glass and handing it to me. Your French is terrible, she will repeat, but you can learn it from me.

She will tell me about your summers as children and the home movies you made together. You were always the stuntman, the joker. Always making them laugh, always coming away with bruises. The static will roll across the screen. You will be blushed then, and blonde. I will want to touch your curls, rub the purple skin to know the pain and the joy of the pain, and you in all the years that have gone before us.

You will plant your lips to my forehead, before they are called to another conversation. The words I will understand are: encore, le futur, les années, le passage, le calme comme une photo, la statue aussi changera avec la lumière.

The lobster’s claw knocking on the pot will have a familiar sound, like a friend on the other side of a door. We will watch each other as it squeals, your cousins between us, their teasing will encourage the water. The child will fall coming towards me, left and right foot undecided. She will say mother, and cry when she isn’t heard. My words will not console her. Only I will hear a squealing in the night, and wake up tired in the morning.

We will take a trip to the coast again. You will always be able to tell a good croissant from a bad one, just from the first bite. There will be flakes of pastry in my hair, your lap. This time we will know to cook the whelks and not eat them raw. The restaurant just serves them cold, you will say, knowingly, as if you’ve always known. It will happen, you will say, it will happen so fast. The tide will take our bodies again. It will not be gentle.

We will lie until night waiting. I will think of the tide, bringing in the tulips, their orange petals, the orange peel. They will spread across the shore. I will think of the teapot, how I will break it against the basin. How it will show the crimson layers I am shedding.

The tide will pull over us like a fairytale, a blanket. It will take us in, will leave its debris behind. You will have accepted what I haven’t. I will call out your name. I will call out the names we made up, the ones that will make sense in both languages. I will not be sure if you will hear, but you will let the waves take you.

*

I will always be swimming back to shore. The sun will always be red hot, it will always slip beneath my eyelids. It will pour out my shadow, something more solid than me. A sense of my dream from a previous night will return to me. I will always know enough to tap its rhythm to your skin, not enough to hear its song.

The child on the beach will always be eating sand from our sandcastle, feet always wet from circling our moat. She will clap her hands to the wind, rub her eyes. She will always cry. Food and words will be soft in her mouth. I will always remember you telling me that your grandmother chewed her food and spat it out like a bird to feed you. You will always open your mouth wide for me to aim grapes into. We will always be eating sandy grapes.

The beach will always stretch and a single cloud will always linger. Small enough that we will run circles around the edge of its shadow until it rains. We will always have this miracle, the rain falling just on us, until I see your smile and I feel the emptiness open in me, and I break the circle open and I will always run without stopping, towards the cliff, the sculpture where you always make me stand for a photo, the hotel we will always promise to stay in one day, the wings in the sky will always be spread, until all I hear is breathing, so loud it will always be like another’s.

On the way back to the van we will always be quiet, upset with one another for reasons too small or too amorphous to articulate. We will always feel like children, carrying the sand in. We will no longer be interested in new words. Instead we will wipe ourselves down and arrange to move onwards. Our clothes will always be wet. The dashboard will always be coated in dust and dead flies. I will always begin to write, but stop when the dust lifts and you will always sneeze. The air freshener around the rearview mirror will always say Spring Blossom. The air freshener will always smell of nothing. You will always choose the music, and we will always begin to talk again, with words we already know, have always known, the pettiness ebbing and flowing between us.

When I wake up my neck will always be sore. I will always say, remember to drive on the left. You will always swerve a little, so that I will always fall into you again. And then, we will begin to laugh. We will always laugh. I will never remember the joke, just that it will always be between us. You will always curl my tongue so that we can both hear. You will always tell me that you know the way, that we are not lost. That actually, you do always pronounce the ‘l’, even if it is quiet.

When I lean my head to your shoulder you will always rest your head on mine, even when it turns your head on its side, even when driving. And when I look at you as you hurry down the M25, always almost home, still but for the blinking, and the smile that will always grow as you sense me watching. The light will always change you. I am always the light that changes you.

At home, I will always bruise my knees on the bed’s frame. The frame will always be raised higher than I expect. You will always be pressing flowers under its feet.

Monica Kam is a writer and lawyer from Hong Kong. She has won the Comma Press Short Fiction Prize and the Bai Meigui Fiction Prize. She is a London Library Emerging Writer and a recipient of Spread The Word's London Writers Award. Monica is currently completing her debut short story collection.