Bury What We Cannot Take: A novel Read online

  With this last pronouncement, San San knew that the discussion leader had successfully appropriated her name. Never again would she be able to hear those three characters spoken in succession without filling with dread.

  She heeded his instruction.

  “Detach yourself from your ego,” he said. “Confess your undesirable behaviors and incorrect thoughts once and for all.”

  San San knew there was only one way to bring the session to its end. Her teacher’s desk and chair stood in the corner. She stepped on the chair and climbed atop the desk.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” asked Comrade Ang.

  Her classmates sputtered to each other. Teacher Lu’s hand covered her mouth.

  Towering over all of them, her classmates, her teacher, and even the discussion leader, San San filled her lungs with air and announced, “I, Ong San San, am the child of capitalist, bourgeois landlords. My parents are the running dogs of the Americans and the British. My selfish, deviant behavior has harmed everyone around me, but most especially the peasantry.”

  From there she repeated her entire essay, virtually word for word, except this time at a screaming pitch. And when she finished with that, she pushed ahead, confessing to the litany of crimes her classmates had put forth. As she yelled, she watched her classmates watch her, enraptured, as though they were taking in a masterful film or opera. She waved her arms and shook her fists. She yelled until her throat grew dry and her voice went hoarse and her legs quivered with fatigue. And when she ran out of things to say, she borrowed crimes she’d seen in Ah Liam’s comic books, crimes of hubris and backstabbing and betrayal, words she barely understood.

  At last, when her voice was about to give way altogether, she croaked out, “I, Ong San San, do not deserve even one drop of mercy bestowed by the Party and by our great Chairman. I will spend the rest of my life striving to be worthy of their compassion.”

  In the back of the room, her teacher’s face was shiny with tears. San San stepped down from the desk, clinging to the back of the chair to steady her wobbling legs.

  Comrade Ang took one step toward her, and she cowered, fearing she’d misjudged the situation yet again.

  The discussion leader turned to face the class. “The session is over. You are all dismissed.”

  San San staggered to her seat. She longed to sit awhile and rest, but not if it meant giving Comrade Ang a chance to change his mind. She shouldered her satchel and followed her classmates through the door.

  Outside the school gates, someone tugged on San San’s arm.

  “You don’t look well. I’ll walk you home,” Little Red said, trying to take San San’s satchel.

  “Don’t touch me. You’re not my friend.” San San set off toward her house, and when she glanced over her shoulder, Little Red was following a few paces behind.

  San San kept walking. Her shoes felt like they were filled with lead, but her head was empty, weightless, as though the slightest breeze would topple it from the stem of her neck. She was halfway up the hill to the villa when the brick wall lining the road began to sway. She pressed her back to the wall and lowered her satchel to the ground. She closed her eyes. How thirsty she was. When was the last time she’d had something to drink?

  When she opened her eyes, Little Red was hurrying to her. Little Red’s hand dug in her pocket and surfaced with a few peanuts, which she rushed to shell. “Eat something. You need energy.”

  San San’s mouth flooded with saliva. Roughly, she pushed away her friend’s hand, and the peanuts fell to the ground. Without thinking, San San bent over to retrieve them. The path shifted beneath her feet, and she found herself lying prone in the dirt.

  “San San!” Little Red cried. “Help! Help! My friend’s fainted.”

  San San’s chin ached, and her palms and kneecaps smarted, but aside from that she felt fine. She wanted to tell Little Red to stop causing a commotion, but she could not release her jaw.

  Little Red continued to scream until someone said, “Run to the doctor’s house. It’s just down there.”

  San San let her cheek rest on the dirt path. She would get up soon, once she gathered her strength.

  An authoritative voice roused her. “Can you hear me, San San? It’s Dr. Lee.”

  The doctor’s strong arms lifted her into the air. He carried her all the way to his house. There, in the cozy living room adjacent to the room where San San had her piano lessons, Auntie Rose cleaned off her limbs with a cool washcloth and fed her sips of water until she was able to sit up.

