Threads

by Ami Polonsky

  “There’s a kite festival here?” Mom asks.

  “Yes,” the girl says. “A big festival, which begins in a few hours. Here, in this park. It begins again at sunrise tomorrow. Very famous kite festival. Many people are setting up for it already!” She points behind her, where several stands are being erected.

  “Oh, we didn’t know,” Mom says, excitedly. “We should stay through dinner!”

  “Yeah, let’s stay,” I add quickly, glancing at the girl.

  “Yes,” she chimes in, smiling directly at me. “Stay.”

  “Al, let’s do it!” Mom goes on. “Remember how Lola loved the kites in Shanghai?” I watch the girl’s face as she looks from Mom to Dad.

  Dad nods. “Yeah,” he says wistfully, “I remember. I guess we could stay through dinner. We were going to try that restaurant near our hotel, though….”

  “Oh, who cares about that?” Mom says before I can even open my mouth. “Let’s stay. Come on, it will be an adventure!”

  “Would you like to buy a kite?” the girl asks. “My uncle makes each kite by hand. Very strong. Will not break.” Lola’s first dragon kite had broken last time. She was so upset that Mom and Dad had bought her another.

  “Let’s buy one!” I say to Mom and Dad.

  “And,” the girl goes on, “you will have the rest of the afternoon to enjoy Sunma. This is a very historic city with special tourist attractions. For example, we have a wonderful gondola that will take you high into the hills and allow you views of the area.” She looks at me intently. “From up high, you are able to see all you need to see of Beijing and Hebei Province, from a section of the Great Wall of China just south of here, to the many factories to our northwest.”

  My heart leaps. “That sounds beautiful,” I say to Mom and Dad quickly, still looking at the girl. She is smiling politely at us.

  “It does,” Mom agrees. “And it’s a pretty clear day—we’ll be able to see a lot.” Bands of white clouds hang like streamers across the rare light-blue sky.

  “Can we do it, Dad?” I ask. “It will be so cool to see everything.” My pulse is racing. This could be it! “Where do we get the gondola?” I ask the girl.

  She points to her right. “Two blocks that way, you will see the base of it. Look up that way into the hills. Do you see the cable?”

  I squint at the thick green trees in the foothills and nod. “There it is,” I say to Mom and Dad, pointing to the silver wire that runs from post to post up the mountainside.

  “The entire ride up and down is one hour, and very scenic,” the girl goes on. “You’ll be able to see everything.” She stresses the word, and I grin at her. I want to hug her.

  “Let’s go!” I say to Mom and Dad.

  “It sounds nice,” Mom says to the girl. “Thank you for the suggestion.”

  “Have a good day,” Dad adds, starting to walk away.

  “Would you like a kite for the festival?” the girl calls after us.

  “Right,” I say, thinking I should pay her back for helping me. “How about a dragon one? In honor of Lola?”

  “I don’t know,” Mom says. “Those are so big….Maybe when we return from the ride?”

  “I would not wait,” says the girl. “It gets very crowded. My uncle makes the best kites; they will be gone.”

  “All right, sure,” Dad says, unzipping his fanny pack.

  The old man takes Dad’s money and lifts a blue-and-gold dragon kite off the wall of the stand. “The dragon is a symbol of luck,” the girl says, looking me in the eye.

  Lola would have loved her. “Thank you,” I tell her. She nods again, still smiling, and we walk toward the gondola ride.

  The dragon kite feels sturdy. It’s hard to carry because it’s heavy and huge. I’m so excited that I want to let out the string and run with it now. I can picture it sailing up into the humid breeze, bright against the sky.

  There’s only a small crowd at the gondola booth. Dad buys three tickets and we get into line to board. I hold tight to my dragon and try to relax. The girl’s uncle was a really old man; it’s possible he was wrong about whatever he told her. And what if she was just trying to make a sale? Even if she was really trying to help, I may see factories, but not a pink factory. This isn’t a sure thing, I tell myself as we inch forward.

