Someone off-camera barked at her. She looked past the lens.
“Sorry that awful photo of you got porned. I don’t even know how it happened,” I added.
“Gai le,” a female voice said. An arm handcuffed in cheap bangles pushed a sheet of paper into the frame. Mary held it before her face with both hands. At first I was distracted by the pig’s tail of smoke curling towards the screen. Her nails, too, the same neon purple as the Sticky Fingers sign, threw me off. Printed on quality paper was a digital photograph of another Asian girl, also taken on the beach. Five weeks hadn’t changed her one bit. Beneath my photo was an address, 2201, 26 Old Peak Road.
I switched to Cantonese. “That’s where I live. I hate it here.”
Rings from the cancer stick between her second and third fingers widened out and then dispersed. She lowered the photo. No matter how hard I tried drawing her in with my gaze, Mary wouldn’t focus. Her eyes registered a different space and place, like she was confiding her feelings to a mirror. Which feelings? Confusion, perhaps. Boredom, for sure. Plus that irritation, although not, I hoped, with me.
“I could try being you for a while,” I said, first in Cantonese and then, fearing it made no sense, English.
Nothing.
I tasted blood, and raised a finger to confirm the cut I had opened in my lower lip. Misinterpreting it, Mary lifted her own finger to her lips. Shhh, she said. Shhh, I replied, though I really wanted to show her the bleeding. Before I could, someone ended the call. Three times I called back, but no one accepted my request.
I was scared now—of answering FaceTime, of leaning over railings, of Hello Kitty, more or less. For real.
“It’s my sister,” I heard her say. “She keeps calling. Something must be wrong.”
It was true. I had banged on another door and barged into another room. Aware that it was early morning in Toronto, I kept on requesting FaceTime. But on finally being shown a screen I was startled to find it opened as well onto an empty chair. A sick notion nearly toppled me—Rachel had been kidnapped too, and was being held hostage in the same place as Mary. One more disappearance from my life and I’d lose it.
But then she sat in the chair, reaching out to adjust the laptop.
“It’s you!” I said.
“You were expecting …?”
“Why wouldn’t you accept my request?”
“Dude, I was asleep when you started calling, and it had to sink in that, yup, it is 7:19 on a Saturday morning and, yup, my crazy mei mei is insisting we chatter. Sorry I didn’t jump right up.”
Rachel, who was my jie jie, since we were using the Mandarin words for big and little sister, wasn’t alone in her room either. She kept checking herself in her box on the screen, pawing her hair. She wore it pixie-cut, a new look, to match the tattoo. Next she would get a nose ring.
“Oh yeah, baby,” a guy said off-camera.
“Greg is here,” she said.
Tofu Burger from Facebook muscled into the frame, his own hair spiky from sleep and emo-boy product. His shoulders were bare, aside from the tats, and covering his chest were pubes.
“Hi there, Baby Kwok,” Greg said.
“Tell him to leave,” I said.
“Hey!”
He grinned how cute boy-men do, in order to never be held responsible for their actions. From his Facebook profile I knew that the four characters inked onto his right forearm spelled the name of his thrash-folk band. The tattoo looked pretty neat. Shirtless, he was buff.
“You still in Head Tax?” I asked to not seem so bitchy.
“We broke up,” he answered. “Creative differences. I’ve formed a duo, mandolin and sitar—Yellow Peril.”
“Cool.”
“How’s your girl Mary, Tie-the-Long-One doing?”
I was too stunned to reply.
“The hottie from the beach? Your sister showed me that sexy pic of her. Man, oh man,” he said, “guys in the res got major wood from it.”
“Bad boy,” Rachel said. But her knotted brow told me she was equally puzzled. How did “guys in the res” even see the photo?
He kissed her cheek and she punched his bicep. Unable to help themselves, my sister and her boyfriend dissolved into each other, forgetting I was there. For the second time in fifteen minutes, I was see-through. Except for possibly being naked from their waists down, they could have been in a photo booth, smooching for the camera. How must it feel, being skin to skin with a boy? How must it—he, I supposed—smell?
