Wing Jones(69)

“You not doing anything for our family!” LaoLao puffs up like a rooster and she shakes her head at Granny Dee. “How come I the one who has to go work? Why not you? You could get work too!”

Granny Dee raises her hand to her chest and gasps, and I think I can hear the air rattling all the way down into her lungs.

“How dare you!” Her voice is shaky. “I might lose my house!”

“This not just your house. This my house too.” LaoLao’s tone is petulant. “I work, work, work all day. Work to save Marcus. Work to save house. What do you do?”

I remember rubbing LaoLao’s feet in the living room when she said that work is nothing because it’s for family. I know she meant it. I know she’s tired today. She’s had a long day. The head chef shouted at her and the line cooks make her feel stupid. She wants to sit at home and watch her soap operas. She’s bitter that Granny Dee isn’t working too.

Granny Dee turns to my mom. “You know I can’t get work, Winnie. My vision … it isn’t what it used to be … and my hearing…”

“I know, I know,” my mom says soothingly, rubbing Granny Dee’s back.

“Your hands! Your hands work. You could do something!” LaoLao snaps back. “My eyes no good! My ears no good! But I use my hands. All day.”

The kitchen lights flicker, once, twice, and then the kitchen goes dark.

“Oh crap,” my mom mutters. “They really did turn it off. Wing, can you get a flashlight from the drawer under the phone?”

“And now we so poor we can’t even keep lights on!” LaoLao roars. Apparently even getting our electricity cut is not going to stop her.

“Mama.” My own mom’s voice is sharp. “Give it a rest, please, just while we get some light.”

“Give what a rest? Give me a rest? I need a rest!”

“Ow!” I stub my toe trying to get to the drawer under the phone. There are two flashlights there. I turn on one and put it on my LaoLao like a spotlight. It’s all the encouragement she needs.

“You do nothing,” LaoLao hisses at Granny Dee.

“That’s not true,” I say, putting the flashlight in the middle of the table like a lantern. Granny Dee shakes her head at me even as her eyes fill with tears. She doesn’t want them to know, but they need to.

“Granny Dee visits Marcus every day,” I say, my voice rising with each word. “Every. Single. Day. That isn’t nothing. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t go and just … sit there. Watch him just … lying there. It doesn’t even feel like it’s him! It doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me feel worse! I hate it. I hate visiting him. Because it isn’t him. Not really. But Granny Dee sits and knits and watches and waits. Where do you think all the scarves have come from? And pot holders?”

“I would visit!” LaoLao’s words are bigger than mine. She’s standing, and I can tell I’ve upset her. “You think she so special? She making him better? Who is paying for him to be in hospital? Me! I want to visit him too.” She’s a shaking mountain, like a volcano about to burst. “I would visit him every day! If I could! But I work and then my bones are so tired.”

Granny Dee turns to face LaoLao, and if LaoLao is a shaking mountain, Granny Dee is a tree blowing in the wind, bending this way and that, trembling, but never breaking.

“I would work! Don’t you dare say that I wouldn’t. But … no one will take me! I can’t cook like you, at least not dumplings or noodles or any of that. And no one wants to hire me to make stew or any of the things I can make. What do you think I should do? So high and mighty! You been workin’ just a few months. A few measly months! What about when you first moved in? You remember that? Who was workin’ then?”

“I was taking care of Winnie! And the babies!”

“Well, now I’m taking care of the babies! They just ain’t babies anymore.”

The two women glare at each other, each one immovable, and I think we’ll never leave the table, that Granny Dee and LaoLao will sit and stare at each other till Granny Dee sprouts roots and LaoLao turns to stone.

Then LaoLao looks away, puffing her cheeks up full of air, just as Granny Dee bites her own, making her face look sunken and older than it is, especially in glow of the flashlight. LaoLao exhales, loud and long like a teakettle shooting out steam, and reaches out to pat Granny Dee’s brittle branch of an arm.

“Next time,” she says, her words coming out heavy, “next time you visit Marcus, I go too. I know is hard to go alone.”

In my room, the Riveo Running Girl entry form shimmers and glows. Using a flashlight, I read and reread the terms and conditions. I read about the prize. The winner of the Riveo Running Girl Race becomes the official Riveo Running Girl. She will be featured in Riveo ads across the country. On billboards. The Riveo Girl will be in a commercial. The Riveo Girl will be paid a lot of money.

I stare at myself in the mirror, at my face that doesn’t look like any other face I’ve ever seen, and try to imagine it on a billboard, or in a commercial.

I can’t.

I just can’t.

Winning the race is one thing. It’s what comes after that that scares me.

But for Marcus, for my family, maybe I can.

I have to.

The entry form asks for a parent’s signature, but I can’t ask for that, not with everything going on, so I forge my mama’s signature. Not hard to do, I’ve seen it enough times. My lioness comes out from under my bed and nips at my ankles, but I ignore her. I can’t risk asking my mom and having her say no. Or worrying about the pressure. I need this. Our family needs this.