Marcus Ong Kah Ho

 Marcus Ong Kah Ho

Kafka Needs to Understand

Blueberries and cheese and cakes and birthdays make me weepy because my friend Joanne recently died in a cake-eating contest.

Now, a disclaimer: our cakes do not cause seizures.

Joanne was just unlucky; she happened to have a seizure.

I say to Kafka: Your Mama had a seizure while shoveling blueberry cheesecake into her mouth. But Kafka doesn’t understand.

So I lock her in her cage.

Then I latch the windows and turn out the lights.

I’m at the bakery when I recall where I left her chew-toy, that it’s out of her reach. And then I get a call from my neighbor who tells me to please do something. We can hear her through the door, he says. It’s really, really heartbreaking!

From the oven, my boss coughs and offers his contribution to the matter—he tells me that the baguettes are burnt. He says, Oh don’t worry, it’s not like you owe me fifteen-thousand four-hundred and fifty-eight dollars. Oh, don’t worry, I say into the phone while staring at my boss. I’m quitting right now. I’ll become a stay-at-home mum.

I tell myself: I only give what I get.

My tears no longer draw sympathy. I suffer every time someone comes in to buy a birthday cake.

For two months after Joanne’s death, my neighbor did a little tap on my window each morning before he headed off to work. He sells insurance, so he is always sniffing around—that’s how he found out I have Kafka now. This man depresses me to the point of nausea.

There he would be, standing behind the curtains, wide-eyed and ready to strike while the iron was still hot. I knew what he wanted to say: Joanne had gone in the worst possible way—unexpectedly. Nothing like cancer, where at least you have a chance to come to terms with it, say your goodbyes, eat something you always wanted to eat, make arrangements and apologies. Joanne had met him once at the public pool, her go-to place to burn fat. On a hot, windless afternoon, he’d sat on a tanning bed and watched her blow bubbles, do the butterfly, dry her neck on a tiny towel. Later, he came over to tap on my window, offering fresh coffee and inquiring if Joanne was single. I laughed and slammed the door in his face.

On the day Joanne was cremated, he came back to ask if I’d like to purchase insurance.

I’ve asked myself many times: What good is having a dog that doesn’t bark at strange men who prowl outside your door?

Who ought to take Kafka in was never up for debate. Dogs are considered good company for grieving. Look how happy Joanne was, our mutual friends said to me at the funeral, taking turns petting Kafka on the head.

I remember the day Joanne brought Kafka home from the shelter. She phoned to promise she would still spend time with me. Please call, she said. Emergency or not, I’ll be there.

With the dog? I said. Ray doesn’t like dogs.

All the better, she said.

I was watching my husband make himself oatmeal, watching him struggle to get the texture right.

It had been a peaceful morning.

I’m waiting for someone to write to tell me that things don’t feel the same. Anyone who might remember Joanne. I’ve been updating Joanne’s food blog, working myself breathless to describe dishes I’ve never tasted before, employing words that are not my own, hoping that my lies might make or break a business. But it comes nowhere close; I don’t have Joanne’s way with words.

I’m also searching my memory for things we did together as girls. But now I realize how different we were. Joanne snipped her hair short, for example. I’d let mine grow and grow down my back, all the way to my buttocks by the time I was twenty-three. Shampoo costs money, she’d explained to me, money her folks had sickened themselves to make. She was so wise. When she came up with the idea for us to pick up survival skills during the holidays—knot-tying, coupon-cutting, karate, swimming—I couldn’t say no to her.

She told me that if I dipped may head underwater, I’d hear my own

heartbeat. But for how long? I replied.

I kept forgetting that we were supposed to have fun.

Then she disappeared underwater. My armpits squeaked against the swim-ring; my little legs kicked. I couldn’t breathe.

Want to learn how to blow bubbles? she asked me.

Then she released a fart. We laughed so hard that the lifeguard turned to us and placed a finger on his lips.

After my husband’s cremation, Joanne stayed over. We drank Sarsi and chewed on the ice-cubes he had put in the freezer. We rearranged the furniture, talked on the sofa, and ordered Domino’s. Kafka mostly kept to herself in the kitchen. We could hear her breathing because she is so large. She dashed out when the pizza delivery man showed up at the door.

Carelessly, I let the last ice-cube vanish on my tongue.

That’s when I realized I didn’t want to eat. But I didn’t want to offer Kafka my share, so I forced the food down while Joanne talked with her mouth full. Kafka pretended to eavesdrop while sniffing at my carpet and our legs. Joanne flicked a pepperoni into the air, which Kafka expertly caught. It occurred to me then that the dog had no idea my husband was dead.

It was Joanne who suggested a cake-eating contest on her birthday. Will I win? she laughed.

She was going to make a fool of herself to cheer me up. Because she was my friend. Joanne only ever had kind words for me. Ray’s death wasn’t karma, she had said. Even though others had whispered: retribution. They shouldn’t judge you, she said. I’d have done the same. But how would she know? She had never been pregnant.

A dog is not a baby.