  Dr. Lee hovered over them. “How did you get so dehydrated? Don’t they give you anything to drink at school?” He held out two tablets for San San to swallow.

  “We’ve been worried about you,” Auntie Rose said. “The cook told us what happened.”

  Heat flamed across San San’s cheeks. Her hands began to shake. She managed to set down the glass before it slipped from her grasp. “It’s my fault,” she said. “I’m a giant stupid egg.”

  She told Dr. Lee and Auntie Rose everything, from her failure to get an exit permit to the scheme she’d concocted at the tea plantation to the endless chain of punishments. How good it felt to share all this.

  “The worst part is,” San San said, “I brought all this suffering upon myself for nothing. When my ma gets home and finds out, she’s going to be furious.”

  San San caught the glance that passed between Dr. Lee and Auntie Rose. Neither spoke.

  “Have you heard from my ma?” she asked.

  This time, Auntie Rose knitted her brow and stared long and hard at Dr. Lee.

  “San San,” he said, “there’s something you ought to know.”

  Taking in their sober faces, any relief she felt from talking to these trusted grown-ups disappeared. She wished she were strong enough to dart away.

  “Your family may have to stay in Hong Kong for longer than they thought.”

  “Why?” she asked. “How much longer?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know exactly,” said Dr. Lee.

  What else had her mother shared with them but not with her? “When did my ma write to you?”

  Auntie Rose said, “We haven’t heard from her since she left.”

  San San took comfort in this. “Then how do you have any idea what’s going on in Hong Kong?”

  Auntie Rose touched San San’s cheek. “You’re right. We don’t know much, but your pa’s illness is very complicated. There’s a good chance they’ll be delayed, and we don’t want you to worry unnecessarily.”

  San San planted her feet on the floor. “My ma writes me almost every day. If she’s going to be late, I’ll hear it from her.”

  “You’re right,” Auntie Rose said. “Your ma loves you so much.”

  “No mother wants to be separated from her child,” said Dr. Lee.

  San San grew impatient. “I already know that.” She reached for her water glass, threw back her head, and drank to avoid having to look at them.

  12

  Ah Liam dragged his suitcase from beneath the bed and removed the books and papers hidden inside: hastily printed pamphlets containing the Chairman’s most important speeches and essays such as “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” and “Cast Away Illusions, Prepare for Struggle”; Comrade Ang’s personal copy of a slim, hardbound volume of the Chairman’s poetry, which he no doubt regretted having lent him; and an exercise book in which he recorded those of the Chairman’s quotations that most touched him.

  He opened the exercise book and tore out a blank page.

  Dear San San,

  I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write. Are you all right over there? Are you lonely? By now you’ve probably put two and two together. It’s true. We aren’t coming home. Pa was never ill. They lied to make us follow their orders.

  He crushed the paper into a ball, threw it in the wastebasket, and tore out a fresh sheet.

  Dear San San,

  I hate it here. Pa is always in a bad mood. When he come
s over, he and Ma fight. Grandma tries to calm them down, which only angers them more.

  He paused, not wanting to imply that his situation was worse than his sister’s, even though he often daydreamed of switching places with her. He could have been the one left on the islet with no one to pester him—aside from the servants, whom he was not afraid to stand up to. His Youth League application would have surely cleared once he’d demonstrated his devotion to the Party by rejecting his family and their poisonous ways.

  He tore out a fresh sheet of paper.

  Dear San San,

  I’ve decided to return to the mainland once I’ve found a way to buy my ticket. Don’t worry, I’ll come for you soon.

  A sharp knock made him jump. He shielded the letter with his arms.

  The maid’s voice came through the door. “Young Master, your father’s here.”

  “Don’t come in. I have to change,” Ah Liam called back.

  His father hadn’t been by the flat since that disastrous dinner. Had he come to apologize to Ma? Ah Liam hoped the maid had known better than to reveal that she was at church again. Before today, he hadn’t even known that churches were open on weekdays.

