‘Mingzi, qi lai, qi lai. Time to get up for school,’ Jax heard his mother call. The words came floating through the doorway, wrapped in smells of garlic and fried eggs.
Jax groaned, drawing the covers tight over his head. He closed his eyes against the morning light, hoping to get back inside his dream. It was a wonderful dream. A winged beast had lifted him high in the air. Everything was tiny – the people, the houses, even the mountains. He found a dream trail and followed it in. Now he was looking down upon a golden pavilion floating on a bed of mist. Whoa… his legs were two long ribbons. He was a giant with his ears in the clouds and his feet on the ground…
‘Mingzi, qi lai, you’ll be late.’
‘I’m coming, Ma,’ he called out.
Jax hadn’t always been the smallest boy in class, but he was this year. Everyone else was growing as if their legs were made of chewing gum, while his seemed to be made from dead lumps of wood. Sometimes he wondered if the birthmark on his palm was using up all of his growing power.
This morning it was annoyingly itchy. Must be another storm coming, he thought, rubbing the mark vigorously. He held up his left hand and inspected it as he did every morning. It was an unusual mark as birthmarks go. But it had always been a part of him, like a nose or a thumb or a belly button.
When Jax was a baby, the mark had been a soft pale pink, a little darker than the colour of his skin. It looked like a raspberry had been pressed into his palm. There were delicate little lines on it as well, as if someone had painted them with a tiny brush.
As each year passed, Jax began to see in his palm a little creature with a head and a body and four legs. If he folded his fingers over, the creature would curl up as if it was going to sleep. Then, when he opened out his hand again, it would look like it was slowly waking up and stretching.
Sometimes Jax would look up and see a fantastic cloud shaped like a tiger or a ship or a bird, slowly moving across the sky. Was that all the creature in his palm was? A changing shape in his imagination?
Jax never told anyone what he saw in his mark. Not even his parents, or his sister, Mai, knew what it had become. Ever since that first day in grade one when Evelyn Foxcroft, a redhead with skinny white legs, pointed at it and yelled ‘Eeeuu!’, he had kept it a secret. Sometimes he wished he could peel it off like a fake tattoo and throw it away. And yet, even though he was so ashamed of his mark, a small part of him hoped that maybe it meant that he, Jaxson Wu, was special somehow.
Jax had come to Australia from China with his parents and little sister Mai when he was seven years old. They had been a family then. That’s how Jax remembered it. All four of them used to ride on Ba’s bike. Mai in a bamboo seat attached to the handlebars, Jax across the middle bar, held safe between Ba’s arms. And Ma, sitting side-saddle on the back, clutching string bags of meat and vegetables. He remembered they used to laugh a lot, too. Laugh at Ma’s jokes and play and do things together. He felt different then. Like a whole boy. He wished he could feel like that again.
Ma said they left China to make a better life for themselves, but Jax didn’t think so. Ba used to be an engineer back in China, and Ma was an accountant for the government. Now they worked in a sock factory, packing boxes. Ma worked in the factory in the daytime while Ba worked the same job at night. Sometimes Jax felt as if his parents were one long stretchy person that rotated in and out of his life. And somewhere along the way Ba had stopped talking to him. Was he disappointed because he saw his son as useless?
There were many times when Jax wanted to show his father his birthmark. He wanted to ask him if he knew what it meant. And if he saw it changing, too, and why it itched so much when a storm was approaching. But they were like two shadows living between empty walls.
When Ba had come home after his first day at work, he told Jax and Mai that his new name was going to be Robert, and Ma’s new name was Joy. The boss at the big factory decided to give them all new names because he said that their Chinese ones were too hard for him to remember. Jax thought his parents looked much more like their old names of Chang Li and Qing Ling, which meant hidden strength and clear spirit.
Jax didn’t mind the new name he was given though. Jaxson Wu sounded kind of strong and definite. Not the wishy-washy sort of boy he thought himself to be.
Jax heard the front door close as Ma left for work. He sighed. She never laughs or jokes any more, he thought. Reaching across the bed, he pulled down hard on the blind. It sprang to life then shot up, flapping around the top like a wounded bird.
A fat green grasshopper sat on the foxtail palm on the other side of the glass. Its body was full and as thick as Jax’s thumb. ‘You beauty,’ he whispered, smiling. He held his breath until it sprang away, leaving the palm frond gracefully waving goodbye.
Just then the door opened a crack and a little black nose appeared.
‘Hey, Ruby!’ Jax cried happily as a small black and white dog trotted up to his bed. She gazed at Jax with brown saucer eyes, her tail wagging so fast it was just a blur.
‘I know, you want your breakfast,’ he said.
At the sound of the word breakfast, Ruby danced around in circles on her short little legs then scrabbled up onto the bed. Jax rubbed her ears gently and put his face against hers. ‘You’re the best dog in the world, Ruby,’ he said, looking deep into her eyes.
After dressing for school, Jax walked down the hall to the kitchen while Ruby did her favourite trick – making figure eights in and out of his legs.
‘Hey Jax, we’re going on a ’scursion to the ’quarium,’ Mai grinned as she sat at the kitchen table.
Jax took a packet of dry doggy bits from the cupboard and poured some into a bowl for Ruby.
‘Miss Tingwell said there’s a water tunnel and giant sharks swim right over your head.’ Mai spoke through a mouthful of egg and her pigtails jiggled excitedly.
‘The aquarium’s awesome, Mai,’ said Jax, patting Ruby on the head and sitting down at the table. ‘When we went, Blanco dropped his mobile phone in the toilet and had to fish it out by hand.’
‘Eeeuuu… that’s ’sgusting. Did it still work?’ Mai giggled.
‘Yeah, but every time it rang it made funny gurgling noises.’
They both laughed.
Mai pushed her chair over to the sink and began to wash her dishes. ‘Hurry, Jax,’ she said, rinsing her plate and putting it in the rack to dry.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be ready before you are,’ said Jax, stuffing the whole fried egg into his mouth at once.
‘No, I’ll be ready first,’ Mai cried. She jumped off the stool and ran quickly to the bathroom.
Five minutes later Jax stood by the front door. ‘You ready, Mai?’ he shouted.
‘Not fair,’ Mai mumbled through a mouthful of toothpaste froth. ‘Ooo idn’t ush your eeth.’
‘I brushed them last night,’ Jax chuckled.
Mai soon came running to the front door to join him, her backpack swinging between her shoulders. ‘You cheated, Jax!’
‘Come on, you don’t want to be late, do you?’ he grinned.