Wing Jones(60)

“I read that fine print too, you know. They might be calling it an audition, but it’s a race. If they just wanted a pretty face, they’d hire any old model. They want a real runner.”

“They probably want a pretty face too,” I mumble under my breath.

“Well, then you’ll be perfect.” Eliza grins at me. “Now stop fishing for compliments and zip me up. What do you think? Yellow or orange? Be honest.”





CHAPTER 40


“Wing, come here. In my room! I want to show you how to play mahjong. Time you learn.” LaoLao is shouting, really shouting, even though I’m only a few feet away from her. It’s four days after my birthday, so I guess LaoLao thinks I’m old enough to learn how to play mahjong.

“I thought you needed four people to play mahjong,” I say, wincing at the volume of her voice. I follow her down the hall to the tiny room she shares with Granny Dee.

There’s a small card table between their little twin beds that functions as a shared nightstand. LaoLao pushes the things on Granny Dee’s side off and onto her bed before she carefully picks up the things on her own side and puts them on top of a dresser.

“You play with four,” she says as she reaches under her bed and pulls out a dark wooden case. I can hear the tiles clacking around inside it. “But today I am just teaching. For teaching, you only need two. Once you know the rules, then we play with Dee Dee and your mama.”

“Granny Dee knows how to play mahjong?” I’m astonished.

“Of course!” LaoLao sighs heavily as she settles herself on her bed, the springs groaning under her weight. “We spend so much time together, I have to teach her something. She teaches me things too. Checkers. Gin mummy.”

“You mean gin rummy,” I say.

LaoLao shrugs and rolls her eyes. “Name does not matter,” she says. “I know how to play.”

As she starts to explain the meaning of the tiles, I hear a sob from down the hall, in the kitchen where my mom and Granny Dee are. I look toward the door.

LaoLao doesn’t respond at first, she acts like she didn’t hear anything, but then she starts talking even louder. “This is pong! Three same tiles, you understand? What is it called?”

“I thought you said the names of things don’t matter,” I say sullenly.

LaoLao swats my hand. “What it called? When three tiles are same? I just told you, don’t be stupid.”

“Pong,” I say, but I’m straining my ears. “I’m going to get some water. Do you want any?”

“No water, please. I am teaching you to play mahjong. We can have tea after.”

“OK, that sounds good, but I want water now,” I say, moving quickly to the door and hurrying down the hall toward the kitchen.

I stop abruptly. My mom and Granny Dee aren’t alone. A man in a suit is there too. An official-looking man.

Granny Dee is holding a tissue to her face and sobbing quietly at the table. There are documents strewn all around her. My mom’s face is tight. The man is speaking in a low, serious voice. “… you have ninety days or we will have to take the house.”

“What?”

Everyone turns to look at me. LaoLao is waddling down the hall after me.

“She would not stay and play!” she says plaintively, sitting down next to Granny Dee and rubbing her back. “She don’t listen.”

“You should go back with LaoLao,” says my mom without looking at me.

“I’m not hiding in LaoLao’s room pretending to learn how to play mahjong while someone comes in and threatens to take the house! I live here too, you know!”

The man in the suit gives me an unfriendly smile. “Your mother is right. This isn’t a conversation for children.”

I hate him. I hate him so much that I could grab LaoLao’s sharpest knife, the Chinese-style cleaver, and chop him open and watch his oily guts spill out. Money would probably pour out of him too.

“I’m not a child,” I say, teeth clenched. My lioness has slipped into the room, but no one notices. Even as she growls at the man in the suit.

“Wing…” My mom’s voice is heavy with warning.

“Oh, let her stay,” says Granny Dee, and she sounds old, older than she is, so old. “It’ll save us the trouble of having to explain it all to her later.” She takes a long breath and looks down over her spectacles at me. “You do need to learn how to play mahjong at some point, though. Excellent game. Best thing this one” – she tilts her head toward LaoLao – “ever taught me.”

I don’t understand much of what the man in the suit says, but I think I get the basics. The bills are too high. Something about credit. And a second mortgage. And not paying a loan back on time. Multiple loans. And if we don’t pay back our debt in ninety days, they’re taking our house. Our crappy little house that Granny Dee bought with my grandpa when she was pregnant with my daddy. The house my daddy grew up in, the house I grew up in, the only place I’ve ever lived. Sure, I was looking forward to when Marcus was playing for the NFL and bought us a mansion, but even then I never thought we’d sell this house. We’d keep it for ever.

That’s what I thought.

Ninety days.

It doesn’t seem real. I don’t know where we would go. I can’t imagine Marcus waking up and us telling him his room is gone. The house is gone.