A Glasshouse of Stars

by Shirley Marr

  “We have to go out and buy some food,” you say to Ma Ma.

  She is lying in bed with the covers over her, all bunched up into one corner. She turns over heavily, like a whale in water, and looks up at you, but she doesn’t move.

  “Please, Ma Ma,” you say with a heavy heart.

  There is a knock on the front door. Ma Ma freezes, and again you freeze with her. Maybe it is Ms. Jardine’s friend. You have to let her in. You have to trust that Ms. Jardine’s friend will help both of you.

  “Please don’t open the door,” whispers Ma Ma, her eyes begging you.

  “But why, Ma Ma?”

  “I can’t face the world,” says Ma Ma, and her lips turn down.

  “Okay. I promise.”

  As quietly as you can, you tiptoe to the front and peep out between the curtains.

  It is Mrs. Huynh.

  You are so relieved to see her, you want to let her in immediately so she can help solve this terrible situation you are both in. But then you think of Ma Ma’s words and you grow silent. You swallow the lump in your throat as you watch a visibly confused Mrs. Huynh leave. You press your palm hard against the windowpane as you watch her descend the thirty steps.

  There is a movement behind you and Ma Ma is also at the window. She sees Mrs. Huynh reach the bottom of the steps and she doesn’t say a thing.

  “Meixing?”

  You look at her; her hair disheveled and her eyes rubbed red.

  She drops down onto her knees next to you. “I’m so sorry, Meixing. I’m finding it very hard to cope.”

  You brush Ma Ma’s hair off her sticky face.

  “We have to go to the shops,” you say to her. “Remember what I said, we need to get more food.”

  You look into her eyes, all funny and glassy. You are sure she can see you, but unsure she’s not seeing straight through you.

  “There are plenty of cans and jars in the pantry—we can live on those,” Ma Ma says finally.

  “I need bread and chicken slices and yogurt for school. You need me to go to school, right? Isn’t that why we came here?”

  Your mother nods, but she still looks confused at the same time.

  “We can go straight to the shops and back again. We don’t have to talk to anyone. We can keep our heads down.”

  Your mother nods again and blinks in quick succession.

  “Where is your bag, Ma Ma?”

  You help her find her wallet, place it into her handbag, and put the strap over her head.

  “Let’s go.”

  You open the front door and help Ma Ma step over the threshold, careful not to tread on the god living there, and out onto the porch. Then, drawing breath at each step and letting it out, you help her down those thirty steps. Like Ba Ba last helped her down.

  “Are you sure this will be safe?”

  “Of course, Ma Ma.”

  “I keep thinking about the last time I went outside. Meixing, please tell me that nothing bad is going to happen this time.”

  “Nothing bad is going to happen.”

  Ma Ma smiles and looks a little better. All you are going to do is walk down the street. There is a corner store at the very end that Ailing would walk to every morning to buy a newspaper and fresh flowers for her room. You will buy a few things and then head straight back.

  As you both start walking, the remaining fears dissolve. As you go past the Huynhs’ place, you stare at it wistfully. You wish that you could go over and hang out, or that Kevin could come over to your place so you could both just act like children. Instead, he is somewhere behind that closed door, carrying the weight of his parents’ expectations on his shoulders. As you are carrying the weight of Ma Ma’s on yours. You hope that he isn’t being punished too badly.

  “That’s it. A little bit farther,” you say. You feel dizzy, as though the world has been picked up and shaken violently and things have become all confused and mixed up. You have now become Ma Ma and Ma Ma has become a baby. When the cocoon in your bedroom opens, your father will come out and become a moth.

  You go past a man and woman walking their dog, but you keep your head down like you promised Ma Ma, and they don’t try to say hello or talk to you. Their dog sniffs Ma Ma’s leg and she cries out in surprise, but you hurry her along and the dog is pulled back on his leash.

  Ma Ma is right, we don’t need any help. We can fix this by ourselves. We can take care of each other, you think to yourself.

