Bury What We Cannot Take: A novel

by Kirstin Chen

  She tore the letter in half and then in half again. Methodically she shredded the paper into smaller and smaller pieces, until each was no larger than her thumbnail, until she was certain no one could put the letter back together again. She could not face another unsolvable equation, another impossible quandary.

  32

  Days San San spent roaming the harbor, pouncing on food scraps that the vendors didn’t bother to sweep up, careful never to stay in one spot long enough to attract the attention of the patrolling police. Nights she sneaked back to the tenement and slept at the foot of the back stairs, secretly hoping Gor would come looking for her.

  But the only person who came for her was Mrs. Chan, who poked her awake one morning with the handle of a broom. When San San sprang up, Mrs. Chan grabbed her arm. “You might be able to fool the Housing Registration Board, but you can’t fool me.”

  Before San San could process what she was about to do, she reared back her free hand, gathered her strength, and slapped the woman across the face. Mrs. Chan howled and let go. As San San sprinted away, she didn’t dwell on the brutality of her actions, or on the peculiar rubbery density of the woman’s flesh.

  Outside, thick clouds padded the sky. The air was pregnant with moisture. She’d taken no more than a few steps when fat raindrops beat the crown of her head like marbles. She covered her head with her hands—which slowed her down considerably—until its futility became clear. She dropped her hands and kept running, and the unrelenting raindrops stung her eyes and drenched her hair and clothes.

  In the harbor, she huddled in a corner of the main hall, trying to wring out her blouse and pant legs. A policeman materialized before her, swinging his baton. His mouth twisted in contempt. “Beat it. You can’t be here.”

  She hurried back into the rain, guessing that an important official was due to arrive at the harbor. Why else was the waiting area so orderly, the floors so clean and free of perfectly edible food scraps?

  Plodding past a row of sampans, she wished for a fisherman to peek out his window and invite her in for a little while, maybe offer her a small bite to eat. But all the shutters were sealed against the downpour, which served her right, given how she’d stolen a boat from one of their own. She stuffed her hands into her pockets and walked on.

  Across the wide avenue from the harbor, she settled on the doorstep of an abandoned shophouse. The instant she relaxed, she was engulfed by a profound ache stemming from the pit of her stomach. She fell onto her side, clutching her belly, wondering if this were how it felt to die. Moments passed before she concluded she wasn’t dying: the ache was deep, merciless hunger.

  Gazing out at the soggy, windblown city, she drew her knees into her torso, as if she could somehow trick her body into thinking she’d filled the gaping hole. When the ache persisted, she stepped out from under the shophouse eaves, lifted her face to the sky, and gulped down the murky-tasting rain, mouthful after mouthful, until the skin of her belly stretched taut. Then she settled back on the steps to wait. All she did these days was wait.

  The whine of sirens filled the air. A long black car, flanked on all sides by a quartet of motorcycles, sped down the avenue toward her. The important official had arrived.

  At the traffic light, the motorcade stopped, giving San San a clear view of the portly, well-groomed man in the car’s back seat. No doubt he was being whisked away to a fancy banquet. She couldn’t stop herself from imagining the exquisite dishes awaiting him: crispy roast duck, and tender garlic-scented greens, and endless bowls of fluffy white rice.

  The official gazed blankly out his window. He didn’t seem to see her. But then he leaned away and said something to an aide and pointed right at San San. She thought to shrink back, duck her head, make herself invisible. Instead she stared back at him.

  A long-ago memory returned to her: the time she demanded to quit the piano like her brother, kicking over a vase of pussy willow branches and facing her mother without fear. It was then that Ma told her she was too ugly to find a husband. She’d burst into tears, not because she longed to be more beautiful, but because she hadn’t thought her appearance mattered to her mother.

  The traffic light turned green. The motorcade drove on. The important official had no reason to devote any more attention to a ragged child who bore little resemblance to a missing girl on a forgotten poster on a tiny islet’s marketplace wall.

