Bury What We Cannot Take: A novel

by Kirstin Chen

“Just for a few days.”

  “Who made you leave her?”

  His mother said, “It’s temporary. Her permit will come through next week.”

  “I tried everything,” said Seok Koon. “They wouldn’t let us bring her.”

  Bee Kim was talking on and on about Hua’s suicide, a hammered portrait, a couple of vengeful inspectors. Seok Koon interrupted to describe the wretched director of the safety bureau. Ah Zhai’s temples throbbed. He yanked his tie from his neck. This heat would kill them all.

  His mother said, “Our own house girl spied on us and reported us to the authorities. Can you imagine such a thing?”

  Ah Zhai pressed his fingers to his temples. Nine-year-old San San, alone in the villa with a couple of servants who’d revealed themselves to be traitors? It didn’t make any sense. “How do you know her permit will come through?”

  His wife’s face fell, and Ah Zhai almost wished he hadn’t asked.

  Like a mantra his mother repeated, “We had no choice. It was the right thing to do.”

  “I wanted to stay behind,” said the boy. “Why didn’t you let me stay behind?”

  Tiny fists pounded the inner walls of Ah Zhai’s skull. “What did the safety bureau director say?”

  All three of them talked at once.

  “He all but promised us the permit.”

  “He’s a good friend of Chin Kong’s.”

  “I should have stayed instead of San San.”

  “All cadres are corrupt. He won’t turn down the bribe.”

  Ah Zhai couldn’t think straight. He had to get them out of this sweltering hall. He signaled for a porter to deal with the luggage and said, “Let’s go. This isn’t the place to discuss this.” He took off, and his family hurried behind him, their voices a blur.

  Outside the harbor, the bustle of the city seemed to chasten them. He helped his mother into the front seat of the car, while Ah Liam and Seok Koon settled into the back. He inserted the key in the ignition and turned up the air-conditioning as high as it would go.

  In a determined voice, his mother said, “What a beautiful car, Zhai.”

  Seok Koon agreed. “Son, do you like your pa’s car?”

  At first the boy was silent, and then he said, “Mui Ah didn’t turn Grandma in. I did.”

  The high pitch of Ah Liam’s voice was the first thing that struck Ah Zhai. His son still sounded like a girl.

  His wife inhaled sharply. “What are you saying? No, I won’t believe it.”

  His mother said, “Whom did you tell? How could you do such a thing?”

  Only then did Ah Zhai comprehend his son’s confession. He adjusted his rearview mirror until it captured the boy’s brazen gaze. Who was this stranger in his back seat? Where had he learned such evil, or was it somehow innate?

  “I had to,” Ah Liam said. Under his breath he recited, “Whoever sides with imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism is—”

  Ah Zhai swerved to the side of the road and stamped on the brakes. The boy slammed into the back of Ah Zhai’s seat, which knocked the breath out of him. Ah Zhai twisted around to look his son full in the face. “Don’t ever let me hear you quote that bastard again. You are too young and too stupid to understand anything.”

  The boy’s lower lip trembled. He squeezed shut his eyes.

  Ah Zhai felt his wife and mother silently urging him to keep talking, to say something reassuring and finite. He returned his hands to the steering wheel and released the brakes.

  At the stoplight, he regarded his wife’s and son’s ashen faces in the rearview mirror. Beside him, his mother wrung her hands like she was determined to squeeze every drop of life from them. The specter of his daughter—that funny flat-faced little bundle who rarely cried, that agile toddler whose watchful eyes missed nothing—loomed over them all. When the light turned, he accelerated, fearful of what he’d done.

  8

  At last, a full four hours after San San and Cook had joined the queue outside the safety bureau, the door swung open. San San stood on her tiptoes to get a better look at the cadre who held a long rolled-up poster and a bucket of paste. Voices rose up and down the queue.

  “Please, comrade, when will the director be taking meetings?”

  “Comrade, I’ve been waiting since six this morning.”

  “So have we,” San San cried.

  “That’s nothing! We’ve been waiting since four.”

