A Google image search of “Mary, Tai Long Wan” opened onto a row of the third photo I had uploaded from my iPhone nine days ago. Was the image that dirty? Did a pretend-pouty expression and a real wet dress turn Mary into porn? I remembered her posing on the beach, the hat reversed to hide the pins. It was fun. I’d felt happier at that moment than at any time, pretty much, since Rachel went away. I couldn’t get my sister back until next spring, at the earliest—she’d already ruled out a Christmas visit, preferring to mooch off the grandparents in Richmond Hill—but maybe I could hang with Mary instead? At least we were in the same city.
I clicked onto each of the photos. One linked to a travel agency specializing in Asian beach holidays. Another site sold sun hats, offering to ship them for free anywhere in the world. The third, prettyasiangirls.com, showed a high school yearbook of Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Malaysian, Vietnamese, and Filipino teenagers, most in school uniforms. Girls volunteered their photos for posting, including a few who went to East Island. The fourth click took me to datingasiangirls.org, which claimed to be “the best singles bar on the web.” After that was a link to teenageasianpussy.com. It uploaded a blue screen with WARNING: ADULT CONTENT and a request that the viewer confirm he or she was eighteen. My final click on the photo led to the URL exploitedasianteens.com, a title I couldn’t decipher for a second—exploited, Asian, and teens. This website gave no warning and asked no one’s age. Instantly I was staring at naked girls having sex with men, sometimes two of them, or with other girls, and framed in the middle was a still from a video titled Three Dicks for a Filipino Chick that lasted 21:40 and had been awarded four stars out of five. Several minutes passed before I clicked the X on my toolbar and shut it down. My eyes stayed open the entire time.
Next I looked at my profile. For Photo, I usually rotated between a shot Rachel took of me holding Manga up to the camera—emo-dog face atop skinny-girl neck—and one of us together, smushing our cheeks to fit into the frame. For About You, I rewrote “50/50 girl with her body in Mid-Levels but her heart back in Stanley, LOL! BFF, non-Facebook—Gloria the Bella and Manga the Mutt!” For Favorite Quotations, I kept “Chihiro: ‘Dad, are we lost?’ Chihiro’s father: ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got four-wheel drive,’” and didn’t touch the quote from the film that my sister had added a while ago: “Chihiro: ‘There must be some mistake! None of these pigs are my parents!’” I left Life Events blank, not yet having had any.
Then I looked at my friends. Most of them were also Asian girls in school uniforms. There were Ashley Chung and Miriam Tsang, Suzie Ng and Chelsea Lam, along with Jackie Jones, who was Australian and lived in Repulse Bay, and the gweilo gang, two-thirds British, that I’d grown up with in Stanley. Xixi Kwok had 173 friends, not very many, and only thirty or so that I seriously stalked, to look at photo albums and “like” things or write on their walls. Of the 173 friends, 142 were teenage girls who wore hats on beach holidays and were pretty and, unlike me, already into dating. Did that mean they were teenage pussy ready to be exploited? Plenty of girls I didn’t really know, and basically every guy who asked, got turned down for friend requests. Not Now was the only answer Facebook let me give, which was fine, except when the request came from strangers, some of them grown-up men with profile photos that resembled the mug shots of actors caught drunk driving. The box I wanted to click for those men was Not a Chance! Or, pretending I was English, Piss Off!
But my friends were safe on my wall. We were all safe in our apartments and houses in Hong Kong. Mary, Tai Long Wan, the second most beautiful girl on my page—Nicole Jardin, with a China Doll mom and a French dad who dropped her at school in a Porsche, had already had her photo in Hong Kong Tatler—was less protected, thanks to the wrong photo I took of her having leaked somehow onto the web. Rachel had said I should edit her from my Facebook before Jacob or Leah discovered her there. Knowing that someone had stolen the other image was creepy enough, but then to disappear her nice, regular Asian girl photo from the rows of Suzies and Chelseas, Ashleys and Miriams? Not a Chance! Piss Off!
