by Kirstin Chen
Their eyes locked, and for a moment, he thought he’d made himself heard.
She opened her pocketbook and retrieved an envelope, which she slid across the table.
“What’s this?” In all their years together, Lulu had never once written him the kind of florid, sentimental letter he’d written her. She’d left him little notes and reminders, of course, but never anything more.
“For you and your family,” she said.
Pressure mounted in Ah Zhai’s ears.
“From Francis and me.”
The din in the tearoom became a buzz of white noise. He pushed the envelope away like it was tainted. “No. Never. No.”
“Zhai, it’s just a loan.”
“I said no.”
Their tea arrived. He watched the waitress set down the teapots and sugar bowl and milk pitcher, and arrange the strainers over the cups, and finally, finally pour out their tea, and all the while he resisted the urge to send the whole elaborate setting crashing onto the floor.
As soon as the waitress retreated, Ah Zhai said, “I don’t need his money. An English banker wants the house.”
“Oh,” Lulu said. “I’m glad to hear it. When will you sign?”
“Everything was dealt with yesterday.” He knew that she knew it was a lie.
“These things take such a long time to go through.” She touched the envelope. “Take this for now.”
The back of his neck blazed. “Tell him I don’t need his money.”
“It’s not for you, it’s for your little girl.”
Everything about Lulu, from her weak-tea eyes to her soft, pliable mouth to her white hands encircling the base of her throat exuded pity. He knew then that any remaining traces of affection she’d felt toward him he’d successfully obliterated with his failure to rescue San San. Perhaps Lulu had never truly loved him, not the way he loved her. Perhaps, over the years, her feelings had transformed from a teenager’s girlish infatuation into a longtime companion’s restrained—and resigned—affection, bypassing love altogether. He wondered if his wife’s love had ever been pure, unsullied by duty and convention. Though what did it matter, now that she hated him, too.
Gently, patronizingly, Lulu said, “Once you sell the house and pay him back, the whole thing will be over. No one will ever know. I’ll make sure of it.”
He tried again. “I love you.”
This time she simply shook her head.
He thought of his daughter in that large, rambling villa. His last trip to the islet, San San had run to him, a man she couldn’t have recognized, as fast as her chubby little legs would carry her, hurling her soft, tender body fearlessly, wholeheartedly into his embrace. Moments later, she would grow shy, but Ah Zhai would always remember her squawking laugh as he lifted her into the air, her unbridled delight. His San San. The only one he hadn’t yet had the chance to wound and push away.
His fingers crept toward the envelope. He watched his hand as though it were something separate from him. He took the envelope with his thumb and first two fingers, weighing the full cost of tucking it into his breast pocket. One side of the scale sagged beneath his wife, mother, son, daughter, along with his father and grandfather and all the other ancestors he recognized only from their dark, dreary portraits; the other side held Lulu.
“Thank you,” he managed to say.
“I couldn’t stand the thought of Seok Koon losing her.” Her eyes watered.
He saw no point in defending himself. At that moment Lulu might have been thinking of Marigold, but he could think only of her, his willful, impulsive beauty who’d left him once and for all.
26
Once Gor’s breathing had deepened, and San San was sure he was asleep, she reached beneath her mat for her letters and loosened the grosgrain ribbon holding them together. In the darkness, she could barely make out her mother’s neat hand, but that mattered little, for she knew the words by heart. She ran her fingertips over the thick, grainy paper like a blind man reading braille. Here, her mother described San San’s room with its pink-curtained canopy bed, the Broadwood baby grand that would go untouched until she arrived; there Ma wrote of a man in the colony, someone she’d come to respect and trust. A few of the lines had been blacked out by censors, so San San wasn’t sure if Ma was referring to her father in some oblique way, or to someone else altogether. He is intelligent and so very kind, Ma had written. He will help reunite our family.
