Air (or Have Not Have)

CHAPTER 24

Wing had his generator running.

The courtyard was full of light and people. The Haj, their pilgrim to Mecca, stood at the courtyard gate. He had crammed onto his head a funny hat with a teddy bear's face. Perhaps he wanted to cheer people up. He had a list.

'Chung Mae,' the Haj called out. People surged forward. 'Ho-ho! With all the Chungs – Old Mrs Ken and…' He paused, ballooning out his eyes. '… Mr Ken.' He coughed and then murmured, 'Quite a family group.'

Mrs Shenyalar threw a blanket around Mae's shoulders. 'Mrs Chung was first!' the Muerain's wife shouted to the villagers. 'She roused my husband!'

Sunni's mother, Old Mrs al Gama, took up Mae's hand. Sunni hugged Mae. 'Are you all right, darling?' Sunni asked.

Mae turned back around to the Haj. 'Mr Haj-sir. Where is Sezen? Miss Ozdemir – has she come in yet?'

The Haj kept smiling, but his eyes narrowed. He said nothing.

'Kwan has hot food for everyone.' Sunni was tugging at her shoulder.

'Haj? You have been keeping count? Who has come? Who has not?'

The Haj looked sweet, like a calf, and shrugged. He was blinking. 'So many have been saved,' he said, looking down at the list.

'Where is Sezen?'

The Haj sighed, and reached forward with his plump hands. 'She has not come here.'

'Who else?'

'The Shens, the Chus…'

Mae knew. 'The people in the south wash.'

The Haj shook his head. 'The Macks and Pins are all right.' He sighed. 'They believed you.'

Mae found she was weeping. 'Who else?'

Sunni stopped pulling, surrendered, and hugged her.

Mae asked, 'What about Han Kai-hui? Her daughter?'

The Haj simply shook his head and said, 'Inshallah.'

'Almost everyone else is all right,' said Sunni. 'You did everything.'

Mae let herself be led through the throng. All the Soongs had survived and were huddled in one corner of the court. The cluster of grandchildren played with toys. Mr and Mrs Okan shuffled up to Mae and showered her with thanks.

Sezen was gone. She had died saving An, the traitor. Han An, the last person in the world you could have seen Sezen giving her life for. Mae thought of An and their clipboards. Mae remembered Kai-hui's face when they were little girls, both poor, catching turtles in the reeds.

From somewhere there came a sound like thunder or fireworks, a crackling and a boom. Someone's house had fallen. Involuntarily, the villagers groaned.

Some of the Dohs surged around Mae now, and took hold of her hand. They were thanking her. Was their house still standing?

'Have you seen Mr and Mrs Ozdemir?' Mae managed to ask. Mrs Doh stared back at her, as if she was far too important to know or care about sharecroppers.

'Wild girl,' said Mae, and suddenly her legs left her.

Mae slumped down onto the ground. Siao, Joe, and Ken Kuei were ranged all around her and that was too much as well. Her brain buzzed.

Someone else was using her mouth.

We all go, we are all washed away, down into the dark, and no one will find us ever again.

Sunni was making Mae sit up. 'Sezen is probably cut off somewhere, Mae. You know Sezen: She'll come roaring up here tomorrow on her boyfriend's motorcycle.'

Indeed, it would be just like Sezen. Mae tried to smile. Joe and Ken between them helped her to her feet. Her shins were numb.

Somehow she was on the stone staircase, being led down into Kwan's kitchen. All around them, the noise of the flood was gently falling asleep. Sssh, the waters seemed to say, sssh, the worst is over. The wound is lanced, the pus is draining. Sssh little ones, sleep.

In the kitchen, everything was feverish: the single orange light, the heat of the stoves, the bustling women.

Something bony and hard flung itself around Mae's neck. Mae burped vile juices into her mouth and felt only elbows. Kwan, desperate, clung to her. Kwan leaned back, looked at Mae, and her lower face crumpled.

Mae felt nothing. Who was this person?

Kwan took her hand and led her to a table. Mrs Pin leapt up, and with a kind of whirligig speed, spun bowls and village bread onto the table in front of Mae.

Wing and Mr Atakoloo looked up from their food. Both bowed deeply and in silence. Mrs Pin ladled soup into Mae's bowl. Mae picked up the spoon, and found it was too heavy to lift.

She collapsed into tears and lowered the spoon and sat helplessly. Kwan crowded in next to her and Mae gave her an angry shove.

'I tried to tell you!' Mae shouted at Kwan. 'No one believed me. No one did anything!'

The kitchen fell into an embarrassed silence. From outside came the rushing sound of water.

Kwan, Wing, Sunni, Young Mrs Doh – all stared at her with those same round, helpless eyes. What were they waiting for? For her to say: I forgive you?

'That's all I have to say,' she told them abruptly. She tore at a newly moistened piece of village bread.

Mae found that the only person she cared about right now was Sezen. Not Joe, not Ken, not Ju-mei, not Kwan, none of them. It was a strange thing to discover. If she told the story of any of them, it would not move her. Only Sezen's life had a meaning. Sezen, who loved Air.

'Where is Mrs Ozdemir?' said Mae, very carefully, very angrily. 'That is what I have asked people. Sezen's mother. Or is she not important enough to be allowed into the kitchen?'

Kwan looked up, questioningly. 'In the courtyard somewhere?'

Without saying anything else, Mae stood up and walked.

'Mae?' someone called after her.

She broke into a run, fleeing from them. Leave me alone! She heard her feet on wet stone again, as if the Flood was still behind her.

The flood never goes away, it pushes – pushes, and washes all away.

Bunched up like a fist, Mae pushed her way unseen through people too concerned with their own loss. The sky was going silver. The rooster crowed on Kwan's barn roof.

Mae found Hatijah huddled in a corner of a barn in the dark. Her head was covered and she sat rocking slightly. She was singing in a wan, private voice.

'Mrs Ozdemir-ma'am? Hatijah?' Mae rubbed the woman's shoulder. The family goat was loose, rooting in hay. Edrem sat with his back towards everyone.

'Hatijah? Don't give up hope. Suppose she rescued all those people and got them up to high hills. What a heroine she will be, ah? Think how joyous we will all be when she comes back to us? Hatijah?'

The woman kept singing – a thin, wheedling, wordless lament. Hatijah stared unblinking and dry-eyed, ignoring the baby on her lap. Mae hugged the red shawl and thought of fleas and the stricken household and how Sezen had fought – fought everything. And she won. Sezen had won.

'Hatijah? Do you want to talk?'

Hatijah kept singing tunelessly, and rocking back and forth. The older daughter sat plucking her own shawl, scowling, ignored. The useless back of her useless husband was turned towards them.

'Can you talk?'

Nothing.

Edrem answered instead. 'We saved the goat.' He snarled the last word. His hands