The Walled City

MEI YEE

I wait for the ambassador. Sing’s cries are in my head, and the yes is on my tongue, filling my body with sparks and spit, like that firework our neighbors bought one New Year’s. I’d never seen fire that color, a cherry red so bright it burned a hole into my vision. It was so beautiful, so not of my world, that I thought it was enough. But then the fuse ran out, shot up into the clear winter sky with a pluming white tail of smoke. The night’s black filled with more colors than I could name: trails of sapphire, scarlet, and green.

The sight was so beautiful I cried.

And I feel as if I’m about to cry now when the door wheels open. There’s so much inside — fear, loss, gain, unvoiced wishes, my yes—whirring and spitting and blazing like that firework. It’s impossible to keep it all in.

But something about the way the ambassador enters the room demands silence. He looks even bigger today, hulking in the fullness of his coat. The fabric is as black as a bear’s fur. His arms are full of something I can’t completely see. Whatever it is, it’s not flowers.

There’s no hello or formal nod. He walks over to the side table and grabs my vase by the rim.

“There were no suitable bouquets,” he tells me over his shoulder. “And I wanted to bring you something special. To show you how sorry I am about what happened…”

What happened. I wish he would say it, tell me he’s sorry for my bruises instead of bringing some other lavish gift. I wish he would keep to our routine, stick with flowers.

The ambassador steps away and I see he’s replaced my browned carnations with a shallow pot. Out of its sandy gravel rises a tree. It’s not a sapling, but a full-grown thing with limbs, bark, leaves, and roots. A tree that should be taller than me is no longer than my arm.

“W-what is it?” I stare, my yes momentarily forgotten, trying to imagine how a tree could be caged and shrunk. It seems like magic, impossible.

“A cypress tree.” He leans over to inspect the leaves, brushing them with too-careful, manicured fingers.

“How — why is it so small?” I feel stupid, asking this. I’ve never seen a cypress before. Most of the trees in my province were long gone by the time I was born, cut down to make room for rice fields. Maybe all cypress trees are this size, and I just never knew.

“It’s a technique called bonsai. Gardeners use it to keep the trees from getting too big and unmanageable. This way you can keep them inside. For your enjoyment.”

I keep looking at the tiny tree. Trying to imagine what it would look like if it weren’t confined to its pot. If men’s fingers and shears weren’t constantly picking at it, cutting it back.

“No more flowers?” I ask.

“They keep dying,” the ambassador says as if I don’t know. As if my room doesn’t fill up with sweet rot stench every time the petals wither. “I thought you might appreciate something more permanent.”

I’ll have nothing to place in the window now. Nothing to warn the boy with.

This thought catches me — sharp and hard — like a slingshot stone. It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t. Soon there won’t be a window. Or walls. Or plastic orchid blossoms and lopsided stars.

As soon as I say yes.

The ambassador stops picking at the tree. His jacket comes off. Along with his coat. He moves over to my bed. The jostle of his body on the mattress shoots pain through my bruise.

“Have you thought any more about my offer?”

Yes. Just say it. Say it and all of this goes away.

My client sits beside me, but I’m still staring at the tree. Its tiny pot is ceramic, glazed blue. The same soft sheen the streetlamp makes on the boy’s face. I find myself wondering if it’s the same color as waves.

My lips part, but instead of my answer comes a question. The same one as before, “Would you take me to the sea?”

The ambassador frowns. He doesn’t look handsome doing it, the way window-boy does. It only makes the wrinkles of his face deeper, more treacherous. “It wouldn’t be good for people to see us together in public. But don’t worry. You’ll never have to leave the building. Besides, if it’s the ocean you want, you can always see pieces of it from the rooftop. When you go to the garden.”

“You… you can see it from the rooftops?” It steals my breath away, the thought that the sea was so close, this whole time, and I never knew.

“Yes. Seng Ngoi is a port city. We’re right next to the water.” His words come out quick and snapping. Like the noise that long-gone firework made. “Enough of this nonsense. What’s your answer?”

