The Weight of Our Sky Read online

  On impulse, I reach out a hand for Mak Siti’s. Her skin feels like parchment, worn and wrinkled from years of hard work, but soft and yielding to the touch. “Thank you, Mak Siti,” I say. “Thank you for looking out for me. I’m glad you’re safe.”

  Her face softens. “It wasn’t easy,” she mutters. “So much yelling, so much noise. We all ran for Pak Samad’s house—the big stone house, you know? We were worried they would set fire to our homes, so we packed ourselves in there like sardines to wait. Alang rounded up the other men, and they took all the weapons they could find and went to fight against those Chinese troublemakers from across the road.” She shoots a quick glance at Vince, still standing a few paces away, then back at me. “That fat boy, Manaf, he acted so brave at first, shouting so loudly about how he was going to have Chinese heads on a platter. When the men left, he was as close to the front line as he could be, so eager to be a hero. When we came back out, after the fighting was over, we found him by Pak Samad’s outhouse, white as a sheet. He fainted dead away when he saw them coming!” She cackles, shaking her head. I remember Manaf. He’s a year or two older than me. When we were little, he liked to pull my hair and then run away, laughing; in recent years, this has given way to sitting with his friends on a special grassy knoll shaded by coconut trees and whistling to girls as they pass.

  “Were . . . were there people who didn’t make it back?” I ask, then immediately regret it. Of course there were people who didn’t make it back.

  Mak Siti shrugs, and I wonder how she can be so calm. Then I remember that she lived through the Japanese occupation too, her skin tough and hardened out of sheer necessity. “That’s what happens,” she says. “At least they took out more than a few of those terrible Chinese people. Now, would you like something to drink? Some tea?”

  Before I can answer, a deep voice cuts through our chatter.

  “Where is Safiyah?”

  Through the trees strides Pakcik Adnan, Saf’s father, as rigidly erect in posture and precise in step as he is when he makes his rounds at school. In fact, he looks much the same as always, except that his trousers, which usually sport creases so sharp they look like they could slice your fingertips off, are crumpled and unironed. If you’ve known him for most of your life, as I have, this is a sign of great inner turmoil.

  “Where is Safiyah?” he asks me again, his glance never wavering from my face. His voice, clear and strong, seems to ring through the village, and pulls gazes toward us. A small crowd begins to gather.

  I can feel a bead of sweat meander slowly down the side of my face. Tell him, tell him, tell him, the Djinn crows. Tell him about your failure. Tell him how you let her die. “We . . . we were at the movies, sir,” I begin. Pakcik Adnan’s eyes narrow. I feel an urge to tap so great that I almost keel over. Not now, not now. I forge on.

  “We went to see the new Paul Newman movie. She was really excited about it. She wanted to watch it again as soon as it was over, because she said you wouldn’t be home until late. . . .” My voice trails off as I wonder if I should be betraying Saf like this. But her father is staring at me, and I can’t stop now, though I’d give anything to do just that.

  “The lights went out in the theater. . . .” I swallow hard, finding it difficult to breathe. “These men came. Chinese men.” A ripple goes through the watching crowd. “They forced Malays on one side and everyone else on the other. They let the non-Malays go.”

  “And the Malays?” Pakcik Adnan asks urgently. “What happened to the Malays? What happened to Safiyah?”

  I can’t bring myself to answer. I can’t even bring myself to look at him. I stare at the ground, scratching patterns in the dirt with the tip of my shoe, tracing the number three over and over again, my face wet with tears I hadn’t realized had begun to fall down my cheeks. “The men, the gangsters . . . they had weapons,” I say quietly. “Pipes, sticks, knives.” Please understand what I’m trying to tell you, I think. Please don’t make me go on.

  The silence that greets this pronouncement is so prolonged and so deafening that I can only stand it for so long before I look up.

  Saf’s father still stands before me, still holding himself straight and tall. But tears are streaming down his face, falling onto his pristine shirtfront, soaking the white cloth through. I have never seen him like this, and I can’t bear to think my words are what caused it. I take a step toward him, wanting to offer some kind of comfort. “I miss her all the time. Every minute. I wish we were still together like always.” It’s only after I say the words aloud that I realize how true this is. I’ve been so preoccupied with keeping my mother safe that I’ve barely been able to mourn my best friend, and now I stagger slightly beneath the weight of my own grief.

