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WAI CHIM

Scholastic Press
New York
Copyright © 2019 by Wai Chim

All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.,


Publishers since 1920. scholastic, scholastic press, and associated logos are
trademarks and/​or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

First published in Australia in 2019 by Allen & Unwin, 83 Alexander Street,


Crows Nest NSW 2065.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility
for author or ­third-​­party websites or their content.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or


transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For
information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions
Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data available

ISBN 978‑1‑­338-​­65611‑4

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 21 22 23 24
Printed in the U.S.A. 23

First US edition, November 2020


Book design by Baily Crawford
For family,
whatever form that may take
A Note on Phonetics
from the Author

This book uses the Jyutping romanization system for Cantonese


language, which includes numbers that represent tones (inflec-
tions). Like many of her ­Western-​­born contemporaries (including
myself), Anna Chiu speaks and understands colloquial Cantonese
but doesn’t know how to read or write the much more complex
Chinese characters. I’ve selected Jyutping as a way of representing
her use of her Chinese tongue.
Mom
Maa1

I need to tell Anna about the big black dog.


Anna, my precious daughter. I saw the dog the other day. It was
snarling and snapping, chomping through its broken chain, froth-
ing from the mouth.
Wo wo. Wo wo.
Anna, I have to tell you about the dog. Big as a car, ferocious. A
beast. It barked and it howled, h
­ igh-​­pitched like a demon.
Wo wo. Wo wo.
I need to tell you, Anna. So you will know, and you will under-
stand. Its eyes were red and glowing like the devil.
Wo wo. Wo wo.

1
Chapter One
Jat1

February

THE SHADOWS OF THE LEAVES on the wall bend to the


right, like gentle waves coming to shore. It could be a good day.
When Ma stays in bed, our mornings are a game of fortune-
telling where I’m forever looking for signs. The search begins when
I try to coax her up with a cup of herbal tea. I shuffle down the
hallway, looking for a shadow that looks like a smiley face, wait-
ing for a shock from the doorknob, or trying to miss the creaking
board on the floor. These signs tell me something about what to
expect behind Ma’s closed door.
I can’t say if they work or not. There was definitely a day I
missed the squeaking board and Ma ended up throwing the tea
I brought her against the wall. Bad day. And then there was the
time I thought the shadows outside Ma’s bedroom door looked like
a kitten playing with a balloon. That day, Ma went out and bought

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me and Lily new iPhones because she said they were on special.
Good day.
Today’s shadows look promising and the knob doesn’t shock
me. The ceramic lid of Ma’s special teacup rattles in my trembling
hands as I push the door open. In here, the shadows look menac-
ing; the thin slats of sunlight threaten to break through the barrier
of darkness that engulfs the room. She’s still in bed, bad sign. One
for one.
I set the cup down on the bedside table. Ma’s tiny form is lost
in a swath of thick blanket so only a matted black nest of her hair
pokes out. I know she’s not sleeping. My heart sinks.
She’s been in bed for two weeks now. It’s not the first time, and I
know it won’t be the last, but I still can’t smother the plumes of disap-
pointment when she gets like this. When she stops being our mother.
Out of habit, I push my glasses up against the bridge of my nose.
“Ma. Caa4.” Tea. I can still detect the tinge of hopefulness in my
voice.
She doesn’t stir. A small breeze makes the blinds tremble and the
beams of light shiver, but nothing else in the room moves, certainly
not my mother.
“Ma.” I put a hand on the cushioned part that I think is her
shoulder and shake gently. Only then does she move and that’s only
to flinch my hand away. I stay by the side of the bed waiting for
another sign, some acknowledgment that I’m here. But she doesn’t
turn. As I leave, I shut the door as quietly as I can. This time, I
think that maybe the waves in the shadows look more like spikes
on a lizard, so not the good sign I thought they were.

