The Weight of Our Sky Read online

  The man’s yells break the spell, and suddenly the air grows thick with tension. The crowd’s low murmurs quickly grow into a roar. “Get your hands off our women, you pig!” one Malay man spits out, trying to grab me by the arm, and I quickly shake him off. Beside me, Mama is panting, trying to walk as quickly as she can with Ethan’s arms clasped around her neck. I grip May’s hand tightly and try to shield her little body with mine. “Keep going,” Frankie says quietly behind us, keeping his parang ready, steadily staring down the hostile crowd.

  It’s impossible to tell who makes the first move. I hear the clash and scrape of metal and wood, and the crowd explodes. “Run!” I yell, tugging May’s arm so hard she almost falls over as we streak down the street, my feet pounding to the same rhythm as my heart. To my right, I see Mama, hanging on to Ethan, matching me step for step with a strength I didn’t realize she had. I’m not sure she realized she had it either. But we can’t run forever, and I can’t think of a plan above the shouts and the thuds and the clanks and the screams.

  Just then, a car barrels down the road and comes to a screeching stop just ahead of us.

  But not just any car.

  A little gray Standard.

  Before I have time to process this, the door is flung open and Vince emerges. “Come on, come on, quickly,” he says, taking Ethan from my mother and ushering us all into the car. “What are you doing here?” I ask him as I hoist May into the front seat, then slide in next to her. “Frankie,” he says shortly, grunting slightly as he tries to settle Ethan as comfortably as he can, my mother rushing around to the other side to help him. “He was supposed to come with us to Kelantan, but right before we left, he ran off. Ma and Ba got worried—Ma knew he was itching to join the fighting. They made me go out to find him.” He scowls, slamming the door shut. “Stupid idiot, making me waste time when I should be getting them somewhere safe. . . . Where is he?”

  “He was behind us,” I say, twisting around to try and scan the crowd for him. Vince wipes the sweat from his forehead and nods. “Okay,” he says. “Lock the doors. Wait for me. I’m going to go look for him. If I’m not back in five minutes, or if it gets too dangerous, get out of here. Don’t wait.”

  “Vince!” It’s too late. He’s slammed the door and gone before I know it. With trembling fingers, I reach forward and push down the lock, then do the same for all the other doors. The car has stopped, and it’s as if we’re all just holding our breath and counting down the minutes.

  Counting. Counting would feel so good right now. My fingers twitch on my lap, eager to start tapping; I stuff them beneath me and tell my brain to shut up. Now isn’t the time to let the Djinn back in.

  The minutes seem to stretch on forever, and the noise of the fighting behind us creeps closer and closer. Next to me, May fidgets nervously. “Melati,” my mother says, “maybe we should . . .”

  “Another minute,” I snap back. “Just . . . give him another minute.”

  The roar of the mob gets louder, closer.

  “Melati.” Mama’s voice is firmer now, more insistent. “We need to go. We need to get out of here, get Ethan to the hospital.”

  I draw in a deep, ragged breath. I know she’s right. I know we have to leave. But I can’t make myself say it. Instead, I just nod, and she gets out and slips into the front seat, gunning the engine. “Hang on, everyone,” she says, easing the car into the road.

  BANG.

  The noise makes all of us jump, and May shrieks, flinging herself into my arms and burrowing her face in my chest. It’s Vince, pounding against the window, leaving bloody handprints on every surface he touches. “Let us in!” he yells, and I open the door and leap out.

  “Are you hurt?” I say, my eyes frantically raking his entire body for any signs of injury. He shakes his head. “Not me,” he says grimly. “Frankie.”

  I finally tear my eyes away from him to look at Frankie, who is propped against his shoulder, and gasp. Blood flows freely from a gash on his stomach. It’s everywhere: smeared all over him, on Vince, dripping onto the pavement beneath them. Frankie’s struggling to keep his eyes open; his head dips and lolls as he drifts in and out of consciousness. “Come on,” I say, “We have to get him some help.”

  Together, we play a quick, painstaking game of musical chairs: I move Ethan carefully to the front seat, where he rests his head against Mama’s shoulder, May on his other side. Then we settle Frankie into the back seat, his head on Vincent’s lap, and I squeeze in next to May, who immediately reaches for my hand and clings to it as if it’s some kind of lifeline.

  “Let’s go, Mama,” I say, and she nods and floors it. In the rearview mirror, I watch as Vince strokes his older brother’s hair gently. “Don’t worry, Kor Kor,” he says softly. “Don’t worry, big brother. We will be there soon. Don’t worry.”

