Кен Лю - The Hidden Girl and Other Stories

“We don’t have what you’re looking for here,” William said, breathing deeply. “Now get out of our house.”

William and his father surveyed the mess Dixon and his men left behind.

“Thank you,” his father said.

“I suppose the ghosts got a good show tonight,” William said.

“I’m sure Grandfather is proud of you,” his father said. And then, for the first time that he could remember, his father added, “Jyu-zung, I’m proud of you.”

William did not know if what he felt was love or rage, and as he looked at the two characters on the upturned bubi on the ground, they seemed to waver and merge into one as his eyes grew blurry.

“Thank you for having me to your house,” Fred said. “I had a great time tonight.” He spoke stiffly and carefully kept his distance from her.

The waves of Long Island Sound lapped gently at the beach at their feet.

“You’re very sweet,” she said, and held his hand. She leaned against him, and the wind lifted her hair against his face, the floral scent of her shampoo mixing with the smell of the sea, like promise mixed with longing. His heart thumped. He felt a tenderness in the middle of his chest that he was frightened of.

Across the bay, they could see the bright red lights of the Edley Mansion, which was being run as a haunted house for the week. He imagined the delighted screams of the children, willingly thrilled by the lies told by their parents.

“Don’t worry too much about what my dad says,” she said.

He froze.

“You’re angry,” she said.

“What do you know about it?” he said. She is a princess. She belongs.

“You can’t control what others think,” she said. “But you can always decide for yourself if you belong.”

He said nothing, trying to comprehend the rage in himself.

“I am not my father,” she said. “And you’re not your parents. Family is a story that is told to you, but the story that matters the most you must tell yourself.”

He realized that this was the thing about America that he loved the most: the utter faith that family did not matter, that the past was but a story . Even a story that started as a lie—a fib—could become authentic, could become a life that was real.

He reached into the pocket of his pants and took out his gift.

“What is it?” She held the little bronze spade uncertainly in her hand.

“It’s an antique,” he said, “a spade-shaped coin used a long time ago in China. It used to belong to my grandfather, and he gave it to me before we left China, for luck. I thought you might like it.”

“It’s beautiful.”

He felt compelled to be honest. “My grandfather said that his father had saved it from foreigners trying to steal it from the country, and the Red Guards almost destroyed it during the Cultural Revolution. But my dad says it’s a fake, like many things from China, and not worth anything. See this mark on the bottom? He says it’s too modern, not really old. But it’s the only thing I have from my grandfather. He died last year and we couldn’t go back for the funeral, because of… immigration problems.”

“Shouldn’t you keep it?”

“I want you to have it. I’ll always remember giving it to you, and that’s a better memory, a better story.”

He bent down and picked up a small, sharp rock from the beach. As he held her hand with the spade coin in it, slowly, he etched the letters of their initials into the patina, next to the older character. “Now it has our mark, our story.”

She nodded and solemnly put the coin into her jacket pocket. “Thank you. It’s lovely.”

He thought about going home, about the questions from his father and the worried silence from his mother, about the long hours ahead of him in the restaurant tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, about college, now a possibility if he could show his citizenship papers, about one day making his own way across this vast continent, now still hidden under a cloud of unknowing darkness.

But not yet. He looked around and wanted to do something big, to commemorate this night. He took off his jacket, his shirt, kicked off his shoes. He was naked, maskless, costumeless. “Let’s go for a swim.”

She laughed, not believing him.

The water was cold, so cold that diving in made him gasp and think his skin was on fire. He dove under and then popped back up, and shook the water from his face.

She called for him, and he waved back, once, and then swam towards the bright lights on the other side of the bay.

The reflection of the red-lit Edley Mansion in the water was streaked, mixed with the bright white from the moon. As his arms moved through the dark blue sea, jellies glowed against his skin, like hundreds of little stars.

Her voice faded behind him as he swam through the stars and stripes, fractal, ambiguous, tasting of salty hope and the deliberate sting of leaving behind the past.

Ona woke up in the middle of a busy street. The light was dim, and it was cold, as though it were dusk or dawn.

Six-wheeled vehicles shaped like sleek-finned sea-darts rushed by both sides of her, seeming to miss her by inches. A glance inside one of the vehicles almost made her scream.

The head of the creature inside had twelve tentacles radiating from it.

She looked around: thick, six-sided towers around her rose into the sky, as dense as the trunks of the whitewood grove. She dodged around the speeding vehicles and made her way to the side of the street, where more of the twelve-tentacled creatures ambled by, paying no attention to her. They had six feet and a low-slung torso, with a shimmering skin that she wasn’t sure was made of fur or scales.

Overhead, cloth signs etched with alien markings fluttered in the wind like leaves, the individual symbols made up of line segments intersecting at sharp and obtuse angles. The noise of the crowd, consisting of incomprehensible clicks, moans, and chirps, coalesced into a susurration that she was sure was a kind of language.

The creatures paid no attention to her, sometimes barreling right into her, through her as though she were made of air. She felt like a ghost in the stories that some of the Teachers used to tell when she was younger, an invisible being. She squinted to find the sun in the middle of the sky: it was dimmer and smaller than she was used to.

Then, suddenly, everything began to change. The pedestrians on the sidewalks stopped, swung their heads skyward, and lifted their tentacles towards the sun—at the tip of each appendage was the black orb of an eye. The traffic in the street slowed and then ceased, the occupants of the vehicles stepping out to join the sun-gazing crowd. Silence fell across the scene like a veil.

Ona looked around the crowd, picking out individual groupings frozen in tableaus like photographs. A large creature wrapped its forearms protectively around two smaller ones, its tentacles trembling noiselessly. Two aliens leaned against each other, their tentacles and arms entwined. Another one, its legs unsteady, supported itself against the side of a building, its tentacles lightly tapping against the wall like a man sending a message.

The sun seemed to glow brighter, and then brighter still. The creatures turned their faces away from the sun, their tentacles wilting in the new heat and light.

They turned to gaze at her . Thousands, millions of dozens of eyes focused on Ona, as though suddenly she had become visible. Their tentacles reached towards her, pleading, signaling.

The crowd separated, and a small creature, about her size, walked towards her. Ona held out her hands, palms uplifted, uncertain what to do.