Authors: Charles Foran
“Hello?” I said. “Anyone there?”
I heard muffled voices within the microphone range and, further away, a door slamming. But no one appeared. Only the flapping of the cardboard baby, caused by an off-camera fan, made clear that what I was watching was here and now, live in Hong Kong.
“Miriam, is that you?” I said, though Miriam Tsang’s address contained her name. “Ellen?”
Weird. Manga, who agreed, sat up.
The voices kept murmuring. I couldn’t make out the language, or any of the words.
“Are you looking for Gloria Bella?” I said, deciding that the nearest I’d been to a room like this was back in Stanley when I’d tag along with Gloria on her visits to amah friends. But those cells had flower-patterned coverlets and frilly pillowslips, side tables crowded with family photos and Tagalog romances, jars of yam jam and jackfruit. Plus a worn Bible and coiled rosary, a dangling Jesus over the bed.
“Hello?”
The chair held my gaze. Hanging off the arm was a pair of girl’s
underpants. Pressing my nose to the screen, I realized it wasn’t panties. It was a SARS mask.
Feeling queasy, and not from cramps, I said “Bye-bye” and touched
End Time.
Sketchy.
Me:
Did you FaceTime me?
Rachel:
When?
Me:
About 40 minutes ago
Rachel:
I was otherwise occupied
Me:
Sleeping?
Rachel:
Giving head tax
Me:
Gross
Rachel:
You’re no longer such a baby, Baby Kwok. And I’m kidding. I was in class, Intro to Boring 100
Me:
Can a stranger call FaceTime?
Rachel:
They’re not supposed to be able. But you know how it goes on the wild web
Me:
Do you remember any helpers in Stanley who loved pandas?
Rachel:
??
Me:
Gloria’s friends. She visited them. I went with her
Rachel:
I didn’t. But then, she never fed me kare-kare and trained me to watch bad Filipino soaps on our old DVD player. She never tried making me Catholic
Me:
Dad made sure I was Catholic. He said so
Rachel:
Mr. Break-Most-of-the-Commandments? Great advertisement for becoming a Jesus freak
Rachel:
??
Me:
Do you still have your Hello Kitty PJs?
Rachel:
The cheap ones he bought us in Korea? I wore those once, for that horrible photo, and then tossed them
Me:
I have the photo in my computer. I’ll post it
Rachel:
You will not
Me:
Next to Mary
Rachel:
Who should NOT still be on Facebook! Why won’t you listen to me?
Me:
There are 4,511 “Likes” and 1,093 “Talking about this” today. It’s pretty popular
Rachel:
Anyone message you?
Me:
Lucy Lau thought she saw her at Pacific Place and Lindsay Choi said a girl like her was standing at the railing on the Star Ferry. She took a photo with her phone. Other people messaged stupid things
Rachel:
Such as?
Me:
Just stupid. You can check for yourself
Rachel:
What about the photo from Lindsay?
Me:
That girl was short and slouchy and maybe 25
Rachel:
You aren’t accepting new friend requests, are you?
Me:
A lot more people than usual are asking
Rachel:
Say not a chance. Say piss off!
Me:
What if I know them?
Rachel:
You might only think you do. And you HAVE to contain this. Not just because of the shitstorm that happens if the parentals find out
Me:
I have a question
Rachel:
The answer is YES—take down the page! Forget about this Mary person, whoever she is
Me:
Am I fuckable yet?
Rachel:
??
Me:
Lots of girls my age are. Men want them, and don’t mind if they’re still kids
Rachel:
Lordy … You’re not bleeding again, are you? Too soon after your first
Me:
No. Why?
Rachel:
Some girls lose it when they menstruate. You don’t want to be one of those sad bitches
Me:
I am, I think—almost. Fuckable. I must be
Me:
??
Rachel:
I have another class to get to—Even More Boring 200
Me:
I wish I had a boring class to get to
Rachel:
I wish you did too. Keep you off Facebook. I don’t like where this is going, SeeSaw
Me:
Mom says I’m a virtual prisoner in this apartment
Rachel:
I’d bust you out, if I was there, being a goddess and all
Me:
Is your arm still bruised?
Rachel:
The skin healed. Guanyin is me now, part of my body. Like you with the petit E
Me:
My epilepsy is a tattoo?