  The cadre turned her back to them. She brushed long stripes of paste on the door and put up the poster. San San pushed forward to get a closer look, but she was too short to see over the grown-ups. “What does it say?” she asked, tugging on Cook’s sleeve. “How much longer?”

  Cook’s lips moved as his eyes swept across the poster. San San had already noticed his poor reading skills. She elbowed her way to the front of the crowd.

  NO EXIT PERMITS WILL BE ISSUED FROM NOW THROUGH THE MONTH OF JUNE. THE SAFETY BUREAU WILL REOPEN FOR REQUESTS ON JULY 1, 1957.

  It was only the end of May. Her father might not last that long. Surely the safety bureau would make an exception for her, if she could just explain everything. She weaved her way back to Cook.

  He scratched his head. “We’ll ask your ma what to do.”

  She wanted to smack him awake. “We don’t have time for that.”

  A commotion rose from the side of the mansion. A short, stout man with a doughy face and beady eyes, flanked by two guards, hurried to a waiting car.

  “Comrade Koh,” several cried as they gave chase.

  “My wife is ill!”

  “My brother is dying!”

  “I’ve been waiting five months, you have to help me!”

  San San didn’t join in. No exceptions, she realized, would be made for her.

  The guards waved their batons to keep back the pursuers. The stout man slid into the car, which sped off.

  “Your mother will know what to do,” said Cook. Everything about him, from his nervous, shifting gaze to his hunched-over posture, signaled his helplessness.

  San San’s frustration turned to disdain. How could her mother have left her with this bumbling, useless man? How could he be expected to take charge of anything? If she were to have any chance of getting to Hong Kong in time to see her father, she would have to figure it out on her own.

  The following day, right before the final bell, Teacher Lu wiped off her chalk-stained fingers on her handkerchief and announced, “You students have received a golden opportunity to thank the peasants who have sacrificed so much for our country.”

  San San knew what was coming. She sank in her seat.

  “This weekend, we need volunteers to assist at a tea plantation in Anxi.”

  The last time San San and her classmates had volunteered at a textiles factory in the city, they’d spent hours washing floors and cleaning lavatories. For days afterward, San San had scrubbed her skin to rid it of the acrid smell of bleach.

  “How lucky you are to be able to give back to the people who are the backbone of this great nation,” said Teacher Lu, placing hand over heart as though overcome by emotion.

  One by one, San San’s classmates raised their hands, and Teacher Lu wrote their names on the blackboard. San San sat as still as a statue, hoping against all odds that Teacher Lu would overlook her. Soon, she and Stinky, the class troublemaker who also had a flatulence problem, were the only two who had yet to volunteer.

  “Anyone else?” asked Teacher Lu.

  San San’s seatmate and best friend, Little Red, kicked her under their shared desk. Dropping her head, San San raised her hand. A second later, Stinky caved, too.

  Teacher Lu clapped her hands. “One hundred percent volunteer participation yet again. As our Great Helmsman says, education and productive labor must go hand in hand. See you all tomorrow at five a.m. sharp.”

  San San smacked Little Red’s knee under their desk, harder than she’d intended.

  Little Red batted her lashes and muttered, “If I have to suffer,
you do, too,” at which San San couldn’t help but smile.

  The next morning, San San and her classmates rode the ferry to Xiamen where they boarded the bus that would take them to Anxi. The bus was hot and noisy and stank of diesel fumes, but San San took a strange comfort in all these bodies crammed in around her. She hadn’t slept soundly in the three days since her family’s departure, and now she leaned her head against the window and instantly fell asleep.

  She awoke to find her hand in a softly snoring Little Red’s. Outside her window, the wide paved road filled with swerving bicycles and honking pedicabs had given way to a winding mountain path and peasants on donkeys. In place of unfinished buildings shielded by scaffolding were verdant fields cut into the gently sloping hillside, all of it veiled by a vast curtain of fog. This strange, beautiful landscape filled her with hope. When Little Red yawned awake, San San said, “It won’t be as bad as last time. You’ll see.”

  The students were greeted by an old man with a leathery face and blackened fingernails that looked as though they were caked with blood, but which he explained were stained with tea. He led them across the dense, almost-black soil, past peasants bent low over tea bushes, like a scene out of a propaganda poster. One of the peasants grinned at San San, revealing a startling mouthful of twisted, brown teeth that was nothing like the bright white smiles of the poster peasants.

