The Weight of Our Sky Page 9

  “Forget hearts, we should be out there, with them!” Frankie gestures to the window. “You know all the gangs are outside there now, defending us, defending their territory? We should be defending our own! We should be giving hell to all the Malays who think we don’t belong here and want to chase us out!” He pauses to shoot me a look. I clench my fists and force myself to meet his gaze without blinking.

  “At very least,” he says, when he finally turns back to Vince, “at very least, you should be sending your supplies only to people like us. Only to the Chinese. You should be helping your people.”

  Vincent sighs. “Frankie . . . your people, my people, our people, they’re everyone. They’re Malaysians. It’s not Malays killing Chinese or Chinese killing Malays. It’s stupid people killing stupid people.”

  He sits down on the edge of the bed and picks up the band, smoothing it against his knee. “I can do more for our people by taking up supplies instead of sticks,” he says quietly. “I’d rather help with the healing than the hurting.”

  Frankie shakes his head. “Then you’re too far gone to realize that your helping is what’s hurting us.” He turns on his heels and stalks out of the room.

  Vince puts another record on—another Beatles number, as if he knows this is just what I need. I shoot him a grateful look, but say nothing. No words are necessary.

  Music swells to fill the growing silence.

  • • •

  In the darkest hours of the night, when there’s a particular quality of stillness to the world that makes it feel like you’re the only one that exists, the Djinn rises. Keep your end of the bargain, he whispers softly in my ear. Or do you think you’ll enjoy the feeling of their blood on your hands?

  I sit up and listen for any movement in the house. Satisfied that I’m the only one awake, I slip out of bed, clear a space in the middle of the room, and begin.

  Six steps, pivot. Six steps, pivot. Six steps, pivot. My feet trace three straight lines, a perfect triangle. Perfect? Are you kidding me? The Djinn snorts. That wasn’t right. Start over. So I do it again, tapping out the rhythm with my fingers as I go, counting under my breath, one, two, three, four, five, six . . . and then I do it again, and again, and again, trying to get it to feel just right. The night deepens around me, and my T-shirt is soaked through, but I keep at it for what seems like hours.

  Once, among the meager selection of books in our school’s dim, dusty library, Saf and I found a copy of an illustrated Sejarah Melayu, a slim volume of fantastical folktales and stories that supposedly captured the “glorious history of the Malays.” Our favorite was the legend of Hang Nadim, whose coastal village was cursed with a plague of swordfish thanks, as always, to the actions of a feckless, wretched king. The swordfish flew out of the water in droves, piercing the bodies of the men and women who had the misfortune to be by the sea that particular day. At first, the king—not the wisest fellow, you see—ordered his men to stand shoulder to shoulder and use their legs to prevent the swordfish from getting past. But obviously all that did was result in the deaths of more people, until Hang Nadim, bright lad that he was, thought up the idea of using the soft stems of the banana tree as a barrier instead. The leaping swordfish found themselves stuck in the stems, no more men were sacrificed, and Hang Nadim was hailed as a hero by all except the king, who later ordered his execution. It doesn’t do to expose your ruler’s stupidity.

  Saf and I would peal with laughter at the absurdity of this story, but in my heart I always felt a small ache for the men who stood on that beach and let themselves be pierced by hundreds of sharp objects flying straight at them from an unrelenting sea, all to protect their own.

  This feels a lot like that. The Djinn hurls swordfish after swordfish at me, enjoying the sight of my skin being pierced by their sharp blades, my flesh being ripped apart, my weaknesses seeping through for all the world to see. But still I pace, and tap, and count. I need to protect my people.

  Eventually, I have to stop, pushing the hair off my damp forehead impatiently. My eyes are so tired they feel like they’re about to shrivel up and drop out of their sockets. Getting sleepy? The Djinn smiles charmingly. I have some movies we can watch together, if you like?

  Shut up. I dig a nail into my left arm so hard that it leaves a deep red crescent on my pale skin. Focus, Mel. Let’s do this one more time.

  Just one more time.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  VINCENT COMES HOME FROM HIS first day as a volunteer practically glowing with usefulness. “I was going crazy at home,” he confesses to me as we wait for Auntie Bee to call us for dinner. “Just hanging around, not knowing what was happening. Now at least I know I’m helping. I’m not waiting around for something to happen.”

