Bury What We Cannot Take: A novel

by Kirstin Chen

  “Come,” she said, leading the way to the dining room. “The food’s ready.”

  Ah Zhai took a long sip of his drink. The honeyed, smoky elixir slid over his tongue and down his throat.

  “Are you coming, Zhai?” Seok Koon asked. “I had the cook make all your favorite dishes.”

  He gazed after his wife’s still-willowy figure in astonishment and gratitude. A quiet home-cooked meal with his family was exactly what he needed. His nerves could not have handled the frenzied, overperfumed air of the Parisian Grill, the deceptively competitive small talk with men he secretly despised and their giddy, gossipy wives.

  His son and mother waited at a table laden with the dishes from home Ah Zhai missed most: winter melon soup, fried oyster omelet, steamed grouper with scallions, glutinous rice dumplings plumpened with minced pork. At the very center stood the pièce de résistance: bamboo shoots of the earth suspended in a mound of clear, quivering jelly. How had Seok Koon tracked down those ingredients? His mouth watered in anticipation of the cool, silky vinegar aspic, the briny, toothsome “bamboo shoots” that were actually Fujian’s prized marine mud worms.

  “What a feast,” he said. “Are we expecting guests?”

  “Only you, the guest of honor,” said his mother.

  He smiled fondly at her and even at his brooding son. Seok Koon gestured for the maid to top off Ah Zhai’s glass, and his gratitude toward his wife blossomed into a deep, sweet tenderness, a kind of mournful affection. He recalled an evening, many years ago, when she’d come to him, shyly, clad only in a filmy white slip he knew she’d had made especially for his visit home. He’d told Lulu that he and his wife were no longer intimate, but there, in the dim glow of the lamp, Seok Koon’s resemblance to Shangguan Yunzhu in her celebrated film Shanghai Nights excited him. They made love once, and then again in the middle of the night, when she’d roused him with her hand, even though she knew he had to catch the first ferry off the islet. At dawn, he left without waking her, planting a shoe on the white slip and ripping the delicate fabric. He hadn’t known then that he’d never return.

  Heat settled on the back of his neck. He masked his unease by waving his chopsticks and saying, “Eat while it’s hot.”

  He ladled soup into his mother’s bowl and filled his own plate. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d savored these flavors. Lulu thought Fujianese food too heavy, too coarse.

  Only after he’d cleaned his plate did he notice the rest of the family picking at their food. His mother had barely touched her soup. Seok Koon removed the fine bones from her piece of fish and then passed it on to Ah Liam.

  “The meal isn’t to your liking?” asked Ah Zhai. “Have I been away too long to remember how Fujianese food should taste?”

  His son studied his still full plate.

  His mother said, “The older I get, the less I eat,” but she was eyeing Seok Koon askance.

  “I guess I don’t have much appetite either,” his wife said. Her smile stopped short of her eyes.

  The tension crept back into him. “Is something the matter?”

  Abruptly, his wife stood. “Actually, there’s something I need to tell you. I don’t know why I thought to put it off.” She left the room.

  Ah Zhai felt cheated. “Mother, does this have to do with the little one?”

  His mother leaned in. “No permits until July.”

  He fingered his tumbler. July was over a month away; they couldn’t wait that long.

  Seok Koon returned. “There’s a moratorium on exit permits, but I may have found a solution.” She opened a copy of a tabloid newspaper before him.

  “What’s this?” He brushed the tabloid aside. “Someone had better start explaining.”

  Seok Koon smoothed the tabloid and pointed to a headline. She was telling him about some priest she’d sought out who’d convinced her to pay a couple of thugs to smuggle their daughter across the border in the back of a truck.

  He watched her chapped lips move, spouting those absurd statements. He didn’t understand how anyone could be so naïve.

  His wife pressed a folded piece of paper into his hand and said, “All of it goes to the smugglers. The church pockets nothing.”

  Ah Zhai unfolded the paper and took in the preposterous row of numbers. Three pairs of eyes stared back at him. “My wife, have you gone mad? Do I need to have you committed?”