The hairs on my skin bristle against the edge in his voice. I search for the yes—the one that was just on the crest of my tongue, waiting to be released — but it’s deeper now. Unsure. Even the memories of Sing’s shriek don’t call it back. Instead of the pool and rooftop gardens and luxury food, all I can think about are the guards at the apartment door. How I’ll never have to leave the building. There might be no bars there, but there’s no boy, either. No one to promise a way out.

Can I trade one cage for another?

Are pieces of the sea enough?

“Mei Yee! Answer me.” His voice is hot, too loud in my ear.

There’s only one way home. For the boy. For me.

If I say yes now, I’ll fail the boy, destroy his wish for home. I’ll fail myself, destroy all of my hundreds of wishes.

There’s only one way, and it isn’t this.

“No.” I expect my voice to be a willow branch: wispy, bending, and supple. The way my courage feels. Instead, I’m bamboo: made of splinters and stab.

The ambassador feels it. For the briefest moment he even looks as if he’s been knifed. His jaw goes slack, his eyes glass.

“I want to stay here, with my friends…” The strength that was in my throat fades, wilts against the look that rises up behind my client’s face. The storm cloud, the demon.

“You’re cheating on me, aren’t you? There’s someone else! I know there is!” His shout is thunder and fire. It spews over the room, flecks into my face with the heat of his saliva.

“No!” I start to protest, but it doesn’t matter.

Those arms, those fingers break their routine and pin me down, gripping with a power I never knew they had. The sharpness of my hairpins digs into my scalp as I’m shoved into the pillow.

So much sweat and skin. Everywhere. Wrapping tighter and tighter around me. And pain. I’m being pried, shredded, ripped. Opened and closed. Exposed and smothered.

No. No. No. Maybe I’m saying this out loud. Maybe not. I can’t hear anything anymore. I can’t see, either. My vision is covered in spots — like electric-blue lichen — the way it did when I stared out the window and waited for the boy.

It’s only when the ambassador lets go and falls back that I realize he’d had a hand over my throat. The air that floods my lungs is thick with smoke. Breath by breath the world comes back. The dust-filmed plastic of the orchid petals. A dozen unseen bruises on my arm, my neck. The hot stick of scarlet trickling down my legs, staining the sheets.

He’s out of the bed, piecing himself together with zippers and buttons. He doesn’t look at me or the bonsai tree. The door opens and he’s halfway out before he glances back over his shoulder.

I don’t know how to read his face. His emotions might as well be inked characters — squiggles and dots. Whatever the feeling inside him is, it’s intense. Like fear, anger, and love all thrown into a pot. Like the colors of my neighbors’ firework.

“It doesn’t really matter if you’re here or there. You’re mine. Remember that.”

He shuts the door. The vase full of dead flowers leaves with him.

The ambassador meant to break me. This is what I decide when I hobble over to the mirror, see fingerprints smudged like ink around the base of my throat. I spend extra minutes with my makeup brush, piling layer after layer of powder against my collarbone. But no matter how much I put on, I can still see his marks. A shadow gone wrong.

He meant to break me. But I’m stronger than he knows. I’m stronger than I knew. The only thing the ambassador broke was himself — the image of him I built up over the months, the idea that he might be able to save me from this place.

There’s only one way out. And it was never by his side.

The other girls notice the bruises, but they don’t ask questions. It’s a mercy, because I know I would never be able to answer. I could never tell them about the ambassador’s offer — how I turned down heaven on a silver platter and he punished me for it.

Instead, they gather in my room and talk about the one girl who has a worse portion than we do.

“They’re still making Sing take clients,” Nuo tells us as she struggles to thread her needle. The cross-stitch is coming together — a carp with scales of fire and white, swimming against some sapphire current.

“The master wouldn’t keep her here unless she was making him money.” Yin Yu says this with her tongue concentrating on the edge of her lips. She’s holding my hand in hers, wielding a wand of scarlet nail polish. She’s made it to the final nail without a slip.

Nuo frowns. Her needle stabs hard into the cloth; she pulls the mandarin-tinged thread through.

“I think…” Yin Yu goes on. The brush slicks cool paint down to the edge of my pinkie nail. Drops off. “It’s better than the alternative. She wouldn’t last long on the streets. None of us would.”