In the bathtub I washed myself over and over. Even so, sitting beneath the faucet with my chin on my knees, I watched my insides form a blood stream to the drain. The stream never stopped, never dried up.
Gloria knocked. “SeeSee, you ho-kay?”
“Go back to sleep,” I told her.
“Everything all right, honey?” Mom called a few minutes later.
“Fine,” I answered. Go away, I said silently to her. Getting out of the tub, I rubbed a hole into the steam on the mirror and examined still another Asian girl. She had the eyes, hair, and skin colour of the region. Only her sharp chin and the freckles sprinkled across her cheekbones, like pepper on a fried egg, suggested the far side of the planet. This girl had bumps for breasts and hips no wider than her shoulders, but she was, I decided, already fuckable, and not in the fantasy Vogue sense. XIXI, TAI LONG WAN, I etched into the glass below my face.
In the bath I’d had an idea. Back at my desk I created a separate page on Facebook dedicated to Mary, inviting my friends to like it. Then I uploaded the first photo and typed the caption, This is my friend Mary. She’s in trouble. Comment if you see her!
Next, I texted Rachel: Check the new page. I added, Is Mary already giving blow jobs night and day? For the last hour I’d sensed that my big sister remained at the far end of the digital connection. She’d known I would Google the photo and click on those sites, and then would return to my Facebook determined to do something for Mary, to really, really help. She had been waiting for me to text her again, and was no less worried or distressed than I was. After all, she was just like the rest of us.
Xixi Kwok created a Facebook page called “Finding Mary”? Rachel replied almost at once. BIG MISTAKE!
Me: Why?
Rachel: Check it now …
I did. Already, thirty-three people “liked” the page and seven more were “talking about this,” which basically meant sharing it with others. That was pretty fast, I had to admit.
CHAPTER FOUR
December 1, 20—
*Index case
*187 infected, 1 dead
“It’s what they call the patient who triggers the outbreak,” Mom said. “A medical term.”
“And you think it’s him?”
“He’s been in the hospital for two months. Hard to imagine anyone else who’s had it for that long. And we all know about his travels to favoured ports of call in Thailand and the Philippines.”
“Pretty scurrilous,” Dad said. “And medically unsound. Also, he’s still alive. How could he be the index case?”
Were they talking about Mr. Clark? Hidden again in Rachel’s old room, the window cracked to leak in balcony conversations, I couldn’t very well ask. I was sorry to be spying—“Girl, not like you,” Gloria said when I told her—but had no choice. There were things I needed to know, and neither parent was going to tell me. I kept hardly any secrets, so why should they? We were supposed to be a family.
“We need a plan, Jacob.”
“An exit strategy?”
“I can’t believe how glib you are.”
“It’s a wave, Leah. Another one.”
“Are you still convinced?”
“After eleven years here, we’re going to just abandon ship? Worse, we’re going to jump the queue over local women and children and nab those precious spots in the lifeboat? I’ve seen that movie,” he said, “and have no desire to play that asshole.”
“My firm has arranged a plane for partners. There’s no queue. Matter of fact,” she added, “I’ll have to petition for you and Sarah. They aren’t promising that all families can be evacuated at the same time.”
“Xixi and I will see it through, thank you very much. Survive the latest panic on dried noodles and orange juice, plus a crate of Absolut. Us, and Manga the Mutt.”
Yeah, Dad! Only he forgot to include Gloria among those riding out the epi-dem-hick. Cicada song, swelling from the hillside with the same force
as Tagalog chatter from a park on Sunday, forced me to squat right under the windowsill. If a parental decided to peek through the crack, they’d see a mop of hair and know I wasn’t Perfect Xixi any longer. Next, they’d probably sneak onto my Facebook—like Rachel, I usually left it open on my desktop, as easy to read as a diary—and find things they wouldn’t understand that would make them angry. Or she would. He was too Cool Kwok to snoop.
