The Black Isle (3 page)

Mother was in the midst of writing a letter, but we were merciless in our demands. Exhausted by Li’s doleful pantomime of gazing out the window and my extravagant sighs, she finally relented.

She called in Sister Kwan. “Take them straight to the park and only the park. At no time should you ever let go of their hands. And keep them out of the sun!”

 As Sister Kwan nodded, I saw the tears well up in her beady Cantonese eyes. She was so easily intimidated, the poor girl. I wanted to tell her that Mother was all bark and no bite but felt it wasn’t my place; it seemed disloyal to side with the help. The other amah, Sister Choon, older and grimmer, was to remain home and watch the twins. I still remember the scowl on her face as she locked the front door behind us.

As we walked, I asked Li, “But why the park?”

“I wanted to test Mother.”

“Why?”

“To see if she really loves me.”

“Does she?”

He gave me a look I couldn’t decipher.

Like many green spaces in Frenchtown, the
Paradis des Enfants
was immaculately manicured and easy on the eye. The only difference was that everything in it was scaled for tots, and to a perverse degree: All the shrubs were within crawlers’ reach, all the flowers short enough for the tiniest petal-sniffing
enfant
. The Parisian-style gas lamps came up only to Sister Kwan’s chin, and the benches similarly favored the wee. Nothing loomed too tall, not even the trees—those that grew higher than six feet had their heads lopped off. The whole place was safe, sedate, a mini Versailles ready to receive the woozy tumbles of wobbly footed babes.

The two brief times we’d been taken to the
Paradis
, we always eyed the European youngsters of our district skipping along in their starched sailor suits, licking ices and lollipops while amahs of all ages skittered after them, pleading with them in pidgin to
no runnee
. Today was no exception. The pampered little devils were out in force, terrorizing pigeons with high-pitched roars and tucking sweet wrappers into the mulberry bush.

I observed Li watching them. In the center of the park stood a circular rose garden enclosed behind a formidable fence that barred “All Chinese and Dogs.” Even though Sister Kwan had explained that this was for
our
safety—“Those red roses are fed on the blood of Chinese children!”—Li’s jealousy was evident. He stalked and stared. I felt envy for the foreigners, too, but mine was different. Many of the children were roaming unsupervised, and it made me realize that never in my seven years of life had I walked, let alone run, in any public place without some zealous grownup holding on to my hand until it was slick with sweat, as if I would suddenly disappear the instant they let go. This, I felt, rather than size and complexion, was the crucial divider between the Chinese and the Europeans: Their hands were always free.

While the privileged thronged in and out of the rose garden, we stayed on the commons. We made our own fun. Sister Kwan was given to dizzy spells, and we had a fairly good idea of how to trigger one. Li and I ran rings around her like twin engines fastened to her wrists. Very soon, our human carousel had to sit down. She staggered to a spot under a shady Japanese maple and, much to our delight, fell unconscious with a gasp. Li and I were now alone, with a million options open to us. Should we peer into the mulberry bush and count the sweet wrappers? Should we stick leaves in Sister Kwan’s hair? What should a boy freshly seven and his agreeable accomplice do?

Somebody else answered our question. A Chinese man, tanned and slim in the Southern way. He was very old, possibly the oldest person I’d ever seen, with a thousand wrinkles, a long white beard, and a black wool cape—this, at the height of summer. He had a cinnabar walking cane that he didn’t seem to need because he walked well—too well, I thought, for a man his age. On his cane were intricate carvings of hundreds of couples, all intertwined in some communal embrace that stretched from its foot right up to its handle, all in the throes of some sort of wretched ecstasy. I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing.

A polished gold watch attached to a chain fell from the old man’s waistcoat when he bowed to shake our grimy hands. Li lit up as soon as he saw it.

“Greetings, my little friends,” the man said. He had a marvelous accent, speaking what I thought was very mandarin Mandarin, untainted by the singsong cadences of the Shanghai dialect. “I was wondering if I could ask you for a favor.”

