The Weight of Our Sky(29)
They think Vince and Jay are taking me to an aunt’s house in Sungai Buloh. “Thank you for letting me stay for so long, but I need to be with family right now,” I’d reassured them. “I’ll be safe with them.” The tears that slide down my cheeks are real; I don’t want to leave this family that took me in so easily, that practices kindness like a religion. But it’s the only way.
I see them exchange worried glances, but they agree, and I feel a sharp pang at how easily this deception comes to me, and how easily it is received. It’s not a total lie, I tell myself. I do have an aunt in Sungai Buloh—mad Auntie Jun. “So thin, how to get any boys like this!” she likes to shriek whenever she sees me, poking me in my ribs. We haven’t actually seen Auntie Jun in the past year—she has a daughter around my age, my cousin Nora, and doesn’t want her tainted by my own peculiar brand of madness—but Auntie Bee and Uncle Chong don’t need to know that.
While Jay and Vince catch up, I occupy myself constructing an intricate web of numbers and taps, weaving a protective shell around the whole car, around Vincent and Jay and me. Three taps at a time here, here, here, and here, now the feet, now the fingers, and again. Once or twice, I feel like I’m being watched, like Vincent is eyeing me in the rearview mirror. But every time I look up, his eyes are either firmly on the road ahead, or on Jay as they talk and laugh in the front seat. You’re imagining things, Melati.
Oh, yes? The Djinn tickles my heart gently, sending cold shoots of anxiety spiraling through my chest. But what if he did? Think how shameful it would be for him to see you acting this way. How utterly disgusted he would be to know they opened their home to someone like you. I feel my cheeks heat up. Begin again. So I do, tapping and counting, concentrating hard until the world fades into numbers and nothing more.
“Where are we going?” I finally ask over the roar and rumble of the engine once I’m satisfied. It’s a hot day; Jay and Vince roll down their windows so that the wind whips my hair about and stings my eyes. “Klang,” Jay booms back. “Got a tip. This man said he abandoned his lorry full of fresh eggs there when the troubles started. Says we can have the eggs to distribute if we just return the lorry to him in good condition. Or should I say, egg-cellent condition. Ha!”
I smile weakly. Vince groans, then looks back and catches my eye. “Brace yourself,” he says quietly. I’m about to ask him what for, when I look out of the window and see Kuala Lumpur for myself, for the first time since it all began.
The streets are desolate. The walls of the empty shophouses bear the bruises of their recent altercations: spattered trails of blood and bullet holes, a map of senseless violence. Here, the smoldering husk of a burned-out car; there, a smattering of broken glass from shop windows; farther on, a sprawling stain on the pavement roughly the shape of Australia that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than dried blood. And a sight that seems oddly familiar, though for a second I don’t realize it’s because I’m so used to seeing them in my head: limp, lifeless bodies, more than I can count. Men, women, and even children, some who look around my age, some even younger, some still wearing their school uniforms. One girl’s blue ribbon trails behind her on the pavement where she lies, intertwined with the hair that’s come loose from her half-undone braid.
That girl could have been just like me and Saf, I think, walking back from school, talking about boys and records and movies, secure in the belief that teenagers like us aren’t meant to be personally acquainted with death until some hazy, far-off day in the future, when we’re old and gray.
And then the Djinn whispers: Maybe one of those bodies IS Saf.
And then: Maybe one of them is Mama.
And then I cannot breathe.
As I count and tap and tap and count, my fingers shaking, the Djinn’s soft rasp ever-present in my ear, I hear Jay let out a long sigh. “Bloody politicians,” he says softly, shaking his head. “Bloody politicians and their bloody stupid rhetoric, speeches, ideologies. You ever hear anyone say words don’t matter after this, you tell them about this day, when Malay idiots and Chinese idiots decided to kill one another because they believed what the bloody politicians told them.”
I want more than anything to close my eyes, to say something, tell them to turn back and send me home, tell them I wasn’t meant for this, that nobody was meant for this. But the Djinn reaches out his cold, bony fingers and forces my eyelids open. Take it all in, he hisses. You wanted to be out here. You wanted to be the hero, the protector. You wanted to see what was happening for yourself. So see.
My breath is coming in short, shallow pants, and my hands are trembling uncontrollably. Every body that I see bears Mama’s face. She’s dead, says the voice in my head. You left her. You failed her, just like you failed Saf. And now she’s dead. I fight to quash him, force him down, keep him silent, but the effort is making me queasy. I’m going to throw up, I think. I’m going to throw up.
“I’m going to throw up,” I say quickly. Jay brings the car to a screeching halt, and I open the door just in time, heaving up the morning’s meager breakfast—boiled sweet potatoes, again. I feel almost detached as it happens, as though I’m floating outside my own body, watching it enthusiastically expel lumpy, pale yellow liquid.
What an idiot.
“Are you okay?” Vince asks, frowning with concern. “I should have known—it’s a lot to take in.” I am flushed and embarrassed when I sit back up, and Jay silently passes me his large cotton handkerchief. “Thank you,” I say quietly, wiping my mouth with it. The initials JS are embroidered neatly in one corner in navy-blue thread. For some reason, this makes me want to cry.