Lan Wai hesitated: she looked down at the ground and then up again. “Okay, just this once. Just for you.” She smiled.
Ji Shen watched as the man slowly walked away, gripping the can tightly. She wondered how many mouths would be fed from that one can.
“Don’t you ever feel sorry for—”
“You can’t,” Lan Wai snapped, before Ji Shen could finish her sentence. But then she relaxed into a smile again. “For all we know, he’ll turn around and sell it for a profit.”
Ji Shen shrugged. “Yes, I see,” she said, leaning over and extracting one can from the box.
Later, when they had sold the entire box of potted meat, Ji Shen grinned victoriously. “It wasn’t so hard.”
“It gets even easier,” Lan Wai said. “You did well.”
Ji Shen felt a warm rush of friendship toward the skinny young woman walking beside her. Lan Wai was the opposite of her rich, spoiled classmates at St. Cecilia’s, and Ji Shen could feel in her the same simple trust she’d felt with Quan.
“My parents and sister were killed by the Japanese,” she suddenly blurted out.
Lan Wai shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry. My mother gave me this scarf. I keep hoping she’ll see it one day and remember me,” she said, touching it. “So I guess that makes us both orphans then. At least you don’t have to look into the face of every woman you see on the street, wondering if she might be your mother.”
“At least,” Ji Shen repeated.
By the end of the week, Ji Shen knew she could no longer keep her new job a secret from Quan. She had run out of excuses and she knew Quan was suspicious. All night she tossed and turned, trying not to awaken Pei. The next morning she waited for Quan and quickly asked him to take a walk with her.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
Ji Shen nodded. “I wanted to tell you that I’ve gone to work for someone else for a while,” she finally said, not daring to look up at him. “Just until I put some money aside.”
Quan stopped. “Who?”
“His name is Lock.”
In the breath of silence that followed, Ji Shen looked up and saw how angry Quan was—a reddish flush had colored his face and he stared at her in disbelief.
“How can you be so stupid?” he asked. “Don’t you know that once you get mixed up with the Triads, you can never get out? Lock would sell his own family for the right price!”
A sudden, hard anger rose up inside Ji Shen, a quick pulse that throbbed at her temple. How dare he speak to her like that? He would never be anything but a sha boy. He didn’t know a good opportunity even when it was dangling in front of him. She was tired of him always watching over her, always knowing what was best for her.
It had only been a week and already Lock taught her what to buy and sell, how to be a survivor like he was. He allowed her to be who she wanted to be.
“It’s none of your business what I do!” Ji Shen felt a hot rush of tears push up from behind her eyes. “It’s my life to live.”
Ji Shen heard the low grunt of Quan’s disapproval, and clasped her hands tightly behind her back. She stared down at his callused hands. They were the one feature that she would always know him by. His hands revealed his whole character—that he was a hard worker, someone dependable and honest. Why couldn’t he just be happy for her? Quan meant more to Ji Shen than he knew; he would always be her first friend in Hong Kong, and the brother she never had.
“You don’t know what you want,” Quan argued. “You’re just blinded by all his flash!”
Ji Shen breathed in slowly and tried to tell herself it was just Quan’s anger or jealousy speaking. What Quan couldn’t understand was that Lock had to be ruthless on the streets, or else he’d have been “swallowed up a long time ago,” as he’d told her the other day. Lock had had a difficult life—he’d been on the streets since he was twelve, and also raised a younger brother and sister.
“What about Pei?” Quan’s voice was tight, yet calmer. “Do you think she’d want you involved with the Triads?”
Ji Shen took her time answering; her throat was so dry she could hardly swallow. As smart and generous as Lock was, she knew Pei would never approve of her being with someone who was so much older, and who had Triad connections.
“It’s my life,” Ji Shen finally said, unable to meet Quan’s gaze.