Still, I say to Kafka now, as though she were my child: Don’t you dare pick up poker. Don’t believe them when they say it’s about mathematics and wit.

Never marry a gambling man.

Kafka yawns.

I tell Kafka that they were supposed to scare him with the baseball bat, not whack the back of his head. They did that rather than hanging a bloodied pig head outside the door.

I tell Kafka what the doctors said:

It was painless.

Often I feel upstaged when potential owners ask for Kafka’s story. They seem overly interested in what she’s been through. What about my story? Aren’t they curious why I didn’t wish to keep my child? He would have grown up, finished school, serve his military conscription, and we’d still be paying off Ray’s gambling debt. I see many of them are smart, logical people, quick to put two and two together. They see the inconveniences of a black dog that brings bad luck. Some breeds have longer lives than others, they say.

I’m not sure why I’m having difficulty deciding if I should have Kafka euthanized, even though I’ve done many selfish things before.

You’re on thin ice, I say, as I push her off the sofa. Today could be your last.

Do you even care? I say.

Hello?

You’re a cold-hearted bitch, you know that?

Kafka isn’t mourning. She’s retained her appetite. She looks me in the eyes but doesn’t understand a word I say. She doesn’t get that I’m unable to give her the same affection she’s used to; she brings me a wire brush and licks my ankles. But I refuse to engage her. I refuse to find out what breed she is. That makes us even.

But now, as I watch her get comfy on the carpet in front of the TV, I feel the urge to break every bone in her with a hammer.

I’d probably say, It was a truck.

Who would rat me out?

But I think about Joanne, and I watch this video of her bathing Kafka in the public pool instead. After washing Kafka, she lets her go to paddle. Dogs that swim have cleaner ears than dogs that don’t. Spoiled bitch, I say to Kafka.

Because the video was recorded during the Hungry Ghost Festival, I now believe that this particular indiscretion is what killed our Joanne. You aren’t supposed to enter bodies of water during the Hungry Ghost Festival. Not when the gates of hell are open and ghosts roam among the living. Certain ghosts, those who’ve drowned, return to the water to grab your ankles. Nobody knows why, precisely.

But this is what we tell children.

Believe it or not, even lifeguards don’t bother showing up for work.

* * *

After watching that video, I sold the TV at Cash Converters thinking I’d go back to listening to the radio, but eventually I gravitated toward YouTube videos. To keep my mind sharp and my heart beating, I now consume parkour injuries, actors in tuxes and gowns giving clever acceptance speeches, compilations of Mafia hits from The Sopranos, tutorials on how to perform a lobotomy, fatal accidents caught on tape.

Kafka sits with me sometimes, but she doesn’t look up at me from the floor. Her nails are long. There’s gunk in her eyes. I could offer her grooming in exchange for some advice, but all she cares about is kibble and drifting off to sleep. She doesn’t greet me good morning as my husband used to when he came home from the casino. She treats me with polite coldness. What does she see when she sees me?

On a scale of one to ten, how much do you miss Joanne? I ask her, feeling ridiculous.

I wait for her to move her paws before I show her my fingers. She doesn’t move.

She moves to fetch me her bowl.

Nothing ruins my day like the frustration I feel when I see her eat. She forgets me; she forgets everything.

I really don’t know what the problem is. I’ve tried crying into Joanne’s clothes, crying in Joanne’s clothes and cutting myself, tearing up Joanne’s baby photographs, re-enacting how Joanne hid her disappointment when she found out she wouldn’t be godmother to my baby.

Kafka will not be moved.

Kafka—what kind of stupid name is that? I ask myself. Why should Kafka be happy?

She needs to understand.

Today I’m baking a tall white one for a couple’s wedding. Working longer hours is supposed to keep my mind occupied. And I do it to clear my husband’s gambling debts, to get on with my grieving.

My boss is standing behind me, his arms folded, watching me nervously. Can you make it whiter? he says. They want it white.

White is white, I say. I don’t get why he has to act as if he’s never baked a cake, as if he didn’t pass baking school with flying colors. Does it allow him to see from the customer’s point of view? Is that it? Does it improve customer service?

I had a dream last night where the groom and the guests choked on my cake. Lots of coughing, gurgling. People were tumbling from their chairs, pulling at tablecloths and sending to the floor glasses and porcelain dishes, which exploded when they touched the carpet. The bride was watching all this from the stage. We managed to lock eyes. She was about to say something to me when the chandelier flattened her.

Who the hell gets married during Ghost Festival month? I say. My boss scratches his head. Who the hell told you they’re Chinese?

I suddenly realize it’s been a year.

And the way it works now, saying that I’d like to go to the temple to offer joss sticks and pray for my friend, my husband, my unborn child, no longer gets me the day off. People expect me not to feel this way forever. Friends no longer check in on me. Nothing happens anymore when I close my eyes.

So I offer to pay off my remaining hours.

With what? my boss says.