  As the Standard speeds off, the chaos of Petaling Street behind us and the promise of safety ahead, I swallow the painful lump in my throat and try not to cry.

  • • •

  The rest of it is a blur.

  I know we somehow make it to the hospital.

  I know the Djinn stirs when we arrive, emboldened by the specters and spectacles of death at every turn. But I also know that I ignore him.

  I know there is a great flurry of activity as doctors and nurses whisk Ethan off in one direction and Frankie in the other; Vince takes my hand and holds it tightly for just one moment before he heads quickly after his brother, and the ghost of his touch lingers long after he’s gone.

  A nurse comes to check May for any injuries, and I have to spend a good ten minutes prizing her hand from mine, convincing her that it’s okay to go, that I’ll wait for her, that I won’t disappear.

  And then at last, it’s quiet, and it’s just me and Mama under the harsh, flickering fluorescent lights, in a corridor that smells of disease and disinfectant, and maybe even death. Oddly enough, the thought doesn’t scare me as much as it used to.

  Mama looks at me. “So,” she says, drawing in a deep breath, “how was your week?”

  And before I know it we’ve fallen into each other’s arms, sobbing and laughing and holding on to each other like we’ll never let go.

  EPILOGUE

  THE TOMBSTONES ARE PURE WHITE, and they gleam with newness in the morning light, the sun’s rays playing off the curves and peaks of the headstone and footstone upon which her name is engraved: SAFIYAH, DAUGHTER OF ADNAN AND MARIAM, 3 APRIL, 1953–13 MAY, 1969.

  It’s my first time visiting her.

  I stayed away when she was buried two months ago, unable—unwilling, really—to face Pak Adnan’s wrath again. He’ll never be able to look at me without thinking of his daughter, without wondering why it is that I lived and Saf died. The least I could do was allow him to grieve in peace.

  Instead, I sat in my new room in a house still too unfamiliar to really feel like home, nursing my own sorrow, playing record after record and remembering my friend. Through my haze of tears, I heard my mother speaking to a friend in a low voice. “They were some of the lucky ones,” she said. “They have something to bury.”

  When the hospital was too full of bodies and too caught up in chaos to ensure they were returned to their families, the government had taken drastic measures. They had the corpses carted off and interred into mass graves: one giant hole for everyone, a final resting place crowded with companions. There was no way to protest, and no way to know if someone you loved was one of them. At least Saf’s family had something concrete to mourn.

  According to the government, the official numbers from that intense, chaotic week, when the city cracked wide open and the streets filled with blood and bodies, are 439 people injured, 196 killed. Auntie Bee and Uncle Chong and Vincent had come to visit the day the report was released, for moral support, Auntie Bee said, though she didn’t mention if they were providing the support or needed it themselves.

  Frankie didn’t come. He never comes with them on these visits, and when we go to their house
he makes himself scarce. I’m not sure we’ll ever be friends, Frankie and me. But he saved us, and we saved him, and that is a connection that we could never sever, whether we like it or not.

  In my room, the Beatles playing softly in the background, Vince squeezed my hand as I heard Mama scoff. “I saw the bodies with my own eyes,” she said, tapping the paper in her hand and shaking her head. “No way there were only one hundred ninety-six. No way.”

  “Must save face mah,” Uncle Chong said quietly. He had grown thinner since we’d last seen him, and Auntie Bee limped along with a cane now, a slender, elegant thing of dark wood topped with carved ivory. Mama hadn’t wanted me to read it, but I did anyway. Of the dead, the report said, most were Chinese. A handful were Indian. Twenty-five were Malay.

  Saf was one of them.

  As I stand there, staring at her headstone, I can feel the Djinn stir. Your fault, he whispers. Your fault. I tap a finger three times against Saf’s name, and then I tell him to keep still, and he does. I’ve come to accept that the Djinn and I are always going to be locked in a battle for control of my brain and my body, that he will never truly go away and leave me in peace. But I also know now that I’m capable of fighting these skirmishes with him each day, and that more days than not, I’m capable of winning them.

  I started praying again yesterday.

  I kneel down in the dirt, as close to her as I can. “I miss you, Saf. I miss you every day, sometimes so much that it actually hurts.” I take a deep breath. “But I’m going to keep fighting, and I’m going to keep living, in your memory. I’ll listen to music and laugh out loud, and I’ll even watch every Paul Newman movie that comes out, even though Paul McCartney is still the best Paul there is.” I can almost hear her laughter, loud and free, in my head. I touch the headstone gently, running a finger once more over the curling Arabic letters that spell out her name. “And we’ll meet again, someday, won’t we?” I whisper. “You’ll wait for me there, and it’ll be like we were never apart.”

