Planet Lolita (24 page)

“John B …,” Hom says.

“That wasn’t the point, as I was about to say. We became friends, and I started to see what a disgrace I was, and while I basically deserved to be castrated, my todger on a stick and my head on a pike, my only redemption was to stop hurting and start helping instead. Which I did, in Patpong itself at the start, me and Hom and a few of the other girls opening a secret safe house for those who wanted free of their debts to the pimps and clubs, and then, after we were found out—some little Doris, hooked on skag as well, grassed on us—driven from the area by gangs menacing knives and handguns, with myself earning, proud as stripes on an officer, this scar across my cheek from defending all the Lychees and Cats that I could. And so here I am, here a handful of us are, the survivors of that bloody eviction, and so help me, Ms. Xixi, any child who makes it to that gate out there and who stays inside this compound comes under my watch, and
no
harm comes to her, and only good things slowly, steadily happen. Except over my dead, rotting corpse, that is.”

The girl, pupils swimming in unshed tears, ponders his dead, rotting corpse. “Wow,” she finally says. Another clarification not pending.

“Everyone getting hungry,” Hom says. “You should change.”

But John B, unsettled by her stillness, her expression as serene and sloe-eyed as any Sam Chum sketch of a character from anime,
resolves to depart from script and get down to what is
really
wrong. This rarer, plaintive John B sermon is generally triggered by the finality of an Asian nightfall, too many cans of Singha Beer, and involuntary excavations of his life pre–Mother Ginger, all the way back to Hackney, why not, and a mom who died of sadness and fags, and an old man who offed himself with the drink, basically, and other such yadayadayada. But today the preaching—honestly, it’s closer to pleading, praying, a kind of pre-emptive benediction—feels worthy of daylight, and sobriety, and an audience of those good ladies, plus Sam.

“No divisions, no borders, but one,” he says. “Either you’re a force of light or dark, the overlay or undergrowth. Fuck off with the supposed divides between us—rich and poor, white and non-white, first and third. They’re bullshit, and a waste of everyone’s precious time on this earth. The only divide that matters is between those who get it and those who don’t. Let me tell you straight. We only
think
we’re individuals whose feelings and thoughts are our very own personality turds. We only
think
we’re free, and that the universe has a unique plan for us, because we’re the exception. Whereas the truth is the opposite. No me, no you, no exceptions, no solo destinies. Just an
us
, a huge collective whole, seven billion car wrecks of perpetual yearnings and needs, seven billion collapsing buildings of unappeasable, incoherent desires. Unless,
unless
,” he says, certain now that a wave of the chopper has sprinkled pepper juice into his eyes, and so is triggering the tears that the teenager across from him should be weeping, “we face up to the lovely, freeing fact that we are all
one
organism,
one
experience, with nothing but our illusions and delusions keeping us separate, alone, and miserable of character and, for the most part, behaviour.”

“You drink much Singha already, John?” Hom says.

“You know that I haven’t,” he answers. “And thus ends the
sermon for today. Except for this …” Turning to the girl, the chopper on the table, he opens his arms and smiles, aware that many find even his crooked-toothed grin alarming, the predator feint preceding the pitiless kill. “‘Our task,’” John B quotes, “‘must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.’ Einstein, Albert,” he adds. “Frizzy-haired bloke.”

Smiling back at him, Xixi Kwok cocks her head.

“E equals MC squared?” he says, to no effect.

“Your Santa suit,” his wife says. “The children are waiting.”

“I’ll broil in it, as usual,” he replies, moving to the sink to wash his hands. Rare for him to feel sheepish about anything he has pronounced, especially stuff so bedrock and heartfelt. Again, it is the girl herself, he suspects, and it isn’t only because, yes, a decade ago in the streets of Patpong he’d have done her, if she’d been selling herself cheap enough, and thought little on the human disaster implicit in the exchange. No doubt John B will be cremated and poured into an urn before he expels his shame, and good for him for keeping the current alive, an ethical hundred volts applied to his daily conduct as bone-rattling, and head-clearing, as the sound of a church bell to the person yanking the cord below. But the sheepishness derives more from her specifically, those eyes and that face, a comic book heroine meets a Valley Girl, an unexpected pop Christmas gift to the shelter.

“The moon was full last night,” she suddenly says, apropos, as far as he can tell, of nothing.

