Hummingbirds Fly Backwards Read online

  I continued down the street in a daze. I was the other woman. That was the fate I’d been handed. I wiped away my tears before heading inside the store, where Chui Yuk was busy chatting with Jenny and Anna.

  “You’re back! I was just telling them all about the bra-snatching pervert,” Chui Yuk said.

  “What are you planning to do about your bra thief?” Anna asked.

  “Ugh, if I could only catch him . . .”

  “You should cover his head in a gunny sack and beat him up, then castrate him and parade him through town before having him drawn and quartered,” I said.

  “It’s not that serious a crime, is it? It’s not like he committed murder,” said Chui Yuk, looking at me bewildered.

  I was merely venting my frustration. The phone rang. I knew it was Sam even before I picked up.

  “I saw her younger sister up ahead while we were walking.”

  “Oh, really? Did she see you?” I asked coldly.

  He said nothing.

  “I have to get back to work,” I said and hung up the phone.

  “We should try to catch that thief tonight!” I said, turning to Chui Yuk.

  “Tonight?”

  “You said he likes to come at night, didn’t you?”

  “But I don’t know if he’ll show up tonight. Besides, Yu Mogwo won’t be home.”

  “We don’t need a man’s help with this kind of thing. Besides, men who steal underwear aren’t the violent type.”

  After work, I headed to Chui Yuk’s place with her.

  “Do you have the bait ready?” I asked.

  “Bait?”

  “A bra! You need an especially enticing one.”

  Chui Yuk went into her bedroom and emerged a moment later with an elegant red lace bra.

  “You have a red bra?” I was taken aback.

  “It was an impulse buy that I made ages ago,” she said, sounding embarrassed. “He likes stealing colorful bras. Everything except white. He’ll definitely go for this one.”

  Chui Yuk hung the red bra out on her balcony.

  We turned off all the lights in the house and stationed ourselves where we had a view of the balcony. The two of us had guessed that the thief was a neighbor who got to the second-floor balcony by shimmying up the storm drain along the side of the building.

  I sat down in a chair and asked Chui Yuk, “Do you have any weapons?”

  “Does a mop count?”

  She ran into the kitchen and came back with a wet mop. “It’s not dry yet.”

  “Let’s not use that. Let’s use a broom.”

  “Our mop is our broom.”

  “You use a mop to sweep? I can’t imagine!”

  “Oh! I know!” Chui Yuk said. “I’ll use one of Yu Mogwo’s belts!”

  She picked up a men’s leather belt off the sofa and waved it.

  “A belt? I’m scared he might like it!”

  “What should we do, then?”

  “Don’t you have a racket or anything like that?”

  “I have a badminton racket.”

  “That’ll do.”

  Chui Yuk and I sat and waited from ten o’clock until midnight, but there wasn’t the slightest hint of activity around the balcony.

  “Do you think he’ll show up?” Chui Yuk asked. Suddenly, the phone rang. It made both of us jump.

  Chui Yuk answered it.

  “It’s Yu Mogwo,” she said.

  I rested my head against the chair. If only Sam were here. I was feeling sort of scared.

  Just then, a human silhouette appeared outside on the balcony.

  “It’s him. Hang up the phone,” I whispered to Chui Yuk.

  As the culprit snuck up to Chui Yuk’s red bra and took hold of it, I stormed out onto the balcony. In the confusion, I took the chair with me and threw it at him. The chair missed, but Chui Yuk lifted her racket and whacked him. Then she grabbed a pile of random things that she threw at him. Completely bewildered, the culprit leapt to his feet and tumbled over the side of the balcony onto the first-floor awning. He rolled off and fell to the ground.

  We sprinted downstairs. Several men had already apprehended the thief, who was still clutching the bra in one hand. Contrary to what I’d expected, he wasn’t hideous at all. He had a fair complexion and a crew cut, and he looked to be in his thirties.

  Someone called the police. When they arrived, Chui Yuk and I had to go to the station to file a report. The bra thief sat dejectedly in the corner.

  I felt a slight tinge of regret. I hadn’t foreseen that this would drag on into the wee hours of the night, or that this man could have fallen to his death—which would have made Chui Yuk and me guilty of manslaughter, though we could’ve claimed it was committed in self-defense. At the end of the day, a bra wasn’t worth the price of anyone’s life.

  “Whose bra is this?” the male police officer on duty asked Chui Yuk and me.

  “It’s mine,” Chui Yuk answered, looking a bit embarrassed.

  “We’re going to have to hold onto this as evidence.”

  “Evidence?” Chui Yuk and I looked at each other in dismay.

  “This will serve as evidence in court that the suspect did in fact commit the crime.”

  “I don’t want to press charges,” said Chui Yuk.

  “You don’t want to press charges?” the police officer asked.

  “That’s right. Can I take this bra and go?”

  The bra thief was so touched that he started to sob.

  Chui Yuk and I left the police station together, and she tossed the bra into a trash can.

  “Oh no! I just remembered!” Chui Yuk shrieked, turning pale. “Did I throw a thick stack of paper at the bra thief?”

