CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It was the time of day that May Ling had learned to dread most.

The pinpricks of light that shone through the tiny holes that years of rain and sun and neglect had eaten through the metal corrugation of the ceiling—would crawl ever so slowly across the floor with the changing angle of the sun, and ultimately disappear into darkness. This was the time when whatever semblance of order that existed among the soldiers eroded into anarchy. These were the terrible hours.

She had learned the names of the young family on that very first night, whispering to one another in the dark, fighting off the damp chill and the constant lurking terror. The father, a man she guessed to be about thirty, was called Jiang, and came from a village not far from Beijing. Together with his wife, Siu, and Djhou, their six-year-old son, Jiang had bribed petty officials, and endured hardships he would not have been able to imagine before, just for the chance to get to this place, and the prospect of transport to America. The smugglers’ fees had been exorbitant, but Jiang had been promised they would be worked off, a little at a time, once they arrived at the Golden Mountain. He and Siu had communicated in hushed whispers for months, late into the night. The risk was enormous, and discovery—let alone capture—meant death for them all. Even the boy, Djhou. Ultimately, the choice became obvious, and the gamble had to be made. Anything was better than the future they faced in China. Jiang had been politically outspoken one time too often.

But the blind hope that had provided them the strength to get this far was draining away. May Ling could practically feel the despair that emanated from them all. Jiang fell in and out of consciousness. His eyes no longer focused properly and he slept almost constantly.

Now, as May Ling looked over at him, lying motionless on the concrete floor, she knew he wouldn’t live out the day. Maybe with proper medical attention, but certainly not here. Not like this.

But that was far from the worst of it. May Ling was also aware that the guards had their eyes on the boy.

She looked on as Siu gently cradled her husband and envied the natural beauty of their affection. Though she judged that Siu was at least five years older than she, May Ling knew that whatever softness or comeliness she herself might have ever possessed had long since been abraded by the hard use she had suffered at the hands of Joey Soong. She was under no illusions as to what she had become.

May Ling had seen so many other girls come and go during her confinement in Hong Kong. Most of them had either been misused so badly that they died of their mistreatment, or contracted some vile disease that slowly, inexorably claimed their lives. Those that hadn’t perished had been sold off and never heard from again. This, May Ling knew, is what had now happened to her. She had grown too old, too hard, and probably too unattractive, and she, too, had been sold. To whom, she didn’t know, and it really didn’t even matter.

But the boy, Djhou, needed her. He needed her strength, and if there was one thing May Ling had accumulated in her life, it was strength. He had reached out for May Ling in the aftermath of his father’s injury. She could feel his fear through the tiny fingers that grasped onto her in the night, when the soldiers outside grew intoxicated and unruly. It felt good to be needed; it was a feeling she’d never truly known, and Djhou’s mother was grateful for any help May Ling could provide.

Over the past three days the original band of refugees had been joined by a number of others. They had come in small groups of three to five, until the shed to which they were all restricted now housed two dozen or more. Mainly, the others were men, of an age similar to Jiang’s. The old couple who had been so savagely murdered that first day were an oddity, and the few women remaining were either wives or sisters of fellow refugees, as was the case with Siu, or they were the wives of men who had gone before. Djhou was the only child—among them.

Now, as dusk faded to night, she studied the features on pathetic faces that slumped against the walls of the warehouse or wandered, stoop-shouldered, in aimless circles. The stink of their collective bodies, and the uncovered hole in the floor that served as their toilet, suffused the air with a gauzy haze that, together with the mist that floated in off the river, hung inside that space like a rank and fetid dream.

A metal door at the far end of the building opened with the squeal of rusted hinges, and woke any who had been fortunate enough to doze off. The flicker of a bonfire along the bank of the river framed the silhouettes of the same two thugs—May Ling refused to believe they could be legitimate soldiers—who had brutalized the old couple. Each carried a lantern fueled by kerosene, trailing a swath of heavy smoke, as they meandered through the enclosure.

Their eyes passed across May Ling’s face, registered something that resembled contempt, but something else, too, before their attention focused on Siu. Jiang’s head was nestled in Siu’s lap as she ignored their leering stares, stroking her husband’s blood-encrusted hair. A knowing look passed between the two men that left little doubt as to their intentions.

“Come,” one said as he wagged his fingers at her, as one would to call a dog.

When Siu refused to look up from the face of her unconscious husband, the other arched back and planted a kick to Siu’s foot.

“Come along.”

May Ling willed Siu her strength, and pulled Djhou close as she watched the scene unfold. She knew well that to speak was to consign all three of them to a thrashing.

“I have my husband to care for,” Siu said. There was curiously little fear in the tone of her voice.

The two men appeared surprised at first, but reverted to that same ugly expression they wore when they first stepped through the door. Their eyes were edgy and restless, limned in pink and wet with an alcohol shine.

“Then we’ll take the boy,” the guard said simply.

May Ling had no time to prepare herself for the sting of the sharp slap that stung her face, and echoed in the stillness of the room. Yellow lamplight reflected inside the expectant, cowardly eyes of the other refugees, and she knew they wanted nothing more than for this to be ended, for someone to surrender and give the overseers what they wanted.

With a kind of dignity that caught May Ling by surprise, Siu gently moved her husband’s head from her lap and stood. Jiang lay immobile on the concrete, mercifully oblivious to his wife’s willing sacrifice. Beside her, May Ling felt Djhou’s fingers dig more deeply into her flesh.

The two guards shared a predatory smile, each holding fast to one of Siu’s arms, and turned toward the door. She marched out between them without a backward glance. Their lanterns drew shadow patterns along the far wall as they departed, all eyes fixed to the floor but for May Ling’s and Djhou’s. May Ling could not decide who she hated more in that moment: these pirates that held them captive or the cowards who sat in their own filth and did nothing at all.

As the metal door slammed shut, May Ling began to sing, softly at first, only for Djhou—her eyes passing between the boy and his father who lay beside them unaware—then louder so that she might drown out the unbearable noises that began to drift in from outside.