Delilah
I was sorting through the latest inventory sheet for Lisa, the school librarian, when I heard the door open downstairs, startling me. Work always made me jumpy, especially when I had to take it home, like I did today, because Brandon—my mom’s asshole boyfriend—didn’t understand the meaning of privacy. All he knew was that I worked at the school library, and I didn’t want him to learn any details about it. A glance at my phone told me it was five o’clock, too early for Mom to be back. Which meant it could only be Brandon, which meant—well, it meant nothing good. I hopped up, grabbed a textbook, and opened it at random. I hunched over the book at my desk because Brandon found it less threatening to see me curled over a book.
I held my breath, listening for his heavy footsteps, but all I heard were soft steps and cupboards being opened and closed. Then a feminine sigh. My breath came out in a whoosh. It was Mom. Weird. The only other time Mom had been home this early was when we received the news about Pa. Maybe something similarly awful had happened to Brandon. One could hope. That’s a horrible thing to think, right? Still, I couldn’t deny the coil of twisted satisfaction at the thought of Brandon pushing up daisies. Sick, sick, sick.
I crept out of my room—even though Brandon wasn’t around, the habit was hard to break. I was used to creeping everywhere now, making my footsteps as diminutive as possible—and stopped on the third step to watch Mom as she emptied the dishwasher. She looked tired. She always did, I guess that’s how most Silicon Valley employees look, but I liked to think she also looked happy when Pa was still around. Now she just looked haggard.
“Why are you home so early?” I said from the steps.
She jumped. “Sweetheart, I didn’t think you’d be home!”
“Yeah, they called off volleyball practice today cause Coach had to take her dog to the vet.”
“Awww. Is it okay?” Mom went back to stacking the dishes.
“Probably not.”
“Oh, Dee. Don’t start.”
I swallowed my retort. Forced myself to take a deep breath.
“What were you up to?” Mom asked.
I shrugged. “Just doing some work for Lisa.” I’d started working there over the summer, just so I didn’t have to stay here in this house and watch my mother scurry about like a frightened rat, trying to appease Brandon’s endless demands. I’d never thought anything involving the library could be interesting, but my second month there, I walked in on Lisa dealing with inventory, and she trusted me enough by then to let me help. And, as it turned out, I was a natural. Lisa often told me I was the best assistant she could ever hope for, and I was pathetic enough to lap up any compliment thrown my way.
The corners of Mom’s mouth lifted, though I wouldn’t call what she was doing smiling.
“You know, I wish you wouldn’t work, Dee,” she said. “We can afford Draycott. I’d much rather you spend your time studying or going out with your friends like a normal teen.”
Once again, I had to bite back my caustic reply. These days, there were thousands of unsaid retorts burning a hole in my throat. I’m doing this because of you, I wanted to yell until my voice stripped the flesh off her bones. Also, it was rich of her to say we could afford Draycott when we’d had to defer my enrollment for almost a year, until Pa’s insurance money finally came in.
Instead, I said, “Why’re you home early?”
“Oh, you know. Thought I’d take some time off work. I haven’t had a vacation in five years, so why not?” Mom’s eyes flicked toward me, pale, nervous. I could smell the lie on her, coming in waves so thick, it was almost visible.
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re taking a vacation from work,” I said flatly. “You, the woman who returned to work one week after giving birth, are taking a vacation.”
“It’s been known to happen,” Mom chirped.
I sighed. “What’s really going on, Mom?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about how nice it would be if I had more time at home, you know? I could do all the things I’ve always wanted to do but never had the chance to…”
“Like what?”
Now that she was finished putting the dishes away, Mom had no choice but to look at me. She didn’t do it for very long before she picked up a dishrag and started wiping at the kitchen counter absentmindedly. “Like baking.”
“Baking,” I parroted back.
“Yes, baking. I loved baking when I was younger.”
“Mom, you don’t take time off work because you want to bake. What the hell is this all about?”
“I just needed a break, okay?” Mom cried. “Is that all right with you, Dee? Do I have your permission to take time off work? Do you know how hard it is for a woman working in tech, Dee? You know the amount of shit I take every single day from men who think I don’t deserve to be there just because I happen to have a vagina?”
