by Kirstin Chen
With the aid of her cane, Bee Kim followed. “I’ll come, too.”
“No,” Seok Koon said sharply.
Never had she spoken to Bee Kim in that tone of voice.
“You stay. I can’t waste any more time.” She was already out the door.
Bee Kim said, “Let me help.”
Seok Koon whirled around and jabbed a finger in her face. “You’ve done enough damage to this family. I won’t lose my son, too.”
Bee Kim staggered back against the wall. The door slammed. So this was what her daughter-in-law truly thought of her, after all the kindness she’d shown her through the years. After all they’d weathered together.
The cook, who’d taken in the whole scene, said, “Madame, please sit down. I’ll bring you a pot of tea.”
Bee Kim brushed away the woman’s hand and closed her eyes. How could Ah Liam have planned this whole thing behind their backs? Where did he get the money to pay for his ticket? Nausea rippled through her. She clutched her stomach. No, she refused to believe it. It couldn’t be true. He couldn’t have looked her in the face and lied.
“Madame, is something wrong?”
Her insides roiled. Her cheeks and forehead blazed.
“You don’t look well. Do you need medicine?”
“I’m all right.” She mopped the perspiration from her hairline.
“Are you sure? Shall I call the doctor just in case?”
“No.”
“Shall I call Master?”
Somehow it hadn’t occurred to Bee Kim to telephone Ah Zhai. And then she wondered what he could possibly do. He couldn’t stop the trains. He couldn’t cross the border to bring back his son. He couldn’t even take care of his own family. Why was he living in that cheap hotel? Why wasn’t he here where he belonged?
“Sure, call him. Tell him everything.” She hobbled down the hallway. “I don’t want to be disturbed. Not until they find the boy.”
36
Seok Koon’s waterlogged bedroom slippers were a pair of iron shackles. She kicked them off and ran into the station. She had never seen it so crowded. It was as though the entire city had spontaneously descended upon this spot. She scanned the departures board and pushed her way to the platform for the train to Guangzhou, but the only person there was a janitor, sloshing dirty water across the floor with a mop, who told her the train had long gone. The janitor’s eyes lingered quizzically on her, and she folded her arms across her chest. Barefoot, in her dressing gown, she must have looked like she’d escaped a mental institution.
Back in the main hall, a bored-looking policeman stood in a corner, surveying the crowd and smoking. Instinctively she hurried toward him, and then stopped short. What did she expect him to do? Cross the border and drag back her son?
Most of the travelers, she noted, seemed to be moving in one direction toward some common goal. She traced their paths as they joined the serpentine queue before the single ticket window with its light on. Beyond the glass, a bare fluorescent bulb hung above the weary attendant’s bald pate, and she stared at the glowing halo as though it were a distant guiding star. She joined the back of the line. She would get on the next train. She would follow her son back to the mainland, and together they would go to Xiamen to find San San.
She planted herself behind a young couple with a wailing newborn. The wife bounced the baby in her arms and made hushing noises, but the cries persisted.
“I can’t take it anymore,” the husband said. “Go over there where I can’t hear her.”
Seok Koon gave the woman a sympathetic smile. She craned to see if the line had moved, but the same red-faced man was shouting at the attendant and slamming his ticket against the window.
She felt sorry for the poor attendant, and for the young mother, and even for the grouchy father and the red-faced man at the head of the line. She felt sorry for the frantic people dashing past and for the desolate few who’d given up and now sat huddled together on the dirty floor. Compassion flowed out of her, pure and strong, abundant enough to span the entire station. In her mind, she’d already crossed the border and found her children. “It’ll just be the three of us now,” she’d say, smothering them with kisses. Her flimsy bathrobe no longer embarrassed her. She was glad she’d brought nothing with her. She wanted no reminders of her previous life. She and her son and her daughter would start anew. It had been a long time since she’d taught piano, but a diploma was a diploma, and she was sure she could find students. A sob crept up her throat as she thought of dear Rose.
“Next,” the attendant called.
Seok Koon gathered herself, stepped up to the window and asked for a ticket on the next train out.
“You’re better off leaving tomorrow, or even the day after.”
“No,” she said. “I’ll stand the whole way if I have to.”
“There’s one seat left, but the rain’s getting worse. This train has almost no chance of running.”
“I’ll take it,” she said, thrusting all her money through the hole in the glass.
The attendant shrugged and slid over the ticket.
For the first time in a long, long while, Seok Koon felt her whole body exhale.
Several hours remained before the train would arrive. She searched for a place to sit, but tired bodies filled every inch of the long wooden benches. She wandered toward the back wall, and an elderly woman invited her to share the suitcase she was using as a seat. Given Seok Koon’s bizarre and disheveled appearance, she was shocked the woman had offered.
“Thank you,” she said. Her aching feet were black and filthy, and she tucked them beneath her. “My shoes got completely soaked. I kicked them off so I could run faster.”
“You were trying to make the early train?” The woman took out an orange and began to peel it.
“Yes,” said Seok Koon. The fresh scent sparked her hunger, but when the woman offered her a segment, she politely declined.
The woman chewed and nodded at Seok Koon’s pocketbook. “You travel light.”