She finishes — both my nails and her words — and screws the polish shut.

“I should go,” Yin Yu says suddenly. It’s only when she’s standing straight that I realize how thin she’s become. “There’s washing to be done in the west hall. Mama-san will be angry if I don’t finish it soon.”

I stand, too, trying to ignore the pain in my thighs. “You’re cleaning too much. Let me take some of the rooms.”

“You’ve helped enough. Besides, you shouldn’t ruin your nails.” Yin Yu waves me back down, vanishes through the dark of the door.

There are only the three of us now, sitting in silence. Wen Kei eyes the door as if it’s the jaws of some sea beast, threatening to swallow her frail body. Nuo stabs the needle into the cloth. It slips, digs deep into her skin. A soft swear leaves her lips as she places the wounded finger between them.

“Yin Yu thrives off work,” she says when she pulls her finger out, pinches it between the silk fabric of her dress. “It’s the thing that keeps her going.”

“I know.” The other two girls are staring at me. Four eyes dark and full of question, bottomless wells. I can’t hold their gazes for long, so I look at the crimson window covering. It matches the new shiny color of my nails.

I can still feel Nuo staring. “Why did you take over her duties? Do you want to be Mama-san?”

“That’s what Yin Yu said,” Wen Kei pipes in.

If there’s any time I should tell them, it would be now. Memories — ghosts of the boy and his promises — file through my mind like a line of orange-robed monks. There’s a fire in my heart, twisting, wanting to reach out and show them the light. The curtain’s red looks brighter, more like blood than flames.

I want to pull it back, show them the shell. But every time I think of doing this, I hear Sing’s desperate pleas, clawing and scrabbling inside my head. I know the others won’t understand. The way I didn’t understand.

They’ll only try to stop me. The way I tried to stop Sing.

“The meeting is soon.” I change the subject. “We should get ready.”

Nuo lifts her finger to her face. The blood is still there, smoothed out like a second layer of red skin. Her needle must have gone deep. I think of all the many strings stretched tight across her zither, made of cruel steel. “Can you still play?”

She frowns, tucks the cross-stitch under her arm. “Do I have a choice?”

None of us speak, because we all know the answer.

This meeting my hands don’t shake. The black lacquered serving tray is steady as I shuffle through the room, pouring wine and offering lights. So much smoke wisps up from the Brotherhood’s pipes and cigarettes that soon enough I can’t even see Nuo clearly. I only know she’s there because of her music. Despite her bandaged finger, the notes stab through the air, steady and strong.

And despite the hurt in my legs, I walk straight, keep a smile pasted to my face.

We’re stronger than they think.

Longwai holds the ledger close. It’s small: the same size as those notebooks Sing used to sketch our faces in. As long as a brick and as thick as a thumb. The cover is a red as bright as Nuo’s wounded finger, crowned with the crest of a shining gold dragon. Every few minutes he flicks through the pages, running over cryptic characters written weeks and months before. All through the meeting he fills it with notes; a few of the numbers I recognize — characters I learned when Sing tried to teach us how to read. Sometimes he’s so focused on writing down inky lines and loops that the men have to repeat themselves to be heard.

When the meeting ends, I collect the empty glasses quickly, willing Longwai and the book to stay put until I can follow. The glasses clink together, their purple-red rims jostling for space on my tray. I try to move slowly, but in the cabinet’s reflection I see Longwai heaving to his feet, the ledger wedged firmly in both hands. He starts walking to the far hall, in the direction of the stairs. I stash the glasses in the bottom of the cabinet, still coated with the stick of plum wine, and follow.

I’ve never been upstairs before. In fact, I’ve only seen the actual staircase twice. It lies at the end of the east hall, by the door to Mama-san’s room. It spirals like my nautilus shell, up and up, into the dark.

I hang, uncertain, at the edge of the hall, waiting for the master to disappear to the second floor before I make my move. Every part of my body shakes as I push myself down the length of the hallway, farther into the dark.

I don’t know if I can do this.

Deep inside there’s a pull, a line of cowardice tugging, begging me to go back to my room. To sit on my bed and wait. To apologize to the ambassador and accept his offer. To apologize to Yin Yu. To tell the boy I can’t do what he asks of me. To be my mother’s daughter. To keep enduring.