  You keep walking. If you concentrate on walking and don’t think of anything else, then sooner or later you will get there. And you do. Up ahead in the distance, on the other side of the street, you can see a bright pink wraparound sign with white cursive writing that reads Ice Cream Snacks Hot Food Flowers. You are proud you can read all the words!

  Entering the front door, pushing past straps of plastic that hit you in the face, you find a tiny store crowded inside with shelves and shelves of food. Some of the cans, cartons, and packets look similar to the things in the general store back on the island, but there are things you have never seen before.

  Ma Ma is entranced by the strange cakes and sweets in the glass display, especially a rectangle of pink-colored coconut with bits of cherry glaze, sandwiched between two pieces of dark chocolate. You stare at the endless types of candy, all wrapped in individual cellophane bags. You pick one up that has six red jelly frogs inside and show it to Ma Ma. She opens her wallet and counts the coins and says you deserve a treat.

  Onto the front counter goes a loaf of bread, milk, eggs, chicken slices, and the bag of candy. The lady who rings up the bill says hi and tries to engage in conversation, but you both lower your heads and feel like you can’t talk back. Your groceries go into a paper bag and you pick it up in your arms, whisper, “Thank you,” and hope that the lady heard you.

  Outside, walking back home, feeling a little more confident and relaxed, Ma Ma affectionately touches the top of your head.

  “Thank you, Meixing. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”

  You smile and say it’s okay. She holds the bag of groceries while you open the packet of red frogs and curiously bite into one. It is sweet and chewy and the yummiest thing you have ever eaten. You offer one to Ma Ma, but she shakes her head. You quietly try to figure out how many you should save for Kevin.

  You are almost home and almost safe.

  Until you see the three teenage boys up ahead.

  What scares you are the heavy black combat boots. They look like they are made for kicking and stomping things. What those things are, you don’t know. They are huddled around a utility pole. The boy with the shaved head has his back to you. Your instincts tell you something is wrong. Your body is flooded with a cold numbness followed by bursts of your heart pumping, as if giving you the choice to stay or to run.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Boots

  If you hold your breath and try to breeze past them in one swift motion, it might be okay, you tell yourself. You know you should turn around and go back to the store, ask the lady there for help. But you are too proud to have to admit to Ma Ma that you were wrong, that the world is unsafe and scary. You don’t want to believe it yourself. At that moment you know you are pinning a lot on a tiny hope. But you grab on to that hope against hope and you approach closer. You just want to go home.

  The boy with the shaved head turns and sees the two of you and grins broadly.

  All we can do is keep going, you think to yourself. Head down. Walk fast. Clear this one section of footpath and you will both be across and it will be over. Home is up ahead.

  The three boys spread out and block the footpath.

  You slow down. Instinctively, you put yourself in front of Ma Ma.

  They cannot block the way like that. There are other people around. It is very cold, but it’s not raining so people are out and about. Walking their dogs. Exercising. Going to work. Leaving work. Surely one of them will come along and tell them to move.

  There might be other people around, but nobody comes to h
elp you.

  It is much too late when you realize they are holding the yellow flyers.

  “I think you should go home,” says the teenager with the shaved head.

  You don’t dare look at his face, but you recognize the same features as that boy from school, the one who had the same flyer, who said he had an older brother. This is a scary new experience, but it feels all too familiar.

  You stare at a crack in the concrete. Try not to notice the heavy black boots. You look at your feet and they look so small.

  You are not sure what is on Ma Ma’s face because you don’t dare look at her. You take the grocery bag back from her, as if it might form some sort of pathetic shield.

  The teenager then says a word that you haven’t heard before. He spits it out with a pure hatred you have never experienced. His friends laugh. Grasping Ma Ma’s wrist firmly, you sidestep to the right so that you can go around the footpath. Your mind screams for you to go back, but you tell yourself you need to go forward.

  The heavy black boots sidestep onto the grass as well.

