CHAPTER 10
When I reach home, the light by our front door is on as if it’s been left on for Dad. But I know that it’s on for me this time. I’m the one who's come home late. I’m the one who’s gone out in my lady armour and house slippers to battle devils and ghosts, and lived to tell the tale.
Mum quietly opens the security door before I can even place my hand on it. Her eyes are wet with tears.
I don’t apologise. I just say simply, ‘I did exactly what Dad told me to do – got out of the house. I was being obedient, for a change. Did he burn anything while I was away?’
Mum’s laugh sounds like a sob.
I don’t tell her about the men, or about running across the main road through all the cars in my socks, weeping in fear, with my heart squeezed up high in my throat.
And Mum doesn’t ask anything. She just pulls me in and gives me a fierce hug.
For a moment, I stand there frozen. She doesn’t usually do more than pat me vaguely on the top of one shoulder, or an arm. We aren’t huggers.
Then I hug her back.
It feels good, but also super awkward. Needing practice.
The two of us are tangled in her hair for a long time before she whispers, ‘Don’t ever do that again! I even went out looking for you. I walked everywhere, up and down all the streets – even to Henry’s house, but I couldn’t find you anywhere.’
I think about the two of us missing each other out there, in the badly lit streets, and what might have happened if those two men had followed my beautiful mother walking alone in her prim suit and silly high-heeled shoes, instead of me in my school uniform and slippers, and I go cold.
Mum lets go of me and locks the front door. We walk very quietly past the closed door to my parents’ bedroom and I imagine Dad in there, wide awake in the dark and seething with bitter thoughts. I’m grateful, but scared at the same time, that there’s no noise coming from behind the door.
Do I prefer it when Dad is roaring? Or catatonic? And will there ever be an Option C?
Maybe not. I need to stop hoping for an Option C, because it’s not up to me – it’s up to him. I just need to stop feeling angry and disappointed that this is how it is, and keep moving, keep learning, keep drawing, keep writing, keep running – with slippers or without.
Mum watches me brush my teeth, and pulls the quilt cover over me after I change into my pyjamas and get into bed. She sits down on the edge of it, the hallway light putting her face in shadow as she looks down at me.
Something feels different, but I’m so tired I just close my eyes and go to sleep with her still sitting there, watching me as if I might vanish in a puff of smoke.
In the morning, the house is still very quiet as Mum hands me my plastic lunchbox with a single ham sandwich in it. On days like these, where Dad’s in his cave and won’t come out, we always talk in whispers; we’re on tenterhooks. Everything’s normal on top – the duck sailing smoothly over the pond – but underneath, everything is churning. We’re very good at pretending.
Mum’s dressed today in her favourite light-blue skirt suit, with a crisp white shirt underneath. She looks as fresh and pretty as one of those fancy jewellery boxes that diamond rings come in, from that expensive store they named the movie after. The advertisements are always on the buses that go past my school, but the store’s nowhere near here, and probably never will be.
I tell Mum about how good she looks, and she smiles, before bending and digging around in the wooden chest we keep shoes in, in the hallway. ‘Help me find the tan pair of heels,’ she murmurs, sweeping her long, straight hair over one shoulder to keep it out of the way as she searches.
I wrinkle my nose. ‘The tan pair don’t go with what you’re wearing,’ I say, as we dig around below pairs and pairs of Dad’s worn-out black business shoes and multiple pairs of cartoon character slippers – indoor and outdoor – that I’ve long outgrown, and should have been thrown away.
Mum makes a small sound, then pulls out the pair of shoes she’s been looking for.
The tan shoes are wedge-heeled and open-toed, clunky and ugly and worn-out looking, but she slips her feet into them with a satisfied expression.
‘They are terrible,’ she grins, looking down, ‘but they have the lowest heel out of every pair I own. And I’m going to be doing a lot of walking today.’
As I step outside the door, Mum mutters something under her breath and runs back inside our silent house. A minute later she’s back, locking the door from the outside and dropping the bunch of house keys into the blue, white and red–striped tote bag she’s carrying – one of the tough, ugly ones you get from a Chinese grocery store with a zip that always breaks in two seconds but with a body that lasts forever and will probably take longer than nuclear waste to break down.
I stare at it in wonder. ‘That’s the bag you take food shopping, Mum! It doesn’t match what you’re wearing at all.’
I wave my hand at her, taking in the stripy bag, the pristine blue skirt suit and the horrible tan shoes. ‘None of it does!’ Mum’s outfits always match.
