SEVEN

 

 

Kowloon Docks, Hong Kong

Republic of China

Five Weeks Earlier

 

 

The stone-faced city man who'd spoken with my father already had two other girls with him when we set out from my village. He would not tell us where or how far we were going. He would not let us talk. He gave us very little to eat. Except for one time when we found an empty barn, we slept under the open sky close to the road. At night, I could sometimes see the seven stars of the Northern Dipper and I would silently pray to the Queen of Heaven to protect the health of my family. I did not sleep well because I was always worried that my mouse, Snow, would climb out of my tunic while I was asleep and run away.

It took us eight days—stopping in other villages and gathering five more girls as we made our way down the river valley, past many other flood-ruined farms—before we arrived at the busy docks of Kowloon, our bellies empty, our feet swollen and sore. Kowloon was a strange and frightening place. So many people. The largest buildings I had ever seen, squeezed together, so tall they blocked out much of the sky. Buildings with glass windows. Rickshaws, carts, and even loud, smokey motorcars. And everywhere, lights that burned inside of glass balls that held no candle or oil.

On the docks, stacks of crates, barrels, coal, and timber were jammed into every corner. Constant shouting and angry faces and chaos and whistles and horns and smells of cooking and coal smoke and hot tar and garbage. Even the water below the wharf smelled bad. It was nothing like the water of the river that flowed past my village. It stank of rotting fish and brine and sewage. And there were foreigners. Tall, sweating foreigners with strange clothes and deformed eyes and colorless skin. They never looked at us. It was as if we were passing through a realm of ghosts that did not recognize the living. Scared, the girls and I held hands, tight, and tried to keep our eyes on the ground.

The stone-faced city man handed us off to another man who led us to a small storage building across from the wharf. This new man had dead eyes and a loud voice. He shouted at us in some strange dialect, all but chasing us into a hot, dark storage room which he then locked. When he left us alone, one of the girls said she thought he was Hakka people, and that all Hakka want to kill all Cantonese. That made me even more afraid. I squatted in a corner and reached into my tunic to feel Snow—her warmth, her soft fur. I wondered if she was as scared as I was.

We were given no food or water all day, and had to piss and shit in a waste barrel in the corner that had not been emptied for a long time. The stench made my eyes water. It filled the whole room. I could not get away from it. I could hardly breathe.

At last, the Hakka man and two helpers came and opened the door. It was night. They had lanterns and a jug of stale water that we took turns drinking from. They took our sacks of personal belongings and piled them by the door. I hoped that meant we were leaving this terrible, stinking room. But then they had us line up against the wall and searched us all over with their dirty, groping hands, taking rings, necklaces, hair combs, and even the shoes of those of us who had them. Luckily, the man who searched me didn't find Snow or my grandmother's wooden comb hidden in the inner pocket of my tunic. For a moment, I was relieved. But then one girl asked the men what they were doing with our things, and the boss Hakka man slapped her across the face so hard that she fell to her knees, then rolled onto her side like a baby and wept.

They took our things and left.

 

*****

We did not see the Hakka men again until the next morning when they opened the door and rushed us outside. The sunlight was blinding after our night in the dark storage room, and I tripped and fell in the doorway. But I quickly jumped back to my feet, worried that if the men saw they might beat me for my clumsiness.

They ran us down the street to a long dock where the biggest boat I had ever seen was tied up. It was probably longer than five large river boats lined up end-to-end. Far too big to push or row. But it had no sail either. Just a tall chimney with thin black smoke coming out of it where I thought the sail should be. It had a strange flag, unreadable markings, and a sort of tall house on one end with big glass windows. And it was made of metal, not wood. Grimy, rusty metal. I could not understand why it did not sink.

The Hakka men rushed us up a ramp and onto the boat where two other men in communist tunics led us toward an open doorway on the far side of the deck. On the deck itself were stacks of lumber, rows of wood barrels, and cases of glass bottles with strange symbols on their labels. The men led us below, down many stairs, into the lower parts of the great boat. We followed them through a room full of machines and tools to a large cabinet they slid sideways to reveal a hidden hole cut through the metal wall which they pushed us through one by one. On the other side of it was a small, dark room with curving, rusty, water-stained metal walls, another waste barrel lashed to a post, an open water barrel, and a stack of threadbare blankets. Several wooden casks were lined up against one of the walls and tied down with netting. The air felt close and damp, and continuous trickles of seawater ran down the curving wall in stained and uneven lines before pooling on the floor and eventually disappearing through a small drain in the opposite corner. The men in the communist tunics spoke a dialect I did not understand, but they made angry-looking gestures that I thought meant we were not to touch the wooden casks. Then they slid the heavy cabinet back into place to cover the hole we'd crawled through, leaving us in total darkness.