  We’re next to board, and the gondola slows down in front of us. I can’t help feeling optimistic as a young man opens the door for us. Dad hands him our tickets and we step inside. I rest my kite against one of the benches and we sit down. Another couple that looks American climbs in, too, and the attendant outside slides the door shut and locks it.

  Mom and Dad introduce themselves to the couple, who tell us they are from Toronto. Our car speeds up, emerges from the station, and begins climbing the foothills. My stomach drops a little as the ground gets farther away. The surrounding area is still hidden from view by the tall trees on the mountainside, and I can’t wait to get up and over them, so I can see what the girl said I would to see. I’m thankful when Mom and Dad strike up a conversation with the other couple so I can look out the window in peace.

  My heart thuds harder and harder as we rise. Soon, the entire landscape bursts into sight. I tell myself to relax, and I focus on breathing evenly. Freaking out isn’t going to help me—I know that. But I need to find Yuming’s factory, and I look from one window of the gondola to the other. I can see the park now on one side; a few kites are flying above the grass. There’s a fountain at the far side, and I think of Lola and Yuming’s fountain in Shanghai. I get up on my knees and look behind us, beyond Sunma. Way off in the distance, tall buildings stretch into the sky: Beijing.

  “Beautiful day for this,” the Canadian woman is saying. “We were here two years ago for three weeks, and we never once saw blue sky.”

  “We’re very lucky,” Dad agrees, and they continue to chat.

  To my left, Sunma stretches into the mountainside. Its houses and buildings become smaller and smaller as we climb, until they’re just a mass of white squares and rectangles alongside a winding river.

  “Is that north?” I interrupt, pointing left.

  “What, honey?” Mom asks, smiling over at me.

  “I’m just wondering—which way is north? And which is south?” I add quickly. “I just want to know where I’m looking.”

  “I believe that’s north,” the Canadian woman tells me kindly, pointing out the window to her right. I get up and move to the empty seat across from her.

  “Thanks,” I say, pressing my nose to the smudged glass.

  I see a valley with a tiny village at the bottom of it. Beyond it, spread apart along the base of the jagged mountains, are several buildings with smokestacks. Those must be factories!

  I gasp quietly and look over the scene that is laid out in front of me like a drawing in a picture book. My heart pounding, I count five factories in the foothills. Their smokestacks spew white billows onto the pale-blue background. I touch Yuming’s photograph in one pocket, and Lola’s ashes in the other. Sunlight reflects off of the buildings scattered in the distance, but it’s not hard to tell—it’s not hard at all to tell—that one of the factories is pink.

  Yuming

  “CAN’T STAY LONG?” Kai asks, sitting on his knees and looking back at Jing. “That would be a mistake.” His anger only barely masks his anxiety. I look from him to Jing to Li, who is sleeping soundly now, his hands twitching in his lap.

  “So then,” I say, “what do you suggest?”

  “For now, it’s best to eat and rest.” Kai brusquely unzips the backpack that he stole, filled with snack food. “We have a few hours on this bus—two, maybe three. Then, with the kite festival crowds, we can stay hidden and busy in Sunma.” His smile appears forced. “I began Jing’s lessons while you slept this morning. Now it’s time for me to start teaching you the ways of the streets.”

  I feel relief at hearing that Kai is committed to staying with me, but I don’t want to learn the ways of the streets.

/>   I squeeze my eyes shut. I recall a winter day years ago. Bolin and I had an argument on the way to school. I don’t even remember what it was about, but he walked quickly down the narrow road to the schoolhouse ahead of me, his back growing smaller and smaller with every step. I slowed down, watching as he sped up and, ultimately, disappeared from sight.

  Deep down I know that, no matter where I go, no matter how hard I search, I will never be able to catch up with him. My best chance of seeing him again will be to get back to Yemo Village, where he will surely come to visit someday….

  My mind swimming, I glance toward Jing and Li again. Li’s cheeks are rosy and his bony chest rises and falls deeply with every breath. It amazes me how he can sleep through anything. His innocence reminds me of myself—of how I used to be before Wai Po and Wai Gong died.

  I force myself to focus—to evaluate my options and measure the risks. I can do this, Wai Gong. Don’t worry, Wai Po.