“It’s a long story,” she said, and then added, “Everything I need is on the other side.”
The woman finished the orange and wiped her fingers on her handkerchief and asked Seok Koon to watch her things while she went to the lavatory. Seok Koon leaned back against the wall and felt her eyelids grow heavy. How long it had been since she’d slept a full night. She reached in the pocket of her dressing gown and fingered the edge of her ticket. The instant she and her son reached the islet, she’d go to Nurse Ho and ask to be taken to the little girl in the city. What had the nurse said? That the girl sang well and could play the accordion. Of course she was San San. How could Seok Koon have ever questioned it? The whole plan was laughably simple. She couldn’t believe her luck.
The suitcase’s owner returned from the lavatory and reported that the wind had picked up even more. “What will you do if the trains stop running?”
“We’ll get out before then,” said Seok Koon.
The woman waggled her head to show she wasn’t so sure, and Seok Koon grew indignant. “The typhoon’s coming from the south, and we’re going north. These bureaucrats are being skittish because they don’t want to be held responsible if something goes wrong.”
Again the woman waggled her head. “It all depends when the storm hits.”
Seok Koon was sick and tired of preparing for the worst. She had to get away from this woman and her pessimism. She stood and stretched her legs and tried to think of a polite way to make her escape. She rolled her head in a circle to loosen her neck, and out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a boy fighting through the crowd.
“Ma!” That single high, sweet syllable pierced her heart.
She pushed her way to meet him. “Son!”
Ah Liam threw his whole body against her, and she buried her nose in his hair, breathing in the stale odor of sweat as though it were the sweetest perfume.
“Ma, I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Son. It’s all ri
ght.”
“How did you know I was still here?”
“I didn’t,” she said, taking his face in both hands, pressing her forehead to his. “But I hoped. I just kept hoping.”
Someone bumped into Ah Liam, making him gasp, and Seok Koon took his arm and pulled him outside.
“Where are your shoes?”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said.
The wide multilane thoroughfare was strewn with tree branches and metal garbage cans and the odd umbrella carcass. Wind whipped Seok Koon’s hair about her face. Even beneath the awning, rain pelted their backs. But at least they were alone.
She said, “Don’t ever do that again. Promise me.”
Ah Liam pulled away and began to cry. “I’m a coward.”
She wrapped her arms around him and said fiercely, “You’re not a coward. Whoever told you to go back to the mainland filled your head with lies.”
The boy was sobbing so hard, he could barely get out the words. “It’s my fault San San’s missing.”
She tightened her arms around his shaking body and whispered things to calm him down.
He gulped at the air. “I’m the one who reported Grandma and got the whole family in trouble. I thought I was a revolutionary, but I’m just a selfish, worthless coward.”
“You’re a child,” she said. “This is my fault. I’m the one who left San San behind.”
In a small voice he said, “What if they never find her?”
Something broke open inside Seok Koon. She turned her son to face her. “You cannot run away ever again, do you hear me?”
He drew back, perhaps surprised by her vehemence, and she shook him again. “Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Swear it.”
“I swear, Ma, I’ll never run away again.”
She released her son. “I’m the one who left her, and now I must live with it. That’s all we can do—live with our mistakes.”
He laid a hand on her back and awkwardly patted her, and she saw the uncertainty on his face. His questions were hers: What if a mistake was too grave to live with? What if the guilt wormed its way deep into the flesh and grew more and more potent, devouring tissue and fat and skin, until one day, you looked down, and your whole self had been ravaged and nothing remained?
She drew her son near and pressed her lips to his damp forehead. “Let’s go before this typhoon arrives.”
Arm in arm they walked into the storm. Seok Koon’s hand slid into her pocket and found that her ticket had soaked through. She wadded up the limp, soggy slip, dropped it on the ground, and kept going.
37
And now, here Seok Koon was, sitting at the dining table, pretending to read the paper. Today is Sunday, she told herself. I am enjoying an ordinary morning with my family. This is my family. This is ordinary.
Sunlight spilled through the window, but she didn’t get up to draw the curtain. The pristine, porcelain-blue sky held no remnants of yesterday’s storm. From behind her paper shield she watched her son spoon congee into his mouth and chew and stare into the distance. Was he thinking of the friends who’d gone off without him? He would make new friends; of that, she had no doubt. He would join the football team and learn to speak English and excel at school. Was he thinking of his sister? If so, there was nothing she could offer him, except to say, “This is our family now.”
Her husband turned a page of the business section and coughed lightly. She didn’t understand how he could sit there so calmly, reading and absorbing the latest stock numbers. Last night he’d moved his things into the guest room, and for that, she was grateful. He’d hovered in the background with a mildly shell-shocked expression on his face as she’d tended to her son and fed him double-boiled beef broth. Seok Koon saw how superfluous her husband felt, and his vulnerability gave her strength. As a peace offering, she’d stayed home from church this morning. In fact she knew she’d never go back there again.