Without waiting for an answer, he began walking. I tapped Li on the arm and we looked back at Sister Kwan—still unconscious under the tree. We now followed our new leader, who walked at an unnaturally keen pace. We had to take three or four steps for every one of his. When he led us beyond the places we knew, past the rose garden and past even the hedge maze where only forbidden lovers went, I grabbed Li’s hand.

All of a sudden, the man stopped in his tracks. He turned and looked directly at me. “Do not be afraid.” It was an order, not friendly reassurance. “How will you ever discover new things if you’re always fearful? Fear is our greatest enemy.”

Li shook my hand off and glowered at me. “He’s right, you know.” Turning seven seemed to have given him the illusion of awesome power. Normally I would have kicked him in the shins to remind him I was still his older sister, but we were in unfamiliar waters. We were following a strange man. And this strange man was leading us deeper and deeper into the unknown. I now hoped that Sister Kwan would wake up and come charging after us.

We came to a small, dark, windowless hut, perhaps a gardener’s shed, on the far edge of the park. I could tell from the height of its door that, unlike everything else in the
Paradis des Enfants
, this hut was sized for grownups, and quite unapologetically so. A huge, old-fashioned padlock secured the rusty handle, and I was grateful that the old man showed no interest in disturbing it. Then my heart sank. Behind the hut was a stone wall about ten feet high. If anything went wrong, there’d be no escape.

The dank, fecal odor of fertilizer hung in the air, much like the sewer, only denser and more beastly. I scanned the area. Nobody else was around. The laughter of children sounded as tinny as mosquitoes, and incredibly far away. My stomach tightened and again I reached for Li’s hand.

“We should go back,” I whispered, hoping the old man wouldn’t hear.

But of course he heard me. Sighing, he shook his head, then addressed Li and Li alone: “Young man, you seem like a leader. Don’t let the girl fill your mind with fear. I need you to be brave and strong. You must not disappoint me.”

It was then that we heard the baby’s cries. They were coming distinctly from the dark hollow between the hut and the wall, a space of uncommon darkness. The man lifted a finger—wait here—and went toward the source. We stood still, exchanging anxious glances.

After a while, the man called, “Young man…”

Instantly, Li went.

I had no choice but to follow. As much as I dreaded seeing the baby, being left all by myself seemed even more frightening. Out of the sun and into the shadows, the temperature dropped.

Our eyes took a moment to adapt to the lack of light. At our feet was a shallow rain gutter, lined with velvety black moss. It felt like we were suddenly in a cave. The baby’s wails increased in pitch and intensity, as if it could sense our approach and wanted us to hurry.

The hairs on my arms stood up and my pulse quickened. In the drain lay a quivering gray puddle. I saw its watery blue eyes and froze.

It was a kitten, not much bigger than a ball of yarn. Its fur was frayed, exposing snatches of baldness, and its hind legs were bent in such a way that I could tell they had been broken in several places.

“The handiwork of neighborhood thugs,” the man said, sighing again. “Boys from the countryside with nothing better to do.” For a moment I felt his grief. He said that the kitten belonged to him and that its name was Xiao Huangdi, or
Little Emperor
. “My heart aches to see it in such obscene agony. I want nothing more than to end its suffering. To bring it the peace it deserves. It’s only right. But you see, young man”—he turned to Li—“this is a job for a child’s hands.”

Like a soldier reporting to his general, Li pulled away from me and took three steps toward the trench. In that moment, I felt the lifelong connection between us, our bond of blood that I’d always taken for granted, not merely slip away but
snap
. A clammy uncertainty was left in its wake. For the first time in my life, I felt completely, horribly alone. The nausea came at me in waves and was suffocating, endless. I choked back the urge to throw up.

Calmly—too calmly—Li got on his haunches and examined the kitten. Just as casually, he placed his hands on the creature’s head, caressed its tiny ears, and then lifted it by the loose flap of skin on the back of its neck. The pitiful thing sensed peril and swiped at the air, swaying like a ragged pendulum. It mewed for its life; it was begging, desperate. How could Li not see this? How could he not hear this? Instead he gave the old man a quiet smile, as if posing for one last photograph with his beloved pet.

“Please, sir, tell me what to do,” Li said. His eagerness to please sickened me even more. His voice was as sweet as treacle.