I don’t remind her that we have no money for her to go food shopping, and probably have no money at all now that Dad’s been fired, because she seems … happy.
‘I’m going for practicality over style today,’ Mum replies in Chinese. ‘Hurry, Wen. We have a lot to do.’
I wonder what she means. It’s just a normal day, except that Dad’s home, possibly forever, and will probably never come out of his bedroom again.
When we reach Henry’s house there’s the usual completed homework in the new envelope that Miss Spencer gave me yesterday before the bell went for home-time. But underneath it is the crinkly envelope with the longest long division question in the world on it and my handwritten answer. But there’s something new, drawn in thick black pen, curled up under the equation that Henry and I put together.
I start laughing as I study it, and Mum does too. Henry’s circled my one deliberate error as usual, but he’s also done something else, and I feel a spark of hope.
I drop my backpack at my feet and hunt around in the front pocket for a pen, dragging my fingernails through the drifts of pencil shavings and paper clips, rubber bands, crumbs and used bandaid wrappers that have collected in the corners, until I find a biro.
‘Wen,’ Mum says in warning, looking at her watch. She seems sharper today. More focused. Impatient.
Hastily, I scribble beside the angry dragon:
I never forget the remainder. The remainder is the most important part, Henry Xiao, because the whole wouldn’t be whole again without it!
Then I shove my note, and the angry dragon, back under Henry’s door before Mum and I walk on.
‘I think he’s going to be okay,’ I say to Mum.
‘I think so, too,’ Mum replies. ‘I just hope he’s had something to eat since Tuesday! But we will fix that today.’
I think of the almost empty packet of sliced ham left in the fridge, and the five slightly stale slices of bread, and wonder how.
I don’t blame Nikki and Fatima for being a little cool towards me when I slide into the empty seat next to them after handing Miss Spencer Henry’s latest packet of completed work. Fatima arranges the ends of her light blue headscarf and looks down at the surface of her desk, while Nikki turns her head away, presenting me with a view of her glossy, unbound braids as she stares deliberately out the window.
‘I’m really sorry,’ I say simply, because there’s no time to explain the parameters, the dips and contours, of my life before the bell rings to start period one. Even being in the middle of it makes no sense to me – how the rules keep changing and expanding as I grow, but never ever in my favour. How would Nikki – whose cousin is an international skateboarder with a cool Korean girlfriend and who has an aunt that models for fashion designers in New York – understand why birthday parties, sleepovers, fun, are all things that are off limits? I can’t even explain it to myself.
Nikki turns to me sharply, staring hard at me for a moment, and then something in her face softens. ‘I get it,’ she says, leaning forward. ‘It’s different for us, too. It’s so unfair. But I still wish you could come.’
‘So do I,’ I say fervently, blinking very fast to hold back tears. ‘But I’ll be sending you good vibes from behind the walls of my house. You’ll be able to feel them; the vibes will be so strong. You’ll be begging for me to cut it out. Begone, good vibes! Trouble me no further, this day!’
Beside Nikki, Fatima laughs and shakes her head, the jewelled pin in her headscarf catching the fluorescent lighting from overhead.
‘I’ll save you a piece of cake,’ Nikki grins. ‘I’ll just leave it on your doorstep after the party, ring the doorbell, then run away, fast, so that I don’t get the door slammed in my face again!’
Miss Spencer hands me a new envelope of worksheets, some for me, plus the usual set for Henry, just before the end of the day. ‘This is it,’ she says, as I pull my backpack out of my locker and dump it on the floor at my feet. ‘This is the last lot of extra homework. Tomorrow is Friday, and Saturday morning is the exam. You’ve both done more than enough. I’ll just give you feedback on this lot sometime tomorrow, then you’re good to go, Wen.’
‘Am I really? Good to go?’ I ask through my hair, as I crouch and shove the envelope into my backpack. ‘Dad says I’m not good enough, that I can’t do it and shouldn’t even try.’
Miss Spencer makes a low, snorting sound like an angry bull, and squats beside me.
‘Do you actually believe that?’ she asks. ‘Because if you do, then don’t even bother.’
‘Excuse me, Miss,’ Billy Raum says, yanking his schoolbag out of his locker right over both our heads. He tries to get a look at what we’re doing and I glare up at him so fiercely that he blinks and pulls his sharp, freckly nose right back out of our business and backs away.
