Maybe she’ll buy Frankie and me some sugar cane. Once when she was young, her uncle bought her a stick of sugar cane, Ah Bing told us. When he sliced back the hard green skin with a big knife, he looked so serious she wasn’t sure if he was angry with her or not. She sucked and sucked until all the sugar was gone, worried he might take it away. Her uncle laughed. Her mother laughed.
That was after they had sent her away to another family. Too many girls to feed. But she had come back. She didn’t like the other family. She walked home. It took her two days. ‘I remember my mother’s face when I came back,’ Ah Bing said. ‘She was so happy to see me.’
The crowd at Mui Wo is like on market days in China, Ah Bing says. A fisherman brushes by; the smell of his brown skin, sea salt and hot sun, fills her nostrils. ‘Po! A man’s smell is too strong.’ She can’t remember the smell of her own father. She was too young when he died.
We cross a narrow bridge over a muddy inlet crushed with sampans. Below us a boat woman squats, mending fishing-nets. A girl balances along the gunnels of two boats tied side to side. She carries a baby brother or sister fastened tightly to her back with a red cloth to ward off bad spirits.
˜ ˜ ˜
Red banners. Red Flags. Red drums call from across the village. The sound of a megaphone blaring.
‘Let’s run ahead,’ Frankie whispers, pulling me close. It’s our chance to see the real Red Guards, not the smooth-faced students we saw through the car window. ‘Come on,’ Frankie persists. ‘Ah Bing will never let us go.’ Bang, bang, bang, bang, a shattering noise bursts around us like machine-gun fire. For an instant, the crowd stops, sucks in air all at once; we hold our breath. The sons of whores have let off a string of firecrackers. Folding my arm into hers, Frankie tugs. We bolt forward, laughing.
˜ ˜ ˜
Tubs of fish slosh at our feet as we hurry past: flabby groupers, blue lobsters, stacks of sand-coloured crabs, their claws bound with straw, left in the hot sun like prisoners of war. At the edge of the cement seawall, a fisherwoman scales and guts a red snapper. Her customer nods appreciatively as the fish flails because it is so fresh. Fish scales and blood fly everywhere.
Stacks of bok choi, Chinese cabbage, asparagus beans, spiky jackfruit laid out on giant leaves of elephant ears. Usually, we’ll linger by the sugar cane, pester until Ah Bing buys us two sticks. We’ll chew them all the way up to the temple, spitting the sucked fibres along the cement path. But today we rush past, dodging imaginary bullets, black umbrellas, blue-and-white flip-flops, red plastic ladles that hang down from stall-fronts like prizes in a fair.
Glancing back, I catch a brief glimpse of Ah Bing, still near the bridge. She stretches up on her toes trying to see where we’ve gone.
‘She’ll just think we lost her in the crowd,’ Frankie reassures. We know the way up to the temple.
Her children, ah. Where are we? Po! She can’t see anything. She’s too short. She needs to catch up, take us inland along the back of the village, away from the Red Guard trouble.
Come on. Come on. Ah Bing would keep us safe, she’d stop us if she could.
twelve
Amid the noise, the beating of drums, the Red Guards look hot and irritable when we reach them. Their leader, a man in a dark, sweaty suit, looks out of place among the others who wear open work shirts or sleeveless undershirts. He paces up and down, his voice cracking as he exhorts Mao’s followers through a tinny megaphone. Up close, the crowd’s responses sound worn and tired.
‘Throw out Governor Trench!’
‘Liberate Hong Kong for Honourable Chairman Mao!’ The men are older, rougher-looking than the students we saw near Hong Kong University. Workers brought in from the city, maybe. I’ve read that the Communists pay people to attend their demonstrations. One or two of them glare at us: two imperialist infiltrators. I’m relieved when Frankie hangs back, pauses next to a vegetable stall.
At the entrance to a narrow alley, a man gapes at us. His face large, pasty and baby-like. The way his mouth hangs open, I notice he’s missing a bottom tooth. I turn away, move closer to Frankie.
‘Ruffians and agitators,’ Frankie whispers, quoting the kind of breathless descriptions we read in the newspaper.
‘Chaiyan! Chaiyan!’ Police! Police!, a small clutch of children call out as they run past, shimmy up a nearby banyan tree.
