The Walled City

MEI YEE

The first time Dai took me to see the sea, I couldn’t speak. The sun was shining off the waters like the fireworks that had laced the sky so many nights before. It glittered and gleamed all the way to the horizon. So much water spreading out in all directions.

The waves were small that morning, lulling and calm. The water stretched under the sky like a mirror, reflecting the infinite. I felt that same wide vastness inside my chest, washing in and out of me. Wind — stiff with winter and salt — licked against the leather jacket Dai’s mother gave me, but I didn’t shiver. I stood on the edge of the world and wanted more.

So I come back — again and again — and the sea always calls the way it did that first time. Singing with the gentle hush and lap of waves. Whispering possibilities with every tide.

Our world changed fast after the New Year. It took Dai’s gift of persuasion and a small army of taxis to get all of us up to Tai Ping Hill. He walked up to the mansion with his good shoulder set, as if he was ready for a fight. The people who opened the door — Mr. and Mrs. Sun — ran out and hugged him instead.

What followed was a chaos of days and doctor visits and phone calls and Mrs. Sun and Emiyo bursting through the front door with more shopping bags than their own weight combined. Clothes in all sizes, for all the girls.

But Dai’s mother didn’t stop there. She sat with us in the rock garden, listened to our stories. When we told her — when she asked about our homes, our parents — that we could not go back, she understood. And then she went to work.

And so a new charity project was born, funded by Sun Industries’s generous donations, managed by Mrs. Sun herself. A boarding school was founded for all the children the Walled City spat back out — Longwai’s girls and ladder-ribbed vagrants — complete with classes and counselors and doors that lock only from the inside.

Even all this didn’t stop some of the girls from leaving. I thought that final night in Hak Nam — when I stood under the streetlamp and watched Mama-san vanish — that all our choices had been made.

But it’s not just one choice made in one moment. It’s every time I wake up in my dormitory room sweating from nightmares of needles and Sing’s screams and Jin Ling has to grab my arm and tell me I’m safe. It’s every time I feel the fear washing up, creeping into me for no reason at all, even though the sky is blue and Dai is laughing at one of Jin Ling’s jokes. It’s every time I see a man with silvering hair and think that maybe Ambassador Osamu hasn’t really gone missing as all the news sources say he has, that maybe he’s just biding his time, waiting for the perfect moment to come for me.

The counselors Mrs. Sun hired to talk with us, they tell me these things are normal. Symptoms of something called PTSD. And most of the time I believe them. But sometimes, sometimes, I hear Mama-san whispering: It’s not our world. People like us belong in the shadows.

And sometimes, sometimes, I wonder if maybe she’s right. If I do not deserve the wide of the sea or the electric hum in Dai’s eyes, which crackle and spark in my heart, or everything Mrs. Sun is giving me.

The other girls feel this, too — this war of choices. Yin Yu was the first to slip away. Our fourth morning at the Suns’ house, we woke up and her mat was empty. All the clothes Mrs. Sun had given her were left in neat folds. More empty mats followed, and — later — a few dormitory beds: girls from the other halls. Always, always they end up back in Hak Nam, surfacing in scarlet-lamped doorways, back to the old ways. Back to the shadows.

The counselors tell us this is normal, too. Every two weeks they go with Mrs. Sun back into the Walled City — issue their invitation with cups of icy, sweet yuen yeung and smiles. They have not come back with any of the missing girls, but they do come back with news: more Security Branch raids, a wave of evictions. Slowly, steadily, the government is draining the city, preparing its body for dissection. I haven’t been back to Hak Nam, but every once in a while, its picture will appear on the folds of Mr. Sun’s newspaper. It looks the same as ever: bricks on bricks and bars on bars. Openings gaping like sockets in a skull.

It’s hard to imagine how a place like that could ever be a park — all green and sunshine and growth. Where things like bright red hibiscus and magenta bougainvillea bloom.