4
Or maybe they’re just bloody leaves.
I plaster on a smile and head into the kitchen.
It’s eerily quiet, just the sound of the dripping tap from the sink.
It’s the only plus side to Ma being in her room. My little brother
and sister have been on their best behavior in the mornings since
Ma’s been in bed.
The two of them are crammed together on one side of the tiny din-
ing room table making breakfast. Ma threw out the toaster a while
­back—​­toast is too jit6 hei3 (hot air) and the darkened bits cause sore
throats, she ­says—​­so we are eating butter and jam on plain bread.
Lily is helping to spread the jam for our ­five-​­year-​­old brother.
Michael flattens his slice of white bread into a gooey patty and
crams it into his mouth, jam and butter smearing all over his pudgy
cheeks.
I grab a paper towel to wipe it off, but it just spreads the sticky
mess around. Now bits of paper towel cling to his face. I shrug and
reach for the tub of butter.
“How’s Ma?” Lily asks.
“Sleeping,” I say. Lily will know this is a lie, which makes it
easier for me to say. I’m a terrible liar, and I don’t like to argue with
my sister. While some people argue to be right, Lily argues just to
prove the other person wrong.
“Mommy’s sleeping! Shhhhh, don’t wake her up!” Michael says
this way too loudly, so I shush him.
As expected, Lily is not buying. “Okay, so, like, talking to herself
or not talking at all?” At thirteen, my little sister is more matter‑
of‑fact and sarcastic than I’ve ever been.

5
“She’s sleeping,” I say again, and jam the butter knife into the
hardened brick. I gouge out a piece, not caring that it looks like
somebody has hacked away a piece of flesh from the middle of the
block. I do my best to spread it, then give up and just fold the bread
over. I eat my buttered bread in two big bites. The lump of butter
melts slowly on the roof of my mouth.
“If Mommy’s sleeping again, are you taking me to school,
ze2 ze2?” Michael asks me, a snarl of paper towel still stuck to
the corner of his mouth. His bowl haircut and perfect bangs make
his brown eyes look even bigger. He’s so cute, sometimes it hurts
my heart.
“Lily is going to have to take you today.”
Lily’s outraged. “I have to meet with my CT partners before
our presentation. You can drop him on your way.” CT stands for
Communications Theater; calling it “drama” is too pedestrian
for the students at Montgomery High.
“You start at nine, Lily. If you get going soon, you won’t be
late,” I say.
“Uuuuuugh!” Lily’s complaining is overly dramatic, but it
doesn’t faze me. She is up and running to our room, her sticky
plate still on the table. I sigh and pick up my hardly used plate
along with hers.
I leave the dishes in the sink and wet another paper towel in a
final attempt to clean my brother’s face. He sits there and lets me
scrape things off with my ­chewed-​­down‑to‑­the-​­nub nails.
“Baba didn’t come home last night.” My brother frowns.
“I know. Things must have been busy at the restaurant,” I say.

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I’ve noticed this has been happening whenever Ma stays in bed, but
I keep this to myself.
Michael reaches up to touch my face. “Look, Anna! An eyelash.
You have to make a wish.”
I smile and comply, closing my eyes and blowing on his finger-
tip, wishing for Ma to be out of bed, for Baba to be home.
For things to just be normal.
We smile at each other as the eyelash disappears, and Michael
looks very pleased with himself.
“Okay, it’s already past eight. Time to get ready for school,” I
tell him.
“But I need Mommy or Baba to sign my permission form.”
He waves a piece of paper under my nose. “Our librarian, Miss
Holloway, is taking us to an art camp! But she says I have to get my
parents to sign it or I’ll miss out. Can’t we just wake Mommy up?”
I remember Ma’s shape in the bed, all bundled up and still. The
last thing I want is for Michael to see her that way. “Tell you what,
you go get ready, and I’ll see if I can wake her up,” I say.
His whole face brightens and the ache in my chest is gone in an
instant.
“Are we going yet?” Lily emerges from our bedroom, already
dressed. She has pulled her hair back in a messy ponytail. Her ­rail-​
­thin body is almost comical with her oversized backpack hanging
extra low and bouncing against her bottom. A water bottle dangles
from a carabiner clipped to the side. “Hurry up, squirt. We have to
go,” she calls after Michael’s retreating form.
She plonks herself down, backpack and all, onto one of our

