Obediently, I crouched and folded myself inside, bending so I wouldn’t hit my head. Mama closed the doors.
Darkness consumed me. The air grew shallow. I curled my spine and hugged my knees tightly. There were no soldiers in the house, I knew that. Yet just being in there—in that cupboard, I became seven years old again. Phantom cigarette smoke pricked my eyes, and shadows swam across my vision, shaped like guns and silvery steel fangs. Fear galloped inside my chest, and I wiped the mucus dribbling out of my nose, down my lip.
“I want to come out,” I cried. “Let me out. Mama!”
One door creaked open. Outside was Mama, holding a paring knife. She pressed it to my throat, applying pressure.
“Ma, what are you—”
“Try again. Do exactly what you did.”
She pointed the tip of the knife to my neck. The metal was cold. It bit into my skin, and I gasped. “Mama?”
My mother’s gaze was blank and callous. Her eyes became mirrors into my past, drawing me back to the Japanese soldier who had opened this same cupboard, the tip of his bayonet scraping against the lacquered wood before finding the soft flesh of my knee.
I looked away, choking on terror.No,I thought frantically.Don’t hurt me. Go away!
The air went out of my lungs. I couldn’t breathe.
Then it happened.
The warning was little more than a tickle across the nape of my neck, a caress of cold air that sent the barest shiver down my spine. It was like going underwater, entering a dark and silent realm where no one would touch me. No one could see me.
Mama’s knife clattered into the cupboard, jolting me back into existence. I let go of my breath and it was over.
“You can make yourself into nothing,” she said quietly. She extended her hand to help me out of the cupboard. “That’s how you escaped.”
Goosebumps pinpricked my arms. I was shaking. “What happened?” I was rattling with questions. “How did I—” I gulped. “This can’t be—”
“Breathe.” Mama cut me off before I could finish. She touched my cheek, and her voice fell low. “When I was a girl, a monk passed through my hometown. My sisters were curious about him and followed him down the road, begging him to read their fortunes. I went along to make sure they wouldn’t get in trouble. At the edge of the village, he turned around. He couldn’t have been older than my father, but he had the oldest eyes. Ancient yet fiery—like the Great Sage. He stepped toward me andtouched my forehead.” Mama demonstrated, pressing her palm to her head.
“Then he leaned down and spoke into my ear so only I could hear. He told me that there was a demon inside me, as small as a fish bone. I wasn’t the first in my family, and I wouldn’t be the last. It was an affliction—acursethat manifests differently in every generation, and it would pass to my daughter and her daughter until...”
“Until what?”
Mama’s hand fell to her lap. “He wouldn’t say. But when you told me the Japanese didn’t see you, I suspected that you, too...” She shook her head. “You were young, Ying. Too young.”
I swallowed hard. “What is your curse?”
“Visions,” replied Mama distantly. “They began when I was thirteen, soon after my family moved to Guangdong and I first bled. When I slept, I... I had dreams. Terrible dreams. I thought they were nightmares—I saw my mother vomiting blood into a pot, the life being drained from her over a few short days. I saw metal birds in the sky dropping seeds that set the world below ablaze. I saw myself as a grown woman locked away in a narrow room, my hands and feet bound to a bed, and my mouth gagged by cloth as I shouted names I did not yet know.
“I became afraid of sleeping.” Mama touched the dark circles under her eyes. “I tried to stay awake as long as I could, but I could never last more than a few days. When I slept again, the dreams came back.
“No one would listen to me,” she went on. “My uncles called me mad, and my father beat me for bringing distress to my mother. He threatened to sell me if I uttered another word about my dreams. So I kept quiet.”
“Then what happened?”
“My mother became ill a few days later. She had always suffered terrible pains in her head and slept to drive them away.By the time the doctor came, it was too late. She wouldn’t wake up.”
Mama wrung her hands, twisting them together. “You can’t understand how hard it was for me, wondering if I might have saved her. If only someone had listened. If only she’d seen the doctor earlier. At night I’d walk into the pond until I was chin deep, and I’d stay there, shivering so I wouldn’t fall asleep. In the mornings I went to the temple and prayed. I could think about nothing else—other than how I allowed my mother to die.
“I became very thin and frail, useless at the farm. My father declared that I was deranged and there was nothing he could do that would save me. So he decided to marry me off.” She paused. “You think he wanted me to become a Ha because of their family name, but there are plenty of prominent houses in Guangdong. Why choose one all the way in a backwater town like Tunglam? Because he needed a family that was desperate to keep its status, a family that couldn’t afford the shame of discarding me once they found out that I was...”
Her voice trailed, yet I understood.
“After I met your Ah Ma, I learned what sort of woman she was and what she’d do if I brought disgrace to the Ha name. So I kept my visions to myself. I hid them from your baba and his family, and I found my god.” She touched her chest, rubbing the beads hidden underneath her collar. “For a while, it became easier to pretend.” Her gaze lowered. “Then I saw the two babies I’d lose, and...”
Her voice cracked. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t know what to say.
