Authors: Charles Foran
I knocked on door number three, the one with music.
“Hello?” someone said.
“
Gao
cho ah!
” Jr. Mam said to me. Into her phone she spoke two words,
“quai lai.”
Come quick.
“I can be her,” I repeated, the notion scarcely any clearer now, “but she has to be me too.”
The door opened a crack and a head stuck out. She was blond, from a bottle, her teeth good and her eyes green. But HK$590 still seemed expensive.
“Are you Russian?” I said, swallowing my disappointment.
“Ukraine,” she replied.
Fumbling with the latch on my purse, I showed her the apple. “You might as well eat it.”
“No photo!” Jr. Mam said. “It’s an apple,” I said.
Two men had entered the apartment—
clatter, swoosh, clatter, swoosh
, went the beads—and were closing in. I recognized them from the food market, including the one that had allowed his face to be swallowed by a dragon. In a second I’d be getting a closer look at his mistake of a lifetime. Was I making my own, right now? The thought was a stronger, sharper poke to the gut.
In Cantonese Jr. Mam instructed them to grab my arms. When Gloria tried blocking their path the woman slammed her against the wall. “Filipino
chau hai
,” she said in English. “For you I get hundred dollar tops. Have to fuck all night to make any money.”
The apple, which the Ukrainian hadn’t touched, fell from my purse to the ground, rolling towards the rear exit, as if attempting its own escape. But instead of helping another girl in distress—or making a break for it alongside the fruit, why not—the $590 prostitute closed her door.
Still pinning Gloria to the wall, Jr. Mam turned to me with a dragon-toothed grin. “But you are Chinese
ping gwoh.
Sweet to taste.”
“My real name is Sarah, from the Isle of Skye,” I answered. Not even debating whether I had the courage to do it, I pulled Gloria away from her. “Slap me again,” I said into my amah’s ear.
Her eyes bugged out.
“For real this time.”
She hesitated.
“Say I didn’t take my medicine today,” I whispered. “Say that I’m mal-brained.”
Emitting an animal sound, half scream, half whimper, Gloria
slapped me so hard that I lost my balance. “Stupid girl!” she said, not too convincingly.
The gangsters, reeking of beer and tumours, had to prop Hello Kitty up, a doll with no control over her muscles. But although Jr. Mam grinned behind her mask at my humiliation, she wasn’t satisfied. Her gaze warned of what else she would be taking in revenge, and her stubby fingers dug into the flesh and bone at the nape of my neck. Using her nails as pincers, she snapped the cross from the chain and caught both before they fell. The pain was sharp but faded. The slap kept on hurting, as it should.
“Now go,” she said.
The men shoved us towards the rear door. “SeeSee, walk,” I heard Gloria say. “Don’t turn.”
We climbed down the rickety fire escape to a back alley. A fluorescent bulb over an outdoor barber shop blazed so raw I covered my brow, certain the glass was about to shatter, and rain on a tarpaulin went
pop! pop!
, each shot a jolt to my spine. Buried into a wall was a food stall with a blowtorched duck hanging from a hook. The duck’s skin glowed like embers, its eyes twinkling reflected light. I decided to finish my aura sitting down.
It was over before my bum found the low stool. The aura was done, and soon I would be too.
“Food,” I said to Gloria.
“Here?”
“Noodles,” I said to the man standing behind the duck. He wore a stained apron over a filthy undershirt, a slit in his N-95 mask allowing him to smoke on the job. “No beasties.”
He stared at me.
“No meat,” I corrected in Cantonese.
“Haven’t you heard of SARS?” he said, the tumour stick a sorcerer’s wand.
“We’re tourists.”
“You should buy a mask.”
“You should serve noodles.”
Across the table, Gloria stared at me, her mouth back to being dead-fish open.
“Don’t cry,” I said.
She struggled.
“Let’s buy mango candies after this,” I added. “Or a fresh mango.”
The man delivered bowls of chow mein noodles with bok choy. “Give the cigarette to the duck,” I said to him. “It could use a few smokes.” I selected a chipped ceramic spoon from one container and plastic chopsticks, their tips grooved with teeth marks, from another.
Gloria found her voice. “Must clean these first,” she said, bending her head towards her purse.
The ground was opening up. “Peking smoking duck,” I said. “Sounds yummy.”
