Caroline Giovanie

Caroline Giovanie is a Chinese-Indonesian writer from Jakarta who currently resides in Brooklyn. Her work focuses on identity, cosmic connection, and finding fulfillment. She loves dogs and songs that give you a good cry (the nice kind). She emphasizes on having Asian characters that are flawed, human, and whole. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School.

Akong (Short Fiction)

Snowflakes descend and melt, galaxies stop creating stars and fade. New York’s first snow of the year fell at night, landing on my jacket and turning to water. My friends and I laughed, pulling our hoods up and taking pictures and videos to send back home. If not to share the experience of what winter is like, then at least it’s proof of what’s out there. I was thinking of you. Even if the distance between us is now more than a few plane rides, I am still your granddaughter, and you are my Akong.

Did you see the snow?

If you did, you would tell me not to stay in the cold for too long. Yeet hay in Cantonese, panas dalam in Indonesian. Internal heat. The principle that your body’s internal energy is thrown off from external elements like cold weather and fried food. At dim sum, you canceled my order of iced tea immediately for a cup of piping hot jasmine tea that almost always burned my tongue. I didn’t believe in it when I was little, thinking it was just a way for you and my parents to stop me from eating too much kerupuk. When Jakarta rained and our streets flooded, my siblings and I would scream in delight and try to swim in the murky water. You called us stupid and locked the front door, always coming over with fresh dragon fruit when school was closed, shivering and wet. We looked out at the downpour, huffing and hiding your reading glasses as revenge.

I had to treat my panas dalam alone for the first time when I moved to the other side of the world, wandering Chinatown on H street looking for the closest thing to the herbal powder you would put on my mouth ulcers. The bitter taste stayed on my tongue for hours whenever I accidentally swallowed it, and if it wasn’t for the blinding pain that shot up my lip where the powder touched, I think I would’ve thrown up. The skin around the ulcer would peel, pink turning white. It wasn’t until a couple years ago that I heard the government shut down production of the medicine for being “too strong.” Strong it was, because the next day my ulcer didn't hurt anymore. All that was left was a wound that would fade in a few days.

*

There are photos of you and me when I was a toddler. My favorite is the one where I had a bowl cut, yet the hair on the back of my head was somehow long enough to be put in a ponytail that shot straight up. I call it “the palm tree.” I was in your arms, wearing a cheong sam that itched my collar. I wanted it off, had no idea what it meant to wear something that would have gotten me killed if it were a few years earlier. The 1998 riots almost obliterated us, and that would have been the end of our bloodline. Your worst nightmare. Would we have moved back to Guangzhou if Indonesia kicked us out? Would Guangzhou have taken us?

In the photo I looked confused, pointing at the camera with a frown on my face. You were smiling at me encouragingly, telling me there’s nothing to be afraid of. We didn’t know I would be going so far away because I didn’t feel safe with everyone.

What did your parents envision when they fled Guangzhou? Hushed rushing on a boat in the middle of the night to escape neighbors and friends who turned into government spies. The boat could have ended up in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, but it stopped in a small town off the coast of Borneo and that was it. It was not a matter of choosing where, the goal was to just go.

I was on their same path, desperate to flee with no idea about my destination, and now I am in this country that does not seem like it wants me. Kong Kong was chased down in his motorbike by people who forced him to prove he’s not a “communist pig.” I entered an interrogation room when I came to the United States to justify my presence. It’s not enough that we keep our heads down. Our existence must be vindicated.

*

I knew Kong Kong never spoke to me because I wasn’t a boy. He called my brother “Ko ko,” older brother, because he was the oldest one who mattered. I still greeted Kong Kong whenever I saw him because I had to, but he would look right past me. My mother told me not to worry, Kong Kong was just quiet. How could I not, when red envelopes from him were only given through my mother, as if the direct transaction will acknowledge my existence. I would cry and refuse to come to Kong Kong’s house, until my father said we can go to yours after and sing Chinese ballads into your karaoke machine. We always got the highest scores when we dueted.

*

In the three years I was abroad before you died, we called each other four times. On each call, you ended with “when are you coming back?” and I said “during break, in December.” “That’s not what I meant,” you said. I knew.

It’s not like you ever gave me a straight answer, either. You were only on video when my father was over and called me, looking hungrier and frailer every time. Not a mention of any of it.

*

I am your eldest son’s first born. You told everyone I am your first grandchild even though you have an older one from your eldest daughter. If I find someone and have my own children, will you erase us too?

Your children want answers. Your grandchildren want your secrets. What did you want? You never knew what I majored in college. It was in Women and Gender Studies. I never told you and you never asked, too disappointed by my abandonment.

You were the eldest of twenty two siblings, the head of the family. One by one, you brought them over from Singkawang to Jakarta. Maybe you took my leaving as a rejection of your offering, a disregard for the work you’ve done to get us here. But it is not. It is because of your hunger for something better that I had the same for myself.

How luxurious is it to ruminate on what you really wanted to say, to lay out how I feel on the page knowing you will never read or understand this. It’s the only way we have known each other, through all the noise. And it will continue to be the way, until we meet again.