Sai Ma’s hand came striking down, but I wasn’t an eleven-year-old girl anymore. I caught her wrist neatly in my grasp and was startled by how fragile it was. I wished I had the nerve to break it.
“You poisonedmeat first because I irritated you,” I continued. “You sent me to Gu Ma’s factory to keep me out of sight, then when you found out about Tommy, you started to worry that I might go off with him and live a better life. You were worried that a baby might get Director Fung to change his mind. You nearly killed me.”
“You’ll be wishing I succeeded.” Sai Ma was drunk, and her spittle sprayed my face. “Wake up, Yut Ying. Tommy married someone else.” She paused spitefully. “You’ll never smile again like that girl on the bottle.”
Something in my heart twisted. I hated Sai Ma and hated even more that I knew she was right.
“I’m leaving,” I said.
I made the mistake of dropping her hand. The instant I did, she seized the silver pin from her hair and lunged—aiming the tip at my face.
I’d never know whether she meant to stab me or scar me. I shoved her against the wall, then spun for the door.
“Get back here, you insolent girl!” Sai Ma shouted. “I warn you—so long as I live, I’ll make your life miserable. A hundred thousand people know your face. There’s nowhere you can go where I won’t find you.”
I was racing down the stairs, and my stepmother stumbled to the balcony, her voice pealing down with one final blow: “Your mother’s left Tunglam, did your father tell you?”
I froze.
“If you leave this house, you’ll never know where she’s gone,” she said with a triumphant note. “Do you hear me, Yut Ying? You’ll never see her again.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rose, a feeling of prophetic doom washing over me. But Sai Ma was not my mother. She couldn’t see the future.
“This house is your prison,” I said. “It won’t be mine.”
I rushed out the door.
All day Susu and the guard hunted me, Sai Ma shouting that she’d kill me once I was found. I would have laughed if I weren’t so afraid. Her eyes were wild in a way I’d never seen. I believed her threat.
The truth was, I never went past the gate. I’d ducked into the myrtle, edging along the back of the house to shut myself in the cellar.
There I hid until night fell and everyone was asleep.
I had a suitcase already packed. It wasn’t much: socks and underwear, two days’ worth of food, twenty dollars I stole from under Susu’s mattress. At the last minute I stuffed my polka dot dress into the bag too, then I tiptoed up to Sai Ma’s room.
She was sleeping alone, her arm hanging off the edge of the bed. In slumber she looked young and harmless, a mimicry of the girl I’d met when I first arrived, who’d fooled me with her warm smiles and hollow promises. I wanted to wake her and give her the fright of her life, but revenge, while sweet, would hamper a clean escape.
My hands shook as I unclasped my bracelet from her wrist. The peanut was still attached, the forked links catching under my thumbnail as I counted them to make sure each was in place. With my mother’s gift back in my possession, I severed my last tie to Sai Ma. I wanted nothing more to do with her.
All that was left was Lily, whose room had been bolted shut and locked since her death. For most people, there was no way inside.
I had a way.
Turning invisible had become as natural for me as singing. I gathered air into my lungs until they hurt, then, as I held my breath, pressure throbbed in my left ear, drowning out the clamor of the world.
I became like the smoke that curled out of Gu Ma’s cigarettes—practically nothing—and I passed through Lily’s door with a silentswoosh.
I half expected to find Prince Cannonball on her bed curled up on her pillow, his tail wagging in rebuke that I’d taken so long. But he wasn’t there.
Lily’s books were gone, her clothes and toys, too. For months I’d been looking through all the photographs in the house, but there were none of my sister. I opened her drawers and lookedinto her closet. My doll wasn’t to be found either. I’d wanted to burn it in offering to Lily’s spirit, except Sai Ma claimed it was lost.
Call me sentimental for wanting something to remember Lily by, but I knew time was the slickest of thieves. Give a year, and it’d steal the sound of her voice. Give five, and the sweet roundness of her face would be gone too, faded into the hollows of my memory.
Heaven take me, I would hold on as long as I could.
Finally I spied a forlorn pair of gloves under her bed. She’d hated those damned gloves, I thought bitterly. Now they were all of her that was left.
I slid them into my pocket.
