“Sell?” Lily repeated.
“The phonograph will have to be replaced. Its energies have been tainted, and your aunt won’t stomach keeping it in our home. The expenses will be deducted from Yut Ying’s wages at the factory.”
“What?” I exclaimed. “You can’t punish me like this, you know I didn’t do it.”
“Do I?” Sai Ma said, tapping her chin. “You’ve shown yourself to be a liar, Yut Ying, and quite possibly a vandal. Such a bad example for my daughter must be punished.” Sai Ma took my wrist and unhooked my bracelet.
“Stop!” I cried. “Give that back!”
“Insurance,” Sai Ma said, “to make sure you pay back what you owe.” She dangled the bracelet high, the way a bird admires a freshly caught worm. “It’s real gold. Someone special must have given it to you.”
My mother.My mother, whom I didn’t know if I’d ever see again.
Anger boiled out of my throat. I lunged, grabbing Sai Ma’s arm as I reached for my bracelet.
“Let go,” she seethed. “All it takes is one word to your father, one word to your aunt—and we send you back to the mainland.”
For the longest time I’d thought my aunt was the snake, but I was wrong. It was Sai Ma. Behind the honey of her words was poisonous venom, and that made her the most dangerous of all. I gritted my teeth, wishing that my power wasn’t invisibility, and instead that I could make Sai Ma vanish from this world like she deserved.
“Clean up the mess,” she said, pocketing my bracelet with a flourish. “You’ll not be allowed in this room again.”
There was no more music in the house. Much as I hated Sai Ma, I hated the silence more. Gu Ma declared the parlor off limits until a specialist could come cleanse the area’s energy, and then came the floods.
Monsoon season began early that year. Thunder boomed, and rafts of dark clouds hemmed the sky, rain spilling from their seams in apocalyptic cascades. More than once, the storms startled me awake, and I hid under my blankets, frightened by the bone-white slashes of lightning across the night sky.
Lily was the opposite. She adored the storms, and the more devastatingly they brewed, the happier she was. “Howl more,” she would tell the wind. “Break the sky,” she would yell to the thunder. The longer the rains and winds waged war upon the island, the longer she could stay at home instead of school. Even Gu Ma’s factory had to close because of the rain.
That summer would be my favorite of all my seasons in Hong Kong. Every night despite the rain, Lily climbed out of her window and fearlessly lowered herself to the second story, her small feet landing in the box of myrtle before she crawled into my room. The humidity was awful, a boundless sea of moist, unwanted kisses upon our skin. Mama used to say going to bed with wet feet would give you arthritis, so every night I’d wait for Lily with a pair of dry socks. We’d sit on my bed in ourunderwear, hugging Prince Cannonball, and complain about Sai Ma.
“I bet she planted the rat herself,” Lily grumbled. “Did it to make you lose face in front of Baba and Gu Ma—and take your money.”
It’d been weeks since the phonograph incident, but holding grudges was a family specialty. My sister couldn’t stop talking aboutit.
“The money and loss of face doesn’t bother me as much as it should,” I admitted. “What bothers me is why. Why does she hate me so much?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Lily. “She’s jealous of you.”
“Me? I work in the factory all day and Baba can hardly tell me apart from the maids.”
“You’re prettier,” Lily said. “People are always telling Mama how beautiful she is. Now that you’re here, they notice you not her.”
“That’s because I’m new, not because I’m prettier.”
“I’d disagree. So would Mama.”
My clothes were rags compared to Sai Ma’s, and as she often reminded me, I walked and talked like a peasant. But it did explain why she’d sent me to Gu Ma’s factory. Why she made me cut my hair.
“She’s also jealous of your mother,” Lily said. “Every now and then Baba feels bad about leaving her behind in China and wants to do something nice for you, but Mama talks him out of it.”
Nowthiswas news. “How do you know?”
“Their room is right next to mine. I hear a lot.”
“What else do you hear?”
“Mama blames the war for robbing her of her dreams. She blames me, too. If I hadn’t been born, she wouldn’t have had to marry Baba. She could have been a famous singer.”
Sai Ma should’ve been an actress, not a singer. I stroked Prince Cannonball, ignoring the hiss he made. “That has nothing to do with you. It was her choice to marry Baba.”