  They stopped at a simple shed in front of which a few thin donkeys idled.

  “Now for your assignment,” the old man said. “You students are going to transport donkey manure to fertilize the bushes.”

  San San turned to Little Red in outrage, but the sight of her friend’s quivering chin made her stop short. “Don’t be sad,” she whispered, and then she gifted Little Red a nugget of knowledge she hadn’t known she possessed: “Donkey manure stinks much less than the human kind.”

  Little Red giggled through her tears, and San San joined in, drawing a stern look from Teacher Lu.

  The old man took them around the side of the building to a deep pit. The stench hit them full in the face. San San switched to breathing through her mouth, and Little Red was kind enough not to point out her earlier error. They were told to line up to collect carrying poles that had a bucket attached to each end. Right away San San’s pole chafed her shoulders. Within a few steps, she felt blisters forming on her skin. She attempted to shift the pole but only succeeded in tipping half a bucket of manure down the side of her pants. The clammy stickiness sickened her. She kept breathing through her mouth, but the stench coated her tongue and the insides of her throat until she could almost taste it. She set down her buckets in despair.

  Her classmates tripped past her with considerably less difficulty. Even Little Red was already several paces ahead. San San gathered her strength and lifted the pole back over her shoulders, careful not to disturb the buckets’ contents. A giant sneeze rose through her and she quickly set down the buckets. Once she started sneezing she could not stop. Her eyes itched and watered; it took all her willpower to avoid rubbing them with her filthy hands. With two fingers she pinched her grandmother’s handkerchief out of her pocket, blew her nose, and then regarded the soiled fabric with remorse.

  Teacher Lu was coming toward her with her hands on her hips.

  “It’s my immune system,” San San explained, repeating the phrase her mother used. “I’m always catching cold.”

  “Your classmates are already on their second round.” Teacher Lu lifted the pole back onto San San’s shoulders and went to check on Stinky, who had also fallen behind.

  Despite the ache that spread from her neck and shoulders to her lower back, San San somehow made it to the row of bushes. She emptied what remained in her buckets and returned to the pit to start all over again.

  Through each round, her nose continued to run. She had to stop every few steps to blow into her grandmother’s handkerchief. She pushed herself onward by imagining her father, lying on his deathbed, unable to eat or move. How could she complain when he was suffering so? She set down her buckets and sneezed three times.

  Teacher Lu appeared beside San San and said in a surprisingly gentle tone, “It’s almost lunchtime. Go and take a short rest.” She pointed to the communal dining hall where they would take their afternoon meal.

  San San trudged in the direction her teacher had pointed, fighting to hide her glee. By now the sun had summoned enough heat to burn through the fog, and she was parched. Inside the dining hall, a young woman with deep lines radiating from the corners of her eyes gave her a tin cup of water. She drank greedily and then went back outside and found a shady spot beneath an acacia tree.

  Two short, sturdy men pushing a handcart piled high with pallets of tea leaves walked past.

  “There?” one man asked, pointing to one of two trucks parked several meters ahead.

  “Yeah,” said the other. “The one going to Hong Kong.”

  San San flattened her back against the tree trunk and listened for the men to say more, but they only grunted and gestured as they loaded the pallets into the truck bed. The moratorium on exit permits, she saw, applied only to people, while goods passed freely across the border. She pictured a fancy tea shop in Hong Kong, stacked to the ceiling with tins of pungent leaves. Her mother would enter, pointing to the tin that held the very leaves that San San had labored to fertilize. Her mother would return to her father’s bedside with that aromatic brew, blowing gently before tipping the cup to his pale, chapped lips, both of them oblivious to the chain that led back to their absent daughter.

  San San knew she had to act. When the men wheeled away the empty cart, she made sure she was alone before scrambling into the truck bed. But the pallets were packed so snugly there was no place to hide. She jumped down from the truck bed and scurried through the passenger door into the cab, where she folded herself in the space beneath the dashboard.