  Then a heavy hand lands on your shoulder, dropped on you so hard that you are almost hammered into the ground. The bag of groceries goes tumbling down. The breath is knocked out of your lungs so you can’t even scream. You don’t think you could anyway. A soft pair of hands pulls you away, and you hear Ma Ma yell, “Run!”

  Like that, the adrenaline kicks in and you are pounding the pavement, the sound of your breathing and your heart beating inside your ears. You run as fast as you can, even though your knees are jelly and your shoulder is stinging. It feels like one of those nightmares where you can’t run fast enough.

  Ma Ma.

  You stop and turn around. Ma Ma is not behind you. She is still all the way back with the three teens in the black boots, like the light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel.

  “Ma Ma,” you shout, and you go to run back.

  “Stay where you are, Meixing!” she shouts back.

  The teens howl at her Old Language.

  Ma Ma.

  She says that your grandmother, although illiterate, was clever in other ways. She says she is illiterate too, but unfortunately also simpleminded. But Ma Ma is the smartest person you know.

  She takes the handbag off her shoulder and hurls it as hard as she can at the boy with the shaved head. Then, cradling her big belly, she runs as fast as she can manage toward you, screaming for you to keep running on ahead.

  You see the gang staring in your direction, but they do not follow. They pick up Ma Ma’s handbag and you watch them shake it out violently onto the pavement. Ma Ma’s reading glasses and her pocket translation dictionary come rolling out. You watch as they pick up her wallet.

  Ma Ma’s hand clasps tightly on to yours and you both hurry home.

  She is shaking and doubled over when you reach the bottom of the steps. A horrible thin noise, full of pain and fear, is coming out of her mouth.

  You can see Big Scary’s eye open wide in surprise, darting around and blinking, but focusing on nothing.

  “Just these thirty steps,” you beg Ma Ma, and she stops moaning and goes very quiet.

  You put your arms around her, supporting her weight as you heave her up onto the first step. She gives a strange cry as her feet hit the stone. She makes this sound each time she mounts another step. You silently start counting from one all the way to thirty. With each number, you swear you are not going to make it.

  One. You are weak. Two. Your mother has lost her strength. Three four five six ten and twenty. By the grace of some force that has not forgotten you, you make it to the top step. Thirty.

  Squeezing back into the front door that seems smaller than when you left, you both stagger inside.

  * * *

  For years and years after, you will have the same nightmare. You will fill your head with fantasies hoping to erase the memory. In one of these rewrites of the story, Ba Ba comes along and cracks the heads of the gang together, sending them packing as you cheer. In another, it is you who screams and runs right at your attackers, punching them in that place at your height where it hurts.

  These wishful scenarios will haunt you for the rest of your life, even after you are grown and feel strong and confident in yourself. Long after the bruise on your shoulder has healed. Long after you have patched up the wounds of your childhood. Some things leave a mark.

  You help a limping Ma Ma into her bedroom and into the middle of the bed. She doesn’t know how to make herself comfortable. She tries to lie down. Turns over on both sides. Tucks a pillow between her legs. Lies back down. Sits back up again. Eventually, she slides down onto Big Scary’s fur and drapes her arms over the top of the mattress, as though she is sinking and holding on to it for dear life, in case it floats away.

  There is a disturbance, like the hum of a bow upon cello strings. Like the creaking of a huge ship coming apart or a large house contracting.

  You feel it as strange rooms with strange purposes—like the one with a deep square spa and the one with only a grand piano in it—break off and disappear without a trace. Big Scary is taking herself apart and packing up as if she intends to leave this time.

  You crouch down next to your mother. The two of you kneel as if you are praying, but to what in this hopeless New Land, you don’t know. You feel your whole face collapsing, but no tears come. You wish they would, but you are completely empty.

  “Ma Ma, I am so sorry!” you burst out saying.

  “Meixing, did you not hear me when I said to run?”