  “It is possible that Mr. Zhang saw us board and will follow this bus to Sunma. And even if that’s not the case, I don’t want to be anywhere near that factory,” I say to Kai and Jing. “I think we need to immediately leave Sunma when this bus lets us off.”

  Jing nods, as though she’s thinking. Kai doesn’t respond.

  “How much money do you have left?” Jing whispers, trying not to wake Li. “And how did you get that, anyway?”

  “A man and woman—they just handed it to me,” I say. “Only forty yuan left.”

  “Sunma will be filled to the brim with rich tourists,” Kai says. “I’m not passing up an opportunity to make great money.”

  “Make money?” I ask, angry now, thinking of Wai Gong and the long hours he’d spend hunched in the rice fields. Once, after we drove into town to exchange a portion of the crop for money, Wai Gong was pickpocketed. It was only after we returned home that he realized his wallet was missing. Then he remembered a young man who had stumbled into him near the government truck. The man had grasped Wai Gong for support and Wai Gong had helped him steady himself. And just like that, all of our rice money had vanished.

  “Yes, good girl—make money,” Kai continues.

  “Pickpocketing isn’t making money,” I whisper, furious. “It’s stealing money.”

  “How else are we supposed to survive?” Kai asks me bluntly.

  I search my brain for an answer, because there must be a better way. “We could go to a different city and ask a police officer there for help. You could come south—with me—to Shanghai. The police there won’t be on Mr. Zhang’s side.”

  “And how will we get across the country with only forty yuan?” Kai sighs in exasperation.

  “You’re going to Shanghai?” Jing asks, leaning forward suddenly. I try to read the expression on her face.

  “It’s where Princess is from,” Kai tells her, glaring at me. “And anyway, what will become of me and Li if we go to a police officer in any city? Li would be taken to an orphanage, that’s what. That is not the life for us,” he whispers emphatically. It’s true, what he says; I can’t picture the two of them separated, Li in an orphanage, attending school every day and sleeping in a row of neat cots every night while Kai prowls the streets on his own.

  “This life,” he goes on, “this life on the streets, it’s what I know. I like it. I belong on the streets. No, I’m staying here. A few days in Sunma, and then back to Beijing—back to the streets we know.”

  “That’s so close to Mr. Zhang, though,” Jing says, looking from me to Kai.

  “And close to Mama,” Li mumbles, his little sleepy face sweaty, his cheeks red with heat.

  Kai glares in Li’s direction.

  I open my mouth to ask Kai about his mother, but then shut it.

  “Kai,” Jing says. She looks down at her fingers. “I don’t think I can stay in Sunma. It’s too close to the factory.” She pauses, her eyes locked on mine, before looking back at Kai. “I’d never feel safe.”

  “Come with me, then,” I say, getting up on my knees. Nervous about her response, I look down at the cracked plastic of the bus seat. “I don’t want…” I steal a glance at her. “I don’t want us to be separated.”

  Jing doesn’t respond, and I turn to face the window. We’re rumbling through a small village. Three old men stand on the roadside, watching our bus pass; a grandmother and young girl on a motorcycle race by; the door to a restaurant closes behind a customer. I watch the blur of so many lives as the bus speeds forward.

  “Shanghai is by the sea, no?” Jing finally asks me.

  I look back at her. “Yes,” I tell her. “Right by the sea.”

  “Is it beautiful where you come from?”

  I nod, thinking of my golden sea, three hours inland: the sprawling rice fields. It was a strong crop the summer that Bolin left, and the fields radiated yellow. When we returned from dropping him off in Shanghai, I sat on the edge of the field, where the swaying crop faded into fog-covered mountains. Fog to more fog, mountains to endless mountains, all under the white sky that stretched into forever. I remember longing for my sibling.

  “Yes,” Jing says, her eyes locked on mine. “I’d like that.”

  Kai huffs dismissively and sinks lower in his seat.

  I only nod, because I have a lump in my throat. I think yet again of how I excluded Jing from our initial escape plan because I thought it would be risky to include her. If it weren’t for her solitary measurement of risks and options, she would not be with me now. I cannot imagine the past days without her, and this thought frightens me—how each of our decisions leads to the next, and how everything is dependent upon whatever came before.

