Fiona and Jane(12)

“My size?”

“All you have to do now is tell your mama you want to stay here, and this room is all yours.”

“Me?” Ona said. “Here in this room?”

She imagined a desk and chair tucked into the corner, under the rectangular window with the frosted glass, like her grandmother proposed. At home, Ona finished her homework on a Formica table in the front room, the same place where she and her mother shared their meals.

“Can Shulin visit? She lives downstairs from Mama and me.”

“Of course.” Grandmother paused a moment before adding, “But you know, you’ll make friends at your new school, too.”

Ona bounced softly on the bed a few times. This bedroom was smaller than the one she shared with her mother, but it would be her very own. She’d never slept in her own bed before, all by herself. What would happen during an earthquake? In her own bed, there would be no holding hands, no curling toward Mama, waiting together for the rocking to subside.

“Things will be different from now on,” Grandmother said. “The ballet lessons are just the beginning of things your mother can’t—”

“What did you say? What are you doing!”

Ona jumped at the sound of her mother’s voice.

“Respectable women don’t smoke cigarettes,” Grandmother said coolly. She stood and crossed her arms, putting herself between the girl and her mother. “You’re going to end up with a mouth full of brown teeth.”

“I can’t turn my back on you for one second,” said Ona’s mother. “What are you showing her this room for?”

“Just once, why don’t you think about your daughter instead of yourself?”

“Go get your shoes on.” Her mother’s mouth was set into a thin straight line. Ona moved toward the door but slowed when she felt her grandmother’s hand squeezing her shoulder.

“Let the girl stay.” Her grandmother’s voice was soft. “One night. Just to see how she likes it.”

“Time to go, bao. Come on,” said Ona’s mother. The child squirmed out of her grandmother’s grasp and ran to her mother’s side. She felt her mother’s hand on the top of her head, a warm shield.

“Please, Wen.” Grandmother lifted her hands in the air, surrender in her voice. “I’ve already prepared this room. She would be comfortable.”

Ona felt heat radiating from all over her mother’s body. Wrapping her arms around her mother’s leg, Ona felt sleepy all of a sudden.

“She’s my daughter,” her mother said. “I take care of her.”

“And she’s our granddaughter.”

“After everything, you should be grateful I even—”

“You’re too proud,” Grandmother said. “That’s always been your flaw, since you were a child.”

“I bring her here and you—you—”

“You made a mistake. A huge mistake!” Grandmother cried. “And now, when I’m just trying to help you, this is the thanks I get? You were always spoiled—”

Ona burst into tears. She felt as if her mother and grandmother had forgotten she was still standing there while they argued.

Her mother bent down and picked her up. Ona buried her face in her mother’s neck and let herself be soothed by her mother’s voice calling her tender baby names: sugarcane sister, sweet mosquito bite, my red sour plum.

When Ona’s sobs subsided into soft hiccups, her mother brought her into the bathroom and wiped her face with a moist hand towel. Mama asked if she was ready to go home. Ona thought briefly of the bed in the room at the end of the corridor. She wondered if both she and her mother could fit in it together, and she decided no, it was too small.

She clasped her mother’s face in both of her hands. “I don’t want to live here, Mama. Don’t make me live here.” She felt tears rising in her throat again.

“You live with me,” her mother said. “Wherever I am, that’s your home.”

Ona nodded. There were still things she didn’t understand, but her mother’s answer was all she needed to be sure of for now.



* * *



? ? ?

Downstairs, Mama was silent on the walk to the bus stop and on the entire way back home. Ona watched her mother in the darkened bus, head leaned against the thick pane of glass, eyes shut. Every once in a while a sweep of neon light from outside the bus passed over her mother’s face, illuminating its sharp planes.

When they got home, her mother fetched Ona’s school uniform from the clothesline outside. She hung the white collar shirt over the back of a dining chair and placed the blue pleated skirt on the seat cushion, then told the girl to go wash up before bed.

Because she was still unaccustomed to bathing alone, Ona left the door open while she undressed. The bathroom was a small rectangular room with a squatting toilet on one side, white tiles on the floors and walls. A set of spigot knobs protruded from the wall opposite the door, and two rubber hoses had been attached to the taps, each one curling down into a pink plastic pan that rested on the floor, next to a short wooden stool with three legs. Ona turned on the water and sat on the stool while she waited for the pan to fill. She looked toward the open door. Her mother pushed a broom across the floor in the front room.