“Was it?”

“The taxi driver said he found Mother Ginger only because it was so bright out. This building was lit up, like God was fully watching.”

John B waits.

“Making sure I got here safely,” Xixi Kwok says.

“Is that why you’ve come? To be safe?”

“And less sad,” she answers, chewing her lip. “I was sad in Bangkok.”

He has an idea. “Santa has an elf to pass out the gifts. A happy elf, naturally, like you are now. Will you lend a hand, Xixi Kwok?”

“Cool,” she says.

Sameth, still squatting against the post and still not sketching, throws him such a whimpering look that he has to keep himself from patting the boy on the head. What was it the poet said—the heart, it is an organ of fire. Aye.

“You too, my bold lad,” John B says.

Next morning, another hosanna of a hill country day—the new arrival has brought the weather with her, the mini Mother Gingers are convinced, reason enough to bake her a cake and prepare a feast, two birthdays in a row—John B, having received glowing reports of Xixi’s second night as resident, her brushing the younger girls’ hair and reading them books at bedtime, and then up with first light to help Mrs. Chum in the kitchen, help Saweet in the garden, help set the table for breakfast; with all this to mull over, and the flurry of emails and stern phone calls that he and Hom have been dealing with since shortly after her miraculous conception, he yet again finds himself choosing his words carefully, crafting some of them in advance, before this skin ‘n’ bones teen in the Hello Kitty shirt and shorts. He joins her in the courtyard behind the main building, on the bench near the spirit shrine, with Sam, naturally, not far off, ready and willing, he thinks, to garland his puppy love in gold leaf and prayer beads.

“We’ve been contacted by your mom,” John B says.

“Gloria?”

“Isn’t her name Leah?”

“I want Gloria. She’s my Excelsis-Major.”

He nods. “She must be the amah I’ve been hearing so much about. Your mother wants you to know that she tried reaching Gloria when you went missing. No luck so far,” he says. He has been warned to tread cautiously.

“She’s busy with Miguel. He’s in trouble. Her other boy, Jesus, is the best player on his soccer team.”

“Leah hopes to get here within thirty-six hours.”

“Not my dad?

“No mention of him.”

A few seconds pass before she speaks again. “Mom turns fifty on January nineteenth. My sister says she’s going through menopause.”

“Don’t I know about that!”

“Are you going through menopause, John B?”

On catching the flash in her eyes, he grins. “She’s flying over from Blighty, of all places, and will be bringing your medicine. Are you … managing without it?” he asks, unsure of his footing.

“I had one yesterday and one today.”

“Episodes?” John B says, having learned the polite term from the mother. Her directness is unexpected, and keeps him off-balance.

“Seizures,” Xixi replies. “Petit-mal epilepsy.”

“Poor doll.”

“I think I had the first seizure while you were chopping peppers. Did I miss much?”

“Now hold on a second …”

“Hom says I didn’t. She says she wishes she could blank out during your sermons.”

“You told the missus?”

“And Sam.”

He needs to sit, but first asks permission to join her on the bench. Everything about John B—the anvil head and scar, the East End accent and diction, and certainly the tattoos distressing both forearms and biceps, as well as across the chest and back—usually gives a serious first fright to newcomers, especially the young birds. Yet this wee girl is right away slagging him with the affection she might show a feckless uncle? Who
is
Xixi Sarah Kwok?

“I want him to sketch me while I’m having one,” she says.

“Why so?”

“Because it’s me too. Anyway, can’t I stay here for a while longer? Maybe Mom can wait a few weeks. She’s a very busy person, and has to help men get the goddamn job done.”

“She’s pining for you, Xixi. And you don’t belong at Mother Ginger. At least, not as a resident.”

Amazingly, that remark threatens to release the pent-up worry—or is it simply emotion?—in her eyes.

“Lucky you are not to be homeless, and busted up,” he says. “It’s in your gaze. You’re still whole, still intact.”

“But I’m see-through.”

“You are?”

“Mos def.”

He gives the comment serious consideration. “All of us are, I suppose, after a point. But you’ll still never be like those poor girls.”

“It’s because I haven’t had it done to me,” she says.

“I didn’t mean that.”

“I know. But it makes a huge difference. There’s a girl named Mary … or who could be named Mary … in Hong Kong …” Twice she reaches for strands of hair that are no longer there. Another kind of memory, he suspects, stubbornly occupies the forefront of her thoughts.