But I remember the demon behind the ambassador’s eyes, and I know things will never be the same between us. Even if he never bruises me again, every single touch will remind me of the night he made me bleed.

I silence every fear and keep walking, all the way down the shadow-drenched hall, all the way up the stairs. The door at the top is cracked open, streaming browned-gold light over the staircase. The air here smells different, heavy with mildew, leather, and ink. Scents both rich and spoiled. They catch in my throat as I rap my knuckles against the doorframe.

The door swings open. Longwai is behind it, his bulk filling up most of the doorway. Beads of sweat dot his brow, and his chest balloons with thick breaths. His eyes cloud and wrinkle at the sight of me. Girls never climb these stairs.

“What are you doing up here?” His words are tight and precise, as if they were cut out of him with a knife.

“I–I wanted to speak with you, sir.” I bow a little as I say this, catch a glimpse of his room under the curve of his armpit. An entire wall of weapons — swords, pistols, rifles, knives. My eyes flick back and forth. No book.

My bow lasts longer than it should. I’m all too aware of this as I rise, feel Longwai’s scathing study.

“I’m busy. Any problems you have should be brought to Mama-san.” He waves a hand down the stairs. The movement creates another brief glimpse. I catch sight of a bed and a screen full of bright moving pictures. His television. Still no book.

“I—" My mind hurtles, searching for words and excuses that might keep me here. Give me enough time to spot that elusive ledger. “I can’t go to Mama-san. I can’t trust her with it.”

Longwai frowns. “Is that so?”

My heart screams profanities in the form of beats. I’m not a spy, nor was I meant to be. The lies I have to feed the dragon, the ones I spent hours thinking of, feel slimy and rotten. Like something he’ll spit back out.

I offer them up anyway.

“She likes to play favorites.” I stand, ever so slightly on my tiptoes, trying to get another glimpse. There are no colors in the drug lord’s bedchamber. Almost everything is black or some drab shade of brown. The furniture, the floor, the wall hangings. The only bright things are the television screen and a tankful of fish. These cast the entire room in a ghost light.

Finally, I catch it. The faintest glimpse of red. It’s only a corner of something, poking out of a gaping desk drawer. That has to be it.

“Most people do.” The master’s booming voice snaps my eyes back to the floor.

“It’s… it’s Yin Yu.” I stumble over my own terrifying words. My veins clog full of guilt, as if the very blood in them has stopped. “She — she’s jealous that I’ve taken over her tasks. I’m afraid she’s spreading rumors about me to Mama-san. And I’m afraid that you or the ambassador might hear something bad about me. Something that isn’t true.”

“You think Osamu is paying for the quality of your character?” His mouth turns into a smile, then spoils into a sneer. “That I’m running some kind of etiquette school?”

I shake my head and push out more small, small words. “I don’t want to end up like Sing.”

“Then don’t,” Longwai says. “Is that all?”

“Y-yes.” I take a step back, only to remember that the stairs are close. My heel hangs off the edge. At this point it might even be a mercy if I fell back. A few scrapes and bruises seem preferable to the way Longwai is staring at me now. Like a piece of meat.

“Don’t bother me again,” Longwai growls.

“Thank you, sir.” I bow again, catch another look at the book. It’s still there, wedged into the drawer.

Longwai grunts and closes the door. I navigate the stairs with coltish knees. They knock and shake with each step. Halfway down I pass Fung, who watches me with his dark, dark eyes. The stairs are tight and our shoulders brush. I have to shrink all the way against the wall to let him pass. We’re so close he can’t not see me shaking.

But the gangster doesn’t say anything about it. His only word is a half-grunted “careful” before he keeps climbing, without looking back.

I did it. I spotted where Longwai keeps his ledger. I took the risk.

Jin Ling would be proud.

My heart is so swelling and full — with thoughts of my sister, the boy, the sea — that I forget about washing the dirty glasses in the lounge. I keep walking straight up the north hall. Past the tomblike silence of Sing’s room. By Nuo’s and Wen Kei’s and Yin Yu’s closed doors. All the way to the end.