But it will be. One day.

And Dai. He’s stayed in his father’s house, studying with tutors to make up for those lost years. There’s an entire unknown world at his fingertips — universities and traveling. He likes to talk about it a lot. He also likes to use the word us.

Our world changed, but one thing stays the same. As constant as the tide.

Every Sunday at noon we take a car to the south of Seng Ngoi — away from the city’s smokestacks and crowded shoreline — where the beaches are hidden things, with rocks and unbroken shells. Jin Ling curls up on a blanket with her ever-present pile of books, flipping through pages and sounding the characters aloud — transforming the slashes of ink into words. It makes me jealous how quickly she’s learning. We’re in the same classes — along with Nuo and Wen Kei and a lot of the vagrant boys. But it won’t be that way for long. Jin Ling’s already finished the first three books our teacher gave her, and she’s always hungry for more. I think it’s because she’s at the top of our class that our instructors let her keep Chma at school. The cat is almost a part of her wardrobe. She even brings him here, to the beach, where he sits patiently on the edge of the blanket, stalking the tiny crabs that sometimes inch out of their holes.

He’s watching one now, the ends of his fur all bristled and gray. If he still had his tail, it would be twitching.

“Hey, Mei Yee!” Jin Ling’s face is wide as she looks up from her book. It’s one from the stacks in Hiro’s old room. The pile Dai gave her. “Did you know that there are whole mountains under the ocean?”

I shield my face and look back out at the water. Try to imagine the tower of mountains beneath it. I remember how we all laughed when Sing told us the very same thing. How it seemed so impossible that such a height could be swallowed by such a depth.

I look back at my sister and am struck by how much she looks like my old friend — crouched on this blanket with a book, the light of words in her eyes. She even tries to wear her hair in Sing’s old braid. She asks me to braid it for her every morning, so I do. It’s still far too short, and the end result is nothing more than a stub. But I take the three strands of Jin Ling’s hair anyway and twine them into something whole. Something as strong as she is.

Some scars stay with you. Like the medallion of shiny skin that punctuates Dai’s shoulder. Or the furious violet welt curled into my little sister’s side. If you looked at me now, you’d see nothing — no bruises or cuts or lumps made by old hurts. All the blisters and bloody toes I got running from Longwai’s guard are long gone. You can’t see my scars, but they’re there all the same. Sing — her death — is just the tip of it. The more I talk with the counselors, the more I find. Wounds that float up faster than they seem to heal.

But they are healing. Step by step. Day by day. Choice by choice. I’m tearing down the bars and bricks.

I’m becoming new.

“It says so right here!” Jin Ling jabs a finger at the shiny page. At the exact same moment, Chma jumps, plows nose-first into the sand. From the looks of it, he didn’t catch anything. He’s only grown fat and lazy now that he doesn’t have to hunt rats the size of himself. “See?”

“Maybe instead of reading about the ocean, you should go experience it.” I’m only teasing her, but my little sister leaps up anyway, starts sprinting across the sand all the way down to the waterline.

“Where’s Jin going?”

I look back over my shoulder to see Dai walking up, barefoot in the sand. His jeans are rolled up to his knees, and his white V-neck glares against the afternoon sun. So bright I have to shield my eyes. “Off.”

“I got us some lunch.” He kicks the sand off his toes, settles onto the blanket beside me. The brown bag crinkles against his lap, and I catch the familiar, delicious smell of stuffed buns.

Chma isn’t the only one who’s been getting plump.

“Should I call her back?” I glance back in the direction my sister ran. The tide is low today, shirking back to show an entire carpet of seashells. Jin Ling tiptoes through them like a ballerina, bending down and picking some up. When she finally reaches the water, she starts tossing them back, watching them land like gulls in the rough blue. I’ve never seen my sister act so much like a kid. Even when she was one.

“No. Let her be. She’s having fun.” Dai shakes his head and grins at me. “I’m not hungry yet, anyway.”