Greg’s words about Mary rattled in my head. My leg, meanwhile, was pumping, causing the desk to shake and Manga to whimper.
Finally, she noticed. “Okay, SeeSaw,” she said. She instructed her sex friend to crawl back into the bed, insert his earbuds and crank his iPod, and pillow-smother himself.
“Zie jien, Sailor Moon,” he said, showing his own expertise in Mandarin.
“He’s cute,” I said, wiping my cheek.
“He sure thinks so.”
I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “I thought it was you, Rachel. When I answered the call. The first time, at least. But it wasn’t—it was her! In a Hello Kitty top, which was weird …,” I said, suddenly realizing that since no one came onscreen during the first FaceTime, how could they have known what was I wearing? “The top didn’t fit her much better. We’re the same size, and I’ve a closet of stuff I never use. I could give her some dresses and Pearl jeans. She’s much older than sixteen.”
It registered. “Are we talking about—?”
“Mary!”
“She FaceTimed you?”
“I was in her room. Twice,” I said, regretting that I hadn’t told Rachel about the original call. “And she was in mine.”
All loudest, funniest half-Asian chick on campus vanished from her features, leaving our mother in Lawyer Leah mode. My sister issued two commands, one to Greg, the other to me. He was told to leave her dormitory room, now. I was told to march the MacBook into our parents’ bedroom with her still on the screen, and tell them what had just happened. Rachel issued a third command. “Stop crying.”
I tried.
“How many ‘Likes’ and ‘Talking about this’ today? Wait, I’ll check myself.” She opened the “Finding Mary” page in a corner of her screen. “7,551 and 2,754. Shit, shit, shit.”
I chewed some hair.
“Why are there twenty-nine messages for you? And those photos?”
“People send me shots of girls on the street. They think they’ve found Mary.”
“Turns out she’s found you.”
“I still don’t know where she lives,” I said. “Though I’m pretty sure it’s in Mong Kok.”
“Maybe your photo will turn up on her Facebook wall. Or maybe they’ll post it on your ‘Finding Mary’ page, with our address.”
“I won’t mind that.”
“You won’t mind?”
“I still want to meet her.”
Rachel blew air from her mouth in disbelief or exasperation—or both. “The parentals are still oblivious to all these cyber interactions, aren’t they? Jacob and Leah are stuck thinking in analogue about a digital happening. You’re in different universes.”
“We’re in the same apartment.”
“Not what I’m talking about.”
“Okay.”
“It’s growing-up day, Sis,” she added. “This isn’t a manga strip anymore.”
The dog yip-yipped at his name.
“What about Guanyin? Won’t she rescue me?”
The gingerly way she touched her bare arm made me wonder if, all these weeks later, her skin could still be bruised. “Fuck, I better put on a long-sleeve shirt. You can’t tell them.”
“I have to pee,” I said, straining to hold the computer, and her face, in front of me. I was already in the hallway.
“Seriously?”
“I won’t make you watch.”
Balancing the computer on the sink, the screen turned away, I did my business as quietly as I could.
“You ba
ck in the jungle?” I heard her ask.
“What?”
“Bleeding for babies.”
It was nearly time for my second-ever period. Earlier today I’d thought I might be starting. But then the cramps went away. “That’s gross.”
“Nature’s way of telling boys what might come out of where they want to put it into so badly.”
“What is nature telling us?”
“‘Danger!’” my sister shouted. “‘Our bodies could be invaded!’ Yuck,” she said. “You didn’t flush.”
“Shush,” I said, once more face-to-face with her. I—or we, in effect—had now crossed to the master suite and knocked on the door. To my surprise, both parents said “Come in,” harmonizing the words. My arms trembled, not just from carrying the laptop.
“Sarah?” Mom called.
“Rachel wants to talk to you guys.”
“Coward,” Rachel whispered.
“Come in, girls,” Dad said again.
“Girls?” Mom said.
