Especially orphans.
Her encounters with Arthur and Poppy afforded rare moments when she felt emboldened and compelled to go on living. At the same time, they made her feel vulnerable and burdened. They were making her fear something she never thought she would—death.
Hannah put aside her guitar after playing Romance Anónimo eight times over on Poppy’s request, and in doing so managed to get Poppy to drink the first bitter dose of the sepia-toned herbal concoction. Poppy tapped Hannah’s arm and pointed at the guitar by the wall. When she refused he persisted, tapping and humming and pointing doggedly with his little hand, ceasing only at her reproachful glare because he wasn’t used to her looking that way. Instead she indulged him with a box of faux jewellery while she embroidered.
At lunch they went to a nearby market that sold cooked food, a hubbub of street hawkers on patches of lawn, conducting a symphony of clanking woks and roaring furnaces. At one stall Hannah had congee ladled into a steel warmer. Turning around, she found Poppy by a fruit stall. He was pulling himself over the edge of a crate in an attempt to look inside when it overturned and sent dozens of persimmons bobbing across the rutted ground.
Hannah scrambled to collect the tumbling fruits while Poppy stood guilt-ridden. She returned the sullied persimmons in a little heaps, with an apology. Even then the stallholders fumed. They were a hollow-chested man and his wife with thin, scowling lips and vicious eyes. They derided Hannah’s efforts in a spate of dialect and demanded that she pay for the damages. When she offered to clean the fruits a hail of invectives deplored her acute lack of business sense. By then the commotion had drawn a small crowd.
She tipped another heap of persimmons back into the crate and there she remained; tolerating their poisonous reproach, breathing, repressing her responses. Beside her Poppy stood with his jaw ajar, drool leaking from it. Over the unceasing barrage of curses she went calmly over to a public tap and rinsed her hands. Then she took out her purse and scattered a few crumpled notes over the ruined fruits before grabbing Poppy’s hand and dragging him away.
“Hoey hai sor geh! Soey zai!” said a reedy, vindictive voice from behind them.
A persimmon left Hannah’s hand and found its way onto the woman’s face, splattering on impact. The audience laughed.
The shock rendered the wife speechless and the husband marched from his stall to deliver a slap across Hannah’s face. She saw it coming and received it without a wince. The smack rang loud and stilled the crowd, and her stolidity surprised the assailant. He drew up to her, flailing a finger and demanding more payment for the assault. Lust got the better of him, and two more shoves from his lecherous hands was all it took to incite Hannah’s wrath.
Their audience saw little, only Hannah turning around and leaving with Poppy in tow. Behind them the man, stunned to silence, sank to his knees cradling his fractured wrist. Shards of bone showed through the open flesh, and the crowd scattered in a fearful hush. Witchcraft. They thought.
“No one calls you an idiot, Poppy.” Hannah started up the stairs, biting her lower lip. She knew he couldn’t hear her but it made her feel better saying it. “I’d break more hands if it helps anything.”
Poppy looked up at her, mouth open, dribble stretching from his chin to his tummy. He had an inkling she was speaking to him, even though she wasn’t looking at him.
“People judge and there’s nothing you can do about it,” she said, angling in her bag for her keys. “You’d convince yourself they’re either liars or fools.”
They arrived at the apartment to find the door unlocked and conspicuously ajar.
She swore in an exhalation and pushed it fully open, the blade of a pocket knife flicking open in her hand. She could handle more than a common thief. But she knew whoever had done this wasn’t one. Poppy made a sound and she muffled it with her free hand. She cursed her luck. At such a moment she had to be burdened with a child.
The kitchen had been rummaged through. Drawers and cabinets were left open. The larder, its legs perched on four porcelain bowls of salt water, had its contents strewn across the kitchen floor. The living area appeared untouched. There was the blue velvet sofa near the small balcony and a coffee table with the half-finished needlework.
A wind chime twirled in a breeze.
Hannah kept Poppy shielded as they approached her bedroom. By now there was no longer caution in her actions, only a kind of morose lethargy. She could hear the whir of the electric table fan on her dresser.
She entered the room and saw Khun lying on her bed, sweating gently and wearing nothing but a pair of white boxers yellowed at the crotch. A half-nibbled roll of waxed sausage lay on the nightstand.
“Hell…” He pounded his forehead with the back of his hand and his biceps bulged. A smirk stretched across his face. “You changed the lock.”
“You don’t live here.”
“Don’t forget who you’re working for, dolly.”
“Not you,” said Hannah. “Now get off my bed.”
Khun sat up and his lean abdominal muscles rippled at the effort. “You should join me up here.” He patted a spot beside him.
“Maybe I should twist your head off.”
He flashed a lewd grin. “Anytime, baby.”
“Don’t push it.”
“Or what?” He leapt off the bed and stormed over to her. She barely flinched at the move but it made Poppy clutch tighter at her skirt. “You’ll get physical? I’d welcome that.”
Hannah, refusing to respond, hustled Poppy protectively behind her.
“Don’t forget the favour I did for that Chronie of yours.”
“We’ve paid you enough.”
“Now, now.” He stroked Hannah’s arm and pinched her soft skin. “The last time we met he only bought your service for two months.”
Hannah threw off his hand. “I could slit your throat right where you stand.”
“I stand as your faithful victim.” Khun breathed an insidious whisper, his face just inches above her clavicle and neck. She could smell the sourness of his breath. “But what’s going to happen to you? Who’s going to look after your pet Chronie? A chump like him won’t last a day without you.”
She stiffened as his hand on the small of her back crept downwards. Then in a sudden and violent act he tore Poppy from her arms. She lunged for the child but he held the boy beyond her reach.
Poppy flew into a feral struggle to liberate himself, twisting and clawing and hissing. Khun closed his massive fingers over his thin arm and wrung out a wheezing scream.
“This dumb thing doesn’t have a voice!” he laughed.
Hannah, unable to restrain herself, lashed out at Khun’s arms with her nails. “Let him go!” She withdrew quickly, repulsed by the folly of her actions and the very touch of his flesh.
In the blink of an eye Khun found the blade of Hannah’s weapon scarcely an inch from his sweaty, glistening neck. “Let him go, now!”
Khun held Poppy farther from her. “Come back to me, dolly.” His tone softening. “We could start over, like how we began.”
“Let go of him! You’re scaring him!”
“Drop the knife. For old times.”
Hannah levelled the blade at a point just below Khun’s chin and nudged it menacingly into the skin. “Let go of him!”
In a fit of rage Khun drove Poppy into the wall. The bawling child fell silent upon impact, dazed by the unexpected blow. At once both nostrils expressed dark trails of blood. His eyes, already swollen from the crying, now grew wide with shock.