The Black Isle by Sandi Tan

child. Protect yourself with this.”
    I didn’t want her stupid charm. I threw it on the floor. She picked it up and placed it back in my hand.
    “Don’t let her touch you again. Keep this to repel her. It’s for your own good.”
    “No!” This time I hurled it across the room. Sister Kwan clucked her tongue and after a fruitless search for the thing in the dark, gave up. Before leaving, she said to me, “Sister Yeung could be very dangerous. Prior to drowning herself, there was an incident…” Here she paused dramatically.
    “What incident?” I hissed.
    “She tried to take you with her.”
    “She tried to kidnap me?”
    “Worse.”
    I understood her meaning perfectly. But was Sister Kwan just trying to scare me?
    After she left, the room was once again silent. The chill returned. I could feel my legs begin to stiffen. Oh, why had I tossed away that amulet? It hadn’t even occurred to me that Sister Yeung could have meant any harm until Sister Kwan put the idea in my head. I watched as my breath again cooled into white spirals. My entire body was paralyzed, but this time my head remained unaffected—I could move my lips and my eyes. A small improvement. I could sense Sister Yeung’s approach.
    In a matter of seconds, she became whole. She came toward me exactly as she had the previous night—there was not the slightest variation. This time, however, I was free to scream for help. Yet, as before, I felt no desire to do so. The fear Sister Kwan had tried to instill in me was needless, even hateful. There was something very sad yet strangely calming about Sister Yeung’s ghost as she gazed at me with those passive, unblinking eyes.
    “Sister Yeung,” I said quietly. “I know you. I want to help you.”
    Again, Sister Yeung reached with both hands for my feet, her movement and expression an exact facsimile of the night before. When she squeezed my toes, I again felt nothing. But this time, I paid closer attention. Her fingertips were shriveled and as tiny as a child’s, smaller even than mine. I had heard about poor children hired by silk factories to fish out silkworm cocoons from boiling tubs with their bare hands—the job left them with stunted fingers. Sister Yeung had those fingers. Looking at her face creased with time’s unstoppable passing, I had a flash of recognition: She would never be young again. I began to weep.
    “Sister Yeung, can you hear me?”
    “One day…,” she started to say. “One day…”
    Her body seemed to melt away, and once again, I was alone in the dark.
     
    The next day, in the rickshaw to school, I refused to let Sister Kwan touch me. Her thumb was wrapped in a much bigger bandage than needed, exaggerating the injury sustained at the chopping board. Each time she tried to grab my hand, I let out a piercing scream. Finally, the rickshaw man told her to leave me be because I was attracting too many stares. He didn’t want the police or, worse, the Republican Army after us.
    “Did you keep the amulet I gave you?” Sister Kwan tried to make conversation, casting herself again as the concerned guardian.
    I ignored her.
    “It was blessed at my temple by a very powerful priest. He has ended droughts.”
    I stared out at the row of street carts next to the crowded tram stop, all of them hawking breakfast crullers and hot soybean milk to commuters in a hurry. The grease smelled delicious. I wished we could stop.
    “She always liked you, you know. Sister Yeung. You were her favorite. That’s why we were all so shocked about what she tried to do to you.”
    Lies. All lies.
    “I suppose she was afraid to go alone,” she continued. “She was probably lonely.”
    “Everybody’s lonely,” I snapped back.
     
    That night I was ready with a new note for Sister Yeung.
      
    You are a good person.
    I want to be your friend.
      
    Even if she couldn’t hear me, she still might be able to see the note.
    Hoping for a new outcome this time, I threw myself onto the floor as