  Eventually, the rain slowed and trickled to a stop. San San went back to the harbor. In the short space of time since the official’s arrival, the main hall had returned to its normal state of disarray. Already the floors were littered with paper and cigarette butts, and smeared with spittle and phlegm. The food vendors once again hawked their wares, filling the air with the heavenly scent of grease, but she couldn’t find any good scraps. Instead she swooned over the fried dough sticks, with their glistening golden-brown crusts. She inhaled deeply and felt the void in her belly expand.

  “Shoo,” the vendor said. “Paying customers only.”

  San San slunk off to her corner. She didn’t have the heart to retort that as far as she knew, smells were always free.

  Just then, the strains of an erhu drifted over from the opposite end of the hall. A voice both achingly familiar and strangely new sang, “Half a moon climbs in the sky.”

  How had Gor’s voice changed so dramatically in the few days they’d been apart? His was no longer the hauntingly clear soprano of a boy, but the rich, faintly husky falsetto of a man. And like a fruit just past its peak, it was a voice that was almost unbearably sweet.

  When Gor neared the end of the first verse, San San’s hands tensed involuntarily, preparing for her entrance. She moved her fingers across an imaginary accordion, and to her great surprise, the corresponding notes filled her ears. She craned to see across the hall, and there, standing beside Gor, with San San’s accordion strapped to her torso, was Auntie.

  The accordion bellows swelled and emptied between Auntie’s thin arms in a sensuous, supple dance. Mother and son turned to each other as their voices merged in harmony: “My sweetheart, please make haste, open the window and pluck a rose and gently throw it down.”

  San San saw then that she’d been nothing more than a temporary, second-rate substitute, and a deluded one at that. This family was a single, complete whole. There had never been any space for her.

  She walked out of the main hall and kept going until the music no longer reached her ears, coming to rest by a garbage heap not far from the public latrines. The fetid odor attacked her nostrils and knocked her off balance. Even the policemen would have to agree that her presence here disturbed no one.

  At sunset, a trio of fierce, feral-looking kids tramped toward the garbage heap. The oldest, a boy, appeared to be about San San’s age, the youngest maybe only three or four. At first San San guessed they’d spied her from a distance and wanted to talk to her. But then she watched in horror as they ventured right into the putrid pile and picked through the trash for anything remotely edible.

  Even though the smell no longer bothered her, San San’s stomach spasmed. She turned away, determined to hang on for one more day, to choose starvation over eating garbage.

  “There’s nothing good left,” the oldest one said. “Someone must have gotten here before us.” He stared at San San, and she backed away, not from fear, but from shock that he viewed her as one of them.

  She ended up on the strip of pebbly sand by the water, pacing back and forth, afraid that if she sat down to rest, she would fall asleep and get herself arrested. She paced for what seemed like hours, until her ankles had swollen to twice their size and her feet were scarred with blisters. By now her hunger was so intense, it seemed to emanate not from her gut but from deeper inside, from the very marrow of her bones. She had to make it stop. Her chin fell against her chest. She walked as though aimless, unable to acknowledge where she was headed.

  As she rounded the latrines, she saw the same kids camped out by the garbage pile. They’d built a sm
all fire and were kicking a piece of trash back and forth in its glow. She edged timidly toward them.

  The boy squared his shoulders and placed his hands on his hips. “You again.”

  San San stood as tall as she could. “I’m just taking a walk. The last time I checked, you didn’t own this path.”

  The two younger ones joined their brother. The boy sneered, “Walk where you like. Just stay away from our garbage.”

  San San gazed longingly at the reeking heap, the contours of which were just visible in the dim firelight. Her eyes registered a flicker of motion at the top of the heap before her brain comprehended that what stood before her was a writhing pile of rats.

  The scream coursed up molten and lethal within her. She turned and fled, too revolted to respond to the wild, spiteful laughter that chased her.

  33

  Of all the comic books still standing on the bookshelf in Ah Liam’s old room in the villa, the one he longed to flip through right now was The Boy Who Defeated an Army. The book told the story of a boy his age who, with the aid of an improvised flotation device—fashioned by knotting off and blowing into his uniform trousers—managed to swim out undetected to an enemy ship and set it on fire.

