The Weight of Our Sky(20)

“Here you are, girl,” she says, handing me a cup of steaming tea from the tray. “Drink, drink. It’s good for you.”

I take the cup and sip obediently. “Who are all these people, Auntie Bee?” I whisper.

There is a pause. “These are our neighbors,” she says. “They had nowhere else to go. The people came with knives and gasoline and fire. Wooden houses, they burn so fast—it spread everywhere.” I look at her in the dim early morning light and realize her face is wet with tears. “They burned them,” she says, sighing. “They burned them, and now our friends have no homes.”

I nod. I don’t ask who “they” is. I’m not sure I want to know. Instead, I count the bodies in the room, three at a time, sipping my drink. The hot, hot tea burns my tongue and scalds my throat.





CHAPTER FIVE


“HERE YOU GO.”

Vincent passes me a bowl filled with porridge so thin you can count the number of rice grains that went into it. With so many mouths to feed, and a twenty-four-hour curfew preventing us from making our way out for more supplies, Auntie Bee is trying her best to make do with what she has. As I force down mouthful after mouthful, the Djinn tickles my stomach with his sharp little claws and Mama withers away from hunger, trapped and alone. Chew three times, swallow, chew three times, swallow. Chew three times, swallow. After every third spoonful, I pause for a sip of water. Again and again, I sip, chew, swallow, until it’s gone—the porridge, and the image of my mother’s wasted body.

The rioting seems to have died down this morning, though when Frankie sticks his head out the window to see what’s happening, there are immediate yells from the police officers patrolling the streets. “Get back inside now,” a voice bellows, “or I’ll blow your head off.” Auntie Bee tugs at Frankie frantically—“Aiya, come inside now, come inside! Faster!”

Once he does, we quickly bolt the window. “The man was pointing a gun right at me,” he says, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and excitement. “Right at my head, here, see?” He points to a spot in the center of his forehead.

Auntie Bee shakes her head, her hand on her heart. “Don’t ever do that again,” she scolds. “Asking for trouble. If they don’t blow your head off, I’ll smack it so hard you’ll wish they had.”

? ? ?

Uncle Chong spends his time in front of reams of paper spread across the dining room table, the radio always on beside him, making lists, weighing options, sketching plans. The radio, which is kept on so we can hear the latest news, plays a constant stream of patriotic songs, as though admonishing us for not being better citizens. “We could go seek protection in another kampong,” he muses. “Maybe here, or here.” He jabs at a map laid out before him, scribbling on a notepad. “You two must be ready,” he tells his sons, who stand close by, their eyes scanning the map eagerly. “We need to plan an escape route. If the mob comes, we must be ready to leave quickly and quietly.” They make plans for a tunnel to be dug in the garden, behind the flowering jasmine shrubs, under the wall and out to the road and beyond. “That would work.” Vincent nods, pushing back his chair to stand. “I’ll go and get the shovels; I think Ma put them in the garden somewhere. . . .”

Frankie leans back in his chair. “I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?” Uncle Chong asks absently, busying himself with yet another list.

“Why don’t we just ask the gang, the triad, to protect us?”

There is a pause as his father and brother both turn to stare at him. He shrugs. “What? They would.”

“They’re killing people,” his father says slowly. “Killing our neighbors, our friends.”

“They’re killing Malays,” Frankie corrects him. “They’re killing the people who want to kill us. I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

Vincent rolls his eyes. “Right, it’s perfectly fine that they’re killing, so long as they’re not killing us.”

Frankie glares at him, a steely glint in his eye. “Ya. Why not? I’ll do whatever it takes to protect our family. You think the Malays wouldn’t do the same, if they get the chance?”

“None of the Malays I know would,” his father says gently. “None of my friends would.”

Frankie grunts and subsides. Vincent rolls his eyes and goes to look for shovels, and in my corner of the living room, I feel sudden, inexplicable tears prickling the back of my throat, threatening to spill out of my eyes and splash onto the tattered rug below.

? ? ?

I had a religious teacher in school one year who was very passionate about teaching us about the concept of hell. While others had spent their time taking us through the basic tenets of our religion, the nuts and bolts of worship, the grace and mercy of God, she seemed to enjoy dwelling on His more fire-and-brimstone qualities, lingering over the agonies that awaited us come Judgment Day. “And this is why you must heed the lessons of the Quran,” she would intone solemnly, her eyes alight with a righteous fervor.

Nothing she told us in that class prepares me for the hell I live through in those first few days at Auntie Bee’s house.

We spend our days packed with the neighbors into the gleaming white house on the hill, too afraid of the men with the hard eyes and the easy way with guns to risk leaving. Uncle Chong plays at optimism, telling us every day that “you see, things are getting better, any day now sure everyone can go home, don’t worry.” The houseguests are a motley assortment of stragglers: Ann and her baby, fair little Peggy with the shock of wispy dark hair, who seems to sleep most of the time and wail the rest of it; a white-haired, sari-clad Indian lady who calls herself Paati and who doesn’t say much, but makes her way into the kitchen each morning and insists on helping Auntie Bee prepare meals; Fairos, who strokes his thin mustache and radiates unease every time Frankie is in the same room, and often tries to talk to me “Malay to Malay,” which makes me uncomfortable; Auntie Letty and Uncle Francis, a Chinese couple who seem to be great friends with Auntie Bee and Uncle Chong; their twelve-year-old daughter, Annette, and her great friend Simone, who had been ready to spend the night at their house when everything fell apart.