In front of us, a muscular man in an undershirt grabs the megaphone out of the Communist leader’s hands and jumps up on a stone mahjong table. He shouts. His face grows red. The veins on his neck swell and throb. The protesters look past him now towards the ferry pier, crane their necks, rise up on toes. The two bare-chested drummers start to pound their drums more quickly, faster and faster, their bodies glistening with sweat.
Frankie pulls me forward to follow the children. Under the tree is a hunk of rusty metal, an old engine of some sort. We scramble up and now we too can see the trim black-and-white police boat from Hong Kong. It has pulled up behind the ferry and disgorges a neat, orderly line of policemen. There’s a distinct edge of fear now within the crowd. Demonstrations are illegal in Hong Kong, as are firecrackers. I wonder if Frankie and I could be arrested; whether Ah Bing could find us if we were, or my mother.
The police look like creatures from another planet, dressed in full riot gear, helmets, shields. They’ve been issued with special non-slip boots and perspex goggles, batons which can shoot bullets into the knees of attackers. They carry no guns.
‘Imperialist tools! Traitors! Running dogs!’ the demonstrators taunt now, in high voices, itching for a fight.
Around us, shopkeepers hastily close their stalls, squirrel away their money, pull down awnings, then the metal grates. The old fisherwoman stares open-mouthed, with gold-tipped teeth, at the Communists who have come from nowhere, wraps her fingers around the handles of her small bucket of fish. Merchants scuffle with Red Guards who grab their fruits and vegetables to throw at the police. A group of men fill their pockets with stone and rubble from a building site. Quiet, faceless, the police form a phalanx at the far end of the market.
‘We better go!’ Frankie yells, jumping down off the engine. She has to shout over the noise of the crowd and the drums. She’s grinning, her eyes ablaze. This is the real thing. Something we’ll read about in tomorrow’s paper. It’s what we want, to get close, to see the Red Guards, all the things my father doesn’t tell us about Vietnam.
thirteen
Away from the seafront, a maze of narrow alleys zigzags to the back of the village. Market stalls press in tightly, blocking the bright sunlight, the noise of the demonstration, but they are closed, deserted. The shopkeepers have gone home or hurried to watch the spectacle. The air smells of dried fish, squid and octopus wizened and pressed flat, fresh ginger root, sweet medicinal herbs. Open gutters glisten with dark slime. A red bucket collects drips from a public tap.
‘We’re going to catch it from Ah Bing,’ Frankie says, laughing. Her voice echoes, too loud. We should whisper back here. Keep quiet. I’m anxious to hurry now, through to the open fields where we can find the path to Ah Bing’s temple. Maybe we shouldn’t have left Ah Bing. Maybe we won’t be able to find our way. I follow Frankie, wishing we were already there. Then we stop.
In front of us: a pair of black slippers, baggy black trousers stretch across wide hips, an open shirt reveals a gold necklace marooned on a clammy, white chest. Somehow I know instinctively, before I look up, that it’s the man I saw earlier with the pudgy face. His small piggy eyes make me cringe. His pink tongue is thrust into the gap where his tooth is missing. Quickly we turn back. But behind us, a second man steps out from a hidden corner. This man is taller. He has large hands and his face is covered with pockmarks. Frankie screams. But the pockmarked man grabs her quickly around the mouth, silencing her, while the pudgy man pushes me forward, shoves me through the opening of a small metal door.
Inside, it is dark and stiflingly hot. There’s a raw, rancid smell. At first, I can’t see anything. Thin
slats of light that break in around the edges of the tin siding help me find Frankie; to decipher the strange shapes that hang before us: flattened ducks, pigs’ trotters, entrails dangling from hooks. We’re in a butcher stall. One that closed hastily because the butcher’s block is stained with blood and bits of flesh. There is a sharp cleaver, a flat razor, the kind butchers use to scrape the greasy markings off pigskin. The smell is sickening.
‘Come now, you don’t want any trouble!’ the pudgy man says. His voice is low and gravelly in contrast to his baby face. In his fleshy fist, he holds something: a shopping bag of woven plastic mesh. He must have kept it in here. I hadn’t noticed it outside. He holds the bag at arm’s length as if trying to keep it away from his body.
Behind me, a big shadow; it’s like looking at the dark side of the moon. Snickering, the pockmarked man kicks the animal so it sways gently back and forth. A huge pig hanging from a large hook.