That smile is just like the sea. I’m not sure if I’ll ever grow tired of it. I shut my eyes and feel the warmth of the summer sun on my skin, my face. The rawness of remembering Sing starts to fade, along with all the other things. Mountains covered by the depths of something greater, more vast than I could ever begin to fully know.

Dai’s arm slides around my shoulder and I lean into him. Open my eyes and stare ahead. Where my sister stands in that carpet of shells, chucking them one by one into the sea.

“That’s funny,” Dai murmurs next to me.

“What?”

“Nothing — It’s just that I’ve seen this before.” A not-quite frown appears on the edge of his lips, stays there. “Deja vu.”

The word sounds foreign, but not like the English I’m studying. “Is that bad?”

“No,” he says, and looks over at me. “Not bad. Perfect. It’s absolutely perfect.”

Our lips are so close, just a breath or sigh away.

My window-boy — he’s always so careful, so gentle. He always waits for me to choose, to reach out, to let him in. I lean closer, and the softness of his lips grazes mine. Fire-flare bursts in my chest, full of life, life, life. Dai pulls in. His fingers are feather-light on my cheeks, brushing and swirling and teasing like a phoenix in flight. We linger together — in this space without grating or glass. In this place I want to be.

And even when it ends, it doesn’t. I see so much reflected in the brown of his eyes: my sister and the sea. Heights and depths. Horizons and possibilities. Flights on fire. I see these things and I feel the vastness calling, deep inside my chest.

It’s times like these I know — in my deepest core, in the marrow of all that is me — that Mama-san is wrong.

This is my world. Wide and open and waiting.

JIN LING

I am running. This time there are no boots. No sliming puddles or cigarette butts. Just sand like velvet between my toes. Spray and salt and sea.

It feels so different — running without a reason. Without knifepoints or purple-veined shopkeepers at my back. I turn around and all I see are Dai and my sister on the blanket. So close to each other they look like a single person under the sun. Chma is still rooting through the crab burrows, his tailless rump raised high. Hunting for the fun of it.

There are no shards of broken glass under my feet. Just things the sea washed up: kelp, crab claws, and shells. A lot of them I recognize from Hiro’s book. Mussels, sea snails, Arabian cowrie. I bend down. Pick them up. Check to see if there’s still life inside. Hiro’s book said that sometimes the shells wash up and dry out. Before the next tide can save them. Every time I see a snail’s sealed up yellow end, I throw it back. Plop! White foam and sink.

Plop! Plop! Plop!

It’s a small thing. A toss for a life.

My life has been full of these small things. Clothes without holes. Boots that fit. My first real mattress. Chma lounging in sun slants and dust motes. New, not-molding books. Bowls of rice porridge every morning. Classes with chalkboards. Dai rumpling my hair every time he sees me and talking about how long it’s getting. My sister smiling again.

The small things add up.

One day I’ll find a way to pay it all back. I’m learning all I can — books and books of words. Mrs. Sun says I’m “exceptionally gifted.” I can be whatever I want. A doctor or a diplomat or a lawyer. I don’t know for sure what I want to be yet, but I know I want to help. I want to find a way to go back for my mother. To face my father without a gun in my hand or a bruise on my face. To show her she doesn’t need him.

For now, I’ll keep throwing.

“Jin!” I look back over my shoulder. See Dai waving a brown paper bag over his head. Like I’m a taxi he’s trying to flag down. Chma is on his lap, begging. “I got stuffed buns!”

My stomach squeals the way Chma used to whenever I accidentally stepped on his tail. It’s never hungry the way it was before — all gnaw and teeth. But the stuffed buns always taste just as good as they did that morning on the roof.

“Coming!” My voice gusts back over the sand.

There’s one last shell by my toes. All curled and coiled the way Nuo wears her hair. So big my palm almost can’t hold it. I pick it up anyway. Toss it far, far, far into the sea.