The kitten looked toward me. Tears fell from its eyes. If someone had told me then that it had a human soul, I would have believed him absolutely. These were not the eyes of a dumb animal but the pleading eyes of a sentient, intelligent creature tragically aware of what was happening and yet unable to stop it. It was an accident of size, of species, that the kitten could not fight back. But the feelings were no different. I would see those eyes time and time again during the course of my career. The eyes of someone dying alone and terrified.

“Brother, don’t!” I yelled. Li did not respond. He’d either grown deaf or I had become irrelevant. “Don’t hurt it! Please!”

The old man continued watching Li. In a flat, unemotional voice, he said, “Break its neck. Quick but firm.”

My brother nodded, matching his solemnity.

The kitten fought at the nothingness as Li’s fingers closed around its neck. My brother, murdering an innocent being with the same soft hands I’d held just minutes before. A child’s hands.

I couldn’t allow it. I lunged forth with all my might, aiming to snatch the kitten from him but instead I found myself hurtling onto the grass yards away. The old man. I never saw his arm move.

The kitten’s mewing grew muffled, but its terror was undiluted. I picked myself up and screamed one long piercing scream to cover up the horror. Even so, I heard its tiny neck snap with a crisp click. An unnerving hush followed. When I peered at Li, the lump of gray fur had gone slack in his hands. He let the lifeless bundle fall to the ground.

The old man nodded at him with avuncular approval and pulled from his pocket a small disk wrapped in shimmering gold foil. I knew at a glance that it was butterscotch candy, the kind we’d ogled in shop windows but were told was too expensive to be wasted on children like us.

“Young man, I want to thank you for your time. And your courage.” The man handed the reward to Li, who accepted it gratefully. He then turned to me with a supercilious smile. “Nothing for you.”

Usually Li would have protested on my behalf, but this time he didn’t.

Lowering himself to the drain with great agility, the man scooped up the dead kitten in the palm of his hand. In one seamless motion, he folded up its legs and tucked the carcass into his pants pocket like a used handkerchief. With the same soiled hand, he patted Li on the head, his fingers slithering through the forest of my brother’s hair before finding a comfortable hold and kneading his scalp. Li closed his eyes and tilted his head back.

When he opened his eyes, his features went slack, as if he’d been blessed. I will never forget that look, that taint.

The man waved at the distance and smiled. “You are now free to go.”

Li turned to me. There was a new coldness to his face that I didn’t like. I found myself wishing we hadn’t disobeyed Mother, that we hadn’t caused Sister Kwan to faint. But for the first time in my life, I couldn’t share those feelings with him.

“Don’t you dare say a word.” He made me swear as we ran, him clutching the butterscotch disk like a prized talisman. “And don’t expect me to share this with you.”

He needn’t have worried. I wanted none of it. I did, however, want my brother back.

Running to the commons, I had to keep slowing down to wait for Li. The violence seemed to have sapped his vigor, for he paused every so often to catch his breath. Gray rings appeared around his eyes, the kind I often saw in hungry beggar children. And his scent, too, turned strange. No longer did he smell of chalk, of cleanliness; he now smelled slightly off, like rice vinegar. Could the same thing be happening to me? Could turning seven mean having less energy and a new odor? But no, I was running at my usual pace and smelled like my usual self. These changes seemed to be occurring only in Li.

When we returned to where we’d left Sister Kwan, she was hoarse from shrieking our names, her eyes rimmed red with worry. Her bun had come undone, leaving streaks of black hair plastered to her tear-stained cheeks. For the first time, I realized how pretty she actually was. In a different, perhaps better world, she would have been a rich man’s plaything. When she saw us, she clutched us to her chest and I felt the shivers coursing through her. Her shaking masked mine.

Sister Kwan never told Mother about her fainting spell or our little detour. Most crucial of all, I kept my oath—I never breathed a word to anyone about the old man or the kitten. Or the sweet. To everyone apart from Li and me, and maybe the invisible guardians of the cosmos, that encounter never happened at all.

Why do I mention the guardians of the cosmos? Well, because that night, following the day my twin and I became two separate people, was also the night I saw my first ghost.

