Planet Lolita (13 page)

“I was a goat.”

He turned away from us.

“‘Do not fear,’” I said to his back, “‘for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.’”

“Isaiah 43:1,” Father Romesh said. “Well done, Sarah.”

“I like to be called Xixi.”

We agreed that Mom shouldn’t find out we’d been chased from St. Mark’s by air horns. With an hour to kill, Dad and I walked over to the waterfront. He drank beer and sent texts, smiling so often I didn’t bother asking if he was texting Leah. I sipped orange juice and zipzipped the cross along its chain, keeping my music low in case my phone buzzed like his did—or hers, constantly.
To my surprise, neither parent had mentioned “Finding Mary” at breakfast. I checked the page twice for new visitors. The morning wasn’t sunny or warm, first signs that winter was clamping down on Hong Kong, a pot lid of cloud and rain that could stay sealed until late February. Even so, both of us wore sunglasses.

“I wanted to pray for Mr. Clark,” I said.

“Hmm? You still can.”

“I have better luck praying in a pew with Jesus hanging over the altar.”

“How about the Tin Hau?” he said, still not looking up from his phone. The Stanley Tin Hau temple, built ages ago for fishermen, had been renovated when I was a girl. The building sat at the rear of an open plaza facing the sea, near a Starbucks and a McDonald’s.

“I dreamed about Mrs. Ma last night,” I said, amazed by how our minds meshed. “The old woman who looks after the temple. She lives in the Tin Hau, with the gods, and incense sticks, and piles of fruit. Remember Mrs. Ma?”

He shook his head.

“They won’t give Mr. Clark a funeral. They’re keeping him in a jar until SARS is over.”

“A jar?”

“Miriam Tsang posted it.”

His attention strayed when a woman in a short dress paraded her dog along the promenade. A cat perched on the breakwater, and the dog lunged for it. To keep control the woman had to grab the leash with both hands, her leg muscles going taut. Dad watched that too.

“They’re driving us away, kiddo,” he said. “We may soon have no choice.”

“Because of the Triads?”

“No. Or only partially. It’s SARS hysteria that’s making me want to get the hell out of town.”

“Can we stay in Asia?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

After a pause, I said, “What about Mom?”

“She talked her way off the first flight. Had to threaten to quit unless they let her stay. But she still may end up back in Canada, or at law firm HQ in London.”

“She doesn’t care about me, does she?”

He gulped some beer before speaking. “You’re going to break that chain.”

“What?”

“Stop sliding the cross so hard.”

I stopped.

“She adores you, Xixi. I’m the problem.”

“She’s mean.”

“It’s tough for everyone.”

“Face it, Dad—Leah’s a bitch. Rachel has.”

His wince was real, as if from a gut punch.

“And she doesn’t understand anything. You said it yourself—she doesn’t get this place. And she doesn’t get me and Mary either. She keeps calling her a prostitute!”

“And when exactly did I say that?”

“What?”

“That she didn’t understand Asia. When did I say that to your mother? I don’t remember you being in the room—or on the balcony, to be exact—during the conversation.”

I decided to check “Finding Mary” one more time. A seventeen-second video had just been posted by Jonathan Rhys-Jones, one of the few boys I had accepted as a friend. Jonathan, a nerd teen with gorgeous eyelashes but dental needs, posted the file in the comments
with the caption
Is this her?
He shot the video last night. The footage, jumpy and rain-streaked and made stalker-creepy by of his heavy breathing, trailed a young woman in a T-shirt and leather skirt for a block, until she noticed, or maybe heard him panting behind her. Going by her height, hair, and leggy legs she could be Mary. When she turned to scold Jonathan for being a pervert, her face was definitely familiar, even in a nighttime Hong Kong street blazing with neon. But she could also be Nicole Jardin dolled up for a dance at the Yacht Club, or Suzie Wu high-heeling it to Lan Kwai Fong. She could be me too, I supposed, on a stupid dare or becoming Mary for a while—as I’d offered.

“What are you looking at?” Dad said.

“Nothing.”

“She wanted to confiscate it, you know. The phone, and the laptop. Your mom said we couldn’t trust you any longer. I said we could. I said you’d been frightened into thinking clearly. I was right, wasn’t it?”

“Sure, Dad.”

“I’m trying to be patient, Xixi, trying to be a good guy.”

“You’re a great guy. You’re Cool Kwok!”