“This is because of Brandon, isn’t it?” I growled. I knew I was being a jerk, but it wasn’t the fact that she’d taken time off. It was the fact that this was my mom taking time off, and my mom never took time off work. She’d always been a tech designer first, wife second, mother third, and I loved her for it. And now, all of a sudden, here she was, an aspiring baker? It was all wrong. It smelled like Brandon’s doing.
“Well, he and I have been talking, yes, about how nice it would be if I—if we started a family, and—”
“A family?” I squawked. “You’re thinking of procreating with that man? Jesus Christ, Mom! You’ve lost it. Look at what he’s done to you, to us! You still can’t rotate your wrist without it clicking!” My entire world was spiraling out of control. “Mom, you’re smarter than this. Why do you keep him around? You can do so much better.”
“Sweetie, it’s not as simple as that. I’m in my forties; it’ll be a miracle if I can conceive at my age, and there aren’t many men out there who would be willing to take me, you know, what with all my baggage and my craziness.” Mom laughed her new laugh, the one she’d developed about a month after Brandon moved in.
“Mom, listen to me. Brandon’s been brainwashing you. All that stuff about nobody wanting you isn’t true. You’re a catch! I bet half the guys at your company are lusting over you.” But even as I said it, I knew I’d lost her. This was my fault, all of it. Pa had been the engineer in charge of making sure the rig ran smoothly, and he’d missed something, or he’d miscalculated—whatever it was, his mistake led to the explosion and left us with nothing but twisted metal and a thick layer of oil that spread poison across the ocean beneath a cloud of greasy, black smoke, an ecological disaster that the world mourned.
And in the months following his death, I’d taken all the fury boiling inside me and flung it at Mom’s face, and she’d had no one to turn to but Brandon. I had ripped her apart piece by piece, and Brandon had been there to catch the bits that remained. He’d pretended to put her back together, but his glue had turned out to be poison, too. By the time we were done with Mom, she was nothing but a shadow of what she used to be. I’d realized this too late. I could rage as hard as I wanted to, and Mom would still believe that she needed Brandon to get by. This was my doing.
“Look, Dee, I just need you to be supportive, okay? Can you do that for us? I’ll be home a lot more from now on, and I would really like us to get along.”
“What do you mean you’ll be home a lot more? I thought you were just taking a vacation. It’s temporary, right?” I asked.
“Well, it’s temporary, but if it goes well, maybe it can become something more permanent.”
“And what would we live on?”
Mom smiled. “Oh, sweetie, Brandon’s assured me he’ll look after us, I mean, look how well he’s looked after our finances—”
I blew up then. “How well he’s looked after our finances? You mean him taking your paychecks and—”
The door banged open. Brandon expected us to tiptoe around him, but he loved making explosive entrances. “Boy, am I glad to be home,” he grunted, stripping off his gear and flinging it to the floor.
Mom shot me a warning glance. Like I needed a reminder that her live-in boyfriend was a monster. I rounded my shoulders and bowed my head (eye contact was a dangerous thing around here) and started walking toward the stairs, but Brandon stopped me.
“What’s going on with my two favorite ladies?” He dropped onto the couch, making the entire thing sag, and manspread his legs, taking up more space than he should. “Babe, can I have a drink, please?”
“Coming right up, sweetheart,” Mom cooed. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the shrill note of fear lacing her voice, but Brandon did not seem to notice. Or, if he did, he relished it.
“What have you two been up to?” he said, beaming at me.
“Um, not much. I was just finishing up my homework—”
“Yeah? You need any help with schoolwork?” Brandon said. His expression was earnest—eager. Even after everything, he liked to think of himself as a Nice Guy.
I was too well trained by this time to laugh in his face. Instead, I wrangled my expression into a simpering, grateful one and said, “Thank you, Brandon, but I think I’ve got it.”
“Aw, come on. Let me help. I’m practically your dad by now. Didn’t he like to help with your homework?” He gave me a big smile, one that said, Aren’t I sweet?
You’re not my fucking dad, I wanted to say. Pa was the exact opposite of Brandon in every way. He was soft-spoken, his fingers as elegant as any pianist’s. He’d moved here from Singapore for grad school. That was when he met Mom, and what was supposed to be a two-year stay in California turned into twenty. Even though he’d lived in California for so long, he never quite lost the Singlish accent. He tried hard to hide the accent in public so it wouldn’t mark him as a foreigner, but at home, he’d relax and I’d tease him for punctuating all of his sentences with lah.