  Something changes then—something shifts inside him; I see it in his eyes, like a shutter has just been pulled down. He stares at me.

  “How did you make it out?” His voice is a little ragged with grief, but he stands as tall and dignified as ever.

  I feel it again, then, that small shift rifling through the crowd surrounding us, like leaves on a breeze.

  “Someone saved me,” I say.

  “And that someone couldn’t save Safiyah, too?”

  I think back to Auntie Bee and what she did for me. “No,” I say simply. “Not that way.”

  “So you left her to die.” The words hit me like bullets, tearing through my conscience. The Djinn throws back his head and cackles.

  “I . . . I . . . no, that’s not . . . I had no choice!”

  “You left her. That was a choice.” Didn’t you? the Djinn whispers. Guilt begins to ooze freely out of the wounds. I feel like I’ve been punched in the chest; all the wind has left me, and I fight to catch my breath. Did I have a choice? Had I been supposed to protect Saf the whole time? But all those visions . . . Mama is the one who will die if I don’t obey. Right? You’ll never know now, will you? Because Saf is dead. You had the power to save her, and now she’s dead. For a moment, I can hear nothing but his cackles ringing in my ears.

  “I never wanted this to happen,” I choke out, tears already beginning to trickle down my cheeks.

  “But it did,” Pakcik Adnan says evenly. “And then for you to dare to come here, the place where you grew up, where so many suffer now because of the actions of those bloody hooligans, with one of them.” He spits in Vince’s direction, and Vince takes a step back, his face impassive, his arms crossed over his chest.

  Pakcik Adnan turns his attention back to me, and I feel myself cowering in the face of his overpowering anger and sorrow. “You are a disgrace, Melati Ahmad,” he says, his voice ringing in the deep silence. “You betray us with your associations, gallivanting about with Chinese pigs while your friends and family bleed at their feet. I wish my daughter never knew you.” Then he spits again, this time at my feet, before turning his back and walking, with perfectly precise, measured steps, through the onlookers and back toward his home, where his wife stands waiting for him at the door.

  • • •

  “Are you okay?”

  The onlookers have dispersed, and we are alone in the middle of Kampung Baru. I can’t answer. I’m trapped in a web of numbers—the number of windows on all the houses surrounding us, the number of coconuts on those trees, the number of white pebbles on the ground, but only the white ones, not the others, the number of planks that make up the wooden fence of that house over there, anything but the recurring image of Saf being bludgeoned to death in the Rex, and the overwhelming feeling that I didn’t do a damn thing to stop it. Keep counting, Melati, keep counting.

  “We have to get out of here, Mel,” Vince is saying, his voice low and urgent. “These villagers haven’t exactly given me the warmest welcome, and I don’t think the farewell is going to be any better. We have to go. Now.”

  He grabs me by the wrist and drags me along unprotesting as he walks quickly back to where we left the car, keeping a watchful eye on our surroundings. I stumble along behind him, not really taking i
t all in, still counting as I go. A traitor. Does trusting Vince make me a traitor? How do I know I can really trust him at all? You can’t, the Djinn says, smiling winningly. You shouldn’t.

  A quick escape, as it turns out, isn’t going to be possible. Jay’s car is a wreck. It looks like what happens to paper when you’ve crumpled it into a little ball and then try to smooth it out again, covered with large dents and scratches all over. Every window has been smashed, and broken glass is everywhere; it crunches under the soles of Vince’s brown leather shoes as he moves closer to survey the damage. Jay himself is nowhere to be seen.

  “Stay back,” he tells me. “I need to make sure it’s safe.” My mind immediately leaps into overdrive: a bomb explodes, blasting both the car and Vince’s body into shreds; a man leaps out of the back seat, slicing Vincent’s head off in one blow. Before I even realize what’s happening, my shaking fingers are tapping furiously against my thighs.

  “There’s no way we can drive this thing,” Vince says, emerging from the driver’s seat, checking his palms carefully for any slivers of broken glass. “We’re going to have to figure out another way to get home.”

