by Kirstin Chen
The boy nearly dropped his packet of rice. “You scared me to death.”
“Sorry.”
He raised the packet to his chin and swept more rice into his mouth in quick fluid strokes. With his mouth full he said, “It’s summer.”
San San had missed so much school, she’d forgotten. “Right,” she said quickly. “I don’t have school either.” She knelt on the grass beside him.
He sized her up. “What do you want?”
She wagged her head vaguely. She just wanted to chat.
“Hungry?”
Eyeing the leftover fish, she admitted she was. But the boy dug in his pocket and held out a handful of crab apples, which she accepted all the same. The tartness of the fruits drenched her mouth with saliva. “Thank you,” she mumbled as she chewed.
“More?” the boy asked, holding out another handful.
She nodded and pushed the marble-sized globes into her mouth.
He must have noticed her continuing to eye the fish because he said, “I have to bring this back to my ma.”
“Oh,” said San San.
“She’s very sick,” he said matter-of-factly. “She has a mass in her lung, and there is no cure.”
It was San San’s turn to reveal something. “Tuberculosis killed my family. I’m an orphan.” How easily the lies came to her.
The boy set down the rice packet. “Then where do you live?”
San San hesitated. The boy didn’t seem like someone who’d report her to the Housing Registration Board. “I don’t really have a home.”
The boy seemed to mull this over.
She quickly changed the subject. “You sing very well. Who taught you? Your ma?”
The boy nodded. “She and I used to do duets. She plays the accordion, but now she’s too sick to leave the house.”
San San saw an opening. “Do you need a partner?”
The boy frowned. “You play the accordion?”
“I play the piano. I’m very good. I could easily pick up the accordion.” She’d once seen an accordionist perform with a military theater troupe and had noticed how a single button on the instrument produced a whole chord. The accordion seemed like a simplified piano. She hoped she wasn’t overestimating her abilities.
“And can you sing?”
San San swallowed the last of the crab apples and launched into the first song that popped into her head: “The Favors of the Communist Party Are Too Many to Be Told.” Compared to the boy’s, her voice was nothing special, but it was loud and clear and right on pitch.
The boy closed his eyes and listened intently. When San San moved on to the chorus, he held up his hand. “Okay, okay, that’s enough.”
He didn’t elaborate, and she asked timidly, “What did you think?”
He mulled it over. “Not too bad. Can you sing harmony?”
She’d never really tried before. “Of course. Sing anything and I’ll show you.”
He grinned. “I’ll teach you the harmonies. You don’t have to make them up yourself.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s much easier.”
“I’ll take you home to try out my ma’s accordion.”
She couldn’t believe her luck. Once she got to his house, perhaps she could ask to stay there—just for a short while. “I swear I won’t disappoint you,” she said, and then added shyly, “Gor.” Elder brother.
He held out the remaining rice, which she accepted at once.
“After we take out my ma’s share, we’ll split all food forty-sixty because I’m bigger than you. Deal?”
She was too busy eating to negotiate. “Deal.”
He retied his cloth bundle. “Get up, then. We have work to do.”
That evening, after San San had watched Gor perform to similar acclaim at the train station and in Commercial Square, he led her down narrow, winding streets, past crumbling tenements that would have long ago collapsed had they not been packed so tightly together.
Gor stopped in front of a dilapidated, soot-colored building and said, “We’re here.”
San San followed him up a dark, dank staircase that reeked of urine. She covered her nose with her sleeve, lowering it only to ask, “Are you on the top floor?”
“Kind of.”
She almost added that her old home was also on the top floor, but stopped herself in time.
On the fifth-floor landing, instead of turning down the gloomy hallway to one of the apartments, Gor pushed open a door that revealed an even narrower flight of stairs.
“Where are we going?” San San asked.
“Almost there.”
At the head of the stairs, Gor opened yet another door. San San stepped onto the rooftop, at the very center of which was a tent, fashioned from a length of dirty tarp. It seemed too small to house even a single person.