  I stand, brushing the dirt from my baju kurung. “I’ll come and see you again soon,” I promise.

  As I walk away, ignoring the lone tear that seems to have leaked from my eye and made its way down my cheek, the sun shines gently, enveloping me in its light, caressing my skin like a blessing.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  If your dream is to one day write a book, my wish for you is to have as fierce and loyal an advocate in your corner as my wonder-agent, Victoria Marini, who believes in my words and ideas more than I ever do and is always ready to extend a hand to hold when I need it, or to punch someone in the face in my defense (metaphorically, of course; my agent does not literally go around punching people in the face. At least, not that I know of).

  I was blessed the day my editor, Zareen Jaffery, decided to take a chance on an unknown Malaysian writer with an unapologetically Malaysian story. This book is what it is because of her deep understanding of what it needed to be, and the always-on-point feedback it took to get it there. Huge thanks and high fives also go to Alexa, and the rest of the Salaam Reads/Simon & Schuster team, for shepherding this newbie through the book-making process relatively unscathed.

  Ribuan terima kasih to Atikah, Arif, and my other beta readers who took the time to help me shape Melati’s story into something real and true and book-worthy, and to Deeba Zargapur and my other sensitivity readers, who kept me in check and made sure my depictions of marginalized identities didn’t cause unnecessary harm; if you find any inaccuracies within these pages, the fault was mine alone.

  Thank you to Morgan, Charlotte, and Ellen, for sharing your stories with me and answering so many of my stupid questions; to Ghaz and Carl, for letting me pick your brains; to Datuk Dr. Andrew Mohanraj, for willingly taking the time to answer my questions on mental health treatment in the 1960s.

  I am unbelievably grateful to the brave, brilliant survivors who graciously allowed me to pick through and pull apart memories that were often painful to relive; I’m humbled by your generosity and your spirit. You inspire me.

  My thanks to Dipika Mukherjee and Sharon Bakar, who pulled me out of the crowd and made me believe I had stories in me worth telling.

  Mak and Abah, thank you for always being ready and willing to help out when I ask. I couldn’t have done this without you.

  Ibu and Bapak, where do I even begin? Thank you for filling our house with books; for encouraging those first, tentative forays into storytelling; for standing back and letting me pursue these lofty dreams; for believing that I could build a future on words. How can I ever repay you?

  I complain constantly about how difficult it is to juggle writing with the wrangling of small humans, but the truth is that I should thank my kids, Malik and Maryam, whose antics and laughter were a much-needed balm to a soul often bruised and battered from wrestling with the intensity of this story. I hope you’ll look at this book one day and forgive me for the times I had to leave you with your grandparents or make you wait for ten minutes to play while I furiously jotted down plot fixes or particularly delicious sentences. I hope you know how much I love you.

  And finally: To Umar, whose belief in me is unwavering; whose love is constant; whose support comes in a hundred different forms, big and small; who so often and readily utters those magic words: “Go ahead and write, I’ll take care of the kids.” I love you always and forever.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  HANNA ALKAF graduated with a degree in journalism from Northwestern University and now spends most of her time making things up as she goes along, both as a writer of fiction and as a mom. The Weight of Our Sky is her first novel. she lives in kuala Lumpur with her family.

  Visit us at simonandschuster.com/teen

  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Hanna-Alkaf

  Salaam Reads

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Hanna Alkaf

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2019 by Guy Shield

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  Jacket design by Krista Vossen

  Interior design by Hilary Zarycky

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Hanna Alkaf, author.

  Title: The weight of our sky / Hanna Alkaf.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Salaam Reads, [2019] Summary: “Amid the Chinese-Malay conflict in Kuala Lumpur in 1969, sixteen-year-old Melati must overcome prejudice, violence, and her own OCD to find her way back to her mother”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018012693 (print) | LCCN 2018018991 (eBook) ISBN 9781534426085 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534426108 (eBook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Obsessive-compulsive disorder—Fiction. | Mental illness—Fiction. | Race riots—Fiction. | Malays (Asian people)—Fiction. | Chinese—Malaysia—Fiction. | Ethnic relations—Fiction. | Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)—History—20th century—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.H36377 (eBook) | LCC PZ7.1.H36377 Wei 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record availabl
e at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012693