  He tore the third draft of his letter into long strips. He smoothed out the other discarded sheets and tore them into strips, too. Then he returned the books to the suitcase and kicked it under his bed.

  He wondered if his father had come specifically to see him, to point out, yet again, what a disappointment he was. If so, this time, he was ready. This time, no matter what, he would not cry. Gazing in the mirror on the armoire, Ah Liam spat in his palm and smoothed down his cowlick. He assured his reflection that, if given a chance to do it all over again, he would make the same decision to turn in his grandmother.

  Since they’d arrived in Hong Kong, his grandmother had brought up his so-called betrayal only once. With no preamble, she’d put down her needlepoint canvas and said, “Grandson, I forgive you. You only did what you were taught to do.” He was so surprised, he knelt before her and bowed his head before he realized he didn’t want her forgiveness.

  Now he tucked his shirttails into the waistband of his trousers and went to the sitting room. His father stood before the picture window, with its view of the lush, jade-green mountainside. From this distance, the rudimentary huts dotting the landscape, which his mother said housed refugees less fortunate than they, appeared almost quaint.

  “Pa? You wanted to see me?”

  His father turned. “I can’t stay,” he said, although no one had asked him to. “I just came to deliver some news. I pulled strings to get you enrolled at St. Mark’s. You’ll start Monday. We’re very lucky they’ve agreed to take you so late in the school year.”

  “It’s almost summer,” Ah Liam said tentatively. He didn’t want to set him off.

  His father held up his hands. “You’ll do a month now and then take summer classes. It’s the only way you’ll catch up. You have to learn English, and schools here are much more advanced.”

  I couldn’t care less about English, he thought but did not say. After all he’d been through, didn’t he deserve a summer vacation? And then he realized that school would give him a reason to leave the flat. He could sneak down to the train station to research ticket schedules and prices. He could ask for money to buy textbooks and supplies. If he was focused and efficient, he could be on his way home in a matter of weeks.

  “I suppose you’re right,” he said.

  “Excellent,” said his father. He was already striding out of the room. “Tell your ma you start Monday. She can call my office if she has questions.”

  St. Mark’s secondary school was a tall, cylindrical building at least three times as large as Ah Liam’s simple, box-shaped schoolhouse on the islet. All in all, he counted five stories, stacked one on top of the other, like tiers of the odd, Western wedding cake he’d spotted in what were called the “society pages” of the Sing Tao Daily.

  The school grounds were eerily quiet. Classes had already begun. Ma had made them both late by shutting herself in the study with the telephone, and when Ah Liam knocked again to hurry her, she burst from the room saying, “Contrary to what your pa believes, there are more important things to worry about than you learning English.”

  Now his mother paused before the circular courtyard, bisected by a flagstone path lined with hedges of magenta bougainvillea. “Isn’t this lovely?”

  “It’s fine,” said Ah Liam.

  At the main office, a receptionist wrote down Ah Liam’s classroom number on a slip of paper. His mother offered to walk him upstairs, but he insisted he’d be all right on his own.

  He climbed the cool, dark stairwell to the third floor and arrived at a room equipped with enough overhead lights and ceiling fans to service his entire school at home. At the front of the room, a tall, colorless woman rapped a wooden pointer on a giant map of the world. The woman’s skin was a dull beige, her eyes the lightest shade of gray—so pale that Ah Liam wondered if she might be blind. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a foreigner up close.

  But the teacher was not blind, for before Ah Liam could knock, she caught sight of him and gestured for him to enter. Her thin lips parted and let loose a stream of strange, clipped sounds.

  In Mandarin he said, “I’m sorry. I don’t speak English.”

  Snickers rose around the room. Save for a half-breed boy in the front row, his new classmates were all Chinese, but not one of them came to his aid.

