Read Online Journey Across the Four Seas by Veronica Li - Free Book Online Page B

the border, a small but juicy prey.
    It was a difficult decision. Mother wanted to stay, but she also understood that Ngai and I couldn’t give up our education for the sake of something that might or might not happen. Ngai was to begin his studies at Hong Kong University , and on full scholarship too. He’d adjusted his ambition of becoming commander in chief of the three armed forces to economic minister of China . He, too, had picked economics as his major.
    Mother agonized over letting Ngai and me return to Hong Kong on our own. She was worried that there would be nobody to look after us. Our other brother, Yung, was working as a seaman on a ship and was gone most of the time. Again, it was Brother Kin who solved the problem. He offered to pay for Ngai and me to move into the university dorm, where our meals and other basic needs would be taken care of. Mother held out for a while, questioning how strangers could replace a mother’s care. But she no longer said "No," which was the closest she could come to saying "Yes" to us.
    I was sad to leave Mother, though not too sad, for I knew I would see her again the next summer. Once on the boat, my tears dried quickly, and I turned my thoughts toward the future. At long last I would be moving out of the squalid one-room home I grew up in. It was a miserable place to start with, and time had only made it worse. Memories of beatings and poverty haunted it. I couldn’t wait to close the door on it forever. My new home would be Saint Stephen’s Hall, the women’s dorm famous for its scenery and parties. I’d always envied the girls who lived there. I’d never thought I would have the chance to be one of them; yet here it was, a present from my brother. I wished a strong gust of wind would blow me home.
    *
    The bedtime socials with my dorm mates were as much fun as I’d imagined. There were four rooms to a floor, and two girls to a room. When the day’s work was done, we opened wide our doors so we could be within each other’s earshot. While curling our hair in front of our respective mirrors, we shouted back and forth about the silliest trivia.
    My roommate was called Renee. She was a tiny person, reaching only up to my ear. Her face was plain and horsey, but whenever she smiled, her face could light up the whole room. Her father was a prominent industrialist who owned a chain of dye factories. When I first heard about her affluent background, I got worried that she would behave like a princess. But she turned out to be easy-going and considerate, and we became good friends.
    Now, I’m going to talk about something I haven’t mentioned to anyone in a long, long time. Shortly after I moved into Saint Stephen’s, the headaches and fevers of my childhood returned. I tried to ignore them at first, dragging myself to classes and pretending to be well in front of Renee. Nighttime was when the fever burned most fiercely. I sweated so much that my pillow and bed sheet were soaked. Something was very wrong with me, and I couldn’t hide my illness much longer.
    There was only one person I could turn to. While sitting on the edge of her bed, I told Sam-Koo my symptoms.
    "Stop crying, you bag of tears!" she chided, handing me the handkerchief that was always tucked between the buttons of her cheongsam. "I’ll find you a good doctor. There’s no illness that modern medicine can’t cure. Take, for example, the mother of a student of mine. She’d been sick for a while when I went to visit her. Her face was yellow and bony and her eyes gave out a green light. I thought her days were numbered. Several months later I ran into her on the street. She was not only alive, but plumper and fairer than ever before." Sam-Koo went on with her usual babble about her students and their parents. I was only half-listening when she mentioned the American-educated doctor who was trained in the latest treatment for TB. What was she implying—that I had TB?
    "There’s only one problem," Sam-Koo