The Weight of Our Sky(19)
“I . . . I can’t go home?” I blurt out. My palms are damp with sweat; I wipe them off discreetly on my borrowed skirt, tapping as I go. I knew we were in the middle of something big, but for some reason I’d never equated that with not being able to go home. The idea of being away from Mama for so long makes me light-headed and clammy. The Djinn, sensing a weak spot, works out a particularly gory death scene. Count, Melati, he whispers, and I don’t have the strength to fight him.
“We’ll have to ration the food,” Uncle Chong is saying. “Make sure nothing goes to waste.”
Auntie Bee leaps to her feet. “I’ll check what stocks we have in the pantry,” she says, already making her way to the kitchen. Uncle Chong nods and walks out of the room. Approximately 608 counts of three later, he reappears, his arms laden with sticks, lengths of pipe, an assortment of tools. A heavy wrench slips from his grasp and falls to the ground with a loud clang.
“Just keep these close,” he says, meeting our questioning gazes levelly. “Keep them close. You never know when you might need them.”
He hands them out. Frankie claims a thick length of heavy iron pipe for himself, swinging it about to test its weight, and I wonder if he can hear the imaginary cracking of a thousand Malay skulls. Vincent takes a long stick and grasps it with both hands, his head bowed. Auntie Bee takes the wrench and prods me to choose a weapon; I grab a hammer and imagine what it would feel like to bash someone’s brains out with it. Then I think about Saf, and how she was left—How you left her, the Djinn whispers—alone and defenseless, and I think I may throw up. Count the floorboards; it will make you feel better, he tells me, and I hate how readily I agree.
Uncle Chong sighs. “At least we’re ready for anything,” he says.
Then, from outside, we hear it. “Please! Please! Help us!” The desperate cries are punctuated with frantic pounding on the door, and we all immediately draw our weapons close. “Tolong, help, please! Open the door! Tolong!” The woman’s cries are piercing and tinged with hysteria; in the next moment, a baby begins to bawl.
Before anyone can stop her—“Wait, Ma, it might be a trick!” Frankie hisses, to no avail—Auntie Bee strides across the room and flings the door open. A slight young woman with a hunted look in her dark eyes trips over the threshold in her eagerness to get inside and crumples on the floor. In her arms, the squirming bundle continues to bawl—a tiny little baby.
“Shhh, shhh.” Auntie Bee strokes the young woman’s back soothingly, but she can’t speak and she won’t let go of the child. For long minutes, the room is filled with the sound of her sobs and the child’s wails, and all of us just stand and stare, uncertain of what to do next.
When she’s finally calmed down, we learn that her name is Ann, and that she took the baby and ran for her life after their home was engulfed in smoke and fire.
“Nothing left,” she says quietly, rocking the now sleeping child in her arms. “All gone. Nothing left.”
? ? ?
When we’re all awake, it’s easy to pretend we can’t hear what’s happening outside. But in the silence of the night, I lie awake, listening and absorbing every crash, every shout, and later, every gunshot.
The Djinn thrives in the chaos, wrapping his arms around me and whispering his poisonous thoughts in my ears gleefully. My mind races, cycling through scene after scene with every sound: Saf’s lifeless body slumped in the seats of the Rex; Mama, doused in flames and screaming in agony; Frankie, a bloodied knife in his hands and a crazed grin on his face. I cower under the sheets on Vincent’s bed, clutching my hammer and counting every single book on the shelves that line the opposite wall, then again by color, then alphabetically by title, then by author.
When that doesn’t work, I slip out of bed and methodically begin to arrange them. In the back of my mind, deep in the recesses, where the Djinn can’t seem to reach, I know this is irrational, stupid, crazy. I know just thinking about death won’t cause my mother to die. I know that books on a shelf won’t stop her from dying, no matter how I arrange them. But every time I try to stop myself, a cold, creeping dread envelops my entire body. Are you sure? What if it’s true? What if the moment you stop is the moment Mama dies? How can you be sure? And I turn back to the safety of the numbers, fearful and shaken.
Eventually, I fall asleep on the floor in front of the bookshelves, curled up with a copy of The Old Man and the Sea (H for Hemingway, first name Ernest, so it belongs on the fifth row, right between Hawthorne, Nathaniel, and Hesse, Hermann; I also take comfort in the fact that the title has six words, the first name has six letters, the last nine. The Djinn grins, baring his sharp teeth: three times lucky).
When I wake up, it’s so early that the sun hasn’t yet risen. My throat feels like sandpaper, and I’m desperate for a drink, so I open the door . . . and nearly trip over the body lying in front of it.
All over Auntie Bee’s living room, packed from wall to wall and in every available inch of space, are people: men, women, children, Malay, Chinese, Indian. The chairs and tables are stacked in one corner of the room and piled high with a motley array of bags and baskets. Auntie Bee picks her way through the bits and bobs and bodies as best she can, holding a tray laden with goodies and handing out a drink here, a biscuit there, and a comforting pat or word to all. She sees me in the open doorway and makes her way over to me.