7
metal folding chairs. The water bottle makes a loud thud as it
hits the chair, but she doesn’t notice, just crosses her arms and
stares at me.
“She’s not going to sign the form, you know.” The know‑it‑all
arch of her eyebrow is so perfect, I wonder if she’s practiced it
before.
“I know.” I snatch a pen from the kitchen drawer and scrawl
on the line on the form. It’s not the first time I’ve forged Ma’s
signature, and I’m sure Lily’s done it a million times, too. But we
have an unspoken agreement between us: We protect Michael from
Ma’s tendencies, the bad ones at least, while we can.
Lily lets out a not‑so‑subtle huff behind me. “You know, if I get
another lecture from Lucy, I’m going to tell her it’s my sister’s fault.
I’m not taking the fall.”
“Sure, whatever. And don’t call your teachers by their first name.”
I place the butter in a used Ziploc bag and put it back in the
freezer, where Ma insists on keeping it. The bread bag I tie up tightly
and then knot it up in another plastic bag and stick it in the freezer.
Everything in our house is tied up in plastic bags of some kind: All
our food containers, cleaning supplies, even the picture frames on
the shelves are sealed in clear plastic. Ma hates dust but she doesn’t
like dusting, so every few weeks, she just replaces the plastic bags
because they’re cheap. Any e­ co-​­warrior would be terrified stepping
into our house, but no one ever comes over, so there’s no worry.
“Lucy tells us to call her that,” Lily retorts. “She says that chil-
dren are human beings and deserve to be treated with the same
respect as adults, so I can express myself to my full potential.”

8
I try not to roll my eyes. Thanks to a scholarship, Lily attends a
rich private school just outside Glebe. With a natural penchant for
melodrama, Lily’s sounding more and more like her w
­ ell-​­off peers.
I just hope they don’t rub off too much.
“Ze2 ze2, I can’t find my other sock,” Michael calls out to me
from his bedroom.
“Do you want me to help you?”
“No!” Michael is going through a phase of being very particu-
lar about his privacy, especially with his sisters. He won’t let us in
when he’s dressing or bathing, and will only let Mommy see him
naked, which is making things harder for me and Lily, as Ma’s good
moods are getting fewer and fewer. I miss the little guy who ran
around naked with his ­half-​­done‑up diaper trailing behind him.
Lily rolls her eyes again. “Oh gosh! I’m never going to get to
school.”
“Be quiet.” I call through the closed door, “Michael, you have
five seconds to come out of there or I’m coming in!”
“Noooo!” The door bangs open and Michael is standing there in
his school shirt and shorts, a striped sports sock on one foot and a
gray k
­ nee-​­high sock on the other. I walk into his bedroom and get
on my hands and knees to look.
I snatch at what I hope is a gray sock, but it turns out to just be a
giant dust bunny under the bed. Yuck. If Ma saw this, she’d lose it.
“Anna, I need my socks.” Michael stamps his feet.
“Aannaaaaaaa! I have to go!” Lily’s screeching makes me wince.
“Sorry, squirt, no time.” I beckon him over and fold the ­knee-​
­high sock over a few times to try to even the two out.

9
I help Michael into his shoes and then put on his backpack. It’s
almost as big as Lily’s, and he bends backward slightly from the
weight. “And good news, Ma signed your slip!” I wave it in front
of him.
He frowns as he takes it from me. “Really? But you said she was
asleep.”
“Ah, she was. But she woke up for a bit and then went straight
back to bed. I think she’s really tired.”
My lying is pathetic and isn’t fooling anyone, not even a ­five-​
­year-​­old. But there’s no time to argue. I grab my own schoolbag,
an ­over-​­the-​­shoulder messenger bag that I bought with the money I
saved from the ­one-​­and-​­only paid babysitting gig I ever had, before
Ma forbade me to babysit at strangers’ houses. “How do I know
their house is safe? They could do drugs or sell the guns.” The
woman paying me to babysit worked at the Woolworths down
the road and was hoping to pick up an extra shift on the public
holiday. But there was no use pointing this out to Ma.
Although these days, it doesn’t seem to matter.
She’s so often in bed.
As I leave for school, I pause by Ma’s door but don’t go in. The
shadows are gone now. At least for today, there are no more signs
to consider.

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