He taught me many of the hallmarks of Singlish—saying aiya instead of oh my god, one of the delightful Hokkien curse words that sounded so much fiercer than your usual English ones. He liked to cook us Singaporean dishes—chili crab, Hokkien mee, roti prata.
We visited Singapore twice when I was little, and though the heat slowed me down to a sweaty crawl, I fell in love with the country immediately. I loved everything about it, the breakneck speed at which everybody spoke, the way people so casually included you in everything, the cleanliness and efficiency of the place. And Pa’s family was there—loud and welcoming, always shoving food in my face. It was the reason I was working my ass off on my studies and at work. I was going to apply to Pa’s alma mater: the National University of Singapore.
Brandon thinking he could replace Pa made me want to plunge a knife in his eyeball and twist. I scrambled my brains for something to say. Something that wouldn’t get me in trouble. I’d made the mistake of asking him to help with my math homework once, when he insisted, and he’d stared at my textbook forever before—well, never mind. So math wasn’t in the cards. Same with Shakespeare. In fact, anything that made him feel stupid was off-limits.
I’d taken too long to think. Brandon’s face had lost its generous smile, and his jaw was now clenched. His jaw was always the first to tighten up. Then it would be his fist, and that would be that.
“Somebody thinks they’re too smart for good ol’ Brandon,” he said in a joking tone, but beneath the singsong voice was a small vibration of anger.
“No, no! I don’t want to waste your time with my stuff,” I said hurriedly. “You have more important things to deal with.” I forced a halfway sincere-looking smile onto my face, my insides shriveling up with hatred. It was, ironically, mostly hatred toward myself. I still hadn’t forgiven myself for not being the badass I’d always thought I would be. The past year or so, he had broken me down, softened me until I was nothing more than this useless, simpering lump with a quavering smile. Keeping my head down and my shoulders hunched had stopped being a survival trait and started becoming an actual habit that I did everywhere, even when Brandon wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity. I was becoming less me, less present, less alive. And I deserved it for being so pathetic, for not fighting back.
Brandon frowned. “Nothing’s more important than the two leading ladies of my life.”
I forced my smile to remain. “That’s so sweet of you, Brandon. But I’ll be fine, really.”
“Well, offer’s on the table if you need my help.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. Time for a quick change of subject. “Hey, how was your day?”
Brandon leaned back, but his gaze remained on me. “Funny you should ask. I was just at your school.”
My heart dropped a beat. “Oh?”
“Yeah, you know, Dee, I gotta say, I’m not a fan of that place. Don’t know why your dad wanted to put you in there so badly. It’s kinda… Well, it’s pretty much filled with spoiled rich brats. And all the shit that’s happened there, man…” Brandon shook his head.
I nodded along.
“Aren’t you gonna ask me why I was there?”
“Why were you there?” I replied obediently.
He side-eyed me in what he probably thought was a mysterious detective way. “Two years ago, someone was operating a drug ring there.”
Ice prickled down my back. This was a dangerous topic, one I really needed to stay far away from.
“It was all a huge clusterfuck. You know what Mendez is like. She couldn’t leave well enough alone. Had to dig deeper and deeper.”
He didn’t know. He had no idea. I wanted to tell him I knew all this already. People at school still talked about the infamous drug-fueled case from time to time. Hell, it shook even the school staff. Lisa herself told me about it one quiet afternoon, her voice hushed and her eyes wide, always checking to make sure we were alone. Lisa never gossiped, so that afternoon was a one-time event. I bet I knew more details than Brandon did about the drug ring. But of course I couldn’t interrupt Brandon, Mr. Important Policeman.
Mom came by with his drink before going back to the kitchen.
Brandon swilled his glass for a while, his thumb scraping the rim. He was wearing this faraway look. “Of course, in the end, nothing happened. The place is untouchable. The trail had gone dry, anyway. Whoever was running the drug business closed up shop.”
I made an aww, that really sucks face.
“But now we got word someone’s started selling again.” He pointed a large, stubby finger and glared at me. “Have you and your friends been buying, Dee?”