“Then you understand,” he says.

“Can you help them?”

“Help, yes. For a short while. Honestly, it’s heart-wrenching,” he answers, expressing the sadness openly, as he prefers.

“Why isn’t God watching us more closely?” Xixi asks.

“You mean, why isn’t the moon full every night?”

“I guess.”

“I’m no priest,” John B says. “But I’ll say this—the moon has cycles. It has to. Otherwise, I believe we wouldn’t have the tides, and the planet might blow apart.”

“Wow.”

“I’m no scientist either.”

“Manga chases his own tail during full moons.”

“Manga?”

“He’s living in a hotel in the New Territories. He has all four legs.”

“I thought maybe you were talking about your father.”

She smiles. But then she thinks about it, or him, more likely, and the smile slides off. Gobshite: her mother summarized what went down in Bangkok. John B knows plenty of two-legged, tail-chasing dogs, with their proud pink willies and come-on barks. He’d be only too happy to step outside the compound and ruin Daddy Kwok’s playboy smile with a fist, should he try visiting the daughter he so miserably failed. Which he won’t do, needless to say—show up, be contrite and humble, act a real man.

“Truth be told,” John B says, “he had to return to Hong Kong for business.”

“Really? So fast?”

“Your mother explained the situation … Men need no end of forgiveness for our sorry habits, I’m afraid to say.”

“I’ll forgive him. Why not.”

“Good girl.”

She thinks for a second. “But can you still tell my mom not to hurry? Hom said I did a good job sweeping the garden, and I told Mrs. Chum I can make pork adobo and arroz caldo. That’s chicken porridge, basically.”

“Why don’t you tell her yourself? We’ve Internet.”

“I like not being on the Net,” she says. “Or Facebook. Or even having a phone.”

“Most of the girls here dream of nothing but owning the latest phone or their own laptop.”

“I like it the way it is right now.”

“Fair enough.”

“And I never want to have my own room again.”

“Okay.”

“I want to share with Rachel.”

The older sister, he also knows, thanks to the mother’s lengthy phone confession. “Would she be willing?”

“I think so. She needs a break from cute white guys.”

John B resolves on the spot to quit trying to figure Xixi Kwok out, and just enjoy. “I’ll ask your mother to wait a week or so. But she may not care for the request, coming from me.”

“She probably thinks you’re a thug. Still a thug, I should say.”

“Then you were listening to my sermon after all?”

“Every word,” she says. Her smile, real now, is like sunlight inside the cabin of a jet after the blinds are raised. He squints at the brilliance.

“Your mother might be right about me.”

“You’re a good man, John B. I can tell.”

To his astonishment, he feels tears welling up and ready to spill. “There’s Sam,” he says, rising. “He’s already made one sketch that he showed me earlier. Sam, over here, son. Don’t be so bloody

Khmer about it,” he adds, meaning too dignified and reserved for his own good.

Reedy, blushing Sameth, destined to fill out into a handsome young man, takes the pigeon steps of the bashfully excited.

“Give it up, mate,” John B says. He is going to have to start the tune off for these songbirds. They don’t have much time, and this is the right meadow, the proper perch, for a courtship.

The boy offers the jagged sheet, freshly torn from the pad.

“Isn’t it wicked?” John B says.

She examines the drawing while they both examine her. The sketch, done with evident talent, depicts Xixi Kwok with luminous almond eyes, a tiara tucked in her short hair and beads adorning her neck, her upper torso a blur of limbs, a dozen hands in total, each offering a significant gesture. She is heroine and goddess, manga and Guanyin.

“It’s nice,” she agrees. But her expression says otherwise.

“You at Wat Pho,” Sam says. “Like you tell me.”

“It’s nice.”

“No good! I knew it.” The boy hangs his head.

Rarely for him, John B has nothing to offer. He shouldn’t be in the courtyard, by the spirit shrine. He should leave these youngsters to their own company.
I’ll be on my way
, he is about to announce, knowing well that adults are meant to protect the young, not exploit them, and encourage their fragile dreams, not crush them, and that the chance Xixi and Sam might have to enter adulthood without permanent scars, unfixable broken bits, is one that Hom never had, and many of the residents at the shelter won’t have, and maybe he didn’t have—but no, no, no, he would never make excuses.