‘Hou leng muimui,’ pretty little sister, the pudgy man says. His voice falsely sweet like a kindly uncle, like a boy playing with an insect before he squashes it. ‘You don’t want to make trouble. Take this bag down to the ferry pier, the police boat. This bag is full of lychees for police captain. Very nice present. Police captain, plenty good friend.
‘Don’t look inside!’ he adds, his voice rough once more. As if I could see anything in here. He forces the bag into my hand. I pull back, not wanting to touch his skin. ‘Maybe next time I’ll bring nice lychees for you. Nei teng?’ You understand?
Frankie squirms, manages a quick gasp before the pockmarked man tightens his grip around her mouth. With his other hand, he presses her wrists together too tightly. The bag is in my hands now. My fingers curl stiffly around the hard plastic handles.
Frankie makes a high, muffled noise from her throat. She doesn’t want to be left or maybe she’s trying to tell me something, to scream. The big man pulls her arms painfully up her back, shoves her against the tin siding so that her chin pushes upwards and her neck stretches long and white.
‘Jau la!’ Go!, the pudgy man barks. He’s angry at Frankie for struggling, causing trouble. ‘You no come back, you no big sister!’ I look at my sister’s neck, the knife on the chopping block. The next thing I know I am pushed out in the sunlight; the bag of lychees dangles from my hands. I choke on fresh air, blink at the light.
˜ ˜ ˜
Where do I go? Back down to the village, to the police boat as I’ve been told? Or up to the temple? Run! Up to the temple! Find Ah Bing! Get help! Help me, Kuan Yin. But if I go to the temple, the men will see me. They might have spies.
Slowly, quietly, I step towards the sea, the bag of lychees heavy in my hand, too heavy. Heading back along the alley, I feel as if I float through the air without legs, without will. My spirit has left my body, stayed with Frankie. Only the lychees pull me forward.
Silently, I memorize my route: red bucket, sweet medicines, basket of ginger root, dried fish. I recite these markers like a mantra that will lead me back. Don’t worry, Frankie. I’ll come back. Even though I’m very small. Gwaimui, white ghost girl. Even though I’m all alone, not looked after. Ah Bing would look after me if she could.
Wrinkled cucumbers, bruise-coloured eggplants loom huge and out of focus. I hear the Red Guards shouting, threatening the police. Still beating their drums as if nothing’s changed, nothing’s happened to Frankie and me. I don’t look at them. Don’t look up. I’m scared. Scared someone will see me, look in my eyes. The eggplants are my last marker, the entrance to the alley. I recite my mantra backwards: purple eggplant, dried fish, basket of ginger root, red bucket, metal door.
Let me be invisible, I pray. Don’t let anyone see me. Not the police, not Ah Bing, not my mother, not the deaf boy. Don’t let him see me floating in midair, carrying the white flesh of lychees. Two women push a large basket of long beans inside their stall. ‘Loi la.’ Come, one says, offering help, protection. I see the wrinkled backs of her hands, her black trousers, the fullness of her basket. I don’t look at her face.
Quietly I walk under the children in the banyan tree. Don’t look up. I try not to hold the bag too far from my body, the way the pudgy man did, too revealing. It’s just fruit. A present for the police captain. I keep close to the stalls for cover.
Around me, the villagers and shopkeepers wait, holding their breath. Who will make the first move? Can’t they see me? A white pawn? Moving forwards? Why don’t they stop me? There’s a buzzing in my ears that drowns out the noise; the blare of police, who issue orders through their own megaphones, makes it all sound faraway. ‘Please co-operate peacefully. Please sit down and let the police escort you peacefully back to Hong Kong.’
It’s because I’m good at this. That’s why they don’t see me, run out and stop me. I’ve been in training. Hiding out. Playing Viet Cong with Frankie. I’m more subtle than the pudgy man. Camouflage, secrets, deceit, they’re second nature. It’s because I’m gwaimui, white ghost girl. I can make myself invisible, hide behind my white skin. I can dodge rocks that the Red Guards hurl at the police, bullets in the jungle. I can’t be hurt. I’m nimble for my age, quick-witted, the Viet Cong say. They use me as a child scout, a lookout. I carry baskets of shrapnel, nails I’ve stolen from aid projects. I smuggle them through underground tunnels to soldiers who pack them into bombs.
˜ ˜ ˜
Looking up, I see that I can’t possibly take the lychees up the pier. The police have cordoned off that whole side of the village. They stand guard at the bridge over the inlet of sampans where a woman mends a net and a girl carries a baby on her back. I won’t be able to pass.
