That was when I heard footsteps from across the hall. Someone was awake.
Again, I became nothing. I slid through the door back into the hall—only to encounter a problem: My shadow wouldn’t come withme.
Why was this happening again? I’d gotten better at vanishing since Gu Ma locked me in the cellar. I yanked and pulled, yet still my shadow clung to Lily’s room, as heavy as an anchor buried in sand.
The footsteps were getting closer.
I panicked and passed back into Lily’s bedroom. I wrestled my shadow, jerking and twisting at my own likeness as it flitted across the walls.You have to come,I commanded. There was no choice, we had to get out. I turned invisible, and with all my strength, I hurled myself through Lily’s door.
It was like bursting through a wall of glass. The world shattered as though I were breaking from inside, and a rain of shards came down upon me, stabbing, as my left ear roared. I reared from shock, only to find the worst was yet to come.
My shadow. I’d thought it would come snapping out the door with me, but somewhere at the threshold it had fragmented from my body, severed in one irrevocable moment, and now it remained trapped in Lily’s room—a dark and bereft little pool with which, only an instant ago, I’d been inseparable.
The agony was what I imagined a cat would feel when it lost its tail, and as I slipped out of my secret invisible world, I fell forward with a high and strangled scream.
Gu Ma whirled. “Who is that?” she whispered, sounding spooked. In her hand was the same gun that had killed Zhou Hin Kong—andclick,she cocked the pistol. Pointed it at me.
Shit.Thinking fast, I drew a quick breath, clamped my mouth shut, and disappeared again.
My aunt saw it all, but under the veil of darkness she thought me a ghost. Her spine went stiff, her eyes boggy with fear.
“L-Lily?” she said, lowering the gun. There was a cigarette in her mouth, unlit. “D-Do you need more spirit money? I’ll send you some. There’s n-no need to be angry. We’re family, don’t forget. Family.”
Yes, I remembered. The cold prickled my skin, numbing away my pain but not my anger.Family suffers together and rises together,she had told me.Most of all, family stays together.
I planted myself behind Gu Ma. When I exhaled, I gained only a little color, becoming as translucent as a pond burbling under the moon. “You’re not my family,” I whispered into my aunt’s ear. “You killed me.”
I’d never forget how pale her round face turned, whiter even than the cigarette between her lips. I held my breath and charged down the hallway. Each step toward the door buoyed me; I could hardly feel my feet touching the ground.
Once I was past the gate, I released my air. Usually my body reappeared instantly, but this time the change was sluggish, like coming out of a deep sleep. I started running, but as my heelsfinally sank into the moist dirt of the hillside, a growl pierced the urgency of my escape.
It was Prince Cannonball perched on a pineapple finial. When he was young, his tail stood high and pert. Now it hung low, curling around an iron bar.
Come with me,I spoke with my arms.
He merely stared, one good long stare, before he turned his back on me and disappeared into the bushes.
It would be the last time I ever saw him, and, heavens willing, the last time I ever saw Gu Ma’s house. Twelve Harbourage, a white mansion with terra-cotta tiles, inhabited by a family of sundered dreams.
I turned for the road.
Hong Kong
1952
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The first thing I did was cut my hair. Ever since a bottle of Peaksoy had ended up on the cover of????(World Today), my feathery bangs were copied by young ladies across the city. I saw them everywhere I went, some of the women even plaiting their hair into a loose braid as I had. With three snips, I set that girl on fire.
I became a singer at the Seven Wonders nightclub in Wan Chai, which wasn’t far from Happy Valley but might as well have been a different country. There, even tailors and banks had illuminated signs above their storefronts, and at night so many people crammed the streets you couldn’t even see your feet. I went looking for a job the morning after I left home, and Seven Wonders was the only club with its door open. The owner was at the bar, diluting bottles of Viking beer with water.
“You look familiar,” he said, peering at me. “What’s your name?”
I didn’t think. I replied, “Helen. I’m a singer.”
“Of course you are.” A grunt. “I don’t need any more girls. Get lost.”
I parted my lips and sang the chorus of “Rose, Rose, I Love You.” My voice started out deep like the lowest note of a clarinet, mellow yet expressive, then, as it soared higher, overriding the barkeeper’s grumbles, he stopped waving me toward the door. When I sang the chorus again, this time in English, I had his full attention.