  He stared at the rain drumming the windowpane, regretting all the times he’d scolded his sister for stealing the book and creasing its pages. Was it only a couple of months ago that she’d knocked on his door in the middle of the night because she’d had a bad dream? Instead of letting her climb in bed, he’d kicked his bedspread to the floor and made her lie there. Ma insisted San San would be found. But while she and Grandma shouted into the telephone and spat veiled accusations at each other, only he was taking real action.

  For the past weeks, he and his friends had plotted their return to the mainland. They met at Li An’s house to study and discuss pamphlets containing the Chairman’s latest speeches and essays, which Ah Tek procured from an underground communist at Hong Kong University. They returned to their homes to steal small, barely noticeable sums of money from family members to put toward their train fares. When the money accumulated too slowly, Fatty took a job at a bookstore in Sheung Wan and pledged his entire salary to the cause. Ah Liam tricked his grandmother into handing over a large sum of cash for summer school fees. Li An pawned a ruby ring that her parents had given her on her fifteenth birthday. And finally, they’d reached their goal.

  The clock on the nightstand read a quarter past five. By the time the typhoon hit—that afternoon, according to the evening news—Ah Liam would be back on the mainland to join the revolution. Once he received his dormitory and school assignments, he would get permission to go back to the islet and find out what happened to his sister. Surely the neighbors and the servants would have useful information that the grown-ups couldn’t get from this far away.

  He pulled on his raincoat and rubber boots and shouldered his school satchel. Then he reread the note he’d written minutes earlier and left it tented on his pillow.

  In the dark hallway Ah Liam paused in front of his grandmother’s room. Pressing his ear to the door, he thought he discerned her low, rumbling snore—from this distance, as soothing as a kitten’s purr. Although he’d tried his best to explain his actions in his note, he knew that nothing he wrote would make her accept that his lies and betrayals were neither about nor against her. For this, he was truly sorry. If only she could see what he saw: that the revolution was so much larger than him and her and the rest of the family.

  He hurried out the front door. The elevator chimed as it released him into the lobby, startling the night guard who’d been dozing with his chin in his hand.

  The guard rubbed his eyes. “Where are you off to so early this morning?” He plopped his cap on his head.

  “Football practice,” Ah Liam answered without slowing.

  Before the guard could point out that no one in his right mind would hold practice in this weather, Ah Liam slipped out the door. The narrow twisting street was empty. The only noise came from the rain beating upon the hood of his coat. He walked briskly, stepping over puddles. Thunder crackled overhead, and he cringed and then felt ashamed. The boy who defeated an army would never display such cowardice.

  Even the downtown district was eerily quiet. The buses and streetcars lurching down the boulevard were hollow boxes of glass and steel. The hawkers that typically blocked off whole sections of the sidewalk to sell pig’s blood congee must have decided to sleep in. The few remaining ramshackle tents built from aluminum sheeting and burlap sacks looked in danger of being blown away any second now.

  As Ah Liam waited to cross the street, he watched a bony woman lift a tarp off four ragged children, sleeping head to toe right on the ground. The children scowled and covered their faces and blinked up at the rain in confusion. Here, right before him, was living proof of the evils of capitalism. Look at how the rich—his family included—cosseted themselves behind high gates and in tall towers, while the poor suffered mere steps away. He longed to take those children by the hand and drag them to the station. “Paradise is just across the border,” he’d say. “The Party will see to all your needs, and you’ll grow tall and strong.”

  In contrast to the rest of the city, the train station was in a state of chaos, as though the denizens of Hong Kong had all spontaneously descended upon this single spot. Travelers lugging heavy suitcases hurried as best they could from one end of the hall to the other and pleaded with ticket agents to get them on the early train and lamented to each other that they simply had to make it out before everything shut down. Laborers with muscled forearms passed heavy crates down an endless human chain, seemingly oblivious to the rain streaming down their faces. Uniformed porters pushing dollies piled high with luggage tried to cut paths through the hordes. A clump of construction workers crouched by a tea stall, sipping from steaming tin cups and smoking cigarettes and peering up at the sky. Ah Liam reveled in the activity. He wanted no part of his parents’ pristine, secluded life. Soon he would join the pulsing throng of workers, sweating and grunting and panting as one. Soon he would be useful.