San San carefully folded the letters along their creases and returned them to her hiding spot beneath her mat. Evidently this man her mother spoke so highly of hadn’t succeeded in rescuing her. But on this warm, starless night, less than twelve hours before she was to board the ship that would take her to her family, she didn’t want to think about all the ways in which they’d failed her. She rolled onto her back and spread her arms and legs, the position that best shielded her knobby bones from the concrete floor. Her tangled, sweat-matted hair caught on the straw weave, and she smoothed out the strands with her fingers. Soon, soon, she would trade in this life she was growing accustomed to for one filled with hot baths, soft mattresses, warm featherweight quilts. This time tomorrow, if she so chose, she would bury her face in the softness of her mother’s abdomen, relax every muscle in her body, and let someone else bear the weight of her.
The next time her eyes darted open, the sky was fading from black to lavender. She lay very still. Soon she would rise and prepare breakfast, heating yesterday’s leftover sweet potatoes on the small woodstove. After breakfast, she would leave with the basin of dirty dishes, but instead of going to the communal tap, she would lay the basin on the staircase landing for Gor to happen upon when he eventually went looking for her. By then San San would have made it to the harbor and disappeared onto her ship. Once in Hong Kong she would send money and medicine and those multicolored lozenges that had filled her mother’s packages. She pictured Gor opening the box, crying out as the candies poured into his lap.
Across the rooftop, Gor stirred. San San stretched her arms overhead, yawned audibly, and pushed herself upright. As though it were any other day, she folded and put away her straw mat before she started a fire in the stove and boiled a pot of water for Auntie’s tea. At first, the powdered herbs that Gor had purchased with her grandmother’s bangle had seemed a miracle cure. Auntie was well enough to sit out in the sunshine, take a sponge bath. The day before, however, the powder had abruptly lost all healing powers. Auntie had stayed in her tent, refusing food and Gor’s repeated offers to massage her feet.
Still, San San dutifully mixed a pinch of the powder in hot water and took the cup to Gor. He was squatting before the belly of the stove, blowing on the smoldering wood to get the fire to catch once more. The discoloration around his eyes had faded to a deep ochre, a few shades darker than his skin. “Will you take it to her?” he asked.
San San paused at the opening of the tent she’d never before entered. In fact, she typically refrained from looking inside, for Auntie’s pallid, emaciated body and its stale odor frightened, even repulsed her.
“Auntie,” she called softly. “Auntie, I have your tea.”
Auntie responded with a moan. San San gingerly pulled back one side of the tarp. The stink of decay hit her full in the face. Auntie lay on her side, her thin limbs swathed in blankets.
Holding her breath, San San crouched at the tent’s opening and offered the cup. But this morning, Auntie was too weak to sit up. San San had no choice but to crawl inside, prop up her lolling head, and hold the cup to her pale, chapped lips.
“Thank you, child,” Auntie said, blinking. The whites of her eyes had yellowed like aged piano keys.
A flurry of footsteps pounded up the stairwell, and the door to the rooftop flew open. San San managed to steady her hand before she tipped the hot dregs all over Auntie’s blanket.
“Housing Registration Board,” a gruff voice said.
San San froze. If Auntie hadn’t fingered the edge of her blanket, signaling for her to burrow be
neath it, she wouldn’t have known what to do.
Gor’s voice shook as he spoke. “Uncles, what can I do for you?”
San San wondered how many of them there were.
“Where is your mother, boy?”
“She’s in the tent. She’s an invalid.”
Breathing heavily, Auntie rolled onto her side, and San San nestled into the curve of her bony back. The air beneath the blanket was hot as a furnace. An angry rash spread down San San’s nape and she longed to scratch it.
“We’ve received reports that you’ve been harboring an unregistered individual in your home.”
“There must be some mistake. Only my ma and I live here.” Gor let out a tremulous laugh. “And as you can see, there’s hardly enough room for the two of us.”