WHEN LI AND I RETURNED
from the
Paradis
that afternoon, Mother and Father were in the middle of something. Neither noticed the scuffs on my arms, the stains on my dress, or Li’s uncharacteristic exhaustion. At first I was relieved to be home. Then came cold, hard bewilderment as I heard the exchange of foreign place names—names with the forlorn musicality of Hindi, Khmer, Malay. They rang of great distance, of sweat and rot and jungle. I could tell my parents weren’t discussing holiday plans. What they were discussing I had no idea.

Li collapsed onto the living room settee. I offered to bring him a glass of milk.

“Scram,” he mumbled, turning away. “Just get me Sister Choon.”

Left alone with my thoughts later that night, I wondered if I should have been more forceful at the park. I could have stood my ground, played the big sister. I could have stopped Li from following the old man, from putting his hands—his soft, warm hands—on that helpless kitten. I could have offered to take the poor thing home instead of standing there dumbstruck, no better than a pathetic crybaby. But no, I
was
a pathetic crybaby, shattered by the sudden realization that my twin wasn’t as bound to me as I’d come to believe. We’d only seemed tethered because something was perpetually holding us together—whether it was Sister Kwan’s iron grip or the prison walls of our mother’s house. Or the narrow bed we shared, where the only way we could both fit was to lie back-to-back.

Li, his back pressing against mine, slept as soundly as a baby, the day’s disturbing adventure apparently already forgotten. He had on his new blue satin pajamas, a birthday surprise from Mother, the arms and legs overlong so as to last through another year of growth. In the moonlight, he shone like an iridescent eel at the bottom of the ocean. The butterscotch disk peered out from within his tightened fist, an otherworldly compass leading him to new places without me, no doubt.

Still in my old pajamas—no new ones for me—I continued to toss and turn. The air was dead. I could hardly breathe.

Summer nights in our house were hell on earth. Mother, fearing contagion, ordered all windows shut after dusk, trapping in the heat of the day and turning the whole place into a tomb. On July and August nights, the air heaved with moisture and the walls gave off centuries of human must—the smell, I used to think, of a dying man’s last breath (though this was before I learned what
that
actually smelled like).

Naturally, when the muggy air in our bedroom turned dry and chilly instead of hotter and stickier as I tossed and turned, I knew something wasn’t right.

“Li?” I tugged at his sleeve, my teeth chattering. No answer.

I reached for the blanket and when my fingers grazed my bare thigh, I jumped: icicles! My fingers were stone cold. Had a window blown open? No, everything was still, the same as it was. But my heart had begun to pound, and I felt a deep, throbbing ache behind my eyes. The nausea I felt earlier in the park returned, pursued by a tingling of the tongue. The hairs on my arms rose to attention. Something was about to strike—a meteor, perhaps, or a typhoon. Something monumental.

In the dark, I plotted the quickest route to my parents’ room. Don’t trip on the cot in the hallway. Abandon Li, if necessary.

My breath emerged from my nostrils in pale wisps as thick as incense smoke. Thicker, when I exhaled through my mouth. Could I be on fire? Or was this the pneumonia or influenza that crept in through windows and carried off so many children in their sleep? Those terms had been thrown at me so frequently that they rang like place names in my mind. Was I already dying?

Then I saw her.

She was old. Thin as a beggar woman. White hair pulled back into a tight bun.

Her white tunic and black slacks instantly told me she was—or had been—an amah. Silently, she took three paces forward and stopped at the foot of my bed. I realized when I tried to sit up that I was paralyzed. It wasn’t fear. Emotion didn’t enter into it at all. A kind of supernatural glue was holding me to the bed. I couldn’t move a muscle or even blink.

I’d heard many stories from Sister Kwan, and in them, ghosts were usually vengeful harlots or poorly tended goats, alternately screeching for blood and bleating for sympathy. This one was neither wraith nor beast. Her skin was ochre. Her eyes lacked the sparkle of life that is noticeable only when it’s missing. But she looked at me with such a beneficent gaze, dead eyes notwithstanding, that had I been a religious little girl, I might have taken her for some sort of nun. She didn’t fit the description of a ghost. For starters, she didn’t frighten me at all.