Her mother-in-law was still asleep. She hadn’t left her bed since Seok Koon had returned with Ah Liam. And when she and Zhai had gone to Bee Kim’s room to tell her the good news, she’d merely said, “Make sure he never does that again. Now leave me alone.” Her forehead felt hot, but she wouldn’t let the doctor examine her, insisting she felt fine. “Old, tired, but fine.”
Seok Koon folded her newspaper and announced, “I shall go to the market. We’ll have a nice family meal tonight.”
Her son grunted noncommittally. Her husband turned a page and said, “All right.”
She washed and dressed and left the flat. She was wading through sludge, or maybe swimming through air. Her brain was swollen taut like a glossy balloon. But she would buy the freshest fish, the plumpest chicken, the glossiest vegetables, something special for dessert.
Passing through the lobby, she noted that the guard had left his desk. This wasn’t the first time he’d gone missing at random hours of the day. She’d have to remember to ask Zhai to have a chat with the manager.
A cry pulled her gaze beyond the glass doors of the building. She stopped with a hand on the door handle, stunned by the commotion outside. There the guard stood, swinging his nightstick in a circle above his head. His menace was aimed at a vagrant, quite young—just a boy, really. The boy tried to run, but after a few steps, his legs buckled, throwing him upon the sidewalk. The guard struck the boy again and again. Seok Koon clutched her skull, unable to bear his wounded-animal cries. She pushed open the door and rushed in the opposite direction. She would hail a taxi at the end of the road.
“Ma!”
The word daggered her between the shoulder blades.
“Ma, it’s me.”
The guard continued his assault. Blindly Seok Koon charged at him, a part of her marveling at the ease with which she dragged him off her daughter. But could this really be San San? Oh, she was so brittle and so frail and what had happened to her hair?
“You moron,” Seok Koon screamed at the perplexed guard because she didn’t know whom else to blame. “You prick, you son of a whore”—insults she’d never said out loud.
She fell to the ground and cradled her daughter, afraid to jostle her precious delicate bones. “San San, is it really you? How did you get here, my treasure? Where did you come from?”
“Ma,” her daughter said, closing her eyes.
Seok Koon touched her handkerchief to her girl’s bleeding palms, her scraped elbows and knees. Her lips moved continuously, murmuring soothing phrases of comfort and love, even as a single thought colonized her mind: her daughter deserved better—a mother who could have rescued her, a mother who knew every last inch of her face.
38
She let them fuss over her. She let them speak to her in voices filled with warmth and concern. She let them wash her and bandage her and feed her and stroke her hair and face and arms. She let them carry her to a roomy bed beneath a pale-pink canopy, let them tuck her in a soft, light quilt. Sometime soon, maybe tomorrow or the day after, she would tell them about the boys she’d bribed to hide her in their kitchen aboard a cargo ship, about the typhoon that had forced them to dock in Shantou, about a kind boy called Turtle who’d ferried her by trishaw to this flat at 72 Fontana Road. It exhausted her to think of recounting all the details, and all the questions they would have—and this was before she’d even mentioned the boy with the magical voice, the rooftop tent, the denunciation session that haunted her dreams, the truck stuffed with tea pallets that had set in motion the whole chain of events. So, it would have to wait until tomorrow, if not the day after. Her eyelids closed. She was engulfed in a thick, almost solid blackness. Her slumber was deep and unrelenting.
In the morning, when her mother opened the door, the first thing San San asked was, “Can I see Grandma now?” She didn’t understand why she’d had to wait this long.
Ma shook her head. “She’s still asleep. I told you she’s under the weather.”
She kicked off the covers. “I won’t disturb her. I just want to see her.
”
“Have breakfast first. The cook made century egg congee.”
Her stomach rumbled, but she said, “No, now.” Somehow she knew she wouldn’t have to plead or whine or raise her voice.
She followed her mother to Grandma’s room.
Her mother knocked softly. “Ma, are you up?” She gently pushed open the door.
The curtains were tightly drawn, and the room was dark, as though the sun had somehow overlooked this tiny corner of this strange city, crammed with so many tall buildings you couldn’t see the sky. Her grandmother blinked open her eyes and struggled to sit up, and San San ran to her. “Grandma.”
“Bee Lian,” her grandmother croaked. “Little Sister is it really you? Who did this to your hair? Why did they say you died?”
San San backed away in alarm. What was wrong with her grandmother’s voice? Who was Bee Lian?
Her mother swiftly intervened. “Ma, she’s not your sister. She’s San San. Your granddaughter.”
Her grandmother waved her mother off and kept talking. “I’m so sorry, Little Sister, I didn’t know the dog would attack. It was so thirsty, I just wanted to give it some water.” Grandma took San San’s arm. Her hand was cold, and San San tried to warm it in both of hers.
“Bee Lian died a long time ago,” her mother said.
But Grandma didn’t appear to have heard her. “I shouldn’t have left you with that dog. It was bigger than you! I should have known better. I’m the older sister.”
San San squeezed her hand and said, “Grandma, it’s me.”
Ma smiled reassuringly at San San. “Grandma’s confused. A high fever can do that.”
Her grandmother scowled. “You think I wouldn’t recognize my own sister? The one I love so much?” She turned to San San. “Oh, the blood that poured from your face. So much blood for such a small girl.”