“Handi Wipes,” she said.
Having slurped broth and supped noodles, I pinched a bok choy flower between the chopsticks. “Baby socks. Green ones.”
She tore at the packet with her teeth.
“It wasn’t so bad, for a first time,” I said, touching my cheek. “Didn’t hurt that much.”
“Let me clean!”
“I miss being a kid. I miss my family. Don’t you?”
I slurped, and supped, and pinched another baby sock. Getting it—what was coming, and couldn’t be stopped—Gloria asked what she should do.
“Stay with me forever,” I replied. “Never go away.”
She threw enough money on the table to buy an entire duck.
“Girls bring condoms to school just to show off,” I said as we hurried out to Argyle Street to flag a taxi. “Real ones. They peel them open in the bathroom and wave them at each other, giggling and squealing. How stupid is that?”
No ground beneath these running shoes. Only a trench, a chasm, black and bottomless. One more step and down I’ll plummet. One more step and—
December 19, 20—
*Eye of viral storm
*837 infected, 29 dead
“Our daughter said those things?”
“Technically, she texted them. Sorry, Xixi,” Dad said. “Sorry to be doing this in front of you.”
Me (to him):
Better than me hiding in Rachel’s old room
Checking his screen, he nodded, his smile closer to a wince. Dad sat on one couch, Mom on the other. In between them I curled in an armchair, chin on my knees.
“‘Am I fuckable yet?’” Mom said, quoting the text I had sent to Rachel. “And then you asked Gloria how many holes you have for sex?”
Me (to her):
Rachel told you? Gloria told you?
Her phone buzzed.
“There’s no chance I will read your message with you sitting right here. I see you texting it! You’re not invisible.”
Me (to her):
I thought I was
“Sarah!” she said, ignoring the incoming texts. “Are you truly still not getting it, darling? The implications of the video sent to my iPhone earlier this morning are terrifying. These people are now stalking you, and threatening to abduct you if you won’t stop. I had no choice but to involve the police. Even your father, who would much prefer to keep his head buried in the sand, or elsewhere, agrees. Right, Jacob?”
Me (to her):
Why stay with him, if he’s such a jerk?
“Give me that phone,” Mom added.
“Leah, don’t.”
Me (to him):
Isn’t she a bitch now?
“Kiddo,” he said. On any other day his expression might have made me regret my words, want to trigger a Cool Kwok grin. But not this morning. Not when she—they, Leah and Jacob, still the official parenting team—had just ruined Gloria’s life. Ruined her life and, by extension, my own.
“What did she say?” Mom said.
“We should get Rachel on the laptop,” he said. “She might be able to talk to her. What time is it in Toronto?”
Me (to her):
I called you a
chau hai
Buzz.
Me (to him):
9 pm in TO
Buzz.
“Stop it!” Dad said without either checking his text or asking, and finding out, that I had called my own mother a “smelly cunt” in Cantonese. An awful term, one I didn’t know that I knew.
Mom sprang up from her couch. “The phone,” she said, coming towards me. “It has to go. I said so last week. I mean it today.”
I’d been attacked by another adult not long before, and instinctively sank deeper into the chair, the phone buried in my belly. Manga yip-yipped at the threat of violence.
“Out of the way, Manga,” she said.
“FFUUCCKK,” I said.
In mid-stride she veered away and crossed to the balcony doors, where she stood deliberately shielding her face. “I don’t know what I have done to deserve this,” she said. “Nor what I can do to stop everything from turning more and more to shit.”
“Let me try,” Dad said.
My belly buzzed, not from cramps or fear.
Dad:
Do you remember last night?
Me:
Some of it
Dad:
Gloria said you had a seizure after eating noodles
Me:
We were in a taxi in the Cross-Harbour Tunnel. My tongue was burnt and I didn’t know why
Back and forth we texted, clickety-click, our words beaming up to some satellite near the moon, bouncing off, and landing right back in the same room in apartment 2201, 26 Old Peak Road, Hong Kong. Out the window the slope glowed bok choy from all the rain. Or it glowed baby socks.
Dad:
What about the massage parlour? Do you remember climbing those stairs?
Me:
I met a Russian girl. She cost $590. So far, 29 people have died from SARS and 837 are infected. I don’t think we’ll get as high as the last time
Dad:
Was she the one who stole your cross?