‘No,’ I say slowly. ‘I think I have a chance, just like everyone else does, but I’m afraid.’ I jerk a thumb at Billy Raum’s retreating back. ‘If I don’t get in, everyone will know for real that I was kidding myself. Henry’s a shoo-in, but me? Like, tickets! People will laugh, and I will probably never live it down. Dad will say it’s my fault for getting ideas, and that I only have myself to blame, et cetera.’
‘What’s the alternative?’ Miss Spencer replies sternly. ‘Stay put? Don’t try?’
After a moment, I nod in understanding.
I know what the alternative is. Not having the heart to get out of bed for days in a row, or get out of a sagging armchair in a cold, empty house that smells like mould and doesn’t feel like a home because you refuse to treat it like one. Like the old Chinese saying goes, if you do it, you might die, sure. Doing something risky is on your head, and you have to wear the consequences. But what if you don’t do it? You’ll still die sometime – and the dying might be of an even worse kind. A slow kind of dying. Dying while you’re living, by awful, incremental degrees.
‘You’re ready,’ Miss Spencer insists, jumping up and helping me to my feet. My bag is so heavy that I stagger sideways for a second after I swing it onto my back, and she has to steady me. ‘So is Henry. You show that school what different looks like, why different is important. Why they need you.’
Miss Spencer walks me all the way to the front entrance and out onto the front steps.
At the distant gate, Mum is waiting in her usual place. She’s looking around, shielding her eyes against the sun, but when she sees me and Miss Spencer standing under the archway entrance that has always looked to me like a frowny old mouth, she waves. Mum doesn’t try to come inside the grounds – she never does, she wouldn’t dream of it – but she looks Miss Spencer right in the eye and she smiles and keeps waving.
She’s never done that before. Usually, Mum looks right through people because she’s really shy, and worried about her English and that people might try to talk to her.
Surprised, Miss Spencer smiles and waves back.
When I walk closer, my eyes are drawn in astonishment to the bag Mum is holding, a plastic bag with three takeaway containers of food inside.
‘Hurry, Wen,’ she says. ‘Before the food gets cold. I’m going to be too busy to cook for the next two days.’
My eyes are drawn to the bag of takeaway food in astonishment. Mum never buys takeaway food. She always makes things from scratch from complicated recipes involving packets of dried foodstuffs and mounds of fresh meat and vegetables, and there’s never any spare money for takeaway anyway. Whenever I need money for a school excursion, it takes her ages to fish little pockets of coins out of different jars and purses all over the house.
‘Did you rob a takeaway shop?’ I say incredulously as we bustle down the main road.
‘Don’t be silly, Wen,’ Mum says, then shocks me even more by turning in to the front gate of Henry’s house, walking right up to the doorbell and ringing it twice, firmly.
‘Uh,’ I say, remembering Dad screaming the words disgraceful suicide in my face.
We hear the usual shuffle of slippers approaching and the sound of two doors being unlocked. Mr Xiao sticks his head outside cautiously, his sombre face breaking into a smile as he catches sight of Mum in her duck-egg-blue suit and me with my packet of homework for Henry.
I hand him the envelope, and Mum hands him the bag of food.
He looks down at it in surprise. The heavenly aroma is making me salivate.
Mum says in a rush of formal Chinese, ‘I did not make this, Mr Xiao, and you have every right not to eat it and instead throw it directly away, but please accept this poor substitute for a home-cooked meal …’
The expression on his face looks like the way my face feels. Utter confusion.
Mr Xiao is still staring at the bag in his hand as he mumbles, ‘Henry is very lucky, Mrs Zhou, to have such good friends.’
‘Henry is the good friend,’ Mum says firmly. ‘For giving Wen the courage to sit an exam she is entirely unprepared for.’
‘Hey!’ I say in English, elbowing Mum. ‘Who says I’m …’
Mum elbows me back to tell me to shut up and I blink in surprise.
Henry’s dad backs away from the doorway into the shadow of his house, clutching the loaded bag of food in one hand and the envelope of homework in the other. He doesn’t appear to have heard a word that Mum was saying as he adds tearfully, ‘Friends that more than make up for the tragedy of Henry having such inadequate parents.’
Mum and I exchange a look of horror as the screen door is shut gently in our faces and locked from the inside.
Mr Xiao says heavily through the wire door. ‘Henry and I will pick you up at seven-fifteen on Saturday morning, Wen.’
‘I’ll wait for you outside my house,’ I confirm in Chinese.
Mum’s effusive, ‘Thank you, thank you, Mr Xiao,’ is cut off as Henry’s dad shuts the wooden door, sealing himself and Henry back inside.