The Weight of Our Sky Read online

  “Okay, kakak,” she whispers.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  I grip the little hand tightly in mine and slowly open the door, inch by inch, shooting glances behind me as I go. Please don’t see us, please don’t see us, please don’t see us.

  One deep breath. Then I tug at May’s hand, hiss “Go!”, and run, trying to keep my body low, my hair streaming behind me. I swear I hear footsteps pounding behind us, but I don’t dare look back. The van. The van. Just make it to the van. Beside me, May struggles valiantly to keep up, her hand clutching mine so tightly it’s almost numb.

  It seems like it takes us forever to cover the distance from one hiding spot to another, but finally we sink to the ground behind the white van, panting hard. I crouch to peek out from beneath the van and see if anyone has noticed us, but other than the commotion from Petaling Street, we seem to be alone.

  “And where do you think you’re going, girlie?”

  I swing around, shoving May behind me, my heart in my throat.

  We aren’t alone.

  The man’s voice is low and harsh, his English tinged with the lilt of a Chinese accent. His dark hair is cropped close to his head; his face bears a thin scar from chin to cheek; his dark blue shirt reeks of sweat and smoke. In one hand, he swings an iron pipe; in the other, a cigarette. Dangerous, the Djinn whispers, he’s dangerous.

  “Nowhere,” I say. “We’re just trying to get to our family.”

  The man takes one last drag, then flicks his cigarette to the ground. “Little girls playing in the streets at a time like this. Not very proper, is it? You ought to be punished.” He grins at me, and I reach into my pocket, tapping the smooth handle of the little knife. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three.

  He’ll hurt you. He’ll hurt both of you.

  “Just kidding. Can’t take a joke, eh?”

  Still, I don’t speak. May buries her head into my back, and I do my best to block her little body with mine as much as I can. Hidden in my pocket, my fingers don’t stop moving.

  She’s going to die because you did this, Melati. You led her into this situation, and now she’s going to die.

  “Cat got your tongue, little girl?”

  He looms closer and closer and the Djinn’s voice is echoing in my head and suddenly the knife is out and I’m slashing wildly, blindly. I don’t even know what I’m doing; my vision is blurred and my breathing is labored and my ears are ringing, but the moment blade makes contact, I feel it: a sudden, visceral thrill. In my head, I hear Abah’s voice: “That’s right, Melati, that’s how you hold it, wrap your fingers around the handle like this, your thumb like this. Good.”

  I was always handy with a knife.

  The man reels back, his face a mask of shock, blood trickling from the shallow wound on his left arm. “You’re crazy, you stupid girl!” he shouts, then turns and walks away, shaking his head.

  The Djinn smiles a slow, delighted smile.

  The knife falls to the ground, and I realize it’s because my fingers are trembling so hard that it’s slipped right out of my hand. I kick it away, as hard as I can, and it goes flying off into the streets.

  May sidles over to me, and I hug her close. The heat is oppressive, yet somehow I can’t stop shivering. “We have to get to a safe place,” I tell her. I look up and down the streets, mentally trying to clear the chaos in my head, map our location, figure out where to go. Then I spot it. The school.

  School, I think. We could head for the school. There might be teachers there, adults who can protect us. There’s nothing to steal at a school. Nobody has any reason to attack a school.

  I nudge May. “See that building over there?” She looks in the direction I’m pointing and nods. “That’s a school. We’re going to go there, okay?” She nods again. “Come on,” I tell her. “Let’s go.”

  We walk briskly, keeping close to walls and ducking low behind cars or trucks when we can. I hold May’s hand and focus on putting one foot in front of the other, counting off in threes, and not on the look on the man’s face, or the blood dripping down his arm, or the way it felt when the knife sliced into his flesh.

  The school sprawls before us, seemingly untouched by the chaos that’s raged around it for the past few days. This is an independent high school, reserved for the wealthy Chinese who want only the best for their children. Unlike most regular schools, including mine, this school is all solid brick and concrete and has the shiny, brand-new look of a building whose administrators can afford its upkeep.