  The teacher kept talking. She waved her arms at the rows of occupied desks and pointed to the back of the room, where Ah Liam gathered he was supposed to stand. Eager to end this one-sided conversation, he hurried down the aisle, tripping over a satchel, or maybe a foot, which earned him more laughs.

  The lesson resumed. Ah Liam adopted what he hoped resembled a relaxed stance by leaning on the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. He studied the backs of the heads of his classmates, trying to figure out what made them seem older, more sophisticated than his classmates back home. Was it the way they wore their uniforms loose and casually rumpled? Their long, styled hair? On the islet, all the boys had cropped military-style cuts; the girls were not allowed to grow their hair past their chins. Here the boys wore their hair slicked back and wet looking. The girls had plaits down their backs, festooned with ribbons as colorful as butterflies. Ah Liam thought this display of vanity vulgar, indecent. Students were supposed to dress simply and modestly. He pictured the pale curve of Ping Ping’s neck beneath her neat curtain of hair.

  A janitor arrived with a spare desk, which he placed at the very back of the room in a row of its own. Ah Liam sat in his hard wooden chair and watched the teacher’s lips, straining to pick out words he recognized. He quickly gave up. None of his classmates glanced his way. Even the teacher seemed to have forgotten he was there. How had his father come up with such a terrible plan? He was one of the top students in his entire grade back home, and now he would probably fail every assignment simply because he spoke no English. He didn’t blame his mother for going along with his father’s wishes; she only had room in her head for San San.

  By the time the recess bell rang, Ah Liam’s boredom and frustration had hardened into anger. He blamed his parents and his grandmother. He blamed his indifferent teacher, his sneering classmates. He blamed this entire hateful city, filled with people who called themselves Chinese yet lived to emulate their Western colonizers.

  He reached in his satchel for Comrade Ang’s poetry book. Clutching it to his chest with the cover facing inward, Ah Liam followed the swarm of students down to the courtyard and found an empty bench in a patch of shade. Shouts rose in the nearby field, punctuated by the satisfying thunk of feet connecting with a football. It hadn’t occurred to him that they played football here, too. He longed to at least size up the players, if not join them. He wondered if he could try out for the team so late in the year, and then reminded himself he had no time to waste.

  A few paces a
way, a trio of younger girls played a game that involved hopping across squares chalked on the ground. Back on the islet, the lower-school students had recess before the middle school. Occasionally, Ah Liam would pass his sister filing back to class. He’d trained San San never to call out to him, but if he was in a generous mood, he’d grin and tap the crown of her head, waiting for the cry of mock indignation that hid her pleasure.

  He opened the book in his lap and tried to block out the girls’ gay shrieks. The fragrance of deep-fried snacks wafted over from the canteen, making his stomach rumble. He fingered the coins his mother had given him, all of which he’d pledged toward his train ticket.

  He turned the pages to his favorite poem, “The Long March.” The day before, his grandmother had spotted the book sticking out from beneath his pillow and warned him not to let his father see it. “In fact,” she’d said, “don’t take it out of your room at all.”

  Now he lifted the book out of his lap, displaying the red clothbound cover for these students who were too ignorant to think of anything but their playground games.

  The Red Army fears not the trials of the Long March

  Holding light ten thousand crags and torrents.

  The Five Ridges wind like gentle ripples

  And the majestic Wumeng roll by, globules of clay.

  Warm the steep cliffs lapped by the waters of Golden Sand,

  Cold the iron chains spanning the Tatu River.

  Minshan’s thousand li of snow joyously crossed,

  The three armies march on, each face glowing.

  Shouts and laughter went on around him. Who would take any notice of a boy in an overstarched uniform with too-short hair, sitting all alone? He shut the book and dug in his pocket for his money. Just this once, he would splurge on a fruit ice.

  He was counting out the strange shiny coins when a tall boy in the long pants of the upper-middle school stalked by. Without breaking his stride, the boy seized Ah Liam’s forearm with one hand and snatched up the book with the other. In Cantonese he muttered, “Come with me.”