  “Where’s Jay?” I force myself to speak, my tongue thick and furry in my mouth.

  “I don’t know,” Vince says, his brow creased with worry and frustration.

  The numbers are failing. I’m meant to be keeping everyone safe, but everything is going wrong, and the numbers are failing. The world suddenly begins to tilt and sway, and I close my eyes to ward off the sensation of trying to walk on jelly, but all I see in the darkness is death. You’re failing, Melati, the Djinn whispers. You’ll fail them all. Just like you failed Saf.

  I need to sit down.

  It’s only when I sink down to the ground, resting my aching head on my knees, that I see it, half-hidden among the wild, untamed grass along the clearing’s edge: A crumpled blue square of cloth, with JS embroidered in the corner in navy blue thread, speckled with fresh blood.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I sit there, clutching the handkerchief and trying to breathe. Vince says something to me; I can’t figure out what it is over the roaring in my ears, so I just nod and hope he’ll leave me alone, and he disappears. I know I should panic about this, but I’m too busy panicking about everything else to care. In his absence, the Djinn amuses himself by conjuring up imaginative ways for Jay to die and parading them through my head, in glorious technicolor. Come on, he says tauntingly, you know what to do. So I sit, counting each individual leaf on the coconut fronds overhead as they wave lightly in the breeze, weaving Jay’s handkerchief clumsily in and out of my shaking fingers, hating the Djinn and hating myself.

  In the distance, the rumble of a motorcycle getting closer and closer knocks me out of my stupor. Bugger, I think desperately, jumping to my feet and running to crouch low behind the car. When I look down, I realize my fingers are shaking. Time to die, the Djinn sings gleefully.

  The motorcycle stops right in front of the car and someone cuts the engine. From my vantage point, I can hear the crunch of gravel as the rider disembarks.

  Protect yourself, I think, you need to protect yourself.

  A waste of time, the Djinn snorts.

  Shut up, you.

  Just beside me, a large rock lies half-buried in the dirt, and I quickly reach over and begin to work it out with my fingers. Come on, come on. The footsteps are coming closer, turning the corner, I almost have the rock free, come on, come on. . . . I swing around, my arm raised, ready to bash the guy’s face in with my rock.

  “Mel?”

  It’s Vince, staring at me with a bewildered expression on his face.

  I lower my arm, feeling a little foolish. “I was just . . .” I gesture to the rock, then shrug and let it fall to the ground with a thud. “Umm. Where’d you get that?” I say, pointing to the motorcycle behind us. It’s one the boys in the neighborhood would refer to as a motor kapcai, and from the way it shines in the evening sun, from the gleaming red and white of its hard plastic exterior all the way to the carefully polished black of its leather seat, it’s obviously the pride and joy of its owner.

  He looks down, suddenly bashful. “I, uh, I kind of . . . stole it.”

  Its owner, who, apparently, doesn’t realize it’s missing.

  “You did?” I just stand there, looking at him. My mouth is hanging open a little, and I’m aware that I look like a fool. But this is inconceivable. I may only have known Vince for a few days, but he has such set ideas of right and wrong that it actually shocks me to know he’s capable of outright theft.

  “More like borrowing lah, really.”

  “Vince.” I stare at him, and he sighs.

  “I know, I know. But it was an emergency. I’m going to bring it back as soon as we’re done.” He reaches out and tugs at my sleeve. “Come on, I’m getting you home.”

  “You didn’t happen to steal any helmets, did you?” I can’t help teasing him a little as we sling ourselves on.

  “I’ll drive really carefully,” he tells me seriously.

  It won’t help, the Djinn says quietly. As Vince guns the engine, I reach around with one arm to grab his waist, blushing in spite of myself. I am close enough to feel the heat emanating from him, close enough to breathe him in. One part of me carefully catalogs every minute detail of this: the way his hair curls up where it meets his shirt collar, the scent of him—fresh and clean, a mix of newly cut grass and lemony soap—the curve where his neck meets his shoulders. The other part of me pictures all the ways in which both of us will die on this journey.

  With my other arm, I tap and tap and tap, counting in threes until the Djinn is satisfied.