  The heavy iron gate is chained and padlocked, but the fence isn’t too high, and I manage to hoist May up and over it, then clamber over myself, landing on the ground feetfirst. “Let’s go inside,” I say, dusting myself off and reaching for her hand. “Maybe there’s someone here who can help us.”

  Cautiously, we step into the wide, paved corridors, relishing the cool relief that seems to emanate from the concrete walls. I pull May toward what seems to be the school hall. “Come on over here,” I say. “If there’s anyone here, that’s where they’re bound to . . .” The words die on my lips.

  Down the corridor, a woman is approaching us. The lines of her dark dress are severe, her hair is scraped back into a bun, her lips are set in a thin, hard line, and her hands grip a heavy wooden bat.

  The Djinn stirs immediately, wrapping his cold fingers around the base of my spine.

  May gasps and instinctively, I push her behind me, shielding her body with mine, quickly tapping a protective tattoo along her little back as the Djinn whips my insides into a frenzied panic.

  “Who are you?” the woman asks loudly, her voice echoing in the corridor. “What are you doing here?”

  “Please, ma’am,” I say, my arms outstretched, palms up, trying to show her I have no weapons, I mean no harm. Beads of sweat are forming on my forehead and dripping slowly down my face, but I make no move to wipe them away. “Please, we’re only looking for help. I have this little girl with me; we don’t mean any harm. We’re just looking for a safe place to hide.”

  There’s nowhere to hide, the Djinn sneers. There’s no way for you to protect her. There’s no way you can pull this off. It takes effort, and I can feel my fingers spasm, longing to tap, to count, to do something, but I ignore him.

  “How do I know you’re not a trap?” the woman says harshly. “How do I know you haven’t lead the looters and the thugs in to murder us all?”

  “Please, ma’am,” I say again. I can hear the note of desperation in my voice. “Please, this isn’t any kind of trap. I just wanted to bring her somewhere safe.” A sob escapes me before I can stop it. Behind me, May begins to cry, her little face buried in my back.

  The woman relaxes her stance then, dropping her arms to her sides, a look of relief on her face.

  “Sorry, girl,” she says, her voice softening as she looks at May. “Sorry, sorry. It’s been a difficult few days and we have people to protect. Cannot be too careful.”

  She beckons to us. “Come, come. I take you inside, we have food and water. You can rest.”

  My knees almost buckle with relief. May still clutches my waist tightly and won’t let me go, so I scoop her up in my arms and carry her like a baby. She flings her arms around my neck and hides her face in my shoulder, and I give her gentle pats on the back as I walk—one, two, three, one, two, three. I hum as I go, softly in her ear for only the two of us to hear. The girl with kaleidoscope eyes. She isn’t the lightest, but unless my arms give out, I know there is no way I’m putting her down.

  The woman—“Call me Miss Low,” she barks over her shoulder as she walks briskly ahead of us—leads us through a maze of corridors and up flights of stairs until she finally stops short in front of a wooden door on the top floor. She pauses to tap lightly on it—three times, and I’m both pleased by this and ashamed at how pleased I am—before flinging it open.

  We step into what seems to be a small library. Shoes are lined neatly along the wall next to the doorway, so a
s not to scuff the wooden floor. The walls are lined with worn, beat-up shelves filled with worn, beat-up old books. Light streams in from the windows that line the right-hand wall.

  In the center of the room sits a small group of six or seven children. I can tell from the way they’re seated around the teacher, who has a book in her hand, that she’s been reading them a story; the sound of the door has put them all on alert, however, and all of their eyes are trained unblinkingly on us, their bodies tense and poised to flee. May peeks out from behind me, and I give her hand a reassuring squeeze.

  “Students,” Miss Low says, her voice like a gunshot in the quiet room. “Students, we have some guests. These are . . .” She looks at me and quirks an eyebrow questioningly. “Melati,” I supply. “And this is May,” I add quickly.

  “Very good. And what do we say, students?”

  “Good afternoon, Melati and May,” the children singsong to us in unison, and I almost want to laugh.

  Then I notice them. In the far corner of the room, a cot has been set up, and a child lies upon it, eyes shut and pale. A woman has been busily tending to him as we’ve been speaking, her back to us, but now she stands very erect and absolutely still.