Now, on the bus, a youngish man next to me holds up his flaccid penis. He’s trying desperately to knead it into a discernible shape. It was the smell, reliable enough, that made me notice. I feel disgusted but not defenseless. I know I’m perfectly capable of punching someone in the face. I punched a girl in the face once, in school. So I know how it feels, how the pain from my knuckles will course through my body after they come in contact with the cheekbone. I’m ready for that; I wait.

The man doesn’t engage me.

I ask him if it’d help if I squeezed my breasts together.

I squeeze my breasts together. I watch his chest rise and his pupils dilate. I twitch my fingers when he starts clenching his jaws.

Seconds later, he ejaculates onto the floor.

Feel better, I whisper. I pat him on the shoulder and step off the bus. But the bus doesn’t move; it doesn’t leave after I leave the bus stop. I hear its engine killed. I hear people shouting.

At the temple, the fortune-teller tells me for eight dollars what I already know. He tries to sell me lucky charms and amulets, saying it’s a matter of life or death, but I tell him that if he meant well he should give them to me for free.

He says he has a family to feed.

He says he understands how I feel. I seriously doubt it.

In the end, I leave the temple empty-handed. Nothing has been accomplished. I feel the urge to kick a trash bin, anything I can leave a mark on without hurting myself. It was the same after I had the procedure.

I wonder if my husband felt like this when he left the casino in the morning. Joanne once told me that she feared the day she’d have to scrape me off a wall. But I told her that Ray wasn’t like that. Unconvinced, she gathered her things and rented a small, airless box across the street from ours; it was the closest one she could find on such short notice.

This is the person I’ve lost.

But Kafka doesn’t understand.

I see a young boy, about four or five, walking backward because he finds it amusing. It’s the most beautiful thing, and it isn’t fair. He and his mother, holding hands, are coming toward the bus stop. The mother is a tall woman wearing a white T-shirt tucked into blue jeans. Her hair is black and long, loose, trembling in the wind. It’s up to me, really, if I choose to keep watching, but the mother has already spotted me. She seems embarrassed by her child’s antics, and she smiles at me as if to strike an understanding. I flag down a taxi.

The driver who finds me is pushing sixty. He wears his wedding band on the wrong hand and twiddles with the air-con dial without my permission. In the rearview mirror, I can see his gummy hair combed to a right-side part. His eyes are so tiny that the car seems to be driving itself. To stop myself from panicking, I ask if he has had lunch. He tells me how, by skipping lunch one day at a time, he was able to see his daughter graduate from university.

Isn’t that the point? he asks. Us parents work hard. It’s no head start, but I left them without debt. He says he’s lucky that his daughter understands this perfectly, which leaves him without regrets. You married? Do you have kids?

I tell him no. But I have a dog.

Ah, he says. But a dog is not human, is it?

Yes, I say.

Then he signals to the left and takes the first exit, which will bring us past the public pool and will cost more. The driver, I think, knows this. He keeps his eyes straight ahead and stops talking. Meanwhile, I look at numbers on the decals: matchmake them to form jingles in my head, the hotline that connects you to Lost & Found.

We’ll pass the pool within seconds.

When I get home, Kafka doesn’t try to get up.

She’s lying on her side in her cage, looking as if she’s dying. There’s vomit. I flick on the lights to get a better look. I understand perfectly. Kafka looks at me as if waiting for praise. I’m surprised, but I remain calm. I give her water to drink. I fetch her a towel.

I let them snuggle and nurse while I fill the bathtub with cold water. I don’t bother counting. I drag the cage, along with everyone inside, to the bathroom. I scoop the puppies out and shut the cage door. I ask Kafka if she knows what’s about to happen as I dangle one of her whimpering puppies by its ankle. She sits up and starts pawing at the wires.

I uncurl my fingers.

This is the moment, I say. You understand?

This is the moment I teach Kafka how to grieve.

A big brown dog once wandered into our schoolyard.

It came out of nowhere, out of the bushes. Joanne saw it first because she was sitting nearest the window. The moment our eyes met, off we lunged. We thudded on the glass. We shouted, Doggie, doggie.

Soon the window was swarmed with faces. The teacher’s commands had become indistinct. Her hands were fisted. And though we could sense punishment looming from the way her eyes moved, we also saw that the dog had lifted its head, its glassy sad eyes now looking into our class through the window. It wasn’t even supposed to be there!

Doggie, doggie!

The dog crept closer, wagging its tail.

Closer, doggie! Closer!

Now the dog was stretching out its forelegs. So we yelped at it. Now the dog was chasing its own tail. We cheered it on.

We were huddling, laughing. We were taunting the teacher with our newfound courage. We were ungovernable. A book whistled over our heads. It landed on the dog.

The dog scurried away. There was nothing I could do.

I pivoted around and saw that lines had already been whipped into several tiny palms. Joanne took hers with a smile.

For weeks, we went on hoping.

Every so often, Joanne would furtively glance out the window, wishing again for that breathtaking experience. But she, too, eventually forgot, accepted that a thing like that only comes when you least expect it. Like times when you cry from laughing.