Eleven

Mai lay in her hammock, her short legs draped over the side, her thin arms resting on her chest, watching Hiep hunched over the pad of paper, his fingers tight around the pencil, writing to Third Uncle. The oil candle flickered. Light was a precious commodity on the island, for when the moon waned, the tent was as dark as the hold of the ship they had crossed on.

Hiep had saved some tin cans from their rations and, with a piece of string and some cooking oil from the market, he had made a candle by pouring the oil in the can and draping the strand of string in the oil for a wick. Using a stick from the cooking fire, he lit the candle as Mai watched. Back home, their family had been the first in the village to have electricity, but now Mai had become used to living without it; she hadn’t missed it until Sang’s ghost had come to haunt her, and now she moved closer to the light, suddenly wary of the dark and what might be lurking there.

The wind had started to moan outside, and Mai knew that the monsoons, the seasonal southwest winds, would soon be lashing the island. At home the monsoons had brought the rain that filled the rice paddies so that the villagers could plant the slender green plants for the new crop. When the storms came, she had been safe inside her brick home listening to the drops drumming the tile roof. Here there were no rice paddies and only a thin tarp overhead to shelter them from the constant downpour. But they could put out their tin cans to catch the rain. No more shortage of drinking water.

“Tell Third Uncle about Sang’s ghost,” she pleaded. “Tell him we need to get out of here.” Hiep’s face was tense, and, ignoring her, he continued to write.

They had to get away from Small Auntie too. When she had first grabbed them from the crowd stumbling onshore from the fishing trawler, Mai had felt relief and gratitude, but when Small Auntie had asked for payment, and refused to let them stay with her unless they paid her more, Mai could see that her smile had only masked the greediness in her grasping heart.

She watched Hiep form precise Chinese characters with his pencil for as long as she could, but, exhausted by the lack of rest the night before, she succumbed to a fitful sleep.

That night, Sang’s ghost appeared along with all the children—Minh, Diep, Huong, Nhu—and Small Auntie, swirling around in a dark mist, calling to her in a clamoring chorus. She was standing on the ocean’s shore, the white-tipped waves crashing at her feet as if they were attacking her, the palm trees furiously waving their fronds, the biting sand swirling in circles in the air. She tried to decipher what each person was saying, and then realized that their mouths were all forming the same words: “You will be punished.”

She cowered on the beach, whimpering, “No, no, it’s not our fault. You must understand.” But their hollow red eyes pierced her with their anger and she covered her face with her hands, listening to the whoosh of their bodies circling over her head, echoing “Mai, Mai.”

Just then Kien, flashing a silver sword, strode into her dream, yelling, “Leave her alone, evil spirits.” They fled from him, dissolving into the sea, as he sheathed his sword and folded his sturdy arms around Mai, pulling her close.

A warm glow enveloped her when his gentle hands caressed her. She reached up to touch his face but he disappeared, her frantic hands raking through the air.

“Kien, don’t leave me,” she called, but he didn’t answer.

Neither did the others, and after a restless sleep where a large eagle with Small Auntie’s face landed on her head and pulled her eyes out with its talons, she woke in the morning, her body limp. Would no one protect them? She stepped onto the dirt floor of their tent and slipped her feet into her dép before walking outside.

“Did you finish the letter?” she asked Hiep, pouring a cup of water into a pot fashioned from an oil can. She added a handful of dry rice to it and balanced it on a rock over the cooking fire. Hiep pulled a bent envelope from his shorts pocket and showed it to her.

“It’s right here. I’m going to take it down to the Red Cross this morning.”

“Do you think it will do any good?” she asked, stirring the rice with a stick so it wouldn’t burn.

“Maybe. Third Uncle is a very important man.”

Mai thought about what Hiep said. Yes, Third Uncle was a very important man, but she wondered how important he could be in a new country where he didn’t know anyone. In his letter, he hadn’t told them what he was doing. Maybe he was too ashamed. She could picture him overseeing the rice farmers for her father, but in America, in the city, he might be reduced to sweeping the streets, or washing vegetables in the dank cellar of a Chinese restaurant. She hoped he could help them, but what if he couldn’t? Then what would they do?

Mai looked up at Hiep, who was standing by the fire with the letter in his hands staring at her. There was something he wasn’t telling her. “What is it, Uncle Hiep? What’s wrong?”

Hiep cleared his throat, shifting his eyes to see if anyone was listening. A few young women squatted by cooking fires several feet away from them. “I saw Sang’s ghost last night,” he whispered in her ear, cupping his hand to his mouth to keep his words from floating away.

Mai gaped at Hiep, her throat dry, unable to speak. So she had not imagined Sang’s ghost. He was real.

The smell of burnt rice brought Mai out of her stupor and she trembled as she lifted the pot from the fire. “What did he look like?” she asked.

“He had on the ragged shorts he died in, he was fuming, and he called my name. I’m sure it was him.”

“Hiep, mail that letter right away. Talk to the man at the Red Cross tent. Maybe there’s a way we can get off this island and go somewhere else, a place where Sang and Small Auntie can’t find us. What about Pulau Bidong? Isn’t that where Fourth Uncle landed?”

Pulau Bidong was a much larger refugee camp. When it became overcrowded, the escape boats were turned away and sent to the much smaller island, Pulau Tengah, instead. Fourth Uncle and his family had escaped before Mai and Hiep, and they’d been overjoyed to find his name on the list of refugees tacked to the Red Cross bulletin board. But one of the Red Cross workers had told them that Pulau Bidong had over twenty thousand refugees on it and would not be taking any more.

Hiep sighed. “They made it, but that camp is full. I’ll go send this letter. Then I’ll pick up some food. We’ve got to stock up. The monsoons will be here soon, and it will be impossible to get to the middle of the island.”

“Here, drink some water before you go.” Mai offered Hiep a tin can filled with water, but he shook his head. She twisted a strand of stray hair around her finger as Hiep turned to go. What would become of them? She didn’t know if she could bear to wait several years to leave this island, as some of the others had.

She thought of the ones who had given up hope. Suicide. A young man whose pregnant wife and three children had drowned on the journey across the ocean had only lasted a month on the island. Alone and depressed, he had walked into the sea at night, two weeks ago. The tide had returned his bloated body to the beach three days later, where it had lain in a tide pool, its filmy salt-crusted eyes wide open, staring into the morning sun, waiting to be discovered by the first passer-by.

She had not seen his body, but she had heard Lan and the others talking about it one evening when they were sitting around after dinner. “I would never be that depressed.” Lan’s voice had wavered, her words unconvincing.

Mai had heard of suicide from her father. A elderly village official had been accused of stealing tax money, and rather than face Mai’s father, he had taken poison in his tea. Mai’s father had sternly denounced the man and the act of suicide.

“You should not take your fate into your own hands. Chu Phu has brought shame on himself and his family. No one will want to marry into that family now. He has brought a stain on their name.”

Mai remembered these words, but she found it hard to be hopeful, and she understood how easy it would be to give up. Maybe, in some cases, suicide was not as wrong as Father had said, but she could never do anything that would dishonor her family.