  You did. You ran away like a coward and left your pregnant mother behind. They could have hurt her. You failed your mother.

  “Old Ma Ma doesn’t matter, don’t apologize,” she says to you, her eyes shining. “I told you to run because you are the one who matters. That’s why we came here, Meixing.”

  And suddenly, you don’t feel so much like it is an impossible expectation you have to live up to, but rather, a simple act of love.

  Ma Ma wraps her arms around you, and you both shiver in the tiny, cold room as it slowly shrinks.

  “Was all your money inside that purse, Ma Ma?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “It is only money. We have each other.” The words come out of Ma Ma’s mouth in puffs of smoke that hang in the air. It is getting colder.

  “What does the word ‘diarrhea’ mean, Ma Ma?” you blurt, trying to take your mind off things.

  “I don’t know, but the translation dictionary will.”

  She crawls over to her bedside drawer and removes a large, well-thumbed leather book with the Old Language printed on the front in gold lettering.

  “Let me see.” Ma Ma flips through it as you both try to sound out the word together. “Surely another useful New Land word to add to what I know.”

  She runs her finger down the page and stops at the right word. She reads the translation.

  A smile plays on her downturned lips and a light comes on inside her tired eyes. Then Ma Ma starts laughing and can’t stop even when she starts to choke. You have to thump on her back. When she tells you what is so funny and laughs at the shocked look on your face, you start laughing too. You both laugh until tears stream down your cheeks, and unsure of whether you are happy or sad anymore, you cling to each other so tight.

  * * *

  When Ma Ma falls asleep shortly after, you pad down the neglected hallway as the dust bunnies made of lint and fluff try to escape from under your feet. You open the front door, shut it behind you, and go slowly down the staircase.

  Quiet as possible, because you want to be invisible, you slowly retread the same path, hoping that you can find Ma Ma’s handbag and what is left of the groceries. You wish you were Ailing, bustling down the pavement every morning, not giving the world a second thought. Maybe one day.

  The utility pole has been decorated with a single yellow flyer and it stops you in your tracks. For a split second, from a distance, it looks like t
he talisman Ba Ba stuck inside Big Scary to keep the bad monsters out. You shake your head and the flyer goes back to looking like a warning to stay away.

  The handbag and the groceries are gone. The only thing that remains is smashed eggs. You poke them with your shoe and turn to go home, your stomach sore from the worry about dinner rather than from any real hunger.

  Dragging your feet, your shoulders sagging, you almost trip over what has been left on the bottom step of Big Scary.

  The bag of groceries.

  It is the same paper bag, judging by the smeared egg stains on one side, but it has been refilled with fresh food. A fresh carton of eggs. A fresh loaf of bread. Sitting on the top is Ma Ma’s handbag.

  It is magic.

  No, it is only human kindness.

  You hear a “psst” and turn around to see Mrs. Huynh standing by her mailbox. Your hand goes up automatically to your body. Before you have a chance to say anything, not even “thank you,” she has hurried back into her home. When you look down, you realize you have placed your palm over your chest. Your heart is aching. But in the best way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Petals

  Before dark Ma Ma lets out a scream unlike any that you have heard before and she clutches her belly. Big Scary groans in unison and shrinks away. Ma Ma calls for you to bring her some towels.

  “I think the baby is coming.” She doubles down in pain again.

  You hurry out to find the towels. In your panic you look around the laundry room, the kitchen; you can’t look in the linen closet because it has disappeared. Big Scary is leaving right now. You are afraid that the bedroom door is going to close upon Ma Ma.

  “I know that you are scared,” you say to Big Scary as you touch her wall. “Please don’t be. I’m scared too.”

  There is a crack, and the window in the front door shatters. You jump and take a step back. The painted shards fall off. You look around in desperation. You need help, now. Throwing open the front door, you run down the front steps.

  At the Huynhs’ place you bang on the door. No one answers you. You bang on it again twice as desperately. But there is no noise on the other side.