By the time Mai’s dad comes, she’s sitting in the back of a police car. Ling is drinking pop and eating candy that one of the cops bought her.

Mr. Kim, the store owner, and a policeman been inside the salon for an hour. Next thing I know, they back outside. A few minutes later, Mai gets out the car.

Mai’s dad looks sad. Tired. Like he could go to sleep forever. “Apologize,” he says to her.

She looks at her feet. “Sorry.”

“Now. In Korean. Like you mean it. . . .”

The police are by the car writing something down.

Mr. Kim is talking fast to Mai now, and speaking Korean to Ling.

Mai shakes her head no. “You don’t know what he said to me.”

“Apologize.”

“But . . .”

“No buts. Apologize.”

“He . . .”

Mr. Kim grabs her by the arm, the one with the tattoo on it. “This man. He won’t press charges if you just apologize,” he says. “So do what I say. Now.”

Mai is talking a mile a minute. Stuttering. Saying, “Daddy, but Daddy, you don’t . . .”

Her father turns his back to her. He shakes his head and walks away.

Mai runs behind him. “He called me trash. Black trash.”

Mr. Kim keeps his back turned to her. He repeats himself. “Apologize.” When he turns around, I see tears running down his face. “You too,” he says, pointing to the man with the broom.

I don’t know what Mai and the man say, ’cause they’re speaking in Korean. When they are done, Mr. Kim whispers something in Mai’s ear. She shakes her head and says, “No, Daddy. No.” He holds her, rocks her from side to side.

“You look in the mirror and all you see is a little black girl,” he says, pushing curls out her eyes. “I see my sister and my mother. People I love, just like you.”

Mai points to the store owner and his wife, then to the people all around us. “They don’t see what you see, Daddy. All they see is this,” she says, pulling at the skin on her arm. “And this,” she says, shaking her hair. “And they can’t figure out what I am.”

Mr. Kim walks over to the curb and sits down. Mai does, too. “Are you part Indian? they ask me. Mexican mixed with a little Chinese fried rice.”

Mr. Kim leans over and kisses Mai’s neck, then rubs her back.

She leans her head on his shoulder. “Daddy, I’m so tired. . . .”

Ling sits in Mai’s lap and plays with her hair.

Mai tells her father that everybody wants her to choose sides. To just be black, or biracial, or Korean. “I did choose,” she says. “Only nobody likes the side I picked . . . not the kids at school, or the boys at the mall, not even you.”

Mr. Kim stands up and holds out his hand to Mai. We walk to his car, ignoring people staring at us like we aliens. Mai and her dad speak in English and Korean, so I don’t know all of what they say. But I like it when he says that the next time someone asks what she is, she should tell ’em that she’s Kim Sung-hee’s daughter. “Sweet as honey and brown as fresh baked bread.”

I like that. So does Ling. She asks Mr. Kim if her skin will be brown like Mai’s when she grows up.

He tells her no. “Raspberry and Mai have something extra special in their skin, that makes it look that way.”

Ling stares at her arm.

He looks at her through the rearview mirror. “You have something special too. Just not the same thing.”

“Lemon mixed with a pinch of vanilla,” I tell Ling. “And so does Mr. Kim.”

“Hmmm,” she says, wiggling in my lap.

“I’m gingersnap,” Mai says, looking back at us. “Raspberry’s brown sugar mixed with cherry juice.”

Ling bends down and licks my arm. “I eat you up,” she says, grabbing Mai’s arm too. Before we get through three more stoplights, Ling is lying in my lap, asleep.

Mr. Kim breathes in real deep. “Dooridul dah doh jal hae yah hae.”

I get close to Mai’s ear and ask her what her father said.

Her fingers roll over the tattoo like she can read it with her hands. “He says that he and I have to do better.”

Ling snores all the way to the house. When it’s time to get out the car, Mai takes her outta my arms. Them two have the same-shaped ears and lips, I think to myself. Then I sit back in my seat and wait for her dad to take me home.