“Ma, I’m back,” Gor called, as San San would have done upon entering her flat.
She stared at the back of Gor’s head. In the twilight, she could have mistaken him for Ah Liam.
“Ma?” Gor repeated.
A strained, hoarse voice emerged from the tent. “Son, you’re home. Have you eaten?”
“Wait here,” Gor said. He lifted one edge of the tarp and crawled inside. “Ma, I brought a friend. She’s an orphan.”
“Oh?”
“She has nowhere to live. Can she stay here?”
And to think San San didn’t even have to broach the question herself. She waited for a response, but all she heard was a string of violent phlegm-soaked coughs. Gor left the tent, uncovered a pail of water in the corner, and dipped a cup inside. San San hung back by the doorway as if to give them privacy, but when he returned to the tent, she moved closer to eavesdrop.
“How can she stay?” his mother asked. “If someone reports us to the Housing Registration Board, just imagine the trouble we’ll be in.”
“Her whole family died of tuberculosis.”
“It’s out of the question, Son.”
San San backed away. She should have expected this. She wondered if there were any chance her stolen boat remained on the beach, and how many nights she could spend in it without inviting suspicion.
“She sings pretty well and plays the piano,” Gor said. “I’ll teach her the accordion. You know it’s pointless for me to go out on my own.”
San San didn’t understand what he meant. Gor played just fine on his own. Better than fine. His pleas were met with silence. More coughing commenced.
“Drink a little water,” said Gor.
After the coughing faded, his mother said, “I suppose she can stay the night, if you promise to be extremely careful.”
San San rose up on her toes and raised her arms in triumph.
“I will,” said Gor. “You’ll feel so much better once I can purchase your tea.”
“Extremely careful.”
“Ma,” he said. “I swear I will.”
San San gazed out at the tent homes that had sprouted from the surrounding rooftops. Judging from the garments hanging on the laundry line, the neighboring rooftop housed many more people than this one.
“Your friend plays the piano? She must come from a rich family.”
San San pulled the hem of her sleeve over her father’s watch.
“They’re dead,” said Gor.
“That’s very unfortunate.”
“I almost forgot, I brought you fish,” Gor said, but his mother replied that she had no appetite and insisted he eat it.
Finally Gor came out of the tent and brought San San a straw mat and a thin blanket.
“You can sleep here tonight,” he said.
She thanked him solemnly, masking the joy that fluttered wildly within her. A soft breeze kicked up, ruffling her hair. “It’s pleasant up here,” she said.
“I prefer it to where we lived before. It was too cramped,” said Gor. “We’re supposed to be relocated, but the authorities have been saying that for years, and nothing’s happened yet.”
A soft moan rose from
the tent.
San San spoke quietly. “Your ma needs a doctor.”
“It’s too late. There’s nothing they can do.”
San San wished Dr. Lee were here to help the sick woman. He would surely be able to cure her. He was so intelligent, so calm. Her head thronged with the crazed insults of a crowd possessed—insults aimed not at Dr. Lee and Auntie Rose, but at her, Ong San San, the girl who’d caused the execution of the last of her loved ones left on the islet. Tears gushed in her eyes.
Gor placed a hand on her shoulder. “My ma’s been sick a long time. Don’t cry, Sio Beh.”
Hearing him refer to her as “little sister” made San San tear up more. All day long she’d lied glibly and without hesitation about her family. Only now did she see the truth behind those lies. In the past days, she’d hidden from the police, escaped the servants, made it across the channel—all by herself because she’d had to; she had no one else.
She tried to smile at Gor through her tears.
“On clear nights like this, I sleep out in the open,” he said. He retrieved his own bedding, which he set next to the tent. “So I can hear if she needs anything.”