She sat in bed in her nightgown, reading glasses on her nose and computer in her lap. He sprawled in the armchair, still dressed, one leg hooked over the side to flaunt his cowboy boots, their leather polished, as if to show that the night was young—for some. Stinking up the air, raw as salted fish drying on a dock, was a fresh argument.
“Put her where she can see all of us,” he said.
“Greetings, Asia-lings,” Rachel said.
“I cannot get used to this technology,” Mom said.
“You’re up awful early,” he said.
“Study study, Dad.”
“If you say so.”
“SeeSaw,” my sister said, “why am I up so early on a Saturday morning? Where are you, girl?”
I slid onto Dad’s side of the mattress. When I didn’t answer—how badly I wished I’d had the strength not to tell her about the FaceTime!—she pushed harder. “Why the hair chewing and lip bleeding and plummeting tears a few minutes ago about who’d visited your room, unannounced and uninvited?”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.
“You’re going to tell them. Everything. We agreed.”
“Someone was in Sarah’s room?” Mom said. By folding down the laptop she showed she meant business.
“Mary FaceTimed me,” I said, studying the duvet. “The girl from the beach. From Tai Long Wan.”
I might as well have raised my top and revealed my baby bulge.
“What in the world …?” Mom said.
“She was wearing a SARS mask, and Hello Kitty. And she had a photo of me, which she held to the screen. She’s older than I thought, and she smokes,” I added.
“How did—?”
“Let her explain, Leah,” Dad said.
“Is she explaining? Are you, Sarah?”
I tried to explain. My taking her photo three times on the beach, and then posting the nicest image on my profile. The third photo, not so nice, being stolen and turned into porn. The 7,551 “Likes” and 2,754 “Talking about this” on the page I created to help find her, though the numbers had surely climbed again in the last ten minutes. The first, and now second, FaceTime calls revealing the room where she lived. Her—Mary, Tai Long Wan—holding up the photo that Mamasan had snapped of me, reprinted on heavy-stock paper, and saying shhh with her finger but something else with her eyes. The address 2201, 26 Old Peak Road printed at the bottom.
“Oh boy,” Dad said. He quit showing off the boots, sitting upright in the chair, hands on the armrests.
Mom tried blaming Rachel first. “You knew all along?” she said to the computer at her feet. “Knew that she was putting herself, and us, in greater danger? And still you did nothing?”
“She didn’t know about the FaceTime,” I said.
“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?” Rachel said. “I’m here.”
“Not really, darling. Not at all, in fact.”
“I wanted to help her,” I said.
“Quiet.”
“Leah …,” Dad said.
“Those girls need us, Mom. Especially Mary.”
“Stop calling her that name!”
I chewed my lip.
“Back on Tai Long Wan,” she asked, “what made you decide that those prostitutes wanted, never mind needed, our help? No, Jacob,” she said, blocking any objections with an outstretched palm, “the question is fair. Why did Sarah latch onto the girl who just happened to be the youngest and prettiest, and look the most like her, and decide that she, and she only, deserved to be saved? Any ideas, dear husband? Any at all?”
Dad went to speak. Suddenly worried by what he might say, I decided to try explaining again. “Father Romesh … He said—”
“And you let Sarah take her picture?”
“He didn’t see me do it,” I said.
“I did see you,” he said.
“Does it matter now?” Rachel said. “Is this what we should be worrying about?”
“What does not matter any longer is you being part of this conversation,” Mom said. “Not when you advised your very foolish, very naive sister so poorly. And of course Jacob knew that Sarah bonded with an attractive young hooker and took her photo. He wanted a copy for himself.”
With a groan Dad dropped his elbows to his knees and his head into his hands.
“Chill, parentals,” Rachel said. “Please.”
“Switch her off,” Mom said.
“No!” I said.
“Sorry, SeeSaw, but if they’re just going to carve each other up, I’d rather be expelled from the abattoir. But here’s the thing—Leah? Jacob? Pay attention for a few seconds,” my sister said. “Check out our platforms. Learn where we’re at, who we’re hanging with and planning to meet. Learn how we move from place to place and space to space, silent and quick and beyond detection by your analogue radars. If you don’t know my Facebook, you don’t know me. It’s where us digital kids live, Mr. So-So Cool Kwok.”
