Planet Lolita (2 page)

“Let’s give these ladies something to smile about,” he said.

“Mom won’t like it.”

“She won’t have to know.”

Hand in hand, we marched to the edge of shore. The wet sand, and then the ocean, tickled my feet, a nice feeling.

The women didn’t just smile at us. Though obviously tired, they tried smoothing T-shirts of wrinkles and wiping sand off
jeans. I had guessed their ages correctly, but been too hard on their looks. Most were attractive enough, with wide, single-lidded eyes and fairly clear skin.

“Jousahn, leng neoi
,
”
Dad said. Calling them “pretty ladies” tripped wider smiles and flirtier giggles. I didn’t like how they clustered around us, grabbing at Marlboros and driving their arms into the knapsack. I didn’t like how they liked him.

They asked questions in their dialect. “She’s my daughter,” he answered in an even worse mangle of English and Cantonese. He gave my age and height—“so tall, lah,” they said—and admitted that, yes, I was a half-half, although he was convinced I had inherited mostly from his side. When they laughed some more, I decided to go talk to the girl in the blue dress. She was keeping her distance.

One apple remained. I brought it to where she stood almost to her knees in the sea. Her dress, I now noticed, was soaked, not only along the hem but across the chest, probably from jumping out of the boat. The water, up to my knees as well, contained a pull, a tug towards the real ocean. I loved the sensation of it, the embrace and maybe danger.

“Ping guo
,
”
I said in Mandarin.

“Ping?”

“Apple. It’s the same in Mandarin or Cantonese, isn’t it?”

“Ping gwoh
,
”
the girl said. She held the apple before her, but did not bite it.

“Okay.”

She had a sunflower-seed face, like I did, black hair and gaze, an oval mouth and naturally bruised lips. Her skin was bronze, as if already warmed by sunlight, and her hair shimmered, also from light, the mysterious kind cast over statues in churches. If her eyes were cloudy, it was from being cold and wobbly after a sea journey. Up close, her body, bare from the shoulders, was the opposite of
a statue—a long-stemmed rose. She had a stem neck, protruding collarbones, shoulders with the same raw petals as my own.

“I’m Xixi Kwok,” I said in English. “I like your dress.”

She squinted, her way of asking.

“My mom calls me Sarah,” I replied. “But I prefer Xixi. Eat the
ping gwoh.
You must be starved.”

Saying it, I realized I hadn’t eaten a thing since last night. My tummy grumbled.

She took a bite, flashing perfect teeth. Apple skin went
crunch
and apple juice sprayed.
Offer me a bite
, I said silently,
and I’ll take it.
She stared at the fruit, as though surprised by the sweet taste, worry lines drawing her brows closer.

“Are you sick from the boat ride?” I said, trying to understand.

Crunch
, another bite.

“I know I’d be barfing.”

Crunch
, she was a third of the way through.
Are you sure you’re okay?
I nearly said. “You’ll like it here,” I said instead. “Great food, although the street stalls serve pig guts, which are disgusting, and amazing shopping, especially for knock-offs. And don’t be frightened by the masks people are wearing. They’re afraid of another epidemic, like when I was little. Two hundred and ninety-nine people died that time. I remember the number from the newspaper. Which is weird,” I added. “Why would a kid remember 299 dead and 1,755 infected? Dad says Hong Kongers are always on the edge of a collective nervous breakdown.”

The girl nodded, but only because I stopped babbling. Then she dropped the core into the water and looked elsewhere. Over at my father, to be exact, still in his boxers and still flirting with the
leng neoi.
“That’s him,” I said. “Cool Kwok. His iPod isn’t all Dad rock. Some of it’s pretty good.”

Her gaze was back on me. On my neck, because of what I do
when I’m nervous. Run the cross along its chain, back and forth, zipzipzip.

I babbled on. “It was a First Communion gift,” I said, pinching the cross between my fingertips. “I wish it was the Virgin Mary. Not crucified, but a—what do you call it—pendant with her and the baby. Not that there’s any Jesus either. Just the cross. I went to Sunday school for a year to get ready for communion. We lived in Stanley then.”

Finally, she spoke. I heard her say a name.

“Mary?” I said. “That’s so funny. We were talking about her.”

She squinted again.

“But it’s your English name, right? What do your parents call you?”