  “I don’t remember exactly, but yes, I think there might’ve been some paper.”

  “Why didn’t you stop me? That was the final draft of Yu Mogwo’s manuscript with all his handwritten notes!” Chui Yuk’s face grew long.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Was there anything written on them?” Chui Yuk grabbed my hand.

  “I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe they were blank.”

  “Right. Maybe they were blank.” She let out a breath of relief.

  It was two in the morning by the time I got home. Would the bra thief change his ways? I doubted it. A fetish was a kind of attachment. If he were forced to give up stealing bras, he might lose all sense of meaning in his life.

  I sat down at the dining-room table and began working on the jigsaw puzzle. By four in the morning, I’d finished all four edges. I heard a knock on the door. When I went to open it, I found Chui Yuk holding a pile of paper. She was crying her eyes out.

  “The paper I threw wasn’t blank. It was Mogwo’s final draft of his novel and all his notes. He’d promised to hand it over to the publisher tomorrow,” Chui Yuk said.

  “Did you two have a fight?”

  “When I got home, Yu Mogwo was terrified. He said he thought there’d been some kind of accident when he came home from work only to discover the manuscript pages of his novel were scattered outside the entrance of the building. Most of his work is lost. I told him that I just grabbed whatever was around to throw at the thief, but he wouldn’t listen to a word I said. He spent so much time working on that novel. It’s all my fault.”

  “Why’d you come all the way over here? Did he throw you out?”

  “He didn’t throw me out. Since I didn’t want to see him go, I had to be the one to leave. He’s never gotten this upset with me before. I’m scared he’s going to break up with me.”

  “He won’t,” I said in an attempt to console her.

  “This time, it’s really serious.” Chui Yuk was choking back sobs.

  “I know. Because it’s out of your hands.”

  “Will we ever put this night behind us?”

  “Of course you will. You can sleep here with me tonight.”

  “Thanks,” she said. Then she moved over to my table. “You’re putting together a puzzle?”
>
  “I don’t know when I’ll be done with it. This is the restaurant that Sam and I want to open. But I’m worried that by the time I finish it, we’ll have split up.”

  “Do you want to marry him?”

  “That’s never going to happen. Men who’ve been married before don’t want to get hitched again. They wouldn’t want to make the same mistake twice, would they?”

  “How much of your youth can you afford to squander like this?” Chui Yuk asked. “I just don’t want you to have any regrets.”

  I lent Chui Yuk a pair of pajamas.

  “Since this is our first time sharing a bed,” I told Chui Yuk, “I should really tell you that this is going to be the first time I’ve ever slept with anyone in this bed at night. It’s always after the break of dawn when Sam is here.”

  “I bet you anything Yu Mogwo is working on his manuscript right now,” Chui Yuk said, putting her pager down next to the bed.

  When I woke up the following morning, Chui Yuk was already gone.

  On the dining-room table was a note she’d left for me.

  “I can’t stop thinking about Yu Mogwo. I have to go.”

  The phone rang. I thought it was going to be Chui Yuk, but it was Sam.

  “Where were you last night?” he asked me.

  “Were you looking for me? I went to catch a bra thief.”

  “Did someone steal your bra?”

  “No, I was helping Chui Yuk.”

  “Are you OK?”

  “I’d be OK if you were here.”

  “So what happened in the end?”

  “Nothing. They hauled him off to the police station. I really wished you were there with me.”

  “I’ll join you for dinner tonight.”

  That day felt like an eternity. I spent my whole life waiting for Sam—waiting for him to call me and waiting to see him.

  I met him at a French bistro in Central.

  “Why did you want to come here?” I asked him.

  “One of my colleagues recommended it. What do you think?”

  “It’s not as nice as our restaurant, of course,” I said, laughing.

  “Please promise me that you won’t go around catching any more thieves for no good reason,” Sam said.

  “Will you always be there to protect me?”

  “I’m never going to leave you,” he said.

  “That’s too bad. Because I won’t always be there for you,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Didn’t I say that a woman is only young once? I can only be with you until I’m thirty.”

  “Why thirty?”

  “Because a woman is at the height of her attractiveness before she turns thirty. After that, I’ll have to watch out for myself,” I said.

  2

  Skies over Cherbourg

  “There’s something I want to give you,” Sam told me just before he left that evening.

  “What is it?”

  He took a velvet box out of his bag. It contained a crystal pendant in the shape of a ball. Inside the ball was a scorpion.

  “I thought a scorpion would suit you perfectly.”

  He hung it around my neck.

  “Scorpions are lonely,” I said.

  “You’re not lonely—you have me,” he said, putting his arms around me.

  “I can’t stand to see you go.” I clung to him tightly. But I knew he had to leave.

  “Are you going to spend my birthday with me this year?” I asked.

  He nodded lightly, and I let him go on his way, suddenly happier.

  During class that evening, Chen Dingleung’s eyes were watering nonstop, and I gathered he was suffering from a severe cold.

  “Did you find that song?” I asked him.

  “No, I couldn’t find it,” he said.

  I was a little disappointed.

  “That’s a lovely pendant you’re wearing,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Is it a scorpion?”