Once they found San San, it wouldn’t take them long to discover her true identity. Perhaps whoever had reported her had offered a description, and they’d already pieced everything together.
Footsteps neared the mouth of the tent. “Comrade,” the gruff voice said, “you may be ill, but we must do our job.”
San San pressed her cheek to the spot below Auntie’s shoulder blade. Auntie’s surprisingly robust heartbeat reverberated through her entire body like a warning signal.
Auntie said hoarsely, “Of course, come in.”
The officer raised the tarp, letting in a gust of air. He breathed loudly through his mouth, and San San squeezed shut her eyes like an ostrich jamming its head into the sand.
After a moment, the officer said softly, “Forgive my disturbance, comrade. I hope your health improves.”
The officer rounded up his team.
Gor said, “Sorry, Uncles, for wasting your time.”
“Don’t give us a reason to have to come back.” With that, the officer and his team trooped down the stairs.
Tension escaped from San San in a shudder. The stench and the heat and the itchiness faded away. She was snuggled against her mother in her soft, roomy bed, with her brother on the other side. Outside a cold wind blew, but Ma’s warmth was more comforting than any quilt.
Auntie lowered the blanket. “Child, are you all right?”
San San opened her eyes, almost sorry to have to get up. One corner of the tarp lifted, and Gor squeezed into the tight space. Wrapping his strong, skinny arms around them both, he released a maniacal laugh. At first the strange, screechy sound disturbed San San, but when Auntie joined in, her laughter husky and clipped, San San let go. Wave after wave of laughter rolled out from deep within her abdomen, shaking her chest and shoulders.
“Who do you think reported us?” asked Gor.
The laughter drained out of San San.
“It could have been anyone in the building,” said Auntie, “but I’d put my money on that busybody, Mrs. Chan.”
Gor murmured in agreement, and San San tried to remember which neighbor was Mrs. Chan.
“I told you both to be careful,” Auntie said. “This can’t happen again.”
Sunlight sliced through a gap in the tent, and San San sat up. How much time had passed? If she hurried, might she still make the boat?
“We’ll be careful, we promise.” Gor looked at San San. “We’ll never leave the building at the same time. She’ll only use the back entrance and the back stairs.”
As casually as she could, San San said, “All right. And now I must wash the dishes.”
“Leave it for later,” said Gor.
“No. If I get there too late, I’ll spend ages waiting in line.” She crawled over the tangle of limbs and out of the tent. “I’ll be home soon,” she said cheerfully, hoping neither of them noticed the way her voice cracked.
Inside the stairwell, San San dropped the basin on the landing and flew down the steps and out the front door. She crossed the overpass leading to the harbor just as the largest ship she’d ever seen pulled out of the docks. The ship was as long as one of those brand-new dormitory buildings lying on its side. The deck of the ship was filled with uniform steel crates, stacked neatly in threes, like a child’s building blocks. Surely this couldn’t be her boat, for if it were, the university student with the cross pendant would have made sure to mention its size.
The ship gained speed and rotated counterclockwise, churning the ocean in its wake. There, perched on the very tip of the back deck, was a bright green flag. Her heart contracted violently, as though an invisible hand had plunged into her chest cavity, engulfed the pulsing organ, and squeezed. She squinted into the sunlight, tracking the square of fluttering fabric as it shrank and finally vanished into the distance. Calmly, rationally, like a mere observer to this tragedy, she considered falling to the ground, cursing her mother and grandmother and brother, bemoaning her poisoned fate. Instead, she dropped her head and trudged back the way she’d come.
The next time she turned to look, the flat expanse of ocean was marred only by gentle ripples flowing with the breeze. It was as if the immense ship had never come at all.
She crossed Commercial Square, where her reflection in a grimy shop window slowed her to a stop. Her greasy, overgrown bangs were pasted to her forehead. Her once smooth, round cheeks were all angles and planes. Her skin had lost its luster and was sallow, stripped bare. And yet her eyes glinted like dark, polished stones, and she sensed this starkness was her true face, excavated from beneath its old layer of flesh. She brought her nose to the glass for a closer look at this not-quite stranger, and her reflection vanished, replaced by a bored salesgirl halfheartedly shooing her away.