San San arranged her bedding on the other end of the rooftop. When Gor turned away, she removed her leather portfolio from her waistband and slid it beneath the straw mat. She wasn’t sleepy at all, but she lay down anyway. Resting her hands on her thighs, she moved her fingers as if across a keyboard, as if she were playing one of her Bach Inventions. She was the best student of the best piano teacher on Drum Wave Islet; surely she’d be able to pick up the accordion.
She tapped her fingers with more vigor, and her ears filled with the corresponding notes. She heard the tick-tick-tick of Auntie Rose’s metronome, smelled her sweet sandalwood scent, felt her strong compact hands beating time on her shoulder. San San played through Prelude and Fugue in C Minor over and over, until this image of Auntie Rose supplanted the others lurking in the shadows, and then she drifted off to sleep.
23
Ah Zhai pushed open the door, his nostrils twitching in anticipation of the cooking smells emanating from the ancient upholstery of this shabby Happy Valley hotel he’d called home for the past three days. Another offer on the townhouse had fallen through. Now, no matter how he insisted he could not sink another penny into the place, his realtor was pressuring him to make what he called “simple updates” to raise the house’s appeal to potential buyers. “Take another five percent off,” Ah Zhai told the sputtering, incredulous man. “Whatever it takes to sell it.”
He nodded at the dour receptionist and climbed the spiral staircase to the second floor. He inserted the heavy brass key into the lock and nudged the door open with his toe. The spartan room was just as he’d left it, with its peeling paint and lumpy single bed and narrow shower stall that could only be entered sideways. The rank, fungal odor and the clatter of the ceiling fan he barely noticed anymore.
Without bothering to remove his shoes, Ah Zhai fell back onto the scratchy bedspread and stretched out his limbs like a starfish. He felt his blood surge in all directions to the very tips of his fingers and toes. He shut his eyes and hoped against all odds that sleep would free him, however fleetingly, from his troubles. Within the darkness, however, his mind whirred, spurring on his heartbeat.
A tentative knock on the door startled him. He sat up. No one knew he was here, not even his secretary. And that lazy receptionist should have called to make sure he was receiving guests.
Another, more insistent knock.
“Coming.” He peered through the peephole at the blurred form of his wife and backed away in horror. He couldn’t be seen here. How had she tracked him down? The only thing she wanted from him was what he didn’t have. His first instinct was to escape through a window. It was a blessing in disguise that the hotel had withheld a room on a higher floor.
“Zhai?” Seok Koon called softly.
He would say he’d been in the neighborhood for a business meeting, that he’d taken ill—food poisoning, probably—and had decided to take a room for a few hours until he felt well enough to go home. He cracked open the door.
Her hands cupped opposite elbows as though she were holding something in. “I’m sorry to bother you. Please may I come in?” Her eyes widened as she gazed into the miserable room.
“I had a meeting,” he began.
“Let’s talk inside,” she said.
“I’ll have the money very soon.”
She pushed past him, looked around for somewhere to sit, and perched on the edge of the bed. “Won’t you sit down?”
“I’ll stand.”
She clutched her pocketbook in her lap with both hands. Her face bore a brave smile. “I have good news. Someone has offered to lend us the money.”
“I told you I’ll have it soon.” He turned away, determined to deny everything. When had she learned of his bankruptcy? For how long had she let him spout those sorry excuses while she sat back and listened and secretly thought him a fool?
Seok Koon spoke slowly as though addressing a young child. “It’s a friend of yours named Francis Low. And it’s just a loan. You’ll pay back every penny the instant they release San San.”
More questions flooded his brain. How was his wife in touch with that arrogant, balding, bug-eyed man to whom Lulu had once been promised? The last time Ah Zhai had shown up at Cynthia’s, the housekeeper had told him Lulu had moved out. He assumed she was simply trying to make him leave, but now he knew where his mistress had gone, even if he had no idea how she’d come to befriend Seok Koon.
“I don’t need a loan. You shouldn’t have asked him, and you shouldn’t have come here.”
His wife’s fingertips grazed his shoulder blade. “Zhai, we all need help from time to time.”