The Gathering
Song Lee moved quickly around the sitting room, opening the window and arranging the chairs so that there’d be enough room for all the sisters she expected to attend the meeting. It was the first large gathering they’d had since the occupation began. Most of their meetings had been confined to the small groups of sisters who lived in various boardinghouses around Wan Chai. Everyday problems of survival took precedence. How to earn money and obtain enough food dominated the discussions at each house, and the women quickly fell back into the old system of support they’d had at the sisters’ house. While many of the sisters had saved money during their years as amahs, most washed, ironed, or cleaned to stay afloat, and a few dabbled in the black market or took out small loans from the sisterhood. Song Lee was always proud of the fact that she’d kept the sisterhood’s money safely hidden, and had never deposited it into a bank as others had suggested. If she had, all would have been lost to the Japanese devils, and many of her sisters might not have gotten by without help.
At least once a month Song Lee tried to attend the meetings at other houses, so that everyone would be kept up-to-date. Especially now, her sisters went about their lives as quietly as possible. The last thing she and the others wanted was to call any attention to what was left of their sisterhood.
Song Lee lit the thin sticks of incense before the statue of Kuan Yin and prayed that the meeting would go smoothly. Her sisters had been her family for more years than she could remember, and now she would have to tell them that there wasn’t enough money left to make any more loans for the duration of the occupation. Song Lee refused to go into the sisters’ retirement fund until there was no choice. For now, they could cook, clean, iron, or shovel night soil to keep going.
Sometimes, Song Lee couldn’t believe the power of her words. Her sisters always listened in rapt attention and did as she said. As a child, Song Lee had kept her words hidden away, afraid they would somehow change the life around her. As an adult, she wanted nothing more.
She breathed in the pungent scent of the burning incense, which never failed to fill her with the bittersweet memory of her own lonely childhood and of the one person who still visited her in dreams. She wondered how life would have changed if she’d only spoken out then. There had been moments in her life that still stung and swelled under her skin. But over the years, Song Lee embraced each memory, allowed it to return to her with a dull ache or a flicker of happiness.
A year after seven-year-old Song Lee had been given to the silk work, an eight-year-old girl named Ching Lui entered the girls’ house. Ching Lui was everything Song Lee wasn’t—beautiful, brave, outspoken, and stubborn. For the next six years of her life, she was Song Lee’s best friend, and the closest she’d ever had to a real sister.
On warm summer nights, Ching Lui would often dare Song Lee to quietly slip out of the girls’ house and go down to the river with her. Song Lee still remembered the suffocating heat and the rich smell of the damp, red earth, the sharp surprise of the cool water against her warm skin, her toes sinking into the soft muddy bottom.
“I dare you,” Ching Lui whispered from her bed next to Song Lee’s.
“We can’t,” she whispered back. “We’ll get punished if we’re caught.” It was always the same argument between them.
She saw Ching Lui’s shadow rise up from her bed. “Then we won’t get caught.”
Song Lee hesitated. “I don’t know.”
Ching Lui leaned close to her. “You’re always afraid at first; then you end up having a great time. Come on.” She pulled Song Lee’s hand.
Song Lee pulled her hand back. She immediately mi
ssed her friend’s touch, but for once Song Lee didn’t move to follow. She had stubbornly decided to stand her ground. The rhythmic breathing of the other girls floated through the long room as she watched Ching Lui quietly walk toward the door. Song Lee sat up in bed, but still didn’t make a move to follow.
Ching Lui reached the door at the far end of the room and waved once again for Song Lee to come along. In that moment of darkness, Song Lee wanted to tell her friend not to go, but Ching Lui’s impetuous nature kept her silent. Instead, Song Lee lay back down on her bed and didn’t look up again until she heard the soft click of the door closing.
In her mind’s eye, Song Lee saw Ching Lui stealing down the stairs and out the front door, then across the field to the river where she would drop her nightclothes on the bank and run straight into the cool water. A secret longing rose in Song Lee.
She waited up all night for Ching Lui to return. And when she didn’t, it was Song Lee who found her lying lifeless on the bank of the river in the red dirt.
