Chapter 17 Safe Harbor #2
Maybe it’s the way they operate as a group, which you find deeply unnerving. All the ghosts back home were individual people, individually locked in their own spiritual loops, trapped by personal grievances or lingering desires.
Never before have you seen a whole village, apparently caught together. All of them working, diligently, to keep their abandoned island immaculate, drifting repetitively through the houses they once lived in. Clustering around your mother like sprouting fungus.
It’s a little unnerving, if you’re honest.
Mami comes back after ten or fifteen minutes. Not very long. Whatever she said has stayed between her and them. She doesn’t share. You decide to get cleaned up, since she isn’t talking anyway.
By the time you emerge from your room, having washed down with a rag and changed clothes, she is preparing dried mushrooms and fish in the kitchen.
The ghosts are nearby but no longer crowded around your doorstep.
They linger at the tree line, glimpses of lost figures.
Watching—benevolently, you hope—but not interfering.
“What do they want?” you ask, unable to stop staring.
“They are lonely.” Mami washes the day’s dust from her hands in preparation for cooking. “It has been quiet here, for a long time.”
She has been lonely, too, though she does not say that to you; knows you won’t understand. Knows she can’t confess to you these things in her heart. She cannot even say them to herself, let alone someone else.
“I see,” you say, nonplussed. “Should I write some fu talismans?” You’ve gotten quite good at doing warding fu talismans, over the past few years.
Her shoulders twitch. “I told you, they are friendly.”
“So were most of the ghosts in Hong Kong,” you say, frowning. Why is she being like this? “We still had wards to keep them out. Isn’t that why we brought so much temple ink?”
“These are family, and friends, not strangers,” she says, sharp and hot. “One of those ghosts is my aunt. One was a childhood friend. Another is my second uncle! You would not understand—”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” you interject, awkwardly. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Mami draws a ragged breath and passes a hand across her eyes. “Please, Siu Yin, let us discuss it in the morning. I am feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. It has been a long day.”
A thousand worried questions are jostling in your head, but you can tell it’s futile to try and get more out of Mami right now. Besides, it is evening, and you are both tired.
Reluctantly, you swallow your questions and help her prepare dinner.
The days slide by. The war grinds on. Two months in, and Baba still hasn’t arrived.
You and Mami have stopped talking about him. There is nothing to say; he has either abandoned you, or become trapped in Hong Kong. Both possibilities are bad and so you each dive into your own distractions.
Every morning goes the same way: scarf breakfast as fast as you can eat, blitz through chores with record speed, and help with the farming, fishing, and fruit picking.
It’s more efficient to split up, and increasingly you each work separately.
The little garden is taking shape around you both, and at least that looks hopeful for the future.
By afternoon, you’ve usually run out of necessary things to do.
This period of time you fill by writing fu talismans, which you hang on various places around the island.
The first port of call is the doors and windows of this house, which Mami doesn’t comment on but also doesn’t object to.
The second is the well, because you want to protect the water supply.
If there’s any spare time, you spend it ambling gently around the island.
It doesn’t take long to learn the length and breadth of it, and the exercise does you a world of good.
That jittery energy of yours, which has always annoyed Mami deeply, is greatly calmed by your body being in motion for so much of the day.
There’d been work in Hong Kong, too, which always kept you busy.
Working in a restaurant had definitely sapped some of that overflowing energy.
But there is something about walking around a rural island which you find particularly restful, and in daylight the ghosts are scared enough not to worry you.
That said, it is always a trifle … well … lonely.
For a girl who has lived in a city thronged with crowds, the island’s quiet can feel terribly stark, at times. You find yourself wishing there were at least one other person here, since Mami is such bad company. She probably feels the same about you, which doesn’t make you feel any better.
“Just one friend would do,” you say to the cat, the next time you see him. “I don’t suppose you feel like learning to talk?”
The cat yawns, showing a bright-pink mouth. He still comes by often, though he never enters the house.
“It was worth a try,” you say, and sigh.
Still, life is pleasant enough. Despite the loneliness, and the looming shadow of your father’s absence, you feel weirdly hopeful.
Perhaps, you tell yourself, Baba has simply been detained, because of the war; the ports have likely shut.
When the conflict ends (always think when, never if), maybe you can go look for him.
The small fishing boats on the island’s far side, though not big enough for all the luggage, could at least get you somewhere safe in an emergency. You and Mami could reach a nearby island, if not the mainland.
Daydreaming about the end of the war, when you don’t even know what’s going on! Still, it would be a good idea to visit those other islands, sometime, even if only to get news. Mami won’t be keen, so you’ll have to do it quietly and perhaps not mention it, unless the news is very good.
You’ll go after the planting season, you decide. That makes the most sense. That gives Baba a little more time to make an appearance.
Then the typhoon arrives, and all of those plans crumble.