A BLUE, FLOUNCY PLAID SKIRT COVERED MY THIGHS, stopping short at my knee-high white socks, partially covered by my black Mary Janes. My torso was covered by a white blouse and navy blue sweater, all of it making up my St. Francis Canossian uniform. I stared at myself in the mirror, coiling my shoulder-length hair into a neat and glossy black bun. Today, my appearance was like that of any other school day. If only that were the truth.

I sighed, and adjusted my hair one last time before the door opened. My boisterous roommate jostled me, trying to take my place at the one mirror in our shared dormitory. As always, Anna Wong was a mess of frenzied energy: black hair out of its knot in wispy strands, despite St. Francis's strict dress code, her white blouse mis-buttoned and wrinkled, and missing her left shoe. I laughed and moved aside as she hopped on one foot, trying to get her black flat on properly while also fixing her hair. In the twelve years that we had shared a dormitory, as little girls boarding at St. Francis together, I'd still not gotten used to how different she was from me. (1)

As though she was living with a very wealthy family and had mui zai to clean up after her—even though I knew full she hailed from Mongkok unlike me who had grown up in my father's house in the Mid-Levels—she never picked up after herself. On the other hand, I liked things neat and tidy, with 'a place for everything and everything in its place' as the nuns said. Well, they also liked to say 'cleanliness is next to godliness', but I suspected that was a line they trotted out to make us clean more.

"I still can't believe you'll be leaving me to marry that... that gweilo (2)," she commented in Cantonese, with both shoes on but her hair still looking like a haystack. "What happened to finishing seventh form together?"

I made a face but said nothing, instead sliding on a jade bracelet, the green stone cool against my skin. Technically, jewelry wasn't allowed in the school dress code, but... I was leaving now, what had been my world for the past eleven years. Today, I wanted one last memento of my old life before I moved onto my new one. "I suppose you're going to try to enrol in Hong Kong University, then?"

It was a question that needed no answer. Both of us had had that dream since we'd arrived here, but now our paths were sadly diverging.

"Is there any other dream?" She pinned her hair back, coiling her plait of hair into a neater bun. 

Glancing around, I took one last at the dormitory. Neatly made beds as the nuns insisted, navy and white coverlets that matched the school colours, and a crucifix and a school banner hung on the otherwise bare walls. Outside I could see the sights and hear the sounds of Hong Kong, the people bustling around in Wan Chai, on their way to work. Through the open window I could smell street vendors' wares, fish balls on a stick and congee with a youtiao (3) This place had been my home for a little over a decade, and now... Well, now it would simply be another chapter in my life.

A long chapter, with happy memories, but a closed one all the same. I smiled to force down my tears.

"Come on, Elizabeth." Anna touched my arm, a rare gesture of affection. "There's no time to be sad. You have a graduation to get to!"

I nodded, touched more than she knew that she could sense my sorrow, and headed out the door without looking back.

☕️

My diploma in hand, I still had trouble realizing that this was the physical culmination of all my years here at St. Francis. I blinked rapidly, looking up at the blue sky to keep from crying. Again. I wasn't usually so outwardly emotional but today was an exception. Outside, on the field instead of an auditorium—because there was no building large enough to house all the students who were graduating—girls cheered and clapped for their friends, throwing their tasseled hats in the air. I mimicked them, and mine fell down and smacked me in the nose. Ouch.

One girl noticed, and elbowed her friend, snickering. I rolled my eyes—despite my best attempts to get along and the close supervision of the nuns, there were always girls who made every attempt to criticize others. Carrie Leung was one of those girls, whose freckled face I turned my back on now. I shielded my face with the offending hat, keeping the sunlight away from my pale skin lest I burn.

"Elizabeth?" My dai ma's, or my father's first wife, spoke in a crisp British accent that made me pivot over to her. She had proper queen's English—she had been educated in England after all, which was where she and my father had met. "Oh, I'm so glad I found you."

She hugged me briskly but tightly, then released me as the scent of incense wafted off of her. She must have been burning joss sticks earlier this morning, I thought. Especially since it was Qing Ming, and later today we would be going to the cemetery for grave-sweeping (5). Even though she would have technically been my stepmother, I felt as if she was my real mother. She had loved and cared for me my whole life ever since my mother, my father's third wife, had died giving birth to me. Despite our lack of blood relation, she had never mistreated or abused me.

I had always thought that it was because I was a girl. If I were a boy, my mother would have been competition to her and she might have resented me. Instead, I was second-class, second-rate, nothing more than a pawn in a pretty dress waiting to be married off. I knew that her Western education made her a little less likely to think in such a manner, but deep down I had always suspected that. It was simply a product of the Hong Kong society that we lived in.

"Why are you so happy to see me?" I asked her, righting the tassel of my cap.

"Your future husband is here," she informed me in hushed tones.

My grip froze on the cord of my cap, and tightened so much that I ripped it off. I stared at the knot of thread, unwillingly to believe the words I had just heard from her. "Nei gong mut yeah?" (6)

She did not even blink, as she repeated herself. I did, rapidly and many times. "I thought his ship wasn't due for another week?"

"The storms cleared up." She smiled brightly at me, and my stomach sank. "He made it here in a little over a month. Your father has sent someone to meet him at the docks, and then we will go to yum cha together. How does that sound?"

Terrible.

Exciting.

Anticipation and fear and dread warred in my stomach, and I forced all of it down to keep from seeing my breakfast again. I made a smile grace my lips. "It sounds... lovely. I simply cannot wait to meet him."

I simply cannot wait for my freedom to vanish as my father sells me to the highest bidder, and a foreigner to boot.

I simply cannot wait to settle into a marriage with a man who no doubt resents me for taking him away from his home and will probably find me unattractive compared to his standards for European women.

My mother patted me gently on the back and led me straight into the hands of the devil.

(1) St. Francis Canossian, established 1869, by a group of Italian nuns. A girls' school known for its prestigious alumni, including a government official of HK, it is NOT a boarding school but I have taken creative liberties.

(2) 鬼佬 - formerly derogatory term for white people, literally 'foreign devil' or 'ghost.'

(3) 油條 - Chinese donut.

(4) 大媽 - first wife

(5) 清明 - ceremony for grave-sweeping

(6) What did you say?