Ching Lui had slipped on the way down to the water hitting her head on a rock. When they brought her back to the girls’ house, Song Lee wouldn’t go near the body. I should have said something. I should have gone with her: an endless lament that turned over and over in her mind. Thoughts of death seem too foreign and far away at thirteen years old. She kept waiting for Ching Lui to return and tell her it was all a joke.
For two days incense filled the girls’ house, until Song Lee felt as if she would suffocate. On the second night, before Ching Lui’s body was taken away by her family, Song Lee had almost fallen asleep when the overpowering smell of incense filled the room and she felt a sudden warmth beside her. “You were right to stay,” a voice whispered. Song Lee lay frozen in her bed. When she was finally able to turn her head, she was alone in her bed. All that lingered on her pillow was a faint scent of incense.
Song Lee heard voices from the stairwell and wondered if Pei and Ji Shen would be attending the meeting. Lately, she sensed, they were going through a difficult time. Ji Shen was just as willful as Ching Lui. She saw life as it was in the heat of the moment, rather than in the years it took to cultivate and shape it. Song Lee had been trying to smooth the ground between Pei and Ji Shen by involving them in the sisters’ meetings.
“Come tonight,” she’d asked Pei again that morning at breakfast.
“I’ll try,” Pei answered, noncommittal. Her spoon skimmed the top of her watery jook.
“It would be a nice change for you and Ji Shen,” Song Lee added.
Pei hesitated, then said, “I don’t think Ji Shen will be able to make it.”
“These are difficult years for all of us, not to mention someone as impressionable as Ji Shen,” Song Lee gently said. “Everything will fall into its place. One step at a time.”
Pei looked up. The worry she’d been holding in suddenly appeared in the fine lines around her eyes. “Thank you,” she said.
Song Lee wanted to say more, but refrained. Over the years she’d kept the peace by remaining one step away, never becoming so close that she couldn’t see beyond what was right in front of her.
There was a brisk knock on the door and Luling excitedly announced the arrival of their sisters. Song Lee could hear the voices and laughter filling the stairwell, moving toward her like a flock of birds. She turned back toward Kuan Yin and closed her eyes for a moment, the sweet incense calming her.
Chapter Nine
1945
Pei
A slant of morning sun warmed the room as Pei folded the last of their laundry and placed it neatly in the battered bureau. Soon they were to meet Mr. Ma.
Pei was totally at ease with Ji Shen now only during their visits to Stanley Camp. Mrs. Finch met them at the back fence the first Thursday of every month. Every month for the past year and a half they’d religiously bought a ride from Mr. Ma. He now knew them well enough to give them coconut candy and allow Pei to sit up front with him: “You see much better from up here.”
Ji Shen never seemed to grow tired of the cramped, bumpy ride to Stanley. During these trips, Pei felt that Ji Shen was once again the young girl she knew so well, with gentle ease and a quick smile.
“Do you think Mrs. Finch will like this?” Ji Shen asked, pulling out a can of sausages from the cloth bag that lay heavily on her bed.
Pei heard the dull thud of other items shifting in the bag. “I can’t imagine she wouldn’t.” She wanted to give her a hug.
Ji Shen grinned. “I was lucky enough to get her a can of peas this time, too.”
Pei refrained from being too enthusiastic about Ji Shen’s dealings, though she knew the black market had become a necessity of life in Hong Kong and was glad that Ji Shen’s surprises always lifted Mrs. Finch’s spirits. Every month Ji Shen packed Mrs. Finch food and essentials. Sometimes she had just cans of potted meat and crackers, but in other months she could happily put together several cans of sardines, liver pâté, a package of bread, and even a small box of peppermints, as if she were preparing for a party.
“Did you tell Song Lee we won’t be here for the rest of the day?” Pei closed the drawer.
“I’m going right now,” Ji Shen answered.
Pei nodded. “Hurry—Mr. Ma won’t like having to wait too long for us.”
She watched Ji Shen swing open the door and bound down the stairs of the boardinghouse. Pei stood in the warmth of the sunlight wishing every day could be so simple.
