Love and Other Consolation Prizes(6)
On the fourth day, when most were beginning to recover—to sit up and walk about, to play cards or games with string—they were given solid food—the first real meal Yung had tasted in more than a week. The simple offering of sticky rice balls and dried fish made everyone moan with delight. Yung wanted to savor the salty rice, but like everyone else, he ate furiously, almost violently, chewing, swallowing, and gulping as though the food might be snatched from his hands at any moment.
Yung was licking his fingers after dinner when the doctor appeared with a crewman and made his normal round of inspections. Everyone stood as tall as they could, arms at their sides; no one dared to cough or sniffle or even breathe in a manner that might be confused with illness. They waited as the doctor slowly walked by, leather heels squealing on the floor, nostrils flaring. Occasionally he would stop to look into a mouth, or a shirt would be removed so he could examine the skin on a child’s back.
Yung chewed his lip as the man, whose breath he could smell, stopped in front of him. Then he lit a cigarette and pushed Yung aside as he directed his attention to the girls, especially the one in the blue robe. He ran his fingers along her neck, removed her wooden hairpins, and toyed with the tresses that hung about her shoulders. He shook his head and then turned back to Yung, who stood out among the girls. The doctor patted him on the shoulder and moved on. Yung listened as the doctor chatted amiably with the other boys, telling them to stay out of trouble. He slapped Jun on the cheek and jerked his ear, playful, but hard enough to make his point. Then the doctor stopped at the paddock of older girls.
They all smiled and kowtowed. He snapped his fingers and said, “That one.” He pointed to a girl in a lavender dress as a sailor stepped forward with a key and opened the groaning iron door.
The merchant’s daughters seemed shocked, confused, and then compliant as they stepped away from the tall, slender girl.
“But…Sir Doctor, I’m not ill—not even seasick anymore,” the girl in lavender protested, pleading in her native tongue. “I feel fine, look at me, my skin is perfect, and my hair is shiny and clean.” She tilted her chin as she shook her head and her tasseled earrings swayed back and forth. “I haven’t coughed once.”
The crewman translated as the doctor dropped his cigarette on the deck and snuffed it out with the tip of his shoe. “I know. That’s why you’re coming with us.” He smiled politely as his words were translated into Cantonese. “We will take care of you upstairs. We wouldn’t want you wasting away down here.”
The color drained from the girl’s face. She smoothed out the lace on her dress and nodded, seemingly resigned. Yung heard the doctor ask the girl, as he led her away, if she liked the taste of baiju, rice wine. And then they were gone, leaving nothing but the pregnant silence.
“They’re not going to throw her overboard, are they?” Yung asked the girl in the blue robe. She didn’t answer or seem to understand the question. But the boys snickered.
—
THAT NIGHT, AFTER Yung and the girls finished dinner, they piled onto their mattress and played a whisper game. One would whisper something to the person next to her and then that phrase would be passed down the line and back again. It never came back unchanged, and that was the fun. Yung had seen the game played before in his village, but he’d never been included.
He waited, and the girl next to him finally turned and whispered, “I’m a hairy dog that bites,” in Cantonese. He clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing. He collected himself and then passed the message along to the Japanese girl in the blue robe. She looked confused, furrowed her brow, and did her best to whisper something on to the girl next to her.
The messages went back and forth, from “My diaper is full” and “Whipped with a cane” to “You’re my pretty servant” and “Jun is your ugly lady-boss.” That one made Yung laugh out loud. When it was Yung’s turn to make up a phrase, he thought of the silliest thing possible. He said to the girl in blue, “I’m going to marry you.”
The Japanese girl crinkled her nose, then her eyes grew wide and she laughed.
But the phrase was taken more seriously as the words moved further down the line. The girls murmured it solemnly, sighed wearily, shook their heads, and eventually returned the message as though relaying a bit of bad news. To Yung it felt as though all the joy, all the laughter, had been snuffed out like a candle.
Yung didn’t understand the sadness he had caused, even as the Japanese girl turned back and relayed the message that had only slightly changed. She looked embarrassed as she confessed, “I am sorry. No one will ever marry us.”
JUJU REPORTING
(1962)
Ernest touched the tarnished band of gold on his ring finger and felt the groove worn into his skin from years of wearing it. He pondered the seaborne episode of his childhood, sipping a cup of oolong tea that had grown cold.
Ernest sighed as he gazed out the third-floor window of his tiny one-room apartment at the Publix Hotel. One aspect of Gracie’s dementia was that she didn’t tolerate men very well—she had even punched a male orderly at the hospital. Even Ernest was not exempt. As a result, Ernest and Gracie had lived apart for almost three years now. Not the retirement he’d imagined. He visited as often as possible on sunny days—that’s what Juju called Gracie’s happier, lucid moments—and he wrote to her on cloudy days, when she didn’t feel like company. He missed her terribly, even when he was by her side—he ached for who she used to be. He longed for who he used to be as well.