  He weaved through the masses until he reached the newsstand at the end of the platform, their designated meeting point. Li An and Ah Tek were already there, clutching thick folded blankets to their chests. Ah Liam’s exuberance gave way to alarm. Somehow he’d forgotten his bedding, the one thing all overseas students had been instructed to bring. He wondered if there was time to take a trishaw back to the flat, and how he’d avoid the servants who were no doubt awake. He would have sought his friends’ advice, but Ah Tek’s wild gesticulations and Li An’s plaintive expression made him slow. What could they possibly be arguing about right now? Even through his fog of worry, Ah Liam appreciated Li An’s simple navy-blue tunic and trousers, visible beneath her open raincoat. What would have looked dowdy on anyone else, on her appeared effortless, elegant. He could already see her photograph in the People’s Daily above the caption: “Model Overseas Student Returns to the Fatherland.” Perhaps the four of them would be photographed together.

  “There you are, Ah Liam!” Ah Tek shouted. “He came. He’s here. He came.”

  Whom those reassurances were meant for, Ah Liam didn’t know.

  “Thank goodness,” Li An said, waving him over.

  Ah Liam glanced down at his watch. He was only a few minutes late. “Fatty isn’t even here yet.”

  Ah Tek scowled.

  Li An shot Ah Tek a look and said, “Well, Ah Liam, it’s just going to be us three.”

  “What do you mean?” Ah Liam asked.

  Ah Tek spat on the ground. “She means Fatty’s a coward. A no-good chickenshit.”

  Li An folded her blanket in half again and shoved it under her arm. “Look, Fatty pulled out and I don’t blame him,” she said. “Not everyone is cut out for this. ‘A revolution isn’t a dinner party,’ right?”

  Ah Liam couldn’t still the tremor in his voice. “When did he change his mind?”

  “It doesn’t matter when,
” said Li An.

  “Last night,” said Ah Tek.

  She glared at Ah Tek. “What matters is that the three of us are ready and committed.”

  “Right,” Ah Liam said, but inside him something threatened to explode. Had his mother found his note? Had she and Grandma called Pa? Maybe even the police? Were they rushing to the station to keep him from boarding the train? He wondered if the police had the power to halt all outbound trains.

  Li An balanced her blanket atop the suitcase on the ground beside her and placed both hands on Ah Liam’s shoulders. Her index fingers grazed his neck, and all he could think of was the weight of her palms, the coolness of her skin.

  “I’m glad you came instead of Fatty,” she said.

  A train barreled down the tracks, whistle blaring.

  “Come on,” said Ah Tek. “That’s ours.”

  Ah Liam followed his friends into the swarm, but his eyes defied his brain, scanning the terminal for Ma’s pale frantic face beneath the nest of hair she wouldn’t have had time to comb. He heard Li An ask if they thought a Party representative would meet them at the Guangdong station, but he didn’t catch Ah Tek’s response.

  A group of students also clutching blankets squeezed in front of Ah Liam. They were followed closely by a Western couple clad in shabby, ill-fitting shirts and trousers. Li An called for Ah Liam to keep up.

  “I’m trying,” he yelled back.

  A woman with a sleeping baby strapped to her chest bumped his shoulder, while a young man supporting an old man with a cane closed in on him from the other side. Ah Liam dropped back and let them pass.

  The train came to a halt, and everyone surged to the doors. He had no choice but to surrender to the throng. He lost sight of the back of Li An’s head. The sharp point of an elbow jabbed his ribs; the toe of a shoe grazed his heel. As he boarded the train, he tripped on the rain-slicked steps and fell against a man who cursed and told him to watch where he was going. Instead of moving into the belly of the train, Ah Liam paused on the top step and flattened himself against the thin metal banister.