  “Puan?” I’m not the only one who’s noticed; Miss Low is staring at the other woman, her brow furrowed. “Puan? Everything all right over there?”

  Slowly, the woman turns, and suddenly the room seems to spin and whirl around me, as if I were the eye of some kind of surreal tornado.

  “Melati?”

  I blink rapidly, trying to clear the tears from my eyes.

  “Hi, Mama.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS IS real.

  I can’t believe this is real.

  Is this real? For a minute I waver. There have been long stretches in the past few days where I’ve been sure that I’m just in some bizarre, unending nightmare, that I’ll wake up and Mama will be scolding me for blasting my records so loudly that Makcik Siti stopped by to complain about my “heathen music.”

  But no, I can feel Mama’s arms around me, the soft fabric of her nurse’s uniform against my cheek, the salty wetness of her tears on my neck. She’s here. I did it; I found her. This is real.

  I sink into her arms like I’m five years old again. “Where have you been?” she murmurs into my hair over and over again, clutching me tightly. “Where have you been? I’ve been out of my mind with worry.” But I can’t reply. I just want to stay here for as long as I can.

  “Hurm.” A dry, inquiring little half cough breaks the spell, and we both turn our tear-streaked faces to see Miss Low looking at us, half-disapproving at this wanton display of emotion. Mama reluctantly lets me go, and I straighten my clothes, feeling as chastened as if I’ve just been caught cheating.

  “I take it this is your daughter?” she says, and Mama nods. “Yes, and I’m just so relieved. I was looking for her, as you know, when I ended up here.”

  “How did you end up here?” I ask her.

  “I was walking toward Petaling Street to look for you,” Mama says, taking my hand and squeezing it tightly. “But as I was passing the school, I saw someone shouting and waving their arms frantically from the inside. It was Miss Low.” I glance at the teacher. “Really?” The idea of the stiff, formal Miss Low doing anything frantically seems like a stretch. She sniffs, looking a little shamefaced. “We needed help quite desperately,” she says, by way of explanation, then busies herself with handing out some buns to the children.

  I turn back to Mama. “What happened?”

  “There’d been an incident.” Mama’s face darkens. “Some of the soldiers—they’ve been shooting into Chinese-owned buildings randomly. Shops, homes, schools. Ethan”—she gestures at the boy on the cot—“Ethan had gone down with Miss Low to get some supplies from the canteen to bring back upstairs for the others. One of the bullets ricocheted off a wall and tore through his shoulder.”

  I wince at this, looking at the boy’s pale, sweaty face, pinched with pain even in his sleep. As I watch, he moves about restlessly, kicking his blanket off. “Is he okay now?” I whisper, not wanting to disturb him. Mama glances at him, biting her lower lip. “No,” she says, sighing. “No, he really isn’t. I’ve done as much as I can here, bandaged him up to stop the bleeding, tried to keep him comfortable. But he needs more than that. I need to get him to the hospital.”

  “Can’t we call for help?” I ask. “Don’t they have a telephone we can use . . . ?”

  “It’s not working,” Miss Low interjects quickly. “The phone line has been down since this whole mess started. We haven’t been able to call anyone. And we daren’t go outside because of the . . . well.”

  I nod, understanding perfectly. Who wants to go outside when you’re not sure who will help you and who may kill you?

  “All the same, I can’t just stand around here watching him deteriorate,” Mama says, rubbing her forehead as if it aches. Tendrils of hair have escaped from the bun she usually traps them in, and her face looks worn and gray. She can’t have slept in days. My heart swells with worry, and I can feel the Djinn begin to stir. Quickly, I tap my right index finger lightly against my thigh, counting the ornate, patterned tiles set into the floor in threes. I concentrate so hard on this that I barely hear my mother as she continues talking. It’s only once I’ve gotten it right that I emerge from my thoughts into an expectant silence.

  “Um, sorry, what were you saying, Mama?”

