CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

May Ling could tell that something had changed. She could feel it.

For days on end, the cargo vessel had pushed through rough seas—the deck vibrating beneath her as the bow plowed through yet another enormous swell—contributing the odor of seasickness to the ever present stench of unwashed bodies and excrement. The pirates no longer checked on them, had not done so for four days now by May Ling’s reckoning, disgusted enough by the condition of their charges that they no longer desired to be serviced by either May Ling or Siu.

But the ship had begun moving slowly now, pitching heavily as the rhythmic throb of the engines wound down, and hurling sacks of rice and waste buckets across the floor of the padlocked container, soaking them all in filth and spoiling much of what remained of their dwindling food supply.

May Ling peered through the dimness at Siu and tried to catch her eye. But Siu had disappeared, had not been the same ever since that night along the river. The condition of Siu’s husband, Jiang, had grown increasingly worse, until, only three days into the voyage, he was gone. His body had been stacked on top of the others of the dead, piled like rotting logs in a corner of the container. Siu had clutched and scraped, held fast to his body with all her strength as the remaining immigrants pried his corpse from her arms. Her young son, Djhou, watched in silence, without understanding, from the nest he had made in May Ling’s lap.

It seemed to May Ling that Siu’s wailing still echoed inside that small space, perhaps the last of what had been left of Siu’s humanity, perhaps all that was left of her at all. She lay in the corner, unmoving, not eating, not even attempting to reach out to young Djhou anymore.

The familiar noises of the vessel fell away into silence, a silence so complete that May Ling could no longer feel the vibration that turned the propellers far below. The din and palpitation of the engines had gone dead.

She ran her fingers through the lank and oily tufts of Djhou’s hair, felt the tiny scabs and bumps that had started to appear on his scalp. He stirred slightly and she felt him look up at her, sunken yellow eyes in a face gone slack from malnutrition. She brushed her hand along his cheek, and nestled him back against her bosom. He wriggled slightly and settled there, sighed and closed his eyes as May Ling began to sing softly to him, began to sing the song she had come to think of as theirs alone. She felt him as he drifted into sleep, grateful he could not feel her as she wept.