Why can’t Dai Gor go?I wanted to ask, but I already knew the answer. My eldest brother was a boy. His life mattered more.
Ah Ma poked her walking stick at me, not stopping until I gave a submissive nod. We both knew that the stick doubled as a whipping cane if I dared disobey. She tossed me a boiled yam.
“Go,” she said, “before your mother wakes up.”
It was for Mama, not my brother, that I obeyed. For Mama that I didn’t run away just now from the soldiers. As much as I wanted to be a coward, I wanted to help her more. I couldn’t let her down.
Tucking the pouch under my shirt, I climbed out the window and into the courtyard. Not far away, a jalopy sputtered, and soldiers were plucking fruits off Ah Ma’s prized lychee trees—but no one was watching the south garden.
The shrubs smelled of yesterday’s rain, and the dirt was still soft, making moist imprints of my footfalls. I had to move fast.
It was two hundred steps to the pots of marigold flowers behind the koi pond. There, underneath the largest pot, was a narrow burrow that I’d helped Mama dig last year. An escape to the other side of the wall.
Darting out of the bushes, I scrambled along the pond. The fish inside were dead, their scales and flesh long since picked off by birds. Only bones remained, the gossamer combs half sunken.
I was midway across the garden when I saw the boy.
He came out from the trees barefoot in the middle of the cobbled path. He started at the sight of me, and I almost screamed.
It took me a moment to realize that he was Chinese. Around my age, maybe a year or two older. In his arms was a heap of laundry—bitter melon–green coats with matching pants and cotton socks: Japanese uniforms. Which meant he was a mule, a child that they had kidnapped to work for them.
We stared at each other, equally stricken. Me, at his bruised cheeks and his dirty white shirt, splotched with grease and brown stains that I hoped weren’t blood. Him, at my shoes.
“This is your house, isn’t it? You’re lucky. Commander says it’s the most beautiful house in Guangdong. He has respect for it.”
Hearing his porcelain voice made my heart hurt. It was brittle, as though he hadn’t eaten in days.
“What are you doing here, mui mui?” His words whistled between two crooked teeth. “Hurry, go before they see you.”
“Come with me,” I whispered. I didn’t have as big a heart as Mama, but my heart was certainly bigger than Ah Ma’s. I knew what would happen to this boy if he stayed.
I pointed to the marigold flowers waving at us like little suns. “We dug a tunnel there that leads to the hills.”
“I can’t,” he whispered back. His shoulders wilted. “They have my sister.”
Heat pricked the backs of my eyes. I thought of Yi Gor, whom I was risking my life to save. Would my brother become a mule for me? No. He’d trade me in a heartbeat for a piece of rock sugar.
“Go,” the boy said. “The soldiers don’t leave me alone for long.”
I dug into my pocket for the boiled yam Ah Ma had given me last night. It was half eaten, meant to last until I returned to our camp.
My chest burned. I didn’t know this emotion, whether it was shame or guilt or compassion. I reached for the boy’s hand. His fingers were thinner than the tines of a rake, and I uncurled them, placing the yam on his palm.
For weeks after the Japanese left, I would look for him, this boy with the crooked teeth, and pray that he and his sister found home safely. But the truth was, even in this moment I already knew I’d never see him again.
Without another word, I turned toward the pots, running as fast as my legs could take me.
I didn’t look back.
Chapter Two
I stumbled up the hills, weaving through the tall grass, keeping low. The only direction that mattered was away. Away from the sloped gray rooftops where roosters used to strut about and announce the morning—now lookout points for the Japanese. Away from rutted dirt roads where I’d aimlessly kicked pebbles with my friends after school—now graveyards of stolen bicycles and barbed wire. Away, away, away.
My shoes squeaked with every step, mud sieving between my toes. Soon I was panting. I let out a grunt every time I lifted my legs. My muscles had turned into concrete and every fiber of me burned. But I didn’t stop.
Until a hail of gunshots exploded behind me.
I pitched forward, taking a mouthful of dirt as my head hit the ground. Heavens, it hurt. But the fear was worse. I curled up into a ball and covered my head with my hands, shaking. The enemy had found me. I’d never see my family again.