Aside from her jaundiced complexion and the pant legs that vanished into thin air, she looked to be solid, three-dimensional. Real. Not floating. No unruly hair or black holes for eyes. She could have easily passed for one of the amahs we had working for us, or one of their friends. But a part of me just
knew
, and I was flooded with a mute, abstract sadness. She conveyed absence, silence, loss—like the primordial emptiness that entered my mind every night before I drifted off to sleep. Had my tear ducts worked, I would have wept.

I could tell she had lived a long life, but it hadn’t been enough.

I wanted desperately to question her, but my mouth could form no words. What did she want? Did she have friends over there? Was she lonely?

It was possible that she registered my questions, but her expression remained unchanged. She looked at me and only me; Li did not exist. She reached out slowly with both hands for my feet—bony, immobile things poking out of the wool blanket I’d long outgrown. I was happy to offer her solace, if that was what she sought. I held my breath, certain I would soon feel the coldness of her claws. I watched as her gnarled fingers wrapped themselves around my toes, one set in each hand. To my surprise, I felt absolutely nothing. But could
she
feel me? It was hard to tell. I studied her features and committed them to memory: black mole just under her left eye, unusually high cheekbones, the pronounced overbite I’d often noticed in the servant class—essentially a kind face. Regulation amah uniform, white jade bangle around her right wrist, no earrings. I told myself to report these specifics to Sister Kwan in the morning.

Out of the blue, she made a noise, a soft gurgle in the back of her throat, like someone about to gag. Or speak. She tried again, but all she could manage was a single guttural word:

“One…”

And just like that, she vanished.

I could now wriggle my toes and part my lips. I hissed, just to make sure my voice had returned. The air lost its sepulchral bite and my skin was again coated with sticky summer perspiration. The melancholy was lifted from me. I kicked off the covers and leapt to the floor, peering under the bed. But no, there wasn’t an old woman lying there with her joints folded across her chest like a giant bat.

I flew back to bed. I couldn’t wait to announce my achievement to Sister Kwan—I saw a ghost and wasn’t scared!—and watch her mouth fall open in wonder. “You brave soul,” I could almost hear her say. Did Li see her? No, it was me, only me. I was first. I was special.

My brother, meanwhile, continued to doze unfettered. I thought about shaking him awake and telling him about my encounter, but I knew he’d only fly into a rage and call me a liar.

Should I keep the sighting a secret? Reporting it might make my parents fear for my sanity; they’d always considered themselves too modern for ghosts. But Sister Kwan…she would understand.

A new, loving warmth wound its way around my torso, as if the bed were caressing me back to sleep with damp, heated hands, coaxing me away from the sharp snap of wakefulness. I snuggled into its embrace and closed my eyes. Every part of me relaxed. The warmth spread farther. Seconds later, I felt a hard kick to the shin—Li. He’d jolted awake and was crying out, furious:

“Damn you, Ling! You peed on my new pajamas!”

Around the year 250 BC, the Taoist philosopher Han Fei put forth a malignant theory that unfortunately became a founding principle of Chinese art. Since everybody knew what dogs and horses looked like, he said, they were the most difficult subjects to paint, whereas demons and goblins, being invisible, were child’s play. In other words, realism was high art because it involved control and discipline, whereas abstraction was the refuge of charlatans. Ever since that time, the imaginative arts suffered. Works of imagination would never again be as prized in Chinese culture as mundane still lifes of birds and chrysanthemums or groves of soporific bamboo. And this attitude infected the rest of Chinese thinking: Originality would never be as revered as rote learning and the manufacture of flawless reproductions. Copying became our métier.

Having seen my first ghost, I knew I had to produce as accurate an account of the encounter as I could so nobody could accuse me of a flight of fancy. Details would serve as proof that the dead amah I saw was as real as a living one. I waited for the right moment to confide in Sister Kwan. Not Li. He had been my secret sharer once, but no longer. After breakfast, we were separated into our respective routines, our respective routes to our respective schools.

