To speak of it is to invite judgment. To speak of it is to give her power.
So we don’t. Not for a while and a night. Lily slept in my room, stomach aching from the animals she ate. She fell asleep holding my hand tight, close to the bed.
In the morning, regret lines our mouths, but the trash is bagged and taken out, evidence left to rot.
We decide to do our hair. Mine, to be exact, since the roots have grown out an inch. It feels safer to be locked in that tiny bathroom, even though it’s not. Cabinets close in squeals of laughter, doors crack their hinges in preparation of a day’s work, and curtains dance without a single breeze, and underneath it all is its real love language: scuttling legs and grating feelers as enthusiastic as a baby’s babble.
“Mom actually had good taste about this one,” Lily says as she examines my áo dài hanging on the door. Apart, I sidle close to the wallpaper that deteriorates in artistic patches. It’s charming, so it’s tolerated to a point. Silverfish find their way into the glue, no matter how Ba seals the cracks. A mildewy odor emanates from the wallpaper’s wide pores.
“Are you even listening?” Lily asks.
I wasn’t, but: “Yes.” I turn my head, jaw aching, and sit on the chair we dragged in. Lily’s waist and hips are swamped in my áo dài, but the length is close to perfect. Her eyes squint in suspicion. “I don’t think they sell many áo dài with girl power spelled out in sequins on it,” I say, and after a moment, she relaxes. It’s normal to be out of sync and awkward when you and your sister have been fighting for a week.
“If anyone can get it done, it’s Mom,” Lily replies, lips quirked. We’re not used to this, fighting and being without our mom. Is this house an echo chamber for Lily too? A cacophony of voice and chirps sharing opinions that become fact. Nails dig into thigh. I must not ask her. I can’t ask her. The house is always listening, just as I am always listening now. I have to stay the creature that has scared her most in this house. When my thoughts slip too much, it always grounds me to think of Mom and the ridiculous cursive or all-caps decals. In a way, it’s my true north. There’s a home away from Đà Lạt.
We snap a poorly lit photo of Lily’s fancy pose for Mom, sending it with at least fifty fire emojis. Exiting our chat, I scroll past my message to Florence again.
SATURDAY 2:33 a.m.
Me: I know you didn’t tell. Thanks.
I don’t quite remember sending it but having seen it, of course I sent it. I miss her and the silly comments in our code. She didn’t turn Ba’s bribes to her uncle, though I doubt more every day that a bribe was ever needed. This house is perfect, superior to the abandoned villa Florence and I visited, and better than the flimsy, boring houses newly dotting Đà Lạt.
“We’re gonna do one section at a time,” Lily says once she’s changed out of the dress. I set the phone to one side. “I watched many YouTube videos on this.” Since I’m the one who touches up Mom’s roots every few weeks and she isn’t allowed to color her hair yet, her eagerness to play with hair dye borders on diabolical. I swat her gold-plated hair clips away, but Lily waves the butterflies around my crown like I’m a flower to be pollinated. “I don’t care if they get dirty. They’re mine, I decide what to do with them,” she scolds. I relent.
We sit in the bathroom as we did that day she got her first period, only she’s painting my hair cold. “I talked to Mom yesterday,” I say, keeping my tone casual, as though I hadn’t insisted that she not come to my birthday. I’d wounded her feelings on purpose, counting on her sincere shame. Chemicals sting my scalp.
“Good,” she says. “And Dad?” On instinct, I grind my teeth together. Responsibility has always fallen on me for his behavior. In the mirror, her side profile is unreadable. “He tries harder with you than anyone else.”
It’s a statement, not a question. The utter wrongness of her words sinks in, churning stomach acid. I carry his burden, and so it’s fair that he should have some of mine as well. A camera is nothing compared to a skull. I inhale sharply. “He does not.”
The brush jabs hard behind my ear. “He totally does. He made a deal with you.”
