The Memoirs of Cordelia Chan

In writing this it has occurred to me that only the old or famous write memoirs and I am neither. That said, I feel the need to set down what I remember of my life before my true inheritance was revealed to me and my world became more complex than I had imagined it could be.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. I was born in our apartment on the periphery of New York's China Town on May 28^th 1973, to a English mother of Chinese descent, and a father who I presumed was also English or possibly European, making me in the Chinese Horoscope a Buffalo, and in the Western a Gemini.
My earlist recollections are of the appartment and the smell of stirfry intermingled with steam and washing soda.
The apartment was unusual in two respects,
1)  it was spacious boasting four bedrooms, living room, large kitchen/diner, bathroom, and seperate water closet.
and
2)  my mother held the title deeds in her own name.
This did not mean we were well off however. My mother worked, what seemed to me endless hours, to pay the bills and put me through school. Looking back, whilst I was never the strongest, fittest, or cleverest, I was above average in all three respects. I'm told I walked at 10 months, and was uttering my first words 3 months later.

There is nothing of much import that sticks in my mind from those early days save for the fight I got into with some older kids, on my 5^th birthday. I'm not sure exactly how it started, but the neighbourhood kids had been teasing me all day about me being English and not American. I can't even remember exactly what happened during the fight, but I do remember waking in hospital sore, covered in bandages- which made it difficult to move-, with a tube attached to my arm. I could hear the doctors talking to my mother explaining that there was nothing broken, the head injury was not serious as far a they could tell, and that I should make a full recovery in a few days. I later learnt that two of my assailants had not been quite so fortunate and I'd managed to break the jaw of one and two ribs of the second.

The saying goes "Every cloud had a silver lining" and for me the silver lining came in the form of a rare visit from my father and a combination of Tai-Chi Ch'aun and Shoa-Lin Gung Fu training - the latter in an effort to cease my constant complaints about wanting to be taught to fight like the boys, and to teach me some discipline.

I have been told by several Sensei, that I have a talent for the Martial Arts, but those early years were no easy ride for either my Sensei or me. I wanted to run before I could walk, kick before I could balance, and meditate before I could focus properly.

Even so, I progressed faster than most of the other kids around me and had a black belt and reputation by the time I was 14. I saw little of my father, although this doesn't appear to have done me any great harm. He would turn up, usually on my birthday, the 4^th July, Thanksgiving, and Chinese New Year, bearing presents, stay a few days, and then depart. My 14^th birthday, however, was going to be the exception that broke all the rules.

Until, recently I had no real knowledge of what my father actually did. My mother always said he was a salesman and that business kept him away, but I'd started to question that story and my mother had become evasive and our relationship had become strained. The fact that I'd started menstruating the previous Christmas had definitely not helped matters.
Previous to the birthday in question, my father would telephone the week before he was coming to let my mother know, and then turn up late on the evening before the proscribed day. That year there was no telephone call, and by the Thursday, things had reached breaking point between me and my mother.
The best way to describe, what happened when my mother said " You're not going out dressed like that!" is to liken the effect to applying a lighted match to a balloon filled with hydrogen. The fact that I didn't seriously injure her, when she physically tried to bar my way, was I believe down to my training. She was of course no match for me, and I was out of the door before she actually hit the floor. I had no idea of where I was going or what I was doing as I raced out the building, but where ever it was it was going to be a long way from there.

In many ways the teenage culture of China town is like that of anywhere else, if you're in with the right set then weapons and transport are no object, even if you have no money. For me, my combat skills had ensured that I was part of the in crowd and I was now about to put that to use. Several of the older boys had motorbikes, and it had never been a problem for me to get to ride them. I knew in which alley they'd all be, and that borrowing one of their bikes would be no problem, in time I was even sure they'd forgive the fact that they'd never been seeing it or me again.

To all of you who may wish to emulate my actions, let me give you this advice: make sure you take your purse, plenty of cash, and a warm waterproof jacket with you. I am fond of old sayings, but sometimes they are just too apt, and the one that goes "It never rains, it always pours." was just that.
Riding a motorcycle in torrential rain is no fun, even in decent leathers, so riding one dressed only in crop top, light jacket, mini-skirt, and boots is sheer madness, but then I wasn't particularly thinking straight. The world however was about to wake me up, although not before ensuring that I was on the least traveled stretch of highway known to man. Coughing once, and then twice in quick succession, the engine died and the hail came down.