  • • •

  We’ve been zooming along the near-empty roads for about fifteen minutes, past the leftover debris, the occasional body, the smoking husks of burning buildings, when I feel it: a movement, as if something is zipping past my right ear. As I turn my head to see what it is, I feel it again, just above my head this time. What is that?

  One glance behind me reveals the answer: a group of guards, lounging against a car parked on the side of the street, one with his gun aimed right at us, casually sending shots ripping through the air toward us as if we’re nothing more than target practice.

  I turn back to Vince. “They’re shooting at us!” I yell at him over the noise of the motorbike.

  “What?!” He leans forward, driving even faster, and I hang on tight so I don’t get thrown off. The wind snatches the band from my hair so that it whips wildly into my face and his. The bike careens left and right as he tries to avoid the shots.

  Eventually, he drives into an alleyway and brings the bike to a sputtering halt. “What is it? Why are we stopping?” I ask, desperate to put as much distance between us and our attackers as we can.

  Then I notice it: One of the bullets has ripped through the flesh on his left arm, just below his shoulder. The blood flows freely, staining his pale blue shirt in splotches of bright crimson.

  No.

  No, no, no, no, no.

  Yes, the Djinn says, baring his teeth in wicked glee.

  I grab for Jay’s handkerchief into my pocket, folding it lengthwise with trembling hands. As I tie it tightly over the wound, the Djinn forces me to count a protective mantra in my head, tapping it in secret spots to make it safe as I can. Beads of sweat stand on Vince’s head, and he’s pale, but he doesn’t complain.

  “Just need to catch my breath,” he says, smiling wanly at me as I force him to sit, his back against the wall.

  “Okay,” I say, and we sit in silence for a while.

  Then, suddenly, we both sit up straight.

  “Did you hear that?” I ask him. He nods. “Shush.”

  We’re both perfectly still, waiting, listening. Then it comes again: a low, soft moan.

  “Someone’s hurt,” he says, immediately struggling to his feet. I leap up to help him, and we both edge slowly along the alley, looking left and right for mor
e guards.

  When it comes again, the moan is louder, intense and soaked with pain. “There it is again!”

  I point to a nearby shophouse. “It’s coming from over there.”

  As we make our way toward it, I scour its façade for clues to what we might find inside. It doesn’t yield much: The sign above it, once a bright blue now faded with time and the elements, is painted with Chinese characters in white; below them, a line proclaims TEA SHOP. One window is smashed, and the metal shutter that covers the doors has been forced open a crack, though I can’t see anything beyond it other than darkness.

  Vince goes first, pushing the shutters back farther to let us in, wincing at the pressure on his arm before cautiously stepping through. I follow him inside and immediately am engulfed in the musty scent of tea. On either side of us, floor-to-ceiling shelves are lined with jar after jar of leaves, each with labels I can’t quite make out in the light that filters in weakly from the windows.

  “Hello?” Vince calls out. “Hello, anyone there?”

  At first, there is just silence. Then, from inside, we hear it: a groan.

  “It’s all right,” he says, walking in a little farther. “It’s all right. We’re here to help you. Are you hurt?”

  Then we see her, hunkering down behind the counter: a young woman, alone and very, very pregnant.

  We shoot glances at each other and hurry to kneel beside her. “Hello,” I say gently, laying a hand on her shoulder. She flinches at my touch, and looks at me warily. “It’s okay,” I tell her. “We just want to help you. You sound hurt. Are you?”

  I can tell she’s trying to decide if she can trust us. Her eyes dart back and forth, first to Vince, then to me, then to Vince again. But before she can speak, another wave of pain hits and she squeezes her eyes shut, biting her lips to suppress a groan. Her hands spasm protectively over her belly.

  “Ma’am,” Vince says softly, “ma’am, if you’re in pain, we should get you to a hospital.”

  The woman’s eyes fly open, and she shakes her head, her mouth set in a thin, obstinate line. “They’ll hurt me,” she whispers. “They’ll hurt my baby. I saw them, shouting and hitting and burning things. I won’t let them hurt my baby.” She curls herself up as best she can, stroking her belly, her eyes squeezed shut.