“It was his idea,” I say, explaining how our parents’ separation sans divorce had screwed up financial aid and how when I called, my visit was what he asked for. Of course, I’d interpreted the invitation in the simplest terms: a half-assed attempt to bond.
Lily sighs. “And you couldn’t tell me.”
Grimly, I turn to her. “Mom would put off seeing her family another decade so we could eat and be educated. What other choice was there? She deserves to start living her life again.” Not in sacrifice for us, and definitely not for me.
“But then you started pranking the house,” Lily says, “to leave sooner.”
“Because of the real haunting,” I say, though she’s partially right. I had wanted both of us to leave sooner and with the money, if at all manageable. “Some of those things, yeah, were me and Florence, but there’s more that’s not.” I listen for the house’s protest, but it’s silent except for our breathing. It’s already everything I’ve told her before.
She hesitates, probably considering ripping hair from my scalp. “Obviously before last night”—her lip trembles—“I was avoiding Ba’s cooking, because it’s weird that he wanted to go all Chef Dad on us, and you said not to eat. But now I don’t even know, Jade. Yesterday was weird. I needed to opposite-vomit? Cramming all of that …” She trails off, mimicking shoving invisible food into her mouth with a nervous laugh. “This place is creepy.”
“It’s a place with a story,” I say carefully. My immediate reaction to my sister believing me should be relief, but all I sense is dread unspooling under the birds’ glossy eyes and the silverfish’s clicking maw. The stories must wait. They will grace the world on opening night, as intended, for the widest audience. “I never do things without a reason.”
Lily snorts. “I know you have reasons. They’re just not all good ones.”
I raise my brow. “I’m sorry that I scared you the other times, but I needed to convince Dad. Didn’t do any good. He’s made up his mind.”
Lily pins me with a skeptical look. “You are exactly like him, Jade.”
“What the shit does that mean?”
“You settle on an idea and don’t let go,” Lily says, unclipping another section of hair. “Like, that time you decided you don’t like Oreos but ended up eating half a package by yourself.”
“I was stressed out studying and needed a sugar rush.”
“How you keep insisting Sir Meow-a-Lot isn’t your cat.”
“He isn’t.”
“He is, you big softie. You found him and brought him home.”
For fuck’s sake, you do one nice thing and people remember. “I didn’t plan on keeping him,” I say. Luckily my phone lights up, an excuse to tap out from this character assassination.
SATURDAY 11:35 a.m.
Florence Ngo: I was never going to
There’re so many things to say that a keyboard can’t capture. Under my breastbone, something is loose and wild. I can’t leave without seeing her. Quickly, before I change my mind, I ask if she wants to get ready together tomorrow.
When I shut my phone and look up, Lily’s smiling at me. “And her,” she says with finality. “You were so determined to hate her.”
“I was not,” I argue, unsure whether to be angry or amused.
“You know,” Lily says, brushing the dark roots of my hair, her voice a whisper. “I love you, no matter what.” Her volume picks back up and happily. “All my friends are queer.”
This is the moment, isn’t it? My sister outgrowing me and finding the words I’ve always fussed over. Who cares if they’re in English or Vietnamese, when I can say them out loud? “Love you too,” I mumble. Maybe this is why our parents never tell us anymore; it’s too much like saying mud is dirty or the sky is blue.
“And I love Dad too,” Lily says, unabashed. “I’m not going to leave him alone here. He belongs back home with us. Let Ông Sáu play caretaker, or Alma when she’s better.”
“I know.” I’m trying. I want to. I had glimpsed him in the truck, that sliver of care still inside and that desperate need to belong. I want to belong somewhere too. I always have.
Lily places the brush and hair dye down. “Okay. I got everything.”
My head burns with dye, but I smile. “Want highlights?” I ask, and she brightens. Mom made me wait until I was sixteen. Switching places, I unknot the silk headband from her hair.
Lily jerks away. “Ow, sorry. My head’s been a little sensitive.”