  Seok Koon’s face crumpled like the sheet of paper in his palm. He threw the paper ball on the floor. “Entrusting our daughter to smugglers? Hiding her in the back of a truck for hours? Maybe days?”

  “Zhai, I fear there’s no other way,” said Seok Koon.

  Ah Zhai turned to his mother. Surely she still had her wits about her; surely she agreed with him.

  “I don’t know what to do,” his mother said. “I’ve gone over it a thousand times in my head. What do you think we should do?”

  His gaze landed on his son, who sank into his chair.

  “You,” Ah Zhai said, shaking his finger at the boy. “You are the reason we’re in this predicament in the first place.”

  The boy’s eyes filled. He was almost thirteen and still behaved like a child. Ah Liam’s features may have resembled Seok Koon’s, but Ah Zhai knew his sensitive temperament was his own. “Don’t cry.”

  Bee Kim reached out to comfort the boy, but Ah Zhai’s look made her pull back. He turned to his wife, determined to make her understand. “This scheme of yours is out of the question. We have no idea who these thugs are. What if they panic and turn her in?” He fought to keep his tone measured. “Do you know what happens to people who are caught attempting to flee? Do you really think those monsters will spare her because of her age?”

  The veins in his wife’s neck stood out like tree roots, but her voice was just above a whisper. “And if we do nothing, what will happen to her then? The abandoned child of capitalist traitors. They’ll make an example of her, treat her worse than a stray dog.” She pressed her face in her hands.

  His mother touched Seok Koon’s shoulder. “Zhai has a point. Let’s not be hasty.”

  Seok Koon jerked away. “Contrary to what you may believe, Ma, your son is as human and as fallible as the rest of us. Ask him why he didn’t send for us sooner? Why didn’t he move us to Hong Kong before the borders closed?”

  Ah Zhai slammed a hand on the table and stood. “Yes, if only I were a soothsayer, then our family could avoid all misfortune. Too bad I’m just a businessman.” He kicked the paper ball with all his might, and it bounced meekly off the wall. “San San may have to wait until July, but she will cross the border safely like you three did.”

  His wife’s head curled toward her chest as though she were trying to shrink into herself. His mother worked her napkin between her fingers like prayer beads. His son wept silently into his plate.

  Ah Zhai’s hands clenched into fists. “I told you not to cry.” He looked about for something to hurl and then swept the half-full tumbler off the table. Amber droplets hit his face as crystal shattered against marble. He swiped his shirt cuff across his forehead. “Get someone to clean up this mess.” He strode out the door without waiting for the maid to bring his hat.

  Inside the elevator, his back found the soft quilted wall. He shut his eyes against the glare of the light and against that dizzying string of numbers no reasonable person would think to pay.

  11

  Day after day, San San sat in an empty classroom, laboring over her self-criticism essay. In the course of a week, she’d completed five different drafts—enough pages to paper a wall—but each time Comrade Ang came to inspect what she’d written, he rejected her work.

  “You barely sound sorry,” he said, ripping her pages in half as she held back tears. “Humble yourself before the Party and confess the full extent of your wrongdoings.”

  How do I do that? What does that mean? she longed to ask. Tell me what to write, and I’ll do it. She couldn’t understand why her brother spoke so admiringly of this cold, cruel
man.

  She started over, criticizing her family background in even harsher language.

  My bourgeois upbringing is like a demon that seizes control of my body and mind, commanding me to give in to my selfish, lazy nature.

  She thought of her grandmother’s story about the neighbor girl who’d been possessed. Was it only a few weeks ago that she’d genuinely feared that her family’s tainted blood had driven her grandmother to hammer the Chairman’s portrait? Gazing up at the beaming face atop the blackboard, she was filled with spite toward her slightly younger but so much more naïve self. Who was the real deviant party here? She who wanted only to see her father one last time before he died, or the officials who refused to hear her out? If someone handed her a hammer right now, who was to say she wouldn’t take out her anger in the only way available to her?