  “Any news of Kampung Baru?” I don’t know why I ask, when I’m almost afraid to hear the answer. The Djinn summons lumps of cold fear from deep in my belly and lodges them in my throat, making it ache, making it hard for me to breathe.

  He shakes his head, his expression apologetic. “I’m sorry, Mel,” he says. “I wasn’t in town today; I was sorting and packing supplies over in Keramat. I’m supposed to drive out tomorrow. I’ll check for you then, okay? Maybe try and get a message to your mother?”

  I can tell he wishes he could tell me something more, and I swallow my frustration. “Okay,” I say.

  He sits at his place at the table, so confident, so sure, so full of pride at what he’s doing to help. His enthusiasm is seductive, contagious. But I’m not fooled. Beneath that assuredness, he’s soft and vulnerable. They all are, I realize suddenly, staring around the table. I need to protect him. I need to protect them all.

  The way you protected Saf? the Djinn whispers. The way you’re protecting Mama now, by staying here and saving your own skin? In my head, the man in the theater laughs and laughs, and both Mama’s and Saf’s bodies lie broken at his feet. I pick up my spoon and tap it lightly on the edge of my bowl three times, then I stir three times clockwise, then three times counterclockwise, and then I do it all over again, trying very hard not to throw up all over the table.

  “Was there any danger?” Auntie Bee asks him. She’s been mostly silent throughout the meal; in fact, she’s been mostly silent for the entire day while Vince was gone, throwing herself feverishly into her household tasks while I try to stay out of her way. I know what it’s like when your brain takes one idea and decides to turn it into a feature-length film. Distraction is good.

  Vince hesitates, and I can tell he’s wondering exactly how much he should tell her. “It was fine,” he says eventually, turning his attention back to his rice bowl so he doesn’t have to meet her sharp, searching gaze. “Police and army guys everywhere, lots of roadblocks, so there can’t really be any hanky-panky. They nip that stuff in the bud real quick. Plus, nobody hurts the volunteers.” He shrugs. “Everybody’s always happy to see us—Malays, Chinese, Indians, aunties, uncles, gangsters. Everyone needs food.”

  “Eh, can you stop that?” Frankie suddenly says loudly, and I freeze as everyone stares at me, my spoon still resting lightly on the bowl’s rim. “We’re trying to talk and you keep tapping on your bowl, ding ding ding, it’s damn irritating.”

  Every eye on me feels like a laser boring straight into my body, and I can feel my face grow hot and tears sting my eyes, and I can’t move. What do I do? What do I do? The Djinn’s laughter echoes through my head. Keep going and they’ll know you’re crazy. Stop and your mother dies. What a lovely little conundrum this is!

  Auntie Bee’s voice cuts through his wicked hisses. “Girl,” she says gently. “Girl, are you all right?”

  I still can’t move.

  Beneath the table, I feel a hand on my knee, gentle, soothing. I glance at Vince, but he isn’t looking at me. Instead, he moves quickly and somehow his other hand knocks over his glass so that it shatters on the floor, water and shards of glass flying everywhere.

  Everyone leaps up in shock. “Aiya!” Auntie Bee cries as water begins to seep into
the kitchen rug.

  “Sorry, Ma,” Vince says. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “So clumsy,” she scolds him, scurrying to the kitchen for a rag. “Quickly, Frankie, roll back that rug before it gets spoiled, then go and get some newspaper to wrap up this glass. Vincent, you go and get the broom and sweep up this mess. Nobody step on any pieces lah, you will cut your feet to ribbons!”

  Through this chaos, Uncle Chong sits calmly finishing up the last of his porridge as if nothing is happening, and when I tap my spoon lightly on the side of my bowl—ding, ding, ding—nobody notices at all.

  • • •

  “Take me with you.”

  “Huh?” Vince looks up at me from where he lies sprawled among his records on the floor. He’s just put on a Bee Gees record—“The First of May,” a somber cut soaked in longing for times gone by that always leaves me feeling sad and hollow.

  I say it again, louder this time. “Take me with you.”

