The Weight of Our Sky(28)

“Was there any danger?” Auntie Bee asks him. She’s been mostly silent throughout the meal; in fact, she’s been mostly silent for the entire day while Vince was gone, throwing herself feverishly into her household tasks while I try to stay out of her way. I know what it’s like when your brain takes one idea and decides to turn it into a feature-length film. Distraction is good.

Vince hesitates, and I can tell he’s wondering exactly how much he should tell her. “It was fine,” he says eventually, turning his attention back to his rice bowl so he doesn’t have to meet her sharp, searching gaze. “Police and army guys everywhere, lots of roadblocks, so there can’t really be any hanky-panky. They nip that stuff in the bud real quick. Plus, nobody hurts the volunteers.” He shrugs. “Everybody’s always happy to see us—Malays, Chinese, Indians, aunties, uncles, gangsters. Everyone needs food.”

“Eh, can you stop that?” Frankie suddenly says loudly, and I freeze as everyone stares at me, my spoon still resting lightly on the bowl’s rim. “We’re trying to talk and you keep tapping on your bowl, ding ding ding, it’s damn irritating.”

Every eye on me feels like a laser boring straight into my body, and I can feel my face grow hot and tears sting my eyes, and I can’t move. What do I do? What do I do? The Djinn’s laughter echoes through my head. Keep going and they’ll know you’re crazy. Stop and your mother dies. What a lovely little conundrum this is!

Auntie Bee’s voice cuts through his wicked hisses. “Girl,” she says gently. “Girl, are you all right?”

I still can’t move.

Beneath the table, I feel a hand on my knee, gentle, soothing. I glance at Vince, but he isn’t looking at me. Instead, he moves quickly and somehow his other hand knocks over his glass so that it shatters on the floor, water and shards of glass flying everywhere.

Everyone leaps up in shock. “Aiya!” Auntie Bee cries as water begins to seep into the kitchen rug.

“Sorry, Ma,” Vince says. “I don’t know what happened.”

“So clumsy,” she scolds him, scurrying to the kitchen for a rag. “Quickly, Frankie, roll back that rug before it gets spoiled, then go and get some newspaper to wrap up this glass. Vincent, you go and get the broom and sweep up this mess. Nobody step on any pieces lah, you will cut your feet to ribbons!”

Through this chaos, Uncle Chong sits calmly finishing up the last of his porridge as if nothing is happening, and when I tap my spoon lightly on the side of my bowl—ding, ding, ding—nobody notices at all.

? ? ?

“Take me with you.”

“Huh?” Vince looks up at me from where he lies sprawled among his records on the floor. He’s just put on a Bee Gees record—“The First of May,” a somber cut soaked in longing for times gone by that always leaves me feeling sad and hollow.

I say it again, louder this time. “Take me with you.”

He sits up slowly and stops the record player. “Why?” he asks. “Why would I do that?”

“I want to help too,” I tell him. “I can’t stay here doing nothing. I need to know where my mother is, need to find out what happened to her, if she’s okay. If I go out with you, then maybe I can ask around, figure it out.” If I find her, then I can protect her. And if I’m with you, I can protect you. It’s not a lie; it’s just not the whole truth.

He sighs. “I know. But it isn’t safe out there.”

“But you told your mother—”

“Of course I told my mother it was safe! You think she’d let me go if she knew what it was really like out there?” He snorts. “Not bloody likely.”

“So what’s it really like?”

He hesitates. “Pretty much how I imagined it,” he says finally, and I roll my eyes. I know an evasion when I see one; I’m usually the one using it.

“So you were in danger?”

“Mel, anyone who steps out their doors right now is in danger. I can’t let you do it.”

“If you don’t let me come with you, I’ll have to go on my own,” I point out reasonably. “Then you wouldn’t know where I was or if I was protected. Whereas if you were with me . . .” I trail off, letting the infinite probabilities unfold in his head.

It doesn’t take long. I can tell by his scowl that I’ve won and he knows it.

“Fine,” he growls. “But you’ll have to explain to Ma. And you’ll have to put up with Jagdev.”

“Who’s Jagdev?”

“You’ll see.”

? ? ?

Jagdev turns out to be a large Sikh man with a belly that hangs over the waistband of his khakis and a beard that can only be described as luxuriant. When he laughs—which he does often, usually at jokes the rest of us don’t really get—his eyes crease up into a dozen tiny crinkles, and his turban wobbles so that I am half willing it to come off and half worried that it will.

“Welcome to the gang!” he bellows, chuckling to himself as he holds open the door of his ancient black car for me. “You can call me Jay!”

“Thanks, Jay,” I mutter, sliding onto the worn leather seats, torn and patched in places. My eyes are swollen, and I feel strangely light, like I may float off into the sky at any minute. I’ve barely slept, having spent the night pacing Vince’s room in a special series of patterns and sequences designed to placate the Djinn and protect the entire house while I’m gone. Each time I tried to sleep, I’d close my eyes and watch Auntie Bee and Uncle Chong die, again and again. Then I’d get up, shaken and nauseous, and do it all over again, until light began to stream through the window and I realized it was morning.