With every passing month, as they drove through the city to Stanley, Hong Kong’s decline under Japanese occupation grew more pronounced. In three and a half years, the occupiers had given Japanese names to streets, hotels, and restaurants, but had done little to improve Hong Kong. The van still had to maneuver carefully through the torn-up streets, while buildings bombed, shelled, and burned during the early fighting remained in disrepair. Food and fuel were always in short supply, and as the occupation dragged on, it was clear the Japanese would not be lifting Hong Kong out of its destitution, but pushing it down further. The streets were still desolate, but at least, in the past year, there’d been fewer and fewer Japanese patrols. All the while, the Chinese had simply found ways to survive.
Most Hong Kong Chinese had learned to coexist with the Japanese aggressors with as little bloodshed as possible. They banded together, bartered with and stole from each other, and did whatever it took to keep going in the face of the fading Japanese dominance.
June was stifling. Pei and Ji Shen were sweating by the time they came in sight of the arid, colorless camp. Pei prayed that Mrs. Finch was feeling better. She’d looked so pale and thin last month; her words had been brief and labored. All Pei wanted was for the occupation to end so that Mrs. Finch could regain her health.
A group of internees was already gathered at the barbed-wire fence, writing IOUs to the hawkers, who now did most of their selling in the mornings before the day became too hot. She imagined the sales were now more charity than business, since she couldn’t see the boys ever being able to collect on all the IOUs.
Pei worried about how Mrs. Finch was holding up in the heat. The overcrowded buildings must be stifling at night after baking in the sun all day. Mrs. Finch had reassured Pei visit after visit that she’d seen the camp doctor, but each month she appeared weaker.
The day before, Pei had stopped by the old herbalist and told him of Mrs. Finch’s shortness of breath and swollen ankles. He shook his head. “I lost so much in the fire. This will have to do.” He sprinkled equal amounts of dark leaves and small dry branches from various jars onto white pieces of paper, then folded them into individual packets. Pei noticed the combination was different from the last herbs she’d brought to Mrs. Finch. “Tell her this one is ginseng tea. It will be less foreign to her then.”
Pei nodded gratefully.
“She must drink all of it,” the old herbalist instructed. “A bowl every day for the next ten days, or it’s of no use!”
They hurried down the path, the heat of the s
un pushing against them.
“I don’t see Mrs. Finch,” Ji Shen said.
Pei squinted hard against the bright glare. “It’s better she isn’t waiting out in the sun.”
“There she is!” Ji Shen pointed toward the redbrick building.
Mrs. Finch walked slowly toward them. Pei waved, her hand pausing in midair when she saw her friend’s even thinner frame and the new hesitation in her step. Pei’s heart ached to see how Mrs. Finch was wilting with each passing month.
“How are you?” Pei called, trying to smile.
Mrs. Finch waved. “I’m fine.” She smiled as she approached. “It’s just that the heat has made my ankles swell a bit.”
Pei pressed closer. “You look a bit pale.”
Even the flowers on Mrs. Finch’s dress had faded from much washing. “Just the heat. Nothing to be concerned about.” Mrs. Finch wiped her forehead with a handkerchief.
Ji Shen swung the bag down from her shoulder. “Look what we’ve brought you!” She pulled out a can and slipped it through the barbed wire.
“My God, peas! And to think I always refused to eat them as a child. Now they’re as good as gold!” She laughed and grasped Ji Shen’s hand. “Thank you, my dear.”
“Try to stay out of the sun as much as possible,” Pei continued. “And drink this ginseng tea.” She handed Mrs. Finch the bag of white packets she’d gotten from the old herbalist. “Just let it steep in hot water for a little while. Promise me you’ll drink a bowl every day. It’ll give you more strength.”
Mrs. Finch reached for the herbs and nodded. “Don’t worry so. You’re acting as old as I am! Now, what news do you have to tell me?”
“The Japanese don’t know what to do with us anymore,” Ji Shen volunteered. “They’ve been in Hong Kong for over three years now and have yet to turn us into their little Tokyo. Nothing has changed, except that Hong Kong is still a shambles and they’re losing their hold all over the Pacific.”
The Language of Threads Page 16