  The tip of her pencil snapped. She’d marred her paper with a thick black cloud. Flipping her exercise book to a fresh page, she pushed these thoughts from her mind. She’d never get out of this prison if she allowed such distractions.

  I am deeply grateful to the Party and to our Great Helmsman for showing me the error of my ways. Chairman Mao is the exorcist who has freed me from the demon and brought me back into the light.

  “Not only did you shirk work,” said Comrade Ang, “but you increased the workload for everyone else.” He suggested she open with a paragraph about how she, the descendant of generations of landlords, had once again exploited the labor of the peasantry, perpetuating the very system the Party toiled to destroy.

  As far as San San could tell, the only people who’d been affected by her actions were her classmates: the children, if not of capitalists and industrialists, then of powerful cadres. Still, she started at the beginning, writing until her hand cramped and her neck ached and the words no longer made sense.

  By the time she was allowed to go home, the sun hung low in the sky. She was too exhausted to do more than swallow a few mouthfuls of dinner before retreating to her room. Lying in bed, she read her mother’s most recent letter—which reported that Pa, though weak, was still hanging on—and drifted off to sleep. At some point in the night, she was awoken by Auntie Rose peeking through the doorway, and she managed to lift her impossibly heavy head and acknowledge her piano teacher before plummeting back down the tunnel of her slumber.

  Sunday afternoon, back in that empty classroom, San San was considering whether mentioning her father’s illness in her essay would garner a little sympathy from Comrade Ang, or, instead, accusations that she was making excuses for her behavior. If she decided to mention the illness, how would she convincingly describe Pa’s precarious condition when her mother had been so vague? Why had her mother said so little? Was it because she didn’t want San San to worry? Or because she’d sent the letter before she’d learned of the safety bureau’s hiatus and had expected to give San San the details in person?

  Her mother’s letter had arrived the day before, but had been dated a week before that. San San’s pencil clattered to the floor. She realized she had no idea whether her father was alive or dead. In the time it took for the letter to land on the islet and get past the censors and arrive at the villa, Pa’s condition could have changed. For all San San knew, he’d miraculously recovered, or was already gone.

  Her eyes fell on the calendar tacked on the wall. Somehow, without her quite noticing, the end of May had come and gone, and it was June. She walked up to the calendar to make sure she’d read the correct date. Could her family really be due back in three days? San San knew then that she would never set foot in Hong Kong. Never bid her father farewell. Never sleep beneath the gauzy pink curtains of her canopy bed. Never run her fingers across the smooth ivory keyboard of her Broadwood baby grand. The question of why her family had amassed such luxuries for so short a trip rose and then quickly faded, replaced by the knowledge that none of this mattered. No longer did she have to shoulder the responsibility of getting herself to Hong Kong. From here on out, all she had to do was await her family’s return.

  She picked up her pencil and sat back down. The knots and tangles that had strangled her mind instantly loosened their grip. She tore up the pages she’d already written and started over once again, determined to criticize herself so ruthlessly that Comrade Ang would have no choice but to accept her essay.

  Indeed, upon reading the ten pages that had poured out of her in less than three hours, Comrade Ang gave her a stiff nod. “Tomorrow, you’ll join your classmates.”

  She was too depleted to rejoice.

  The following morning, she skipped down Tranquil Seas Road and detoured past Little Red’s house so she wouldn’t have to enter the classroom alone. But when she rang the bell, the house girl informed her that Little Red had left an hour earlier.

  Minutes before the first bell, San San arrived to find her classmates already seated. Even more worrisome was the sight of Comrade Ang standing at the blackboard with his arms folded across his chest while Teacher Lu sat meekly in the back.

  In a booming voice, Comrade Ang said, “Ong San San, take your seat,” as though addressing the entire class.

  She sat down beside Little Red and grinned furtively at her friend, who seemed preoccupied by her own fingernails. The rest of her classmates were focused on the political discussion leader, even Stinky, who typically pulled grotesque monkey faces whenever anyone inadvertently glanced his way.

