Incense for Another Daughter by Chiu-yi Rachel Ngai*

Preserved in caramel sugar, memories of my sister melt like candy on my tongue. She vanishes into a sharp sliver in my mouth, cuts and draws blood, disappears before I can carve her into my flesh.

I remember meeting a baby as a child, a heavy head supported in the crook of my elbow. I remember the way her eyes opened wide and searching, perfect and ready to find the word ‘gullible’ on the ceiling. Her tiny baby’s fist curled tight around my finger, grasping. I remember my lips shaping her name—something pretty, melodious and ringing—even as it fades away. Two syllables, sharp consonants softened and made sweet by round vowels. Something with an A sound. It started with a K, or maybe a D. 

---

Let’s call her Kylie. My sister, Kylie Cheung. 

In my deepest dreams, I’m eleven years old and flying bamboo dragonflies in a playground with Kylie and our cousin, Andrew. The three of us run through metal jungle gym bars, racing to our parents for the last pieces of White Rabbit Candy from the very bottoms of bags. A sea of colour, Hong Kong from the eyes of a child culminates into streets and storefronts that stretch forever. 

Somehow, despite my eyes and Andrew’s watchful gaze, Kylie trips on a wax paper wrapper and falls. Instead of crying, she laughs, voice ringing through our gasps and cries of “are you okay”. 

“I’m big and tough,” she says. She reaches out a hand, and as I pull her up, I smooth down her hair and make sure there’s no blood. There isn’t, thank God, the skin didn’t break. “Don’t worry, jeje! See, the birds are still singing!” 

She’s right. Sparrows chirp and chirp—nature’s steady breaths that cut through the whizzing of cars. As Andrew gives Kylie the last of his own candy and shows her a yoyo-trick he just learned, my mother pulls me aside to where the others can’t see and slaps me, hard. Useless thing, take better care of your sister. Even Andrew does a better job than you. 

When we return, the children are running again, chasing after the same pink and green plastic bamboo dragonflies like nothing happened. To them, nothing did. Or I should say: Really, nothing did. It’s a beautiful day, and I rejoin them, the perfect laughing older sibling. Kylie jumps into my arms and I throw her into the air, the golden dusk clouds forming a halo around her head. 

On a perfect day, I am with my family, watching over a little sister who looks at me like I hung the moon and stars in the sky and handcrafted the fabric flowers she wears in her hair. On a perfect day, I don’t yet know the smell and taste of hospital floors. On a perfect day, innocent, unknowing hugs still sooth the handprints that decorate my skin. On a perfect day, Kylie exists even outside my dreams and the pitch-black memories.