Chapter Four
“Did she bring rice?”
I was half asleep, still clinging to Mama’s neck, when we arrived back at our camp, but Dai Gor’s voice was a pinprick to my dreams. I stirred immediately when she set me down.
“You forget what a bigheaded prawn your mui mui is,” Ah Ma was replying. “We’re lucky she even knew which house was ours.”
“She got the medicine,” said Mama sharply. She whirled. “Syun Tung, stop playing with that radio. If the Japanese catch our signal—”
My oldest brother fiddled with the knobs, and the static grew louder before it shut off completely. “She could’ve brought food, too,” he groused. “A bag of rice wouldn’t have killed her.”
Mama glared him into silence.
We’d been in the hills twenty days now, ten since we’d run out of rice. My belly curved in like a bowl, and I was tired—oh so tired—of eating yams. But after today, I would’ve eaten a whole box of them. A pot burbled just outside the tent, and I hoped it was dinner.
My grandmother loomed over me. “Did they come into our house?” she asked, for that was the only thing that mattered to her.
“Yes,” I said, slowly sitting up.
Ah Ma sniffed, then she began her lament. “My house. My beautiful, beautiful house, soiled by those scoundrels! If not for these old joints, these weak bones, I’d have thrown them all out.”
The house was everything to my grandmother. If I tripped over a loose floor tile, she’d bemoan the scuffed tile and not the cut on my knees, then strike me for not being more careful.
“I can’t believe you didn’t get killed,” Dai Gor said, setting down his precious radio. “Were they carrying vipers?”
“Yes.”
My brother went on, “Uncle Tong’s son said that they killed a hundred people last week, and even after the rain, the fields still smell like blood—”
I gave his radio a good kick. It was the only way to shut him up.
“Ma! Did you see what she did?”
“Enough,” said Mama. She dipped outside the tent, stirring the soup pot with a ladle. A pungent herbal smell suffused the air; she was making Yi Gor’s medicine. “Your sister has had a long day. So have I.”
Dai Gor sent me a dirty look and stormed out.
Ah Ma clucked her tongue. “You’re too hard on him, Yuk Fong. Sons are treasures.”
“What good have your treasures done? All three left you behind.”
Ah Ma’s face darkened. “You watch your tongue.”
Mama didn’t argue further. It was as far as she’d ever go. She was the kettle on the fire that only simmered but never boiled.
“An errant son is worth four dutiful daughters,” Ah Ma said. “Your daughter may be dutiful, but Syun Tung is right, she should have brought food. A thoughtful girl would have brought back some rice for her sick brother. No wonder she did so dreadfully in school.”
At the insult, my cheeks grew hot. My Ha blood was petty and never forgot a slight.
Be good, I reminded myself. The gods had saved me; in return, I couldn’t disappoint them.
“I will be more thoughtful, Ah Ma,” I said, striving to sound polite. “Can I have my doll back now?”
She harrumphed. “That rag? I gave it to the neighbor’s daughter.”
“You said you’d give her back when I brought the medicine.”
“I changed my mind. You’re too old to be playing with dolls. You have so many toys—look at those little mosquitoes your mother’s taken in.” She pointed at a tent full of our neighbors’ children. “They have nothing.”
Before I could protest, Mama ladled medicine into a bowl and passed it to me. “Give this to your brother. Tell him to finish it.”
I gave her a pleading look. I was waiting for her secret smile, a promise to get my doll back while I went to Yi Gor. But Mama was silent. Her hand was on her chest, where her rosary beads lay behind her tunic.
I turned back to Ah Ma. “Which neighbor?”
“Ying!” warned Mama.
I stomped my foot, but that was the extent of my rebellion. I ducked under the mosquito netting to my brothers’ tent.
Yi Gor lay on a pile of blankets rank with vomit. He was pale, his skin clammy and his closed eyelids marbled with tiny veins. I knew he wasn’t asleep, because he rolled to his side and said, “What are you staring at, nosy hen?”
“Mama made you soup.” I passed him the bowl. “Drink it.”
“It’s hot,” Yi Gor complained. “Blow on it for me.”
One of Yi Gor’s favorite amusements was ordering me around. I glowered but did as he asked.
He rolled to his side. “I heard Dai Gor say something about rice. Did you get eggs, too?”
“Yes,” I said meanly, “and lychees and steamed cakes from Mrs. Wong’s bakery.” I saw his disappointment and suddenly felt bad. Seven tin soldiers surrounded his blanket—toys he had brought from home, now half buried in the dirt.
I pushed the toys aside and sat beside him, dipping a wooden spoon into his soup. I blew it cool.
Yi Gor turned away when I raised the spoon. “It smells rotten.”
“You smell rotten.”
My brother gave me a feeble glare. “Someone’s in a bad mood.”
Yi Gor coughed, and I seized the bucket behind his pillows in case he needed to vomit.
But he simply let out a ragged breath. Finally, he took the spoon.
He screwed up his face at the bitter taste, but he drank half the bowl without complaint.
When he was nearly done, I rewarded him with a sip of boiled water.
“Dai Gor wanted to bet that you wouldn’t come back,” he said. “I could’ve won his radio, but—”
“But what?”