Raising his head, he applauded her slap-down with a defeated smile. I wondered about the word “abattoir,” but didn’t ask.
“I’ll let myself out,” Rachel said.
Her screen went dark. All that remained was the three of us squeezed into the corner frame, Mom on the bed, Dad in the chair, me now moved to the floor next to him, legs folded under my bum.
“Don’t slouch, Sarah,” she said. “Your posture is terrible.”
She was making a mess of things—with me, with Dad, with Rachel—and had to know it. But she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stop.
“Who are you calling?” he asked.
“I’m texting Sanjay.”
“Tiffin man,” I said under my breath.
“To beg for a seat for Sarah on the initial company flight. A seat, or seats, I already turned down for you and her.”
“We’re not ready to flee the infected pool just yet,” he said.
“Infected port, you mean,” Mom said. “Didn’t you hear? The WHO has declared Hong Kong port contagious, and shut it down. About a third of our business is with shipping companies. I could work twenty hours a day sorting this nightmare out.”
“You don’t sort out a nightmare, Mom,” I said. “You get through it, and then wake up.”
I sought my father’s eyes. We locked gazes, how we used to do, nothing to be afraid of or to hide. I couldn’t lie to him and he couldn’t lie to me.
“Dad and I will get through it,” I added.
Her phone pinged. “Never mind,” she said. “There are three partners ahead of us who want to bring family members with them. They’ve another plane chartered for December twenty-third.”
“We’ll be fine without you,” he said. “Gloria will look after us.”
Gloria! With all the drama, I’d forgotten my promise not to leave Hong Kong without her. But Dad, aware of how much she meant to me—my Asian mother, more than my Filipino one—had sent a reminder. Thanks, Dad, I said silently.
“You know I have no choice in the matter,” Mom said. “Partners sign
ed contracts agreeing to accept repatriation in the event of a, what did they call it, ‘political or environmental emergency.’ I thought the clause was a joke. After all, what isn’t these days?”
“We’ll be okay, Leah.”
“They’ve threatened her directly, Jacob. What more evidence of an emergency do you require?”
He kind of frowned, kind of winced, like he wasn’t sure if, this time, she wasn’t being more than her usual mean, bossy self.
“I’m going to speak with Sanjay,” she said, rising so abruptly her laptop fell to the floor. “On the phone. Tell him that, if Sarah can’t come with me, I won’t leave on the first plane. He’ll just have to accept my decision.”
“Phew,” he said once she was gone.
“I still won’t go with her in two weeks. Not to London or Toronto or any city where it’s cold and grey and I don’t know anybody. I don’t belong over there. I belong here.”
He nodded. Her words had left him sad. All at once Dad looked tired, and older than usual. Closer to his actual age, although I’d never say it. Opening his own phone to the Net, he asked me to show him. “Mary, Tai Long Wan,” he said.
For more than a month—since November ninth, basically—I’d been waiting for one of them to ask.
“We’ve been sneaking, or creeping, is it called, onto your sister’s Facebook since she was your age. Your mother, mostly, though she stopped once Rachel left for university. Two weeks ago she asked if we should try sneaking onto yours, or make you show us.”
“You could have sent a friend request.”
“Would you have accepted it?”
“Did Rachel?”
“Emphatically not.”
“I might have,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. I told her I didn’t want to see your Facebook. I said it was like our parents demanding the transcripts of the phone calls we made as teenagers. It’s not fair and it’s not healthy. Not that my folks would have asked,” he said. “My mother especially. She stopped taking me seriously once I started dating white girls.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I managed to say.
“I also said that we could trust you weren’t doing anything stupid with your profile. That we’d always been able to trust you to be the sensible, or just cautious, one.”
Dropping my gaze—okay, I’d lied to him a little lately—I opened my wall.
Planet Lolita Page 9