  “Yes.” I turned to leave.

  “All I could find were the lyrics,” he said, pulling a sheet of paper out of his backpack. “The only problem is they’re in French.”

  “I don’t speak French.”

  “I do. I can translate them for you.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “How about we go sit down somewhere? I’d love a cup of honey lemon tea.”

  “I’m meeting a friend at a restaurant near here. Would you like to join us?” I’d made plans with Chui Yuk after class.

  “Sounds good.”

  At the restaurant, he ordered a cup of tea, and I waited expectantly for him to read the lyrics to me. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes and nose.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “I’ve had a bad cold for the last few days.” He seemed to realize I was impatient to hear the translation because he said, “Are the words to this song really important to you?”

  I smiled but didn’t say a word as he translated out loud to me.

  “That’s it?” I asked, considering the song’s sentiment of not being able to live without that special someone. But before I could ask Chen Dingleung about what he thought it meant, Chui Yuk appeared behind him.

  “Let me introduce you. This is Chen Dingleung, my teacher. This is Chui Yuk. She’s a model. He’s translating lyrics for me.”

  “You two sounded like you were having an intense discussion,” Chui Yuk said.

  “How did you find the lyrics?” I asked Chen Dingleung.

  “I can’t remember whether someone wrote them down for me, or if I wrote them down to give to someone else. It was a long time ago. Here, you can have them.”

  “This doesn’t look like your handwriting,” I said.

  “Someone else must have written them down for me, then.”

  “Was it someone who was waiting for you?” I asked, giggling.

  Chen Dingleung wiped his nose. “It was more than ten years ago. She’s probably married now. Who’d wait forever for someone?”

  “Some women can keep waiting for a man,” I said.

  “Women can, but men can’t.”

  “Why can’t men wait?”

  “Because men are men.” Chen Dingleung shook his head, laughing.

  “Maybe you can’t wait, but you can’t speak for all men.”

  “Do you have a man waiting for you?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “When you’re waiting for a man, do you sleep with other men?”

  “That’s not waiting,” Chui Yuk said.

  “Well, a man can keep waiting and sleep with other women at the same time.” Chen Dingleung took out his handkerchief again and wiped his nose.

  “You can’t speak for all men.”

  “No, but I have more say in the matter than you do. It’s women that I can’t speak for.”

  “Is it really true that a man can wait for a woman and have relationships with other women at the same time?” Chui Yuk asked.

  “He can—even if he’s married. Men don’t see any conflict between those two things.”

  “No conflict?” I sneered.

  “Of course there’s no conflict. That’s why a man can love two different women at the same time.”

  I was momentarily speechless. Maybe Chen Dingleung was right. Maybe Sam could live with one woman and still love another. It seemed that men were truly capable of going back and forth between two women without any sort of inner conflict.

  “So, according to what you’re saying, no man would wait forever for a woman,” Chui Yuk said.

  “That’s not true,” Chen Dingleung said, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief.

  “There are men who would wait forever for a woman,” Chen Dingleung said.

  “Is that so?” His sudden turnabout surprised me.

  “Because they can’t get another one,” he said coolly.

  “If all men were like you, there’d be no romantic love stories,” Chui Yuk sai
d.

  “You believe in romantic love stories?” Chen Dingleung asked her.

  Chui Yuk nodded.

  “Well, you’re a woman. That would explain it,” Chen Dingleung said.

  “I’m hungry. Should we order some food?” I asked.

  “I’m in the mood for minced meat noodles,” said Chui Yuk.

  “What about you?” I asked Chen Dingleung.

  “I don’t want to be in the way of whatever you two had planned.”

  I shook my head to indicate he wasn’t interfering with our plans.

  “I’ll have another cup of honey lemon tea,” he said.

  “What do you want to eat?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  After finishing his second cup of honey lemon tea, Chen Dingleung fell asleep in his chair. His nostrils emitted a faint snoring sound with each breath, probably because he was so congested. His mouth fell slightly open, and his body slouched towards Chui Yuk.

  “Should we wake him up?” Chui Yuk asked.

  “No, he seems really sick. Let him sleep for a while. Did you and Yu Mogwo make up?”

  “He didn’t sleep a wink after I left the apartment that night.”

  “What about his novel?”

  “He’s starting over and writing a new one.” Chui Yuk took out a book and announced, “This is Yu Mogwo’s new book.”

  “It’s already done?”

  “It’s part of a collection,” Chui Yuk said.

  “Is it from the same mom-and-pop publisher? I thought you said they weren’t any good.” The cover was mediocre, and the print job looked rather shoddy.

  “There’s nothing we can do about it. Major publishing houses want big-name authors. They don’t go around searching for up-and-coming talent. It’s their loss. As long as the work is good, there’ll be people who appreciate it.” Chui Yuk was brimming with confidence.

  “All right. I’ll take it home and read it.”

  “People are going to love it. I’ve read it several times already.”

  Chui Yuk and I talked for nearly an hour while Chen Dingleung slept soundly. When it was time to go, I patted his shoulder hard, and his eyes fluttered open.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said and began digging through his bag for his wallet.