  He sits up slowly and stops the record player. “Why?” he asks. “Why would I do that?”

  “I want to help too,” I tell him. “I can’t stay here doing nothing. I need to know where my mother is, need to find out what happened to her, if she’s okay. If I go out with you, then maybe I can ask around, figure it out.” If I find her, then I can protect her. And if I’m with you, I can protect you. It’s not a lie; it’s just not the whole truth.

  He sighs. “I know. But it isn’t safe out there.”

  “But you told your mother—”

  “Of course I told my mother it was safe! You think she’d let me go if she knew what it was really like out there?” He snorts. “Not bloody likely.”

  “So what’s it really like?”

  He hesitates. “Pretty much how I imagined it,” he says finally, and I roll my eyes. I know an evasion when I see one; I’m usually the one using it.

  “So you were in danger?”

  “Mel, anyone who steps out their doors right now is in danger. I can’t let you do it.”

  “If you don’t let me come with you, I’ll have to go on my own,” I point out reasonably. “Then you wouldn’t know where I was or if I was protected. Whereas if you were with me . . .” I trail off, letting the infinite probabilities unfold in his head.

  It doesn’t take long. I can tell by his scowl that I’ve won and he knows it.

  “Fine,” he growls. “But you’ll have to explain to Ma. And you’ll have to put up with Jagdev.”

  “Who’s Jagdev?”

  “You’ll see.”

  • • •

  Jagdev turns out to be a large Sikh man with a belly that hangs over the waistband of his khakis and a beard that can only be described as luxuriant. When he laughs—which he does often, usually at jokes the rest of us don’t really get—his eyes crease up into a dozen tiny crinkles, and his turban wobbles so that I am half willing it to come off and half worried that it will.

  “Welcome to the gang!” he bellows, chuckling to himself as he holds open the door of his ancient black car for me. “You can call me Jay!”

  “Thanks, Jay,” I mutter, sliding onto the worn leather seats, torn and patched in places. My eyes are swollen, and I feel strangely light, like I may float off into the sky at any minute. I’ve barely slept, having spent the night pacing Vince’s room in a special series of patterns and sequences designed to placate the Djinn and protect the entire house while I’m gone. Each time I tried to sleep, I’d close my eyes and watch Auntie Bee and Uncle Chong die, again and again. Then I’d get up, shaken and nauseous, and do it all over again, until light began to stream through the window and I realized it was morning.

  They think Vince and Jay are taking me to an aunt’s house in Sungai Buloh. “Thank you for letting me stay for so long, but I need to be with family right now,” I’d reassured them. “I’ll be safe with them.” The tears that slide down my cheeks are real; I don’t want to leave this family that took me in so easily, that practices kindness like a religion. But it’s the only way.

  I see them exchange worried glances, but they agree, and I feel a sharp pang at how easily this deception comes to me, and how easily it is received. It’s not a total lie, I tell myself. I do have an aunt in Sungai Buloh—mad Auntie Jun. “So thin, how to get any boys like this!” she likes to shriek whenever she sees me, poking me in my ribs. We haven’t actually seen Auntie Jun in the past year—she has a daughter around my age, my cousin Nora, and doesn’t want her tainted by my own peculiar brand of madness—but Auntie Bee and Uncle Chong don’t need to know that.

  While Jay and Vince catch up, I occupy myself constructing an intricate web of numbers and taps, weaving a protective shell around the whole car, around Vincent and Jay and me. Three taps at a time here, here, here, and here, now the feet, now the fingers, and again. Once or twice, I feel like I’m being watched, like Vincent is eyeing me in the rearview mirror. But every time I look up, his eyes are either firmly on the road ahead, or on Jay as they talk and laugh in the front seat. You’re imagining things, Melati.

  Oh, yes? The Djinn tickles my heart gently, sending cold shoots of anxiety spiraling through my chest. But what if he did? Think how shameful it would be for him to see you acting this way. How utterly disgusted he would be to know they opened their home to someone like you. I feel my cheeks heat up. Begin again. So I do, tapping and counting, concentrating hard until the world fades into numbers and nothing more.