A white-hot spark within him burst into flames. He spun around with his arm outstretched. The back of his hand struck his wife’s jaw with an earsplitting CRACK. Seok Koon fell against the bed, cupping her face. She didn’t cry out.
He shook out his sore hand. His next words were a plea. “I told you not to meddle in my affairs.” He was glad she would not look at him, for how did he appear to her? An insecure, good-for-nothing, ridiculous joke. He was half the man Francis Low was, for at least Francis Low had maintained his father’s fortune; Francis Low would never have lost his child. Ah Zhai couldn’t blame Lulu for making her choice any more than he could blame Seok Koon for despising him.
There was nothing he could say in his own defense, so he said, “Tell no one about this place.”
She lowered her hand to reveal the shadow that had spread across her cheek and nodded without meeting his eyes.
He wanted to ask if Lulu had been the one who’d offered the money, if she’d spoken his name, if she’d clasped her white hands around her neck as she always did when discomfited.
He said, “Leave now.”
Seok Koon stood and smoothed her dress and whipped out the door without a word.
Ah Zhai picked up the telephone and dialed reception, ready to spew the entirety of his wrath onto an easy target.
24
Day after day Gor and San San rehearsed the program for their debut performance. They began with “The Crescent Moon Rises,” followed by “Mo Li Hua,” and, to finish, San San would perform a solo rendition of “The Young Shepherdess.” With a little help from Gor’s mother, she’d quickly picked up the accordion, but even so, she wasn’t thrilled about having to play and sing by herself.
“Why can’t you do it?” she asked Gor.
He rolled his eyes. “I already told you, silly, it has to be sung by a girl.”
“Why can’t we play it as a duet?”
“It sounds better with just accordion.”
“What if I make a mistake?”
“Stop worrying like a eunuch,” he said. “Everyone will love you.”
From inside the tent came Auntie’s strained voice. “He’s right, you know. You have talent.”
San San blushed.
After the first night, Gor had said she could stay until the end of the week. She prepared to go back to the harbor to devise a new plan, but Gor didn’t point out when her time was up, and she didn’t remind him. She concocted elaborate stories to explain this penniless family’s generosity. Perhaps Auntie had always longed for another child, a sibling for Gor, but had been too ill to get pregnant; perhaps, fearing she didn’t have long to live, Auntie wanted a companion for her son. San San imagined that as Auntie’s health deteriorated, Gor had grown disillusioned with his schoolmates’ trivial preoccupations. Perhaps he’d been waiting for a friend like her, someone who truly understood what it meant to lose a loved one. She wondered where Gor’s father was, but of course she didn’t ask, even as she longed to share that she, too, had never really known her father.
Once, she awoke in the middle of the night, coated in sweat, unable to shake the image of Pa, moaning in pain and calling her name. Trapped in the hazy purgatory between sleep and alertness, San San raged at her mother for poisoning even her slumber with those lies.
When she and Gor weren’t rehearsing, San San worked to be as unobtrusive as possible. No matter how hungry she was, she ate sparingly and never accepted more. She learned to cook and clean and wash the laundry, so that Gor could devote more time to alleviating Auntie’s pain with hot compresses and massage techniques he’d learned from a sidewalk doctor.
In a matter of days, the ship with the green flag would arrive to bear San San to Hong Kong. Sometimes the yearning for that moment to arrive struck her so deeply she feared she would collapse; other times the view off the rooftop of the sun setting on the city filled her to the brim. She envisioned staying behind, becoming a part of this family; she would forget she’d ever been an Ong.
Finally, one morning, after San San had played through “The Young Shepherdess” three times from start to finish, and Auntie had found the strength to peek out of her tent and offer some pointers—“Slow down when you sing that phrase,” “Draw out the pause for another beat”—Gor declared them ready.
They strapped their instruments to their backs and descended into the foul-smelling stairwell. At the entrance to the tenement, two old women sat on the front steps with their feet in the street.
