The Weight of Our Sky(12)

We wait.

I freeze, trying to make myself as still and as small as possible, trying to quiet my heart, which is beating so loudly I’m sure its rhythmic tattoo echoes down the streets. Auntie Bee’s lips move in silent prayer, and I add my own, tapping manically with my fingers: Onetwothreeonetwothreeonetwothreeonetwothree, the words blurring together until they don’t even make sense.

Then we hear it. The roar of the mob gets closer, louder. I suddenly smell the acrid scent of smoke. From beside me, a sharp intake of breath from Auntie Bee. “They’re burning the shops,” she mutters. “They’re burning the shops.” There is a loud clattering of footsteps running frantically past us where we crouch hidden from sight; in the distance, I hear an anguished cry. I start to shiver and can’t seem to make myself stop. From my peephole, I realize the man has picked up a stick from his trishaw. “Allahu akbar!” he yells along with the crowd, his fist raised. “Allahu akbar!” They sweep past him, smashing windows, setting fire to abandoned cars. It is wild and raucous and terrifying.

Then suddenly, a car appears—a blue Morris Minor—and screeches to a stop down the road, just within view. The door opens and a man darts out. “Come, come, quickly,” he calls, waving at those running desperately from the riot, his dark skin glistening with sweat. For a moment, my heart lifts crazily. There’s a car! He can save them!

It doesn’t take long for my hopes to be dashed. Before anyone can even make it into the car, the red bands turn to him. The man with the blue Morris Minor immediately backs away, his hands in the air. “Indian scum!” someone yells. “Don’t let him get away!”

“Please, I mean no harm,” the would-be savior says, inching his way back to the car, his hands still stretched toward the sky. “Just let me go. I mean no harm.”

It does no good. Before he can say any more, his car is suddenly aflame, and he steps away from it with a shocked cry. He doesn’t get very far. The mob descends. There are thuds and thwacks and a heart-thumping crunch as the flying fists connect with his various body parts, until finally, bruised and bloodied, he is pushed hard in the chest, so hard that he goes flying into the flames.

I close my eyes and turn away, but even though I count and count and count and count, there is nothing I can do to stop his agonized screams from ringing in my head long after the men have moved on and there is nothing but silence on the streets.

? ? ?

Eventually, the trishaw man, gray-faced and trembling, comes back to our hiding place and helps us clamber out: Auntie Bee and me, a young Chinese man who immediately sprints away down the street, and a pretty Indian girl who can’t stop thanking him through her tears as she stumbles away.

“I am so sorry,” he says to us, shaking his head. “I wish I could take you where you need to go, but I don’t think it’s safe. If the Chinese see me, I’m dead. And if the Malays see me with Chinese in my trishaw, I’m dead.” I can see that he means it, and so can Auntie Bee. “You’ve done more than enough,” she says gently. “Thank you.”

Auntie Bee coaxes me, with a tremor in her voice that she can’t quite mask, to keep walking, but my brain won’t stop counting and the Djinn won’t stop screaming in my ears and I can’t quite make my legs move the way I want them to. She’s trying her best not to nag me, to keep encouraging me, but I can see from the way she’s jiggling her foot with each pause that I’m holding her back. “You should go, Auntie,” I gasp the third time we stop. “You should go ahead. I’m sure I’ll be fine on my own.”

“Don’t be silly, girl.”

In the distance, we hear the crash of breaking glass, then yells and cheers. Auntie Bee clicks her tongue, looking up and down the street. Then she nods firmly to herself and snaps to attention. “Right,” she says. “You can’t move fast, and we can’t stay out here, so our only option is to stay hidden until they’re properly gone. Right?”

“Right.”

“All right. There’s a shop down there that doesn’t have its shutters down; the owner must have run off when all the troubles started. We’ll slip inside and stay out of harm’s way. Come.”

She offers me an arm to lean on, and together we make our way to the little shop. It’s too dark to make out what the sign above the door says, but when we enter I’m hit by the smooth, rich smell of fine leather. Auntie Bee tugs at me to follow her. “I don’t want to risk turning on the light,” she says as we fumble our way through the darkness. I bang my knee against something—a low table?—and bite back an agonized moan.

We crouch down behind a counter piled high with leather skins to wait it out. In the silence, I tap softly against the cold stone floor.

The yells are getting closer and closer, and beside me, I feel Auntie Bee shiver. Neither of us says a word.

Then, suddenly, we hear it. “This one!” a harsh voice yells from right outside.

Then a crash as glass breaks and splinters.

Then a whoosh, and a rush of heat.

Fire.

For a second, all we can do is stare at each other in the sudden brightness as the flames spread to lick the wooden cabinets, stools, and tables strewn about the shop.

Then she grabs my hand and we run, stumbling in our haste to get away from the flames that leap and dance between us and the door. Auntie Bee makes a beeline for a window toward the back of the shop, and I follow, covering my mouth to keep from choking on the thick smoke. “Hurry!” I tell her frantically, but when she finally prizes the shutter open, wrought-iron bars block the opening.