Every morning at seven, Mother placed our fates into the hands of our servants. Quite literally. With our hands tightly clasped in theirs, Sister Choon took Li by rickshaw to the boys’ school at one end of Frenchtown and Sister Kwan took me to the girls’ school at the other. Both amahs waited by the gates until lessons ended at noon, at which time they escorted us home, again by rickshaw, again with our hands tightly enclosed in theirs. At no point in the journey would the amahs let go of us to scratch an itch or even to hold on for dear life when the rickshaw puller swerved to avoid a flattened dog.

It was hard in those days to find a moment without either of the amahs hovering over us, nattering acridly in Cantonese and pulling our ears for the smallest infractions—hawk-nosed Sister Choon especially, but even my favorite Sister Kwan was not immune to ill temper. We were small and had no concept of privacy, so we rarely begrudged their interference and abuse. Chinese children, I suppose, never took scolding very seriously unless it was a person of authority who was doing the scolding, in which case we cowered and cringed and cried. (We Chinese children were preternaturally aware of status.) Yet because we spent most of our time with these grown women who, due to their lack of education, retained a childlike credulity, they often became our confidantes.

Sometimes on the trips to and from school, when I had Sister Kwan all to myself, I would ask her for stories of the strange—the weirder the better. She considered herself an expert in the field. All the amahs did, coming as they did from superstitious families in the South who worshipped their ancestors at dilapidated shrines and said prayers to rice grains. From Sister Kwan I’d learned that a cat could turn a dead man into a vampire by leaping over his corpse, that the beautiful maidens men met on byways at night usually turned out to be ghosts, and that wayward monks could sometimes subsist for decades inside the bellies of large carp.

I loved her stories. They told of an ancient China steeped in magic, color, and fine breeding, far removed from the fetid, gray, unsmiling world that was our Shanghai. Her stories helped to leaven the unpleasant encounters that were such a frequent component of city life. Whenever we passed the distended corpse of a beggar on the street, she’d mumble a Taoist blessing and assure me that the person must have been cruel to his parents to deserve such a fate; whenever our rickshaw man took us past one of those wretched funeral shops that considered baby coffins appropriate for its windows, she’d tell me American children used them for storing their dolls.

“There was an old amah in our room last night,” I told Sister Kwan.

Her eyes widened in anticipation of a juicy story, so I proceeded to describe the encounter in detail. We were in the rickshaw, away from Mother’s disapproving ears and punishing hands.

“The mole…” Her expression was uneasy. “You’re sure it was under her left eye and not her right eye?”

“Positive.”

“And her hair was completely white?”

“Yes. As snow.”

“The jade bangle was white, not green?”

“White as her hair.”

“Oh dear, oh dear.” Sister Kwan muttered a quick oath.
Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha.

“What’s wrong?”

“You’ve just described Sister Yeung.”

“Sister Yeung?”

“You don’t remember her, do you? She used to take care of you when you were a baby.” Sister Kwan released my hand and clutched at her temple. “I wonder what she wants, coming back.” She looked at me. “Did she say anything? Did she frighten you?”

“She touched my toes.”

 “She did?” Her eyes widened again. “What else?”

I shrugged. “She tried to say something but vanished before she could say it. Anyway, I wasn’t scared. I don’t think she meant any harm.”

“Oh dear.”
Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha.

“What’s wrong?” I pinched her arm. “Tell me!”

“The first thing that’s wrong is that Sister Yeung died when you were two years old. She threw herself into the Huangpu River. The other thing that’s wrong, my child, is that faced with her ghost you felt no fear.”

I didn’t tell anybody else about the ghost amah. Sister Kwan did. Even after I made her swear repeatedly that she wouldn’t. Her betrayal sent prickles of rage up and down my spine. These Cantonese farm girls were no better than the water snakes that slithered through their paddy fields!

That evening, the amahs gathered in the kitchen with the cook and started boiling noxious mountain herbs and ground-up mutton bone. The entire house reeked of wet soil and rot, like a cemetery after the rains. Sticks of incense smoldered at the kitchen shrine. I begged the amahs to stop—the ghost meant me no harm! No harm at all! I tugged at Sister Kwan’s sleeve but she went on as if I weren’t there.

“Why are you doing this?” I moaned. “Was Sister Yeung a bad person? Tell me! I want to know. Come on, tell me about Sister Yeung!”