  Another man returned to count the pallets and make sure they were properly stacked, but she was well out of sight. Later—but hopefully not too much later—when the driver entered the truck, San San would have to convince him to take her along. She prayed he’d arrive soon, before anyone noticed she was missing. “Please just hear me out,” she’d say quietly but firmly. “My father is dying in Hong Kong. My family had to leave without me. My father is rich and will reward you handsomely for bringing me to him.”

  In the distance, her classmates called her name. She curled up tightly on the floor of the truck. She picked out Little Red’s voice among the cries and wished she could have informed her of her plan, to spare her from worrying. And then San San thought of all the other people who would worry: Cook and Mui Ah. Auntie Rose. She’d have to send a letter the instant she reached Hong Kong. Perhaps the driver would have paper and a pen, so she could write the letter on the way there and give it to him to mail when he returned to Anxi. Did they have mail service in the countryside?

  Shouts of her name grew louder. Her nose was running again, and she dabbed the edge of her handkerchief to her raw nostrils. A gust of wind blew in through the open window. She felt her insides constrict, and then the sneeze catapulted out of her. “Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!”

  The passenger door of the truck swung open. San San smacked her head on the dashboard as she sat up. “Achoo!”

  “She’s here, I found her,” someone cried. “The little scoundrel is right here.”

  A pair of rough, calloused hands dragged San San from the truck. When her feet hit the dirt, her legs crumpled; she clung to the stranger’s arm.

  The arm belonged to a stocky woman with a broad, flat face. “You lazy worm, you naughty girl. Everyone’s been searching for you. Your teacher’s worried sick.”

  San San twisted around to meet the woman’s eyes. “Please just hear me out,” she pleaded, but her teacher was already running over.

  Sweat dripped down Teacher Lu’s face. She doubled over and rested with her palms on her knees. When she’d caught her breath, she seized San San by the shirt collar and dragged
her to the bus.

  “I’m sorry, Teacher,” San San said. “I felt so sick and so exhausted, I just wanted to rest for a little while.” The last thing she wanted was to reveal her true motive.

  “Wait here,” said Teacher Lu. To the bus driver, she said, “Don’t let her out of your sight.”

  The driver smoked and turned up the volume on his small radio and ignored San San except to ask, “Why would you do such a stupid thing?”

  The bus’s dirty windshield turned the clear sky the color of smog.

  San San said, “I guess I’m stupid.”

  After a while, her classmates filed onto the bus. They laughed and pointed and made faces at San San, all except for Little Red, who stared straight ahead and marched past.

  Teacher Lu got on last and sat down next to San San. She pinched her arm and said, loud enough for the whole bus to hear, “You bad, bad egg. You’re in more trouble than you can even imagine.”

  San San’s classmates tittered, and she hung her head.

  “You’re really shameless,” said Teacher Lu, “shirking work while the rest of your classmates sweated through their shirts.”

  San San realized she’d managed to convince her teacher that laziness was her sole crime. “I’m sorry, Teacher. I see how my selfishness caused my friends to suffer. I promise to fix my bad attitude.” She dared not peek to gauge her teacher’s reaction.

  9

  Each morning, Seok Koon hastily changed out of her nightgown and flew downstairs to check the mailbox, even though she knew it was too soon for a letter from Diamond Villa to arrive.

  She told herself the director would keep his word, but just in case, she spent her days traversing Hong Kong Island and parts of Kowloon in search of anyone who might possibly increase San San’s chances of making it safely across the border. At nine o’clock sharp, she arrived at the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on Queen Victoria Street, and when the aloof receptionist announced once again that she had no available appointments, Seok Koon parked herself on the lumpy sofa directly opposite the reception desk, in case of a cancellation. Afternoons, she braved stinking, chaotic streets to visit the community centers that were sprouting up all over the colony to cater to newly arrived immigrants and refugees. Evenings, she wrote her daughter breezy, lighthearted letters describing their seventh-floor flat in the stately building that was taller than any on Drum Wave Islet, the pale-pink curtains and canopy bed in San San’s new room, the Broadwood baby grand piano that no one would touch until she arrived. She closed each letter with the promise that Pa would hang on until San San reached his bedside.