“You can do as you wish,” she said. “You always do. But we have to remove our daughter from Hong Kong before things get any worse.”
“We’re nowhere near that stage.”
“They keep calling. Two new phones, two new numbers, and they keep calling. ‘Blocked ID’ and ‘Unknown Caller.’ Every hour on the hour for two weeks. I don’t pick up and they leave exactly one message per day. ‘Girl is none of your business!’” Mom said, trying to sound like a Triad guy mangling English. “‘Not smart to look for her.’ Which doesn’t make any sense, does it, given that we haven’t done a thing for those women from the beach … As Sarah likes to remind me.”
Maybe you haven’t, Mom, I thought to myself. But I have. As of twenty minutes ago my “Finding Mary” page had 4,418 “Likes” and 1,064 “Talking about this.” In fourteen days! People were making her, or my page about her, their business. We were all looking for her.
“And did you learn anything in Shenzhen?” she asked. “You were gone long enough.”
“I learned that the margin for producing jeans can quickly narrow. It can even disappear.”
“What can disappear?”
“The margin.”
“Margin of what? What are you talking about?”
Dad dragged on his tumour stick and drained his glass. “I put in twelve-hour days at the factories. No time for checking into the latest cross-border prostitution initiatives of the Sun Yee On. Sorry.”
“You didn’t visit a single club or karaoke bar after hours with your Shenzhen associates? Didn’t act surprised and bashful when a few young women suddenly joined you in a private room?”
“The things you think.”
“The things you likely do.”
“What do you know?”
“More than I wish to.”
I needed to get out of the bedroom. Here was a diary, a profile, that I shouldn’t be allowed to look at, no matter how much it related to my future. Fear kept me beneath the window. So did a growing interest in how differently adults talked when they didn’t think their kids were listening. But mostly I stayed so I could report the conversation to Rachel, and she’d be impressed by my own grown-up behaviour—spying on the parentals, telling Mom that Dr. Wilson wanted to lick her tears, watching too much of Three Dicks for One Filipino Chick, awarded four stars out of five.
“What I know, Leah, is that you still don’t understand this place. In your gut, rather than your head. How things work here, and how they usually go. I thought that by leaving your old job and relocating to a high corporate floor, you’d quit analyzing me, and just start cashing fat paycheques and taking tiffin with Sanjay. Asia is too much for you. It may be too much for us as well.”
She was silent.
“And I believe I did penance for those sins years ago,” he said, “whether you or our older daughter thinks so or not. I’m tired of confessing.”
“No one’s asking you to confess.”
“It was just sex.”
“It’s never just sex.”
“For some of us, it is. Flirting. Fucking. Having a little fun.”
“You’re a child.”
“I’m a full-grown man. Believe you me.”
She sobbed, a tight, almost gagging sound, as though she had tried to keep it in.
“I hate this,” he said. “I wish we didn’t keep having this conversation.”
“We can stop soon.”
“You mean that?”
“You want that?”
The silence lasted for so long I thought they were going to get divorced right then and there. But Dad said instead, “You’ve kept the phone messages?”
“I’m a lawyer. Of course I’ve kept the messages.”
“If it comes to it …”
“Right. And although I understand nothing about how things work in Asia, I can certainly attest to how helpful the legal authorities in most countries are in stopping human trafficking and prostitution. They’ll be of great assistance. Or, at least the ones not using the girls themselves will be.”
“I’ll ask around. I will.”
“Promise?”
“Sure.”
“I cannot fathom why they’re being so aggressive. It’s not like we aren’t holding up our end of the bargain. Between SARS, and this mess, Sarah is virtually a prisoner in the apartment. And you know,” she said, “I’ve never fully trusted Gloria as a helper. As a bodyguard, which we’re asking her to be now, I trust her even less.”
For some reason, he agreed with her terrible words. “I learned things about how she cared for Xixi during the last outbreak that pretty much confirm your worries. She may not be fit for the job.”
