The Ghost

I don’t have many childhood memories. Subconsciously, maybe, the memories are blocked off. I don’t have “remember that summer when we went to this” or “that birthday party when cousin did that.” Nothing. My dad used to be a photographer, so I have many photographs of little me, but they weren’t snapshots. There’s no blurry shots of me playing with my siblings, there’s no goofy moments at the playground, there’s no first day walking to school moment. Photographs of me were all posed. I was pretty good at posing, at least it seemed so from the photos. So my childhood was told to me by my parents, mostly my mom.

According to my mom, I was sent to a daycare as soon as she was discharged from the hospital after giving birth. During the 70s in Hong Kong, there were daycare centers that opened 24 hours a day, for parents who couldn’t afford a stay-in nanny. I was living in the daycare for all of my infant years. My mom was a nurse at a small family clinic, during lunch break she would go visit me. She recalled often times when she arrived I would cry very hard or I would sit up, holding onto the crib railings and eagerly waited for her. Because the daycare staff had too many babies to look after, they weren’t able to give each child attention. Sometimes the milk bottle just laid next to my lips and, of course, I couldn’t feed myself, so I’d cry my lungs out.

I wonder what was on baby Bonnie’s mind when this woman showed up once a day?

The first house we lived in, from what my mom told me, there was a female ghost in the bedroom. I was about 3 years old, maybe. Every night, I would stand by the bedroom door, eyes staring at a corner, and cried uncontrollably. Because I wouldn’t let my mom near me and would only allow my dad to hold me, my mom believed that it must be a female ghost. She said sometimes she could see the spirit from the corner of her eyes. This lasted a year until we moved to a new house.

I wonder what was on little Bonnie’s mind when this woman showed up each night?