  The opening bell rang high and shrill.

  “Now the self-criticism session can begin,” said Comrade Ang.

  San San’s limbs grew heavy. Her hands and feet tingled. He hadn’t mentioned this part. “Come to the front, Ong San San.”

  She pushed back her chair and walked slowly to the discussion leader. He handed her the ten sheets of paper she’d written the day before and told her to share her essay with the class.

  “All of it?” Her voice squeaked.

  “Of course.”

  A thousand pins pricked the backs of her eyes. Along with her last letter, Ma had sent a story called “The Little Match Girl,” hand copied on lined paper to increase its chances of slipping past censors. The tale of the impoverished, unloved little girl who’d burned through her matches and frozen to death had made San San dizzy with rage. Now she channeled that rage toward Comrade Ang. No matter what, she would not let him see her cry.

  She began to read.

  “Louder,” said the discussion leader.

  She raised her voice.

  “I said louder. Start over.”

  The words on the page blurred. She blinked hard and returned to the beginning. She dared not look at her classmates for fear of seeing in their faces even a sliver of Comrade Ang’s contempt.

  And then a strange thing happened. By the end of the first page, San San discovered she’d spent so many hours rearranging those same few phrases about her own unworthiness and the Party’s magnanimity that she could detach herself from the meaning of the words and simply push air through her vocal chords and move her lips. Sound waves drifted through her ear canal without penetrating her brain.

  When she’d read all ten pages, Comrade Ang let her take her seat.

  This time, Little Red gave her a small, worried smile, and San San accepted the conciliatory gesture by squeezing her friend’s clammy hand beneath their shared desk.

  Comrade Ang said, “Now it’s time for you students to participate in the criticism of Ong San San. Each and every one of you has a responsibility to help Ong San San correct her ways.”

  A cord tightened across San San’s chest. How stupid of her to think that turning in that essay would make everything right. Her brother had once mentioned three boys who’d been forced onstage to have their heads shaved in front of the entire middle school. She couldn’t remember their crimes.

  Comrade Ang continued. “No stone must be left unturned if we truly want to help Ong San San grasp her faults.” He looked around the room. “Who’s first?”

  Little Red raised her hand and leapt up with
out waiting to be called on. San San recoiled like she’d been slapped.

  “Ong San San is always the last to volunteer for class labor trips,” her friend said. “It’s no surprise that she hid in the truck to get out of work. From now on, she must labor twice as hard as the rest of us to prove her loyalty to the Party.”

  Little Red took her seat. San San reached beneath their desk and pinched her friend’s arm as hard as she could, but Little Red neither flinched nor turned her head.

  Precious, a girl San San had never spoken to, was next. “Ong San San lives in a villa full of servants who wait on her hand and foot. No wonder she doesn’t know the value of productive labor.”

  “Yes!” cried the typically stoic Comrade Ang, punching a fist into the air. “Laziness is a disease that must be eradicated before it contaminates us all.”

  Then came Stinky. “One time I asked Ong San San to help me with my homework, and she refused. Not only is she lazy, but she is selfish and arrogant, too.”

  San San was furious. How dare he spout such lies! Stinky never asked for help; he only begged to copy her assignments. The truth threatened to burst out of her, but she clamped her back teeth. She thought of the little match girl, lighting one match after another to block out a heartless, unforgiving world.

  One by one, her classmates accused her of lacking empathy, of putting on airs, of disrespecting her teachers.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” said Comrade Ang. “Here in new China we will stamp out arrogance, insubordination, and most of all, capitalistic deviance.”

  The classroom erupted in applause. San San’s classmates jumped up and shouted over one another, desperate to add another transgression to the sprawling list. Their voices blended together until she could no longer make out what she was supposed to be guilty of. The accusations passed over her like a blade over a whetstone. None of them could widen the gash that Little Red had made with that first contribution.

  After a long, long while, Comrade Ang held up his hand, and the classroom quieted. His face and neck were streaked with sweat. “Ong San San,” he said, beckoning her to the front of the room.