“I didn’t want to bet,” he confessed. “I’m glad you went and not Mama. I’m also glad you weren’t killed.”
Yi Gor lifted his spoon again, and little by little, he finished the soup, letting out a cough at the end. He looked so pitiful lying there, yet he did something I would never forget.
He smiled at me.
In the years to come, when my brother and I were no longer speaking, I would often come back to this moment—and wish that I had smiled back.
Two weeks later, the Japanese left.
Summer had gone. We were on the brink of autumn and the hills were turning red, maple leaves coating the ground in a bloodred carpet.
The trees became easier to climb, and my brothers and I wasted no time.
The wind whistled against the nape of my neck as I clung to a newly barren branch, watching the Japanese crawl out of our hometown.
From my perch, the line of cars composed a long, armored centipede with no head, just a continuous tail.
It made for quite the monster, with the smoke gasping out of the exhaust pipes, puffing into the shape of wispy black legs.
We watched to the very end, when even the centipede’s shadow was gone—before we began our long way home.
There was no celebration when we returned to Tunglam.
No one cheered, for there was little to be happy about.
Our town was forever changed. Much of the farmland had been razed or scorched, trees had been chopped down, livestock slaughtered, shops plundered.
Everyone knew someone who’d gone missing, and there were walls of barbed wire that hadn’t been there before, enclosing areas that gave off suspicious odors.
A few times Mama covered my eyes with her hand as we walked down the street. She wouldn’t tell me why.
The first thing Ah Ma did when we got home was go straight to her room to burn her bedsheets. She couldn’t stomach the idea of the enemy touching her things, their commander sleeping in her bed.
Mama followed her and snatched the matches before she could light the brazier.
“What are you doing?” Ah Ma bristled. “Give them back.”
Mama wouldn’t. “You burn your sheets, what will you sleep on?”
“If Third Son hadn’t married you, I wouldn’t be starving to death, working myself to death, hiding from those Japanese bastards! I’d be in Guangzhou—”
“Locked up in a war camp,” Mama finished for her.
Ah Ma’s eyes flashed resentfully. She wrenched free of Mama and hobbled into the courtyard, knocking her cane on every doorframe and moaning at the mess the soldiers had made.
Her only audience was Mama and we children, so Ah Ma quickly tired of putting on her show and stood by the pond, where she actually started weeping. Fat pearls of tears rolled down her cheeks. Mama went up to her.
“This house was beautiful,” she said, touching Ah Ma’s arm. “It will be beautiful again.”
War had brought an unlikely peace between my mother and grandmother, who leaned her head against Mama’s shoulder, blowing her nose into Mama’s sleeve.
Our house was special. According to our family annals, the emperor himself had gifted it to my ancestor, an imperial minister of great renown.
Some considered it the most elegant residence in all of Guangdong Province, with its celadon-green walls and vermillion doors with brass knockers, its auspiciously south-facing courtyard and sprawling gardens.
For Ah Ma, the house was a reminder of better times, a last symbol of our family’s faded glory.
It was more precious to her than blood, and no matter how dire our straits, she refused to leave it.
“They took everything,” Ah Ma said, weeping. “My wedding silks, my porcelain, my paintbrushes.” She gestured at the pond with a dramatic flourish. “Even the fish are dead. They’re off to a better place.”
My grandmother covered her face, wretchedly sobbing. “Who wants to live during a time like this? I know I don’t. I should have stayed and let them kill me. I’m better off dead.”
Ah Ma made as if to throw herself into the pond.
My brothers grabbed her. “Don’t you stop me, what point is there in going on?” she cried, flailing against the boys. “They took everything from us. Everything!”
“They didn’t take everything,” Mama said. “Not our lives.”
Ah Ma wrenched herself free of my brothers. “What use are our lives if we have no money?”
“No one has money.”
“No one has food, either.”
Mama strained to stay patient. “We are lucky. If we were in the North, winter would kill us. At least here, we can still grow more—”
“Yams?” cried Yi Gor.
The thought of eating more yams made my throat close.
“Uncle Lau might have some eggs and rice,” said Mama.
“His rice has ants,” Dai Gor muttered, making a face.
I wanted to step on his foot. He had had more to eat than any of us yet showed the least gratitude.
Before the war, I’d never known that hunger could hurt.
I’d never had to wear my brothers’ old shoes and stuff them with cloth so they didn’t whistle with air when I walked.
I’d never watched my mother starve herself so we could eat more; over the last weeks she’d grown thinner and thinner, and some nights I couldn’t sleep for worrying she might not wake up the next morning.
While Ah Ma continued to cry, Mama sorted through everything we’d brought back from the hills. At last she located a parcel enfolded in pink striped cotton, and she passed it to me.
It was my porcelain doll. She had a chip on her chin from the time Dai Gor threw her down from the rooftop to see if she’d shatter, and her tangled black hair was unevenly cropped from when I was little and thought doll hair would grow back.
I couldn’t believe it. I looked up at Mama, my eyes filming up with gratitude. “How did you—”
“Don’t grow up too fast, Ying,” Mama interrupted. She combed her fingers through my doll’s fine hair, picking out a stray leaf. “Life is more beautiful when you’re a child.”
She took two brooms and a shovel, handed them to my brothers and me, and we began the journey of cleaning up.