I hesitate. I feel a pair of eyes, a police officer’s, pick me out. I feel his gaze, his surprise, a small white girl alone in the Chinese market, carrying a shopping bag full of lychees. The police officer picks up a radio receiver. The bag of lychees is huge and grotesque. It pulls at my arm. My clenched hand is sweaty. I edge back behind the side of a fruit stall to escape his view. To hide what I carry.
‘No,’ I whisper. ‘Don’t help me. I don’t want your help. Don’t stop me.’ There’s an empty oilcan, tall, dented. This is as close as I will get to the police because the pier is cordoned off. I don’t think I can bear the weight of the lychees any more. Quickly, without looking, I drop the bag into the can. Hear the lychees hit the bottom with a horrible clang, the sound of metal striking metal. I’m surprised no one else hears. No one runs out to stop me.
Hurry now, don’t run. I walk briskly. I need to get back to Frankie but also instinctively I’m putting space between myself and the lychees. Between myself and the police. It’s hard not to run. But if I do, people will know what I did.
The explosion, it’s deafening. A huge single blast, like all the firecrackers blown up at once. There’s a shout. I hear a boy’s high voice scream, without stopping. The police charge forward, shields up. Protesters, villagers, shopkeepers, children scatter, running back into the alleys for safety. No one wants to be arrested. No one wants to be hurt. I see the suited Communist leader standing empty-handed and confused. It’s not what he bargained for.
I run fast now, carried, hidden by the crowd. Turn into the alley at the eggplants. Eggplants, dried fish, basket of ginger root, sweet medicines, red plastic bucket, metal door . . . The door is open. Where’s Frankie? I throw myself inside, ready to scream at them, tear them to pieces. I couldn’t do what you asked. Give me back my sister. What have you made me do?
‘They’re gone.’ Frankie’s voice in the dark. She crouches in the corner behind the slaughtered pig, her back up against the hot metal. She is here after all, my sister. She’s all right. She’s alive. I’ve done it. I’ve saved her.
I lean over to pull my sister up, to embrace her, but she pushes my hands away as if they are dirty or maybe she is. She gets up herself.
‘You shouldn’t have left,’ she says, her voice angry and choking. ‘You don’t know what they could have done.’ Outside her eyes are wide and dilated. I’m taken aback, w
ounded. I thought she would welcome me back, a heroine. Instead she’s accusing me. ‘What was in the bag?’ she asks.
‘I didn’t look,’ I say. ‘I threw it in an empty can. Then I came back – I thought they might kill you.’
‘There was an explosion,’ Frankie says. She looks at me hard. Then dizzy, her vision blurry, she throws up in the gutter.
fourteen
Red embroidered silk. Tassels. Red stubs of joss sticks. A large coil of joss hangs from the ceiling, smoking. Porcelain bowls bear offerings to Kuan Yin: Ah Bing’s mangoes, longans, dried mushrooms, sticks of incense wood. Red shakers of fortune sticks. Fortune papers tacked on the wall. Red tablets with gilt lettering. Red plastic pinwheels turn before a grease-caked fan. A red bucket holds a rag, a feather duster, a greasy cooking-oil bottle now used for detergent. A magenta canteen with white peonies steams with jasmine tea.
On the wall, a painting of Kuan Yin. She wears a blue dress, floats across the ocean on a pink water lily.
Frankie is sick again. She threw up in the algae-choked stream on our way up to the temple. The amahs bring her tea and congee to settle the stomach.
‘Missee say warm Coke number one,’ Ah Doi pushes her own remedy. Ah Mui insists that we turn off the fan. Ah Bing makes Frankie take off her clothes. They smell awful, ‘like bad meat’. Frankie pulls a sheet around herself and shoves the clothes through the curtained door of Ah Bing’s sleeping cubicle upstairs. She pulls the curtain, shutting out everyone, shutting out me. The small room has an interior window to let in light but the glass is etched, I can’t see through.
I help Ah Bing wash Frankie’s clothes in a tub on the patio. She doesn’t say anything to me either. We wash in silence. I want to cry. When Frankie knelt down on the path to vomit, Ah Bing swore at us. ‘Diu ke lo si.’ Make love to your old teacher. ‘Houh hoi.’ Little whores. The words soothed me. They were the first words she spoke after the police let us go.
White Ghost Girls Page 5