  Li coughs and sits up, asleep and awake all at once. “You all right, Li?” Jing asks, looking away from my eyes and rubbing his back. He nods and coughs some more, leaning on Jing again. She lowers her window so the breeze can wash over his sweaty face. I sit back, next to Kai, and watch Hebei Province slide by through the dirty bus window, thinking, all the time, of Shanghai, of Yemo Village, of being home with Jing. And, someday, Bolin. The thought makes me want to cry tears of happiness.

  We pass stretches of trees and small villages, a family of five all crammed onto a tractor, old men with wheelbarrows on the side of the road. I am almost home, I think. Hungrily, we gobble the food from the backpack. Eventually, the green hills around us fall away, exposing a sprawling town ahead. In the center, high above the buildings, stands a large red temple. The sky overhead is a rare light blue.

  “Dan Temple,” Kai whispers, as if to himself. A sign on the roadside reads WELCOME TO SUNMA.

  I touch my pants pocket. I don’t know the cost of train tickets to Shanghai, but surely it is infinitely more than the forty yuan I’m carrying. Perhaps it is almost enough for two tickets? Almost enough is not enough, I imagine Wai Po saying, but I can’t think of her now—her soft skin, her soft white hair, her soft lullabies. I have to focus on one thing: We need more money.

  Clara

  I PRESS MY forehead against the glass so Mom and Dad won’t be able to see the tears that are trying to jump out of my eyes. They’re still chatting away with the other couple, talking about hotel rates in Sunma, the kite festival, and the Canadians’ Siberian husky back home. They’re not paying any attention to me. And that’s fine.

  Focus, Lola would tell me. Map it out—hurry! How would you get there from the base of the gondola? I look out the back window, down at the rolling hills, Sunma, and the tree-covered mountains. I can see the roof of the temple with its layers of curving red tile. There are the ponds where Lola watched the Chinese baby reaching for the koi fish. Beyond Sunma is the tiny, run-down-looking village at the bottom of the valley, and up above it, just before the mountain juts straight up into the sky, is a pink factory. Yuming’s factory. Three of the four smokestacks spew exhaust into the sky. I whisper silent messages and try to force them through the air. I’m coming for you, Yuming! I’m coming.

  Being so close makes me feel frantic, just like I did right after Lola
died. Once I found Yuming’s picture and note, I started seeing Lola everywhere, and that had made the anxious feeling disappear. Now, knowing Yuming is so close, but not being able to do anything for her yet…It makes my whole body want to explode.

  I imagine Lola standing next to me inside the cable car. I see her smile at me in a mischievous kind of way before she opens the sliding window. Her ghostlike image climbs out and up, onto the top of the car. I cringe and my stomach feels suddenly like it’s floating through air that’s too thin. This is awesome! Lola calls down to me. I’m gonna go check out the factory.

  I feel like yelling to Lola, even though I know she’s not really here.

  Come with me! Lola says, peeking her head back into the window from above, her hair draping down like a black, silky curtain. I look down, all the way to the ground, where doll-size people are hiking on a trail.

  All right, scaredy-cat! I’m going, then!

  Lola leaps off the top of the cable car—she’s flying, her arms outstretched, her hair blowing out behind her. She turns her head back to me, and smiles as she soars. I watch her get smaller and smaller as she gets closer and closer to the pink factory. She lands right on top of it, just a tiny speck now. I picture her, transparent, ghostly, slipping through a doorway and into Yuming’s sewing room. I see her sitting down next to the Chinese girl who has been stuck in a factory prison for who knows how long. The two girls are so similar in my mind—they’re both bold and brave. They’re so similar that they’re almost the same person.

  I have a wild urge to climb out the window after the ghost of my sister—the ghost that I know isn’t real. I feel like I’m going crazy.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and force myself to breathe. I switch seats so I’m next to Mom, and she puts her arm around me. “Beautiful views, huh?” she says softly, and I know that what she’s really thinking is Lola would have loved this. “You okay, honey?”