“You mean in Stanley?”
He must have nodded.
“Who told you?”
“Xixi. Though she didn’t realize it.”
Never would I say anything to get Gloria in trouble. Never!
“They’re almost too close,” Mom said. “It’s like Sarah needs her. She shouldn’t—she has plenty of friends.”
To swallow my own sound, I covered my mouth with first one hand, and then both.
“Maybe not as many as you think,” he said.
“There’s Kimberley and Chelsea and Miriam and, I don’t know, a half-dozen Britneys and Courtneys at that school. It’s like an American Idol episode, with Asian faces.”
“Or post-American faces.”
“Whatever that means,” she said, not unfriendly.
“A lot of those girls haven’t been around—or maybe available—lately. Especially since school closed.”
“Nonsense. They live on Skype and Tumblr and Facebook. They’re never unavailable. We should be too.”
“What?”
“On Facebook. Her Facebook. Checking to make sure she isn’t doing … well, I don’t know what,” she said quietly.
By her tone, I could tell Dad had rejected her idea with a look, or a shake of his head. What a relief. If they demanded to see my Facebook, “Finding Mary” would never happen.
“I think she’s lonely,” he said. “As well as a bit of a loner.”
“Sarah is the most beautiful girl in her grade, Jacob. Loneliness could not possibly be a problem for her.”
He sipped vodka. “You’re too busy at work,” he finally said. “We’re too busy.”
“Excuse me?”
“She needs Gloria right now. That’s all I’m saying.”
“And what if she has another episode with only the amah present? She might, you know, given her reluctance to take her medication. And suppose the seizures grow more frequent, and stronger, as Alex Wilson suggested that they could? How will Gloria handle Sarah then? I cannot hold these multiple anxieties in my mind and still think straight.”
Cicada noise—not music, noise—abruptly swelled, enough to flood my ears the way a Black Rain levels all sounds into a sustained thrum, the equivalent, I decided during one storm, of the loneliness, or maybe aloneness, of being alive but still trapped in the womb.
“We could try having sex,” he said. “It used to relieve the stress.”
She sobbed again, this time letting it out. I crawled back across the floor before any emotions escaped my chest.
He knocked, called my real name, and entered. For almost an hour I had lain on top of the bed waiting, teeth brushed and hair combed. Even my choice of clothes—Hello Kitty pajamas, now too tight and too pink—was because he brought them back from a trip to Korea. Manga had been good company, and though I’d cleared his bangs to smile into his marble eyes, and bopped his nose so he’d yip-yip, and not ki
cked him out after he farted, I’d also given warning. On seeing Dad, the pooch leapt to the floor.
“On Facebook with your friends all night?” he said, glancing at the MacBook on the desk.
“Facebook’s private, Dad,” I said too snappily.
“Is it? Your sister told me she has close to seven hundred friends.”
“I don’t have nearly that many.”
“But the ones you have, they can visit your, what do you call it, profile anytime?”
“If they’ve been invited.”
“Right.”
“You and Mom have never asked.”
“No, we haven’t.”
I waited, my heart almost in my throat, for him to ask to be invited. Could I say no? To her, easily. To him, much harder.
“But you were right here with Manga, weren’t you,” he said instead. “Did that dog fart?”
I dropped my gaze. “I was on FaceTime with Rachel,” I answered. He knew. Not about Mary being on my Facebook but about my being in Rachel’s old room, spying. I couldn’t do it again. Ever.
“And how’s she doing these days?”
“She’s a super-hot goddess.”
“Is she?”
“She and Greg are an item. His band is called Head Tax.”
“Funny name.”
“Their music is basically hideous. And he has three tattoos,” I said, picturing Guanyin pimpled onto her arm, “including one on his—”
“Whoa, kiddo. Some secrets are for keeping.”
I was trying to apologize! Not sure what to say next, I chewed my lip.
“Everyone has secrets,” he added.
“They sure do.”
Planet Lolita Page 6