He might as well have picked up our solid oak coffee table and smashed me in the head with it. “I don’t—I really—”
Brandon threw his head back and guffawed. “I’m messing around, Dee. That look on your face! You are the biggest fuckin’ nerd I’ve come across. ‘Ooh, I’m Asian, I can’t do anything fun! Must study hard!’” He raised his hands and leaned back a little. “Uh-oh, call the PC police! I made a race joke!”
Somehow, I managed to force a smile onto my face. “Ha ha,” I bit out.
He winked at me. “I’m messing with you. I don’t really believe that. You’re a great kid, Dee.”
“Thanks, Brandon.” Sometimes, I imagined Brandon dead. Maybe he slips while going down the stairs and breaks his neck. Maybe he gets caught in a gunfight and a bullet rips through his skull. Maybe—
Brandon grinned and took a sip of his whiskey sour. He made a face and called out to Mom. “Hey, babe, can you bring me some ice cubes?”
“Okay, sweet stuff,” Mom chirped.
That was my cue to leave. I was halfway to the bottom of the staircase when I heard Mom whisper, “Shit.”
I paused. Pre-Brandon, my reaction to my mom swearing would have been laughter, followed by me giving her a hard time. But there was actual terror in Mom’s voice, and it was contagious. I crept back to the kitchen and raised my eyebrows at her.
She tipped the ice box toward me and gestured at it. Empty.
“I’ll go to the store and buy some,” I whispered.
Mom blinked rapidly, her eyes shining with tears. “I—I’d have to ask him for money,” she said.
My chest tightened. How wrong, how fucking awful it was that my mom was reduced to this. How could she have let him bully her into letting him take over the finances? And now here we were, panicking because we’d have to ask Brandon to give us a few of Mom’s hard-earned dollars so we could get him ice for his goddamn whiskey.
“Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll pay for it. It’s why I got the library job.” And why I was working so hard at it, squirreling money away.
Mom smiled gratefully, then her smile froze when Brandon called out, “Any luck on that ice?” Already there was a dangerous tone to his voice.
Mom took a deep breath and plastered a smile on her face, even though Brandon wasn’t in the kitchen to see it in its full terrified glory. “We’re out of ice cubes, sweetie. Dee’s just about to go to the store and grab a bag.” She ushered me out of the kitchen.
“Out of ice?” Brandon’s voice had gone silky soft. He hefted himself off the couch, and suddenly, there he was, a mountain of muscle and sudden, swift punishment.
My bones turned to water. The urge to curl up in a tight corner with my head in my hands almost overcame me.
“Who was the last to use the ice?” he said, still in that velvety voice.
Mom was opening and shutting her mouth, but no words came out. And then I recalled she’d poured a whole bunch of ice cubes into a water bottle last night and then pressed it to her back, where he’d—
“It was me.”
It took a moment to realize I’d spoken. They were both staring at me. Shit, shit, shit.
“No, Brandon—” Mom started.
“Shh,” Brandon whispered, putting a finger to his lips. He turned toward me, and when Brandon turned to face you, he did so with his entire body, and it felt like seeing a large bull that had been happily munching grass but now realized you were there and you were wearing red.
Time held its breath. The only sound in the room was the roar of my blood rushing through my ears. I should run right now. I shouldn’t even take the time to grab anything on the way out, just run until there was no more air in my lungs. But I was a useless, watery thing, and so I stood there, trembling, as he advanced upon me.
“Brandon—” Mom pleaded, but like me, she was broken too. She wouldn’t actually do anything.
“Funny story, Dee,” Brandon said, in a conversational tone, his voice still soft, soft as snowfall. “You know what they call it when an officer kills someone by accident?”
“Please let me get the ice now, I’ll be quick,” I squeaked.
“Don’t worry about the ice. Answer my question.”
I scrambled through the mess that was my mind. “Um…I don’t know…um, a misdemeanor?”
“Paid vacation.” Brandon broke into a face-splitting grin. “Hey, why do you look so scared, Dee? I’m just playing around.” He smacked my shoulder and roared his laughter at Mom. “Look at her! Shaking like a leaf!”
“Why don’t you go get the ice now, darling?” Mom said to me, her cheeks trembling with the effort of keeping the manic smile on her face.
I slunk away quickly, Brandon’s laughter echoing through my head.