After a pause to chew her lower lip—I did the same when I wasn’t sure how to answer—she repeated it. Mary, and Mary only, she called herself.

I loved this! The two of us talking and maybe becoming friends, staying in touch long after the beach.

“I’m on Facebook,” I said. “Are you?”

She kept chewing. Her lips were thicker than mine, something boys apparently liked.

“I’ll probably need a last name to find you,” I said, switching to Cantonese to make sure she understood. “Or you could find me.”

Suddenly Dad was squeezing my arm. Mary retreated a step, nearly stumbling. Even Manga the Mutt, who yip-yipped at his own image in mirrors, wasn’t scared of Jacob Kwok. But she seemed to be.

“We should go back to the tent,” he said.

“I gave her the last apple.”

He looked Mary up and down without, I sensed, focusing. “She’s a bit young for this,” he said.

“My hat!” I said. “Or else her brain will boil.”

I gave her my straw bowler, saying “Please” in three languages. “Sailor Moon,” I said of the decorated pins, “Pikachu, plus Chihiro, you know her, from
Spirited Away?
”

“Zala oon,” she answered, pointing to the Sailor Moon pin.

“Girl power!” I said, raising my hands up. “Though I know that stuff is for kids.”

Mary put on the hat.
Her
beauty went Asian
Vogue
cover then, her smile forming the speechless
wow!
of models doing the pretend-surprised expression. When she shifted to the teen rebel pose, the kind friends post on Facebook walls, I felt my own smile widen.

Pulling out my phone, I positioned Mary in the frame. For her first face, her lips went push-pouty and her eyebrows arched, super cute. For her second, she was the sweet girl giving the peace sign, her head cocked and her finger running along her cheek. I laughed at those expressions, the same warm, tugging feeling as the ocean around my calves.

For her third face, Mary reversed the hat, hiding the pins, and yanked it down over her skull. Her eyes emptied and her lips formed a catwalk sneer, also pretend. I didn’t like this pose nearly as much, but snapped it.

This time Dad, who had been scanning the beach, pinched my skin. “Enough, Xixi. Come on.” He pulled me to the tent, splashing water on us both.

“I could see her heart beating through her chest,” I said.

“What?”

“Mary—she’s all bones. Should I be worried about her?”

“Mary?” Dad said. Then, raising his Ray-Bans up onto his forehead, “Here they are.”

Mom and the Boss Lady, having chosen higher ground for their return, were laying fresh tracks in the sand. One trekker, her shirt even more sweaty, was panting, the
pff-pff
rising above the lap of waves. The other wore a slight flush, as if from repeated compliments about her toned body and brisk good looks, the Isle of Skye in her gaze.

Boss Lady peeled off. She made straight for Mary, wagging a finger. Readying herself, Mary bowed her head, her hands back to being clenched. Soon the other girls formed a shell around them, blocking our view. I kept expecting the hat to wash ashore. If it did, I’d put it back on.

“Xixi gave the girl her hat,” Dad said.

“I noticed,” Mom said. “That one’s special cargo, I bet, worth double the rest.”

“You can almost see her heart in her chest,” I said again.

“Did anything else happen?”

“No,” Dad said.

“I told you not to do anything.”

“We didn’t,” I said.

“Jacob, I may have fucked up.”

We waited.

“On top of the hill,” Mom said. “I cut a deal. Her crappy phone still didn’t get a signal up there, so I let her use mine.”

We still waited.

“She got to contact her Triad connection and we get to walk away. Everyone forgets we ever met.”

“Sounds good,” Dad said.

“I hated how she looked at Sarah. I’ve seen that look before.”

“So you made a deal.”

“I hope so. It was a pretty broken communication. But a phone
number is a track directly to us,” she added, staring down at her iPhone. “They could obtain our names and address from it.”

“Maybe they could visit us,” I said, not smart.

Her scowl made clear just how not-smart. “We have to vanish from this beach as well.”

“I’ll take down the tent,” Dad said.

She told him to forget about the tent. “Mamasan began checking that headland the instant we were back on the strand,” she said, pointing to the north end of Tai Long Wan. “They won’t need an hour to bring speedboats from Sai Kung. They were probably waiting all night in a cove. We have twenty minutes or less. And Christ, here she comes now. Bet you she’ll insist we stick around to meet her friends.”