One of the benefits of being in the middle of no where, late at night in the pouring rain, is that you lose all sense of time and distance. Therefore I cannot say how far I pushed the bike, or how long it took me to find some shelter. Neither can I say how long I sat and shivered under the tree, or at which point I entered the phantom release of restless sleep, before the final twist in this episode revealed itself.

The rain had slowed to a gentle drizzle, the cold had eaten its way merrily into my body, and my senses had reached the effectiveness of a pocket flashlight in a sea fog, before I realized that there was light before me and the gentle thrumming of a car engine. Looking up a figure, of strange familiarity stood over me. "Good morning Cordelia, Let's get you in the car and somewhere warm. That's a good girl, up you get."
As I struggled to stand a warm heavy coat landed like a pallet of bricks about my shoulders, and I would have fallen but for the support two strong arms. I vaguely remember getting into the car, and then nothing until I awoke sometime later.

The room was dark, although a glint of weak light showed through the center of the drapes where they hadn't been closed properly. I felt as if I'd been mown down by a truck, and my head felt strangely heavy. Moving a leaden arm, I felt my head, soft, spongy, ribbed, but two dense to be bandages. Slowly I sat up. As the towel dropped over my face, I could now feel cold air against naked skin. I pulled the sheet about me, realising that whoever had brought me to this place had removed all of my clothes. As I struggled to the edge of the bed my head started to swim. Forcing myself on I swung my legs over the edge and tried to stand. I think I made it about three quarters of the way to standing position before I blacked out.

When I came to again I was back in bed with the bed clothes tucked up about me. There was a light to my right, providing gentle illumination to an otherwise dark room, and below the light a glass of milk and a plate of cookies. On the left, hung from the bed post was a mans shirt, and further over to the left the back of a slightly ajar door. My hair was now loose, and I was lying on a wet towel rather than the sheet I had been on earlier, and I hurt in a way that only a woman can. Why do periods come at the most inconvenient times?

As I sat up, much more gingerly than last time and without my head swimming this time, I heard the front door chime. A door opened, and the sound of indulgent voices reached me for a few seconds before the door closed again. Then a much heavier door was opened, and a familiar voice said " Bill , Alice, Thank you for coming at such short notice. As I explained on the phone I've got guests and apart from that I'm not used to dealing with teenage girls and their problems."
The heavy door closed again, and the voice continued "I've also got another favour to ask - could you look after Cordie for a couple of days until her mother gets out of hospital. It's nothing serious but the doctors want to keep her in. Apparently she hit her head rather hard when she fell and seems to be having a touch of temporary amnesia."
A female voice, who I guessed must be Alice, responded " She's going to be alright, your wife I mean."
" Oh. Cordie's mother and I were never married. We were together for a while but found we couldn't live together. So I left. I visit now and again, mainly to see Cordie, but apart from that.."
"So where is your daughter then?"
"Down the corridor there, 2^nd door on the left. The bathroom's opposite, and the kitchen's through there."
I heard footsteps coming towards the door, and finished adjusting the shirt into a comfortable position. Down the corridor my father continued "Look Bill, I know I've asked you to do quite a bit already, but there's one more thing I need you to do. It seems when she ran off, she borrowed a bike without asking the owners permission. It should still be out on the highway where I found her. Can you sort out returning it to its owner, and compensating them for the inconvenience. I don't think a criminal conviction would look too good when she gets around to applying for Collage. Just handle the invoicing in the usual way. Sorry, to rush off but I need to get back to my guests and we've a plane to catch in a couple of hours."
"Sure thing"
Whatever he was about to say next was interrupted by two things, the front door chiming again, and a dark haired middle aged lady, knocking on my door saying " Are you awake dear? Is it ok if I come in?" as she did exactly that.
"Oh. You're awake. Well lets see about sorting you out then. How are you feeling?"
I wanted to say "Like I've been mown down by a truck" but it appeared I was in enough trouble as it was, so it came out as "A little better thank you, but I need a shower and I think the bed's going to need new sheets."
"Ah. Yes. That's why your father asked me to come over. You go and get in the shower, and I'll get my bag from the car."
"Do you know where my things are?"
"No. I'll take a peak in the laundry, if not we'll think of something."
She disappeared back through the door and I managed persuade my protesting body off the bed. I think I was crossing the passage to the bathroom when I heard my fathers voice again "Thanks again for your trouble Bill, Alice. Just lock up when you leave. You might as well keep the key. See you when I get back." followed by the sound of a heavy door slamming shut.