Rachel:
Kind of. But I have to run. Sorry
Me:
Run
To convince Gloria to let me spy on Leah, I had to beg and bribe—lunch in a Pinoy restaurant in Wan Chai, where adobo stews and cassava cakes tasted like home—and promise not to fashion-slam the disguise she wore to the Landmark Building. She actually believed the outfit would keep people who weren’t legally blind from recognizing her. Running shoes instead of flip-flops, saggy-bottom jeans and a nylon jacket zipped to the collar, the Jackie O sunglasses she found in a drawer in Rachel’s old room, and a baseball cap with
JESUS TALKS PILIPINO
across its brim—would any of this stop her from looking and sounding like Gloria Bella?
Though I hated to admit it, the SARS mask worked best, hiding six of the twelve beauty marks in Excelsis-Major, one of two constellations that lit her face, day or night. The three exposed marks climbed her left ear.
“Jesus does not like lies telling, girl,” she said from the second-floor railing.
“Did he say so in ‘Pilipino’?”
“You bring me here to spy on your mother?”
“We’re shopping.”
“In Landmark Building, where she work?”
“I’m a junior
tai tai
with no school to attend and parentals stumbling around in a
gweilo
fog. I’m supposed to hang here all day, or in Pacific Place, making shopping porn with brand guys named Dior, Hermès, and Vuitton. Or Shanghai Tang in Duddell Street. They sell eight-thousand-dollar cheongsams that only look good on starving Chinese ladies or hipless teens. And,” I said, “you’re basically a sock puppet in that mask.”
“Don’t talk so much like Rachel.”
“Or maybe Rachel shouldn’t talk so much like me?” In my mind, I separated us out. “
Gweilo
fog” and “shopping porn” belonged to my sister. But the price of the cheongsam, the starving Chinese ladies, and “sock puppet” were my own.
“You and her are different.”
“I’m just bored. Chairgirl of the bored. Whoops,” I said, “that’s Rach, for sure.”
She gave me the scold look, minus the usual laughter in her eyes.
“Aren’t you weirded out by what’s going on? I don’t remember hearing about this stuff happening during the last crisis. It’s like one of those movies set in the messed-up future. Look down there! Will Smith should come shooting up from the fountain and save humanity.”
Will Smith could come shooting up from the fountain below, but he wouldn’t find much humanity, or even many purse dogs, to save. If every day was a good shopping day in Hong Kong, then today was no-day, nothing, the
shush shush
of splashing water, normally lost to voices and phones and high heels clacking over marble, so loud I could have been lying in the bathtub on Old Peak Road wiggling my toes. In the café perched on the platform between us and the ground level, a place normally packed with dragon ladies sipping oolong tea and not touching their towers of cakes and finger sandwiches, one table was occupied. Seated there was a senior
tai tai
, lacquered in global brands, her chubby daughter, texting on her phone, and a young helper, Indonesian by her teak skin, poking a finger into a glass of ice water. On the helper’s face was the same kill-me-now boredom worn by the women drooping over counters inside the Dior, Hermès, and Prada shops located on all three shopping floors. When the Indonesian spotted us standing at the railing above her, I smiled and gave her the wave. She cocked her head, unsure why someone like me, travelling with her brown helper, would make friendly with someone like her. But she returned it, careful to keep her hand below the table.
Helpers,
tai tais
, store employees, and café hostesses all wore particle masks, N-95, naturally good for slimming.
“It’s dead in here,” I said.
“Then why do we stay?”
“I like the view.”
“You think Leah not recognize her own child because she wears beach hat and silly glasses?”
“You ‘tink’ she not recognize her own amah in same outfit, more or less? But the mask is clever.”
“SeeSee, please.”
“I wanted to do this with a friend. You know I did. Only there’s no one left. Or no one who’s allowed to go near the SARS Leper Child.”
Dad had been right to tell Mom that most of my friends had gone missing because of the
epi-dem-hick.
I’d texted Chelsey Chung this morning to be my co-spy—ages ago we played Harriet the Spy together in Stanley Market, trailing old ladies who kicked cats and men who butted tumours in flower beds—but she said she was flying to Los Angeles tonight, before the border closed. Me:
What border?
Chelsey:
Got 2 go. Dad freaking!
I guilted her into calling, and she explained that her father had bought three first-class tickets, the only seats left on the flight, and was yelling at her to pack for the Christmas holidays in California. “I’ll miss you,” I said, realizing it would be next year before we saw each other again. “I’ll miss my life,” Chelsey said.