Me:
??
Dad:
Gloria said a woman ripped the cross from your neck
I checked the dent between my collarbones. When I looked up at Dad, he shrugged. Amazing, not to have noticed the cross and chain were gone. My fingers climbed my left cheek.
Me:
She may have hit me
Dad:
The Russian? That’s assault
Me:
Did I find her? Mary … Did I apologize?
Our eyes met. This time, knowing how much it meant, he added a sad smile. “Sorry, SeeSaw,” he said.
Mom flinched at the kindness in his voice.
Dad:
What about before you entered the building, the women at the table in that outdoor restaurant? And the one in charge?
Me:
I watched the video. And I remember most of it—before the doorway. Thai girls cost just 190
Dad:
The police have identified the location
Me:
I still don’t think Mom had to send them the video
Dad:
They demanded it. Anyway, the gangsters have posted YOUR photo on YOUR Facebook wall. The photo the mamasan took on the beach, plus our address below. You know this, right?
Me:
I saw
Dad:
We should have contacted the authorities weeks ago. And confiscated your computer and phone. Now it’s too late
Me:
Did you have to, Dad?
Dad:
You mean Gloria?
I turned off my phone. “Did you have to?” I said from the centre of the room, equally distant from them both. “Kwok-MacInnes parentals … did you?”
“We had to,” he said.
I told them I’d wait in my cell until the interrogation. “Come, Manga,” I said to my last remaining friend. Dad was already by the balcony door, scrolling through our exchange for her to read—everything I said and did, even in my own bedroom, was being recorded, taped, and posted on YouTube, Facebook, and exploitedasianteens.com—before I was out of sight.
Afraid to FaceTime Rachel and catch her having sex with Yellow Peril, formerly Head Tax, and warned by Leah to leave Gloria
alone, likely so we couldn’t get our stories straight—dumb, since I couldn’t remember chunks of mine—I retreated to Facebook. In the last twenty minutes another twenty-seven people had liked “Finding Mary” and nine more had talked about this. Two comments had been added since my photo was posted earlier this morning. One was from Kimberley in Phuket.
Super-cute Asian teen!
she wrote for everyone to read. But she also texted me privately:
U posted yourself, Xixi? Bad idea to give the address.
From Manchester, Jonathan Rhys-Jones posted on the page as well.
She’s worth it
, he wrote. Intending to be sweet, no doubt, but the comment came out creepy. Poor Jonathan.
Looking at Mary, looking at myself, I wasn’t sure anymore about her, about Facebook, about me. The seizure in Mong Kok had been different, the chasm the deepest and darkest so far. Half a day later, had I climbed all the way back out? Bok choy baby socks and a smoking Peking duck, a tongue scalded by noodle soup and a cheek stinging from a slap, a cross stolen and an apple rolling down a corridor—I couldn’t sort out events or say why certain images still burned in my mind. I couldn’t be certain I knew what I knew now because I remembered it, or had been told, or had watched the video sent to my mother’s latest Apple product. It was no good, having a mal-brain. I couldn’t be trusted, or trust myself.
Leah called me back to her courtroom for another grilling. Two police squeezed onto one of the couches. Though Senior Inspector Kerr stood when I entered, Constable Chu did not. Kerr was
gweilo
, pasty and balding in a slept-in suit, his face mashed by wrinkles but his green eyes twinkly. Chu was local, uniformed in a beret, a blue shirt with epaulets, cargo pants, and black boots. The belt around her waist holstered a handgun and cuffs, a baton
to her knees and a canister of spray, not for hairstyling.
My arms went out, wrists already cuffed. “Take me, not Gloria,” I said. “I can’t be trusted.”
“You must be young Sarah,” he said in a Scottish accent. “I recognize you from the video.”
They belonged to the Organized Crime and Triad Unit. He was a dinosaur, he explained, one of a dwindling number of pre-Handover hires still on the force. She was an exemplary junior officer, present this afternoon on account of the sensitive nature of the matter. Senior Inspector Kerr kept pinching at his SARS mask while he spoke, as though to let his words slip up and over the fabric. I liked him immediately.
“You sound like Shrek,” I said.
“Sarah,” Mom said.
“Kwok Xixi,” I corrected her.
“I feel a bit ogre-ish in this bloody thing,” he said.