  But she isn’t looking at me, she’s zoned straight in on my finger. My heart skips a beat. Hurriedly, I jam my hands into my pinafore pockets and rearrange my expression to what I hope is a thoughtful, contemplative look.

  “I was saying that they have a van here,” Mama says slowly, finally lifting her eyes back up to my face. “The school van, the one they use to pick kids up and send them home. I could go, drive Ethan to the hospital. You’d be safe here with them.”

  My heart immediately begins to thump in my chest. “I am not letting you out of my sight again,” I say. The very idea seems to send a shot of adrenaline through the Djinn, who begins to pace restlessly, sending waves of nausea through me. I feel like I may throw up.

  “Now, listen, Melati—”

  “No, you listen, Mama.” I’ve never interrupted my mother like this before; it’s just not what good Malay girls do. But I think of everything I’ve done and endured to get to this point, and I’m filled with wild, reckless abandon. I fold my arms and set my jaw, staring her straight in the eyes. “I am not going to be separated from you again. If you want to go to the hospital, then I’m going with you.”

  Mama sighs in frustration. “Stubborn child.”

  I turn to Miss Low. “Does the van work, Miss Low? Does it have petrol and everything?”

  She nods. “It should,” she says. “The driver uses it every day.”

  “There you go,” I tell Mama. “So that’s what we’ll do. We’ll get him to the hospital.”

  My, my, aren’t we feeling brave? The Djinn has been so silent that to hear his voice, low and mocking, is a shock. Right on cue, my head is filled with this journey’s possible outcomes, all ending in Mama’s death. The nausea returns twofold. I am suddenly, achingly desperate to count something.

  I can feel Mama’s eyes on me, so I can’t tap with my fingers; instead, I tap my tongue against the backs of my teeth, counting each one as I go, first left to right, then right to left. This time I remember to keep my ears tuned to her voice. Don’t let her catch you, Mel. Don’t let her see you struggle.

  “We’ll have to go as fast as we can so nobody can catch us or stop us,” she’s saying, tugging her sleeve absentmindedly; it’s a habit she has when she’s nervous. “I hope I know how to work that thing,” she mumbles to herself.

  “Why don’t we go see it?” I say, heading toward the door. “Then you can take a look, get comfortable with it.”

  She pauses in the middle of the room, uncomfortable and unsure. “I don’t know. .
. .”

  She glances down again at Ethan as he stirs in the cot, his lips moving feverishly, uttering words we can barely make out.

  When she looks up again, her expression is set, determined. “All right.” She nods curtly. “Let’s go.”

  It’s as we’re almost out of the library door that I feel a little tug on my skirt. May stares up at me with huge eyes. “Where are you going, kakak?” she asks, so softly I have to bend close to hear her.

  “I’m just going to check on something,” I tell her. “I’ll be back soon, I promise.” Gently, I prize her little hand from the turquoise fabric. “Go wait inside,” I say. The door swings slowly shut, and I can feel her eyes boring holes in my back as I walk away.

  • • •

  Five minutes later, we’re sitting in the school’s dark green van, and my mother is staring at the pedals. “I can do this,” she breathes to herself. “I can do this.”

  “Of course you can, Mama.” But she isn’t really listening to me; she’s too busy checking the gear and peering at the mysterious dials behind the steering wheel. I can understand why she’s nervous; Abah taught her to drive ages ago, but he was always the one who took us around in the car. Mama hasn’t actually driven on her own in years.

  “Just think of Ethan,” I say, trying to be helpful. She shoots me a lethal look through narrowed eyes, and I shut up immediately, slinking low in the passenger seat. She’s going to crash it, the Djinn says knowingly, leaning back in my chest, slowly crushing the air out of my lungs. She’ll kill herself, and you, and that boy while she’s at it. Right on cue, the image comes: The van, crumpled and in flames; our bodies, limp and splayed on the ground. I suck in a breath and exhale slowly, counting rapidly in my head and blinking on every third count, so that Mama won’t notice.

  “Right,” Mama says, interrupting my thoughts, and I quickly sit up, trying to ignore my racing heartbeat. “Right. I think I’ve got it now. Let’s go and get Ethan downstairs quickly.”