With Miriam Tsang, our FaceTime gave me cramps, though it wasn’t that time of the month yet. “Is your Dad super religious or something?” she asked. Her family had forbidden her direct contact with the Kwoks, on account of our refusal to wear SARS protection. “The masks aren’t condoms, Miriam,” I answered. “They can’t stop you from making a baby, even if you don’t want to, or were forced.” Aware of how strange that sounded, I said, “He has values.” But Miriam kept talking. “They figure maybe you’ve got the virus now,” she said. That’s when I called her parents stupid and pressed
End Call
before she could see me crying onscreen. A minute later she sent a text. Miriam:
I know you don’t have SARS … Do U?
To Miriam Tsang, my best friend since we did sleepovers in Stanley, I had made no reply.
“Anyway,” I said to Gloria, “you have to be here. The parentals have promoted you to bodyguard. Do you know tae kwon do? Or Thai kickboxing? And there she is,” I added. “With her entourage of men who get the goddamn job done.”
Gloria withdrew from the railing as if from a crumbling cliff edge. I leaned over it, my upper torso in mid-air, wanting to shout,
Hey Mom, you’re wearing a SARS condom!
Because she was, the powder-blue particle mask from the bottom of her Fendi bag. Leah’s protection blended nicely with her creamy silk scarf and tight black dress, the semi-nasty boots that drove men at the office crazy. Plague fashion obliged that the three male lawyers sport white masks, to offset their dark suits. Two formed a vanguard while a third walked alongside her, their arms brushing. He was the hue of honey off a spoon. They were so into each other that I could have executed a triple Axel from the railing, the index case suicide of the new SARS crisis, and not been noticed.
“You didn’t know?” I said to Gloria’s shock. “She never goes anywhere without it.”
“She’ll see us.”
“No, she won’t. She’s all eyes and ears for tiffin man.”
Sanjay Seran had the same build as Jacob Kwok, and similar looks and grooming. But his mouth turned down when he smiled, as if he’d swallowed a sea slug, and his nose ended with a point, witchy on a guy. His shoes probably cost twice what Gloria Bella earned each month, and his suit twice that again. He and his wife, Maya, had been to our apartment for dinner, and his boys, Vijay and Amitav, were on the swim team at the club.
As well, he had no cool. Was a honey-hued dork.
“Mr. Seran,” Gloria said.
“He wants to lick her tears.”
She recoiled even further from the cliff. I glanced over at the Indonesian helper in the café, who was watching us, her finger still in her water glass.
Grown-ups
, I said to her, using a shrug,
what can you do?
“No worries,” I said to Gloria as they passed beneath us. “They’re busy planning exit strategies.”
“We can go home now?”
Yes, please
, I thought to myself, because being this kind of daughter kept my tummy knotted. But then an image brought actual bile into my throat. Might Jacob Kwok also be secretly protecting himself against airborne diseases with a SARS mask? Leaving exactly one member of the Kwok-MacInnes family vulnerable, if not already infected. The girl too spacey and mal-brained to get it when adults were keeping things from her.
“Yummy Pinoy food,” I said. “Remember?”
For the first time ever, there was no queue at the taxi stand on Pedder Street. We walked to the top cab and opened the door. But the driver, staring at my maskless face, waved us away, saying “no business” in Cantonese.
I slid in first. “251 Jaffe Road,
m’goy
,” I said.
When he scowled into the rear-view mirror, I fired him my best Lawyer Leah glare.
“
Gao cho ah!
” he complained.
You got to be kidding me!
in English, more or less.
“
Gao cho ah
yourself.”
“Your father?” Gloria said. “You want to check him too?”
I concentrated on sending a text.
Me:
Anything weird going on?
Mom:
Just another day of chaos and collapse. Why?
Me:
Are Vijay and Amitav still in Hong Kong?
Mom:
Sanjay Seran’s boys? Why do you ask?
Me:
What exactly IS tiffin?
Me:
??
Mom:
I shouldn’t be back that late
Me:
Whatever
The ride from Central to Wan Chai took six minutes, the streets near-deserted on a Thursday afternoon. I paid, two twenty-dollar
bills for a twenty-four-dollar fare, and told the driver to keep the change. He came around the side of the car with a spray bottle and rag, wiping the back seat while we stood on the sidewalk.