I frown. “I barely even touched you.” That same earthy smell wafts from the walls and mixes with the chemical scent. “Is that why you’ve been wearing your hair down?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I think it’s a pimple from leftover hormones or something.”
I set the folded fabric on the sink’s rim. “Let me see.”
“Really, it’s no big deal,” Lily backtracks, but as gently as I can, I finger through her hair. Each pained noise she makes brings me closer to it, the thing that’s making my heart beat harder. In this house, nothing is coincidence. The thumping stopped once I found what was hidden in the chimney. My sister, sleepwalking again, marked her height against Marion’s children. The food rots, no matter the refrigerator’s age, and now these walls release their animal scent. I part along the flat seam where the headband was, and Lily hisses.
The welt’s as ripe as a seeded grape. Its center is white, bulbous, as if pulled fresh from vine. It oozes clear liquid as something shifts inside.
“Don’t move,” I say, but to whom? It or my sister? Faced with whatever I couldn’t protect Lily from, I want to scream. The sound threatens to rip me apart, but I have to get myself together. We are so close to the end, and Ba cannot be trusted to pick up the pieces if I disappear completely into this house’s halls. Lily deserves more than this.
Alarm rises in my little sister’s voice. “What is it?”
“It’s not a pimple,” I answer matter-of-factly, reaching for my toiletry bag on the shelf. Lily tries to stand, but I hold her in place where I can see it stewing. Seething for being found early.
How do I know that it’s not yet ready in the warm cocoon of my sister’s head?
Who told me that?
Her gaze drifts upward in the mirror. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t look,” I tell her before squeezing a glob of hand sanitizer onto tweezers. The cloyingly sweet gel coats the metal. I don’t know what I’m doing, only that I can’t leave it where it doesn’t belong. I’d been focused on our food, but there are other ways an unwanted entity can slip inside. I should’ve known after all my research how easily one can be colonized: infections begin as innocently as licking your fingers clean of salt.
This house has Marion’s cruelty. It toys with me. Ce sont tous des parasites.
Anything can happen to the people I care about, if I don’t willingly open myself up for dissection. “I’m sorry,” I say. In the mirror, my reflection is holding Lily in a headlock. She cries out when I touch too close to the welt’s red rim, struggling against my grip. I’m holding my sister in a headlock. “You have to stay still.” Even though she’s scared, I squeeze into the wound and use the tweezers to pinch one white end. I tug, unleashing a spot of blood that makes me want to hurl. I hold my breath.
The larva expands its rounded body, too young to squirm in these metal pincers. I can’t split it open. I don’t want to know what happens when something’s half-dead in you, so I keep at it gently, soothingly, until this impossibly bloated body emerges from the hole in my sister’s head. “Don’t look,” I say again as my hand shakes with terrified adrenaline.
Lily can’t contain her high panic. Once I let her go, she springs forward to try to catch me—to see what’s been eating inside her skin.
But I’m faster. Flipping open the toilet seat, I throw the larva in. Its bulky form splashes as I flush it away, other hand shoving my sister back.
“What was that?” Lily asks, shoulders pulled to her ears as she hugs herself.
I clench the tweezers harder. “Are there more?”
“More what?”
“Spots that hurt or itch,” I say calmly, though I run my tongue over my gums and teeth, searching for any stray legs. The shower curtain shifts, though nothing’s touched it. This house can’t be left in boredom. It gets too many ideas.
She shakes her head. The tweezers roll from my fingers and ping against tile. I pull her into my arms. Tears wet my shirt. “Was it lice, Jade?” Lily asks, sniffling. She knows it isn’t, but she’s learned from me too when a lie serves us and when it keeps us going. “You can’t tell anyone I have lice.”
“I won’t,” I say into her hair, staring defiantly at the birds. She’s embarrassed, of course, but no one can blame themselves for where a mother decides to lay her eggs.