He didn’t smile, although I thought he might. “So you won’t make me look a fool for standing up for you?”

I considered lying again. But then I found a middle truth that kept my expression from betraying me. “Facebook is all I have left for friends. Facebook, and Gloria. But I won’t try contacting Mary on the computer or phone, okay? I won’t.” Later I’d have to thank bucktoothed Jonathan Rhys-Jones for the plan. So long as he didn’t expect us to become girlfriend-boyfriend.

Dad studied my face for almost as long as he had studied the porn photo of Mary. “Go pray for Mr. Clark in the temple. I have to make some calls.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

“Be back in twenty minutes.”

I strutted down the sidewalk, angry as a model forced to wear a canary mask and flaunt her pork buns.

Standing guard out front of the Tin Hau were the twin stone Shih Tzu, ancestors of meek Manga. Carved into the red doors were the temple bodyguards, fierce men with black beards, blue robes, and sabres at the ready. Inside was a tiger skin spread over a wall and rows of statues fronted by pots stuffed with smoking incense sticks and pyramids of oranges and apples, bananas and persimmons, along with flowers gifted by worshippers hoping for a favour in return. Also to be found in the partially roofed outer chamber, usually in a side room, was Mrs. Ma, older than the tiger and bent into a permanent question mark, whether or not she was sweeping the floor with her broom.

I hadn’t been lying about the dream. In it, Mrs. Ma sat on her tiny stool peeling a mango and feeding me slices. I ate several, careful to slip them off the blade, the juice trickling down my chin. In the outer chamber this morning, movie-set bright despite the sky, a maskless Mrs. Ma greeted me by name.
“Kwok Xixi, nay ho
,
”
she said, even though I hadn’t been by in a year and didn’t look much like the half-half girl who used to hang out here, more interested in the cats than the gods. Stranger still, she waved me to her corner and, having extended a bowl of hard candies, also mango, proceeded to say that, contrary to what most people believed, the temple wasn’t devoted to Guanyin.

“Only a single statue of her,” she said, indicating the hall to the main chamber.

I’d Googled Guanyin after Rachel got a tattoo of her, and read about Tin Hau. Other statues, Mrs. Ma said, were of sea captains and army generals, popular opera singers from history. But the
majority were devoted, like to the temple itself, to Mazu, or Tin Hau in English. She was the protector of sailors and fishermen forced to challenge the sea.

“Everyone knows the story of Mazu,” Mrs. Ma explained. “She was just fifteen, your age, when she rescued her fisherman father and three of her brothers who’d been caught in a storm. After that, Mazu waited by the shore each afternoon, her red garments guiding boats to safety. Sadly, being only a regular girl, with regular limitations and problems, she wasn’t exempted herself. When about a year later her silly fool father insisted on going fishing one dark, angry morning, and needed to be saved again, Mazu swam out, ignoring the dangers. She drowned. He survived.”

“That lady isn’t Guanyin?” I said, sucking on a candy.

“Mazu was her reincarnation. Lots of brave girls are.”

“I’m sorry she died so young.”

“You’re a brave girl,” Mrs. Ma said.

Something occurred to me about our conversation. “How come I understand everything you’re saying? And how come you’re not wearing a SARS mask?”

I was thinking about all this—Mazu’s death at sixteen, mango candies versus mango slices, how Mrs. Ma looked like the less-evil spirit sister in
Spirited Away
—when my phone beeped.

Dad:
You lost? It’s been an hour

An hour? I decided to ask Mrs. Ma the time. But she wasn’t on her stool by the door any longer. I barely made her out in the gloomy side room, lying on a daybed with her eyes closed and the rest of her face behind N-95 gauze.

“Were we really talking for that long?” I said to her. My Cantonese didn’t come out so fluently now.

She opened her eyes. “Can I help you?” she said, as though she didn’t know who I was.

“My parents love me,” I answered. “They’re just super busy.”

My phone beeped again.

Dad:
Kiddo? You’re scaring me now

Me:
You and Mom are super busy, right?

Dad:
??

Me:
Aren’t we late for Mass?

Dad:
Mini-Me uninvited us. Don’t you remember?

