The Weight of Our Sky(48)

The word “dead” sets off a chain reaction of deaths in my head; the Djinn sets them up like rows of dominoes, and one by one I watch them fall, as if in slow motion: Abah, Saf, Jay, Auntie Bee, Uncle Chong, Vince, Mama. I grit my teeth and count each person as I pass, sorting them mentally into groups; first by gender, then by age, then by the colors they wear, then by wounded versus nonwounded. . . .

Then I stop. Wounded number twenty-one, a woman sitting with an ankle wrapped in gauze propped up on a wooden carton. Her white nurse’s uniform is spotted with grime and, here and there, blood. That must be . . . surely that’s . . .

“Auntie Tipah?”

The woman looks up, her hands still holding an open bottle and a cotton pad that she’s been using to dab some small cuts and wounds along her legs, her brows still furrowed in concentration. It takes a minute or two for her to recognize me. The minute she does, her eyes widen. “Melati?”

That’s her, all right; I’d recognize that raspy smoker’s voice anywhere.

I go to kneel beside her and she envelops me in a warm but awkward hug, given the position she’s in. “What are you doing here, my dear?” she asks me, gripping my elbow as though she’s worried I’ll run away. “Where’s your mama? Is she all right? I’ve been wanting to see her, to thank her properly.” Her eyes are bright, feverish.

My heart, so light just a minute earlier, turns to lead and thuds to my feet. “You mean . . . you mean she isn’t here?”

A shadow falls across her face. She turns away from me and busies herself tidying the loose ends of the gauze that binds her ankle. “No, she isn’t,” she says.

“Do you know where she could be?” There is a tremble in my voice I can’t quite mask.

Auntie Tipah sighs. “We left the hospital together that day,” she says. “Your mother wanted to go and see if you made it home safe, and I wanted to be with my family. Everyone did; we were so worried. To see so many dead and wounded come in—they looked like they’d been in a war.” She pauses to tuck a stray hair behind her ear; she still won’t look at me. “So we started out on our bicycles. We were both scared, but we were trying not to show it. ‘They won’t hurt us,’ she told me. ‘We’re no threat to anyone, you and I.’ And she was right, you know, how could we be a threat to anyone? Your mother’s just about fifty kilos, if that, and look at my skinny little arms!” She pauses to flex a barely noticeable muscle. “See? Some threat.” She sniffs and lets her hands fall to her lap.

“I didn’t notice the stone in the road,” she says, lacing her fingers together, then apart, together, then apart. “I rammed my bicycle right into it and went flying. Cuts and bruises everywhere, and somehow managed to twist my ankle. And I bent the front wheel of the bike so badly that it couldn’t be used. We weren’t too far from Kampung Baru at the time. I was crying by then, so worried I wouldn’t make it to safety, wouldn’t make it back to my family.” Her fingers never stop moving. “Your mother said we should walk. ‘I’ll help you,’ she said. ‘I won’t leave you, Tipah. We’ll make it in no time!’?”

She pauses, and I feel as though my heart stops until she starts to speak again. “We weren’t more than ten minutes away from Batu Road when we heard them.” She swallows hard. “The Chinese mob, coming through Chow Kit to attack Kampung Baru. My heart stopped then. I knew that if they saw us, they’d kill us. And I couldn’t run, not with my ankle. So I turned to your mother and I told her she had to run, to get away, as fast as she could. At least one of us would make it. But your mother refused.” In the darkness within, the Djinn chuckles.

Auntie Tipah wipes away a tear from her cheek. “I could kill for a cigarette right now,” she says, smiling shakily. Her hands tremble. In the time it takes for her to pick up her story again, Mama dies a million deaths in my head. “Anyway. We tried to hurry along, but the noises were getting closer and closer and she knew I couldn’t go any faster. We were passing these abandoned houses, some all burned down, and she shoved me into this outhouse. Told me to keep the door shut and to be as still as I could. I told her, ‘No, no, you have to hide too, where are you going?’ But she just shushed me and told me to lock the door.”

She takes a deep breath. “I thought then that she’d run far, far away, or at least go and hide. But no, not your mother. I peeked through the crack in the door and I saw her walk along for a little while, and then just stop. Like she was waiting for something. I thought to myself, What in the world is Salmah doing? And then I figured it out.”

She looks at me then, finally, her smile achingly sad. “She wanted them to see her,” she says quietly. “She wanted them to keep their eyes on her, to chase her if they wanted. She let herself be bait to lead them away so that they wouldn’t find me.”

She shuts her eyes then, and two more tears ooze out and trickle slowly down her cheeks; quickly, she fumbles about in the pocket of her wide skirt for a pale pink handkerchief to wipe them away. “I need a damn cigarette,” she mumbles under her breath. I can feel my chest rising and falling convulsively; I’m having trouble sucking in air, and my pulse is starting to race in response. Somewhere within, the Djinn whistles a merry little tune.

“Did it work?” I manage to ask, at last.