Tunglam, Guangdong Province
1940
Chapter One
Yut Ying
The first time I turned invisible, I was hiding inside a cupboard—about a broom’s sweep away from the soldiers looting Mama’s bedroom.
It was a sticky sort of morning, the air was thick and tasted like warm gasoline, and in every corner you’d find a mosquito humming, drunk on the heat. Unpleasant but bearable, unless you were stuck in a cupboard, as I was.
Slowly, not daring to make a sound, I pressed my face to the opening between the lacquered doors. The crack was narrow, scarcely letting in any air or light, but I was desperate for a breath. Inhaling, I peeked into the bedroom. I could make out a stripe of green uniform and the occasional flash of a brass button, shiny as a coin. I wished I hadn’t seen the guns.
Vipers, my brothers called them. They were slung across the soldiers’ backs, hanging by a leather strap, silvery fang pointed down. Not a real fang, of course, but a short knife attached to the barrel of a rifle. One bite and I’d become a ghost.
I leaned back, folding my body as small as I could.Don’t look in here,I prayed as shadows swept by my hiding place.Not here.
They were going through Mama’s dresser, snickering and holding up her white undergarments and making jokes I was glad I couldn’t understand. Then someone found Baba’s cigarettes.
I was surprised Mama had kept them. They were at least three years old and probably stale, but the soldiers didn’t care. Their hoots of laughter were manic as one of them lit a match. Almost immediately, columns of smoke swirled in the air, wreathing the bedroom in an ashen haze. The smell made my throat itch.
I covered my mouth to keep from coughing. Inside the cupboard hung a sparse row of quilted jackets, and I reached for a dangling sleeve, pressing it to my face to smother any sound. As I leaned back, a mothball dropped against my palm and rolled away, hitting the door with a bright and treacherousping.
I froze.
The soldier closest to the cupboard stopped laughing. I didn’t have to know Japanese to realize he was saying, “What was that?”
I wanted to cry. Through the crack, I saw his mouth overturn like a sinking boat, and underneath his cap, his dark eyes sawed back and forth, back and forth, in the motion of a knife being sharpened.
One step. Two.
My brothers said that the Japanese turned into goblins at night, and their favorite snack was little seven-year-old girls like me. They’d put me in a cage, fatten me up with peanuts and sticky rice, and slowly roast my body over a pit until my skin crackled.
Maybe it won’t be so bad,I thought.At least they’ll feed me first.
Then again, it was daytime. More likely they’d stab their vipers into my heart and leave me to rot. They wouldn’t waste a bullet on the likes of me. My corpse would be a feast for the ants,but if I arrived in the underworld in such a tragic state, I’d be rejected by the gods. There’d be no hope of being reborn into a luckier life.
The soldier pointed his gun at the cupboard.
My entire body clenched. This was it.
The doors swung open. I wanted to be heroic, to look my murderers in the eye and spit at them. But when the moment came, I buried my face behind the jackets and held my breath so I wouldn’t scream.
The merciless tip of a bayonet swiped across the cupboard walls. I bit down hard inside my cheeks as the blade skimmed across my pants, grazing right below my knee. My throat pinched, pain burning away my fear. Still, out of some desperate hope, I didn’t make a sound.
Please, gods,I prayed,let me live and I’ll be good. I’ll never talk back to my brothers or wish a rash upon Ah Ma’s back. I’ll be twice as helpful to Mama, and—
The bayonet pushed aside the jackets, and sunlight fanned over me, hazy with smoke. I was exposed.
Don’t,I begged silently.
Any second now, the blade would come stabbing down. I’d never learn to read, never see a movie starring my idol, Bak Yeung, or become a famous singer and make Baba proud enough that he’d finally come home. I’d never hold Mama’s hand again.
Tears leaked down my cheeks. I was alone, and that was what frightened me most. As my face became slippery with regret, I stole one last glimpse at this world I had barely gotten to know.
The soldier’s eyes were two bleak bullets boring into me. As he leaned into the cupboard, I could smell the tobacco on his breath and the pine-scented soap in his hair. I could even count the reddish pits in his cheeks and see the filmy layer of sweat clinging to his chin. But to my bewilderment, he didn’t grab me.
He picked up the mothball that had fallen out of Mama’s jacket and muttered “yokai” under his breath. It sounded vaguely like Cantonese for—I shivered—demon.
