It was obvious the words had been drilled into him. “Then why are you going away? Malaya’s so far.”
“There’s a fortune to be made overseas in palm oil.” He ventured a step deeper into my room. “I’ve got friends who will help.”
Friends? Since when did Yi Gor have friends? This was when I realized how little I knew about his life. Although his room was across from mine, our conversations had been limited to grumbling about our stepmother. I only knew what he had deigned to share.
I peeled off my blanket. “Give me a few minutes to pack, then we can pick up Lily and—”
“You’re not coming.”
“What?”
“Don’t look at me like that. Someone has to stay in case Mama needs to leave China. You’ll be safe here—”
“Safe?” I raised my voice. “Did you just say I’d be safe here? After what happened?”
Yi Gor shrugged. “He was a lowlife gangster collecting a gambling debt.”
If there was one thing my brother and I had in common, we were bad at lying. “A lowlife gangster?” I repeated. “Then why aren’t the police here? Why do you have to go away?”
He shook his head.
“Tell me, damn it!” I slapped him angrily on the shoulder. How could my own brother protect Gu Ma over me? Then I understood.
“She’s bribing you to stay quiet.”
“Yut Ying—” Yi Gor started, but a ripple of guilt crossed his face, betraying him before he could finish. “It’s better if you don’t know.”
“Then get out,” I said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“You’re safe here,” he repeated, this time with a note of pleading. “You have a roof over your head, you have food, you have our family. It’s what Mama wanted for you.”
I refused to listen.
“Mama didn’t send you here to chase your dreams,” said Yi Gor. “She sent you here to be safe. I think you know this by now.”
Yes, I knew. I knew more than he could possibly imagine. She sent us here because she’d known, no matter how unpleasant life was in Hong Kong, that China would become mired in civil war and revolution. A life there, if we’d stayed, would have been far worse.
“She wanted us to be together,” I said through my teeth, “and now you’re leaving.”
“Once I make enough money, I’ll send for you. I’ll send for Mama, too.”
Lies. I twisted my hands as if that could lock the anger inside me. Yi Gor and I had never been close, yet these last few years living as Baba’s leftover children had bonded us. I never thought he would abandon me.
“I risked my life for you once,” I said. “If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t.”
I meant for the words to stab at his conscience, for them to twist in deep and maybe, just maybe change his mind. But Yi Gor merely hung his head, and he backed into the hall.
I would come to regret that I didn’t plead with him more, that I let those bitter words be the last between us. But in this moment, I was too young and too proud.
I shut the door on him without saying goodbye.
Hong Kong
1949
Chapter Nineteen
The autumn I turned sixteen, my family started discussing my marriage prospects.