Outside the marketplace, she passed a sidewalk barber and doubled back. “Uncle, will you cut my hair?”
The barber tossed his cigarette butt on the ground and motioned for her to sit on his stool. “How do you want it?”
“Cut it all off,” she said. “As short as you can.”
“Little sister, are you sure?”
“Very sure,” she said before she could change her mind.
He said, “All right, then. It’s just hair, after all.”
It was just hair—a clump of lifeless fibers shrouding her head, no different from a wig, which was no different from her old face that had revealed itself to be a mask.
The barber raised his rusty scissors, tugged a thick lock of her hair, and snipped.
She couldn’t help it, her eyes filmed over, as though the scissor blades had pricked her flesh.
He tugged another lock and snipped again.
“Wait,” she said. “I have no money.” She looked around for a mirror and wondered how much he’d cut, if she could hide the short pieces beneath her longer strands.
He lowered his scissors and sighed. “Well I can’t send you home looking like a lunatic, can I?”
She gazed back at him, the correct answer beyond her reach.
“Just this once, it’s free.”
She held very still and listened to each sharp snip that would bring her closer to her essential self.
When he was done, he held up a mirror. She ran her fingers through the short crop and broke into a grin. No longer was she the missing daughter of the Ong family but a street urchin with whatever name she chose.
At Gor’s building, she entered through the back door and climbed the back stairs. On the top-floor landing, Gor sat in the darkness beside the basin of dirty dishes with his knees pulled into his chest.
“Sio Beh, what did you do to your hair?”
She sat down beside him. “I don’t want to cause any more trouble for you and Auntie. This way no one will recognize me.”
He rubbed his palm over her head. “You look like a boy.”
She said, “That’s the point.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d come back.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d want me back.”
He jabbed his elbow in her side. “Where would you go? You’re too small to go off on your own.”
She studied Gor’s earlobe, fleshy and long. The kind that was said to bring good fortune. Amid the bleakness crowding in on all sides, he wa
s a single shining spark of luck.
“We’re brothers now,” she said.
“You’ve gotta be kidding. You still kick like a girl.”
She punched his arm. “How about that? Did that feel like a girl?”
He laughed and lightly returned her punch.
Her ship wouldn’t return to the harbor for another fortnight, an eternity as far as she was concerned. Anything could happen in that time. Gor could get caught stealing. Auntie could get weaker, maybe even succumb to her illness. Despite her best efforts, she could be discovered and sent back to the islet, unless she found another way to get to Hong Kong.
She stood and lifted the basin of dishes.
“I’ll come with you,” said Gor.
She shook her head. “You stay and take care of Auntie.”
Right now, what she wanted more than anything was for her life with this, her temporary family, to go back to normal. Besides, there was no point in both of them waiting in line.
27
Bee Kim set down her needlepoint canvas and reached for the ringing phone. “Yes?”
“Good afternoon. This is Mr. Ong’s secretary. May I speak to Mrs. Ong?”
Bee Kim knew the girl meant Seok Koon, but she feigned dimness. “This is Mrs. Ong.”
The girl hesitated and then evidently decided against challenging her. “Mr. Ong said to inform you that the money is in his account.”
Bee Kim hurriedly thanked her and slammed down the phone. “Daughter-in-Law,” she called. “He took the loan. Zhai took the loan. San San will be fine.”
Seok Koon ran in the room. “What? Impossible! Who told you?”
Again they counted the days that had passed. Seok Koon’s letter detailing the need for San San to collect her inheritance in person would have reached the villa about a week ago, which meant that a response from Cook—hopefully reporting that the girl had received her permit and was leaving on the next train—could arrive any day now.