Alice later told me that she'd heard a thud, and come running down the passage to find me sobbing hysterically in a heap between the bedroom I been in and the bathroom. She'd got Bill to pick me up and put me back to bed, which is where I found myself when I woke the following morning. I was also wearing a pair of knickers, not the ones I had been wearing when I left the apartment, a pad - which by the feeling urgently needed changing, and my fathers shirt which I had put on the night before. My body had ceased protesting, the way it had been the night before, but was now doing so in other ways. Slipping out of bed, I snagged another towel from the open packet, and crept from the room. Bill, continued to snore gently in the armchair which had obviously been hastily brought in the room from somewhere else in the house.

Crossing to the bathroom, I alleviated two of the protests my body was making, before attempting to find the kitchen and alleviate the third. I'd just extracted the milk from the refrigerator, when a voice behind me said " Good morning dear. Are we feeling a better now. Would you like some breakfast?"
I nodded. Something seemed to have handcuffed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. I put the milk on the table and sat down staring at it. Alice put a glass in front of me and filled it with milk.
" So what would you like then. There's juice, eggs, and waffles in the refrigerator. I think I spied some maple syrup in one of the units, or there's bread and Jell-O. "
"Is my mother going to be okay? I didn't mean to hurt her honest." I'd burst into tears again, and she crossed the room to hug me. A noise from the doorway caused her to turn, and she made a swishing motion with her hand. "Yes. She'll be alright in a day or two. Apparently she hit her head on the door frame as she fell, so I don't think anyone is going to blame you for that."
Another eruption of tears welled up and exploded as I remembered the bike. How was I going to explain that to Choy. He was wise enough not to pick a fight with me, even though he was four years my senior, as it was his jaw that I broke when I was five. We'd become good friends after that, and it would be to him in the not too distant future that I lose my virginity.

By the time Bill came back about 20 minutes later, I'd calmed down and Alice had been explaining what had happened two nights ago. It seems a neighbour, alerted by the screaming match I'd been having with my mother, had come to investigate the sound of slamming doors as I'd left. He'd found my mother collapsed in the entranceway of the apartment, and dialed 911. When the paramedics arrived they'd notice the broken furniture and crockery and called the police. With me missing they'd searched the flat, found my father's number and called him. He'd then made a couple of phone calls and determined I'd fled the building in a hurry and made off on Choy's motorcycle - to this day I've not figured out how he found this out. He'd then come looking for me, although he'd been about to give up when he'd eventually found me. He'd taken me home and put me to bed, before going to the hospital to check on my mother. He'd got home to find me lying on the floor, and in the process of putting me back to bed had discovered I was bleeding. At which point he'd called Bill and Alice.

"I see the birthday girl is up and about then." Bill said as he crossed the room to sit down at the table. Unfortunately, in the state I was in it was about the worst thing he could have said, and I burst into tears again.
"Now, look what you've gone and done."
"Sorry honey. I was only trying to cheer her up."
"Given what she's been through in the last 48 hours I don't think reminding her it's her birthday today was such a good idea."
He looked a bit sheepish and said "No. I suppose not."

We ate breakfast in silence, with Bill and Alice not wanting to say anything for fear of setting off another bout of tears, and me saying nothing because I felt miserable and alone, deserted by my father without even a goodbye or reason. I managed to eat half the omlette Alice had cooked for me, before I excused myself, and went to the bathroom for a shower. You can cry, undisturbed in a shower, because the sound of running water masks the sobs, and the water washes away the tears, and soothes the eyes.
By the time I emerged over an hour later, I felt more composed. Bill and Alice were still in the kitchen, although breakfast had been cleared away. "I want to go and see my mother." I said.
"I don't think that'll be a problem." said Alice looking at Bill.
Bill nodded. "Yes. We'll just gather up your things, and then we can go. I expect you want to get some of your clothes as well, if you're coming to stay with us for a few days."
I'd forgotten about that bit, but managed to fight back the tears. Alice collected my now laundered clothes, whilst I located a jacket to fit me in the closet in the bedroom down the hall from the one I'd been in.
Bill locked the front door behind us as we left, and I got into the back seat of the station wagon. As the car pulled out of the drive I looked back at the house. It would be a few years until I saw it again, and several more still till I saw my father.

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