Mom must have changed her mind and asked Boss Lady her name. Mamasan approached, her phone raised like the chalice at Mass. Two photos she took, one of the parentals, the other of me.

“Okay?” she said in English.

“I let you use my phone!” Mom said.

“Pretty girl, Xixi Kwok,” she offered. “Pretty face.”

“We won’t make trouble for you.”

“Was that a threat?” Dad asked.

But Mamasan had already turned her back on us.

“No deal, I guess,” he said.

I managed to grab the electronics and bring Dad his shorts—“Put on your effing shorts, Jacob,” Mom said—but the sheets and pillows were also abandoned. We followed their path back towards the hill, making a mess of each step, and though I was pinched between the parentals, and had been instructed not to look over, nor to smile, and definitely not to wave, I managed a few glimpses of Mary. Her height, and my hat, made her stand out.
She was where I had left her, up to her knees in the tugging ocean.

Fifteen silent minutes later, climbing the slope, Mom finally spit out her complaint. “You told them your name?” she said to me.

“Look,” Dad said.

Tai Long Wan lay half in sunlight, half still in shade. It was perfect, the most beautiful, secluded strand in Hong Kong. Three speedboats the size of plastic toys had rounded the headland and were ripping seams in the ocean. They slowed nearing the shore, their engines the faint growls of dogs letting you know they’ll attack if you don’t back off.

“Come to collect their cargo,” he said.

“Their property, more like it.”

“We’re off the beach, Leah. Our tracks will have dissolved by mid-morning.”

“You told them your name?” she said again.

Friend me, Mary
, I said to myself.
I’ll accept.
And made the Asian-girl wave, in plain sight of both parents, although there was no hope she could see it from so far away.

November 8, 20—
*Atypical pneumonia
*74 infected, none dead

Other stuff happened that same day. Between abandoning our tent on the beach and pulling into Sai Kung on the minibus. During the hike back to the road and then the ride out. Stuff happened, but I couldn’t remember all of it. Not yet.

Like the photo my sister Rachel was examining. It had been sent at eleven this morning from [email protected] to [email protected] with the caption “Mary, Tai Long Wan.” SeeSaw was me and Mary was her, the girl in the dress, and at that hour I was seated in the back row of the bus, squeezing the railing and trying not to throw up. Did I still manage to email Rachel a photo of Mary? I must have. Could I remember touching
Send?
Kind of not.

“Nice hat,” Rachel said.

“Is it …? Can you see my pins?” I asked, hoping I had emailed her the first or second photo, not the third.

“Sailor Moon, Pikachu, and Chihiro,” she answered. “The SeeSaw Trinity—Father, Son, and the Holy Goat.”

“Funny.”

“She’s hot.”

“Do we look alike? I think we do,” I said. Hair fell over my eyes, and I twined strands together.

“Don’t.”

I pretended not to understand.

“I’ll reach through this screen. I have superpowers too.”

“Fine,” I said, dropping the braid, though not before it had passed between my lips once or twice, a soft tickle.

“Hands by your side, please.”

“Anything else?”

“No slouching,” she said.

In my room in our apartment in Mid-Levels, Hong Kong, I slouched. In her room in her dormitory in Toronto, Canada, Rachel sat prim and proper. Thanks to FaceTime on the MacBook Pros our parents bought us last summer, before she went away to university, the duck-egg face of Rachel Kwok filled my screen. My own sunflower-seed face was tiny in the bottom corner. To decide if Mary and I looked alike, she held up her iPhone, her eyes darting. Watching her watching me was okay, but watching me watching her watching
me
was too much, a 3-D action movie about giant robots, made for boys who live inside video games.

“I read that there are two Chinese face shapes,” I said, “the duck egg, and the sunflower seed. Between us, we’ve got both.”

“Say what?” she said. Translated, she meant,
Stupid SeeSaw comment, hardly worth the bother.

“My face is long and thin, and yours is more … round, I guess.”

“You mean, I’m the peasant in the family, you’re the aristocrat?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You know so,” my sister said. “Just not consciously.” I was silent.

“What SeeSaw doesn’t know about the grown-up world would crowd a gigabyte memory stick,” she said. “But I’m going to school you as best I can. You’re too exposed in that apartment. Too vulnerable to seeing and hearing shit that will mess you up.”