  “Where are we going?” I finally ask over the roar and rumble of the engine once I’m satisfied. It’s a hot day; Jay and Vince roll down their windows so that the wind whips my hair about and stings my eyes. “Klang,” Jay booms back. “Got a tip. This man said he abandoned his lorry full of fresh eggs there when the troubles started. Says we can have the eggs to distribute if we just return the lorry to him in good condition. Or should I say, egg-cellent condition. Ha!”

  I smile weakly. Vince groans, then looks back and catches my eye. “Brace yourself,” he says quietly. I’m about to ask him what for, when I look out of the window and see Kuala Lumpur for myself, for the first time since it all began.

  The streets are desolate. The walls of the empty shophouses bear the bruises of their recent altercations: spattered trails of blood and bullet holes, a map of senseless violence. Here, the smoldering husk of a burned-out car; there, a smattering of broken glass from shop windows; farther on, a sprawling stain on the pavement roughly the shape of Australia that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than dried blood. And a sight that seems oddly familiar, though for a second I don’t realize it’s because I’m so used to seeing them in my head: limp, lifeless bodies, more than I can count. Men, women, and even children, some who look around my age, some even younger, some still wearing their school uniforms. One girl’s blue ribbon trails behind her on the pavement where she lies, intertwined with the hair that’s come loose from her half-undone braid.

  That girl could have been just like me and Saf, I think, walking back from school, talking about boys and records and movies, secure in the belief that teenagers like us aren’t meant to be personally acquainted with death until some hazy, far-off day in the future, when we’re old and gray.

  And then the Djinn whispers: Maybe one of those bodies IS Saf.

  And then: Maybe one of them is Mama.

  And then I cannot breathe.

  As I count and tap and tap and count, my fingers shaking, the Djinn’s soft rasp ever-present in my ear, I hear Jay let out a long sigh. “Bloody politicians,” he says softly, shaking his head. “Bloody politicians and their bloody stupid rhetoric, speeches, ideologies. You ever hear anyone say words don’t matter after this, you tell them about this day, when Malay idiots and Chinese idiots decided to kill one another because they believed what the bloody politicians told them.”

  I want more than anything to close my eyes, to say something, tell them to turn back and send me home, tell them I wasn’t meant for this, that nobody was meant for this. But the Djinn reaches out his cold
, bony fingers and forces my eyelids open. Take it all in, he hisses. You wanted to be out here. You wanted to be the hero, the protector. You wanted to see what was happening for yourself. So see.

  My breath is coming in short, shallow pants, and my hands are trembling uncontrollably. Every body that I see bears Mama’s face. She’s dead, says the voice in my head. You left her. You failed her, just like you failed Saf. And now she’s dead. I fight to quash him, force him down, keep him silent, but the effort is making me queasy. I’m going to throw up, I think. I’m going to throw up.

  “I’m going to throw up,” I say quickly. Jay brings the car to a screeching halt, and I open the door just in time, heaving up the morning’s meager breakfast—boiled sweet potatoes, again. I feel almost detached as it happens, as though I’m floating outside my own body, watching it enthusiastically expel lumpy, pale yellow liquid.

  What an idiot.

  “Are you okay?” Vince asks, frowning with concern. “I should have known—it’s a lot to take in.” I am flushed and embarrassed when I sit back up, and Jay silently passes me his large cotton handkerchief. “Thank you,” I say quietly, wiping my mouth with it. The initials JS are embroidered neatly in one corner in navy-blue thread. For some reason, this makes me want to cry.

  “JS for Jagdev Singh,” he says, following the direction of my gaze. “Although when my wife is angry with me, she says it stands for Jolly Stupid!” I laugh then, and suddenly feel better.

  “I don’t suppose you want this back. . . .”

  He looks at the crumpled square in my hand and grimaces. “You keep it,” he says. “I have plenty more.”

  “Let’s go,” Vince says, looking up and down the street. “We have some eggs to collect.”

  “How egg-citing!” Jay says, grinning.

  “How long is this going to go on, Jagdev?” Vince asks him.

  “I dunno, Vince, I think some jokes are egg-xactly what we need right now,” I tell him, and Jay laughs delightedly as we make our way toward Klang.