Me:
I took my medicine this morning

Dad:
Are you still at the Tin Hau? Don’t move

Back outside I stopped in surprise at the livid ocean sky beyond the breakwater and the droplets streaking the Shih Tzu directly in front. Between stone dogs and wooden bodyguards, I felt protected from Triad kidnappers who might be angry that, at last check, “Finding Mary” had 7,842 “Likes” and 2,801 “Talking about this.” But I didn’t feel protected from the rain, now slanting across the plaza in sheets that could have been thin sails, strong enough to pull a temple out to sea, with no hope of return.

Mazu was brave, wading into the ocean to save her foolish dad. Mr. Clark was brave, hugging all those schoolchildren every morning, until he ended up dead in a jar. Rachel was brave enough to sleep naked with a smelly guy and let someone drill ink holes into her arm. Cool Kwok was brave, standing up to Lawyer Leah by refusing to wear a SARS mask or flee the infected port of Hong Kong. Gloria was the most courageous person ever, fighting her loneliness, her sadness at being so far from Batangas City and all-day Tagalog, and lately her despair—an adult word, “despair,” one I heard her using on the phone—at her oldest son’s foul mouth and knock-off gangster fashion, his pornified teen lust. And Mary, Tai Long Wan, wasn’t it brave
of her to try communicating with me, regardless of how many real gangsters were threatening her behind the camera? To be a good person you had to mind and esteem and call people by their proper names. But you also had to carry on even when you were need-to-pee afraid, and less than certain you were doing the right thing. Be brave, Xixi Kwok. Be brave or be a goat.

“It’s my fault,” I said to Gloria four crampy, goat-grey days later. “I have to do something.” We sat on the balcony, the sliding door closed, as though we needed privacy from snoops. We didn’t—Jacob and Leah were rarely home, and never at the same time—but Gloria felt more at ease talking out here, despite the cool air and the honking, hammering, and mechanical squeaking of everyday Hong Kong.

“You bring this girl to Hong Kong and drop her on beach?”

“I let the Net kidnap her,” I replied, although I was now convinced my sister’s boyfriend had stolen and posted the third photo, “and then shared her with 8,751 people. That’s maybe worse.”

“No chance.”

“I want to see her. Not to help her. Just to be sure she’s okay and apologize for the mess I made. I know where she is.”

Gloria gave me a look.

“A boy in my class shot a video with his phone. She’s on Shanghai Road in Mong Kok.” I did text Jonathan Rhys-Jones to ask where he’d taken the footage. He replied in a nanosecond and said we should meet and talk about it. I said sure, possibly next week or the week after, but could I have the information right now? He replied that he’d be back in Manchester by the weekend—all his family were leaving for an extended holiday from SARS—but gave it up anyway.

“Xixi, no chance.”

“I saw her face clearly, Gloria. It was the same girl. We’ll find her in the street, and I’ll say sorry and ask her to forgive me. We won’t go into any dangerous places.” I paused before adding what I knew she couldn’t resist. “Shouldn’t I seek her forgiveness? Isn’t that the only way I’ll be able to wash away my sin?”

Gloria, my Asian mom, the sweetest, purest person on the planet, blinked twice, her eyes softening. We were both Catholic, after all, forever apologizing for our sins and being forgiven, and then recommitting them. I bet she secretly wanted her oldest son to say he was sorry, so she could forgive him on the spot and resume loving him. I bet she was also hoping that my parents would apologize for threatening to fire her. That wasn’t going to happen, and I much preferred her to stay mad at Jacob and Leah, and take her revenge by helping me out.

Two grey days earlier, Gloria had finally asked the parentals the big favour she needed—an extra two weeks off at Christmas to spend with her boys in Batangas City. Despite not wanting her to go, I coached her on the wording, guessing it would be a tough sell, especially since she refused to provide details. “Too much shame,” she had said, also very Catholic. We’d settled together on an “urgent family matter” and a “private emergency.” She had wanted to speak with Dad first, alone, but after waiting forty-eight hours for him to be in the apartment when any of us were awake, she approached Mom. She did so as Leah was stepping in the door from another long day of dealing with the infected port of Hong Kong. Their conversation was brief. “Leave us during this crisis,” Mom had said, “and don’t bother returning.” Dad, naturally, had been kinder. “The situation here should be resolved soon enough,” he told Gloria later that evening. “Can you wait until then?”

“Neither of them will be back before midnight,” I said now. “Mom has another dinner with Singapore lawyers and Dad is in it for fun at Sticky Fingers. We can do this and be home by nine. They’ll never know.”

I saw it in her sad gaze—she was ready to agree. “If they find out …,” she said.