by Grace Lin
Finally, we got in the car and drove to Albert’s house. He lived far away, so far that I got to miss school! We didn’t have to travel as far as Grandma and Grandpa, though. They were coming all the way from Taiwan to see Albert. But they didn’t go to school, so it didn’t matter.
It was a long drive. Sometimes I steamed up the window with my breath and drew a dog with my finger. I tried to think about what I wanted to be when I grew up, but nothing came to mind. Lissy and Ki-Ki just snored.
Sometimes we listened to music. Mom put in a tape with songs on it and we sang along. Our favorite song was one that went like this:
LISSY: There was a hole…
PACY &KI-KI : There was a hole…
LISSY: The prettiest hole…
PACY &KI-KI: The prettiest hole…
LISSY: That you ever did see…
PACY &KI-KI: That you ever did see…
The song kept going on like that, with a bird’s nest in the tree that grew from the hole. We made Mom play it over and over again. Dad got very tired of the song. He said he was going to put the tape in a hole.
When we finally got to Albert’s house it was dark outside. But Auntie Kim, Uncle Leo, Grandma, and Grandpa and lots of other cousins, aunts, and uncles came out and welcomed us inside. They were all wearing their special silk clothes, and in the moon-light we shimmered like a stained-glass window. Grandma’s dress was a silky, silver gray. She glowed liked a pearl ring. All our relatives hugged and kissed us and asked, “Ja-ba, bei?” over and over again. That meant, “Have you eaten yet?” in Taiwanese.
I thought that was a silly question. Of course, we hadn’t eaten yet! We had all been in the car the whole time.
It was so crowded in the house. Red eggs were everywhere. Albert’s name was written in Chinese on big pieces of red paper. Grandma and Grandpa hugged us again and again. We hadn’t seen them in a long time. Cousin Jimmy, Sylvia, and Austin were there; so were Uncle Wally and Aunt Judy. So many people!
Albert was sleeping in a crib. I don’t know how he could sleep with all those people around, but he did. He had a round, fat face with red cheeks. He looked like a red egg. But it could have been because he was sleeping on all those red envelopes. Relatives kept coming by and slipping those envelopes stuffed with money into the crib. It reminded me that I still had to think about how I was going to get rich. Lucky Albert! He was already rich.
On the table there were brown stir-fried noodles; cooked duck shiny with oil; fresh lychees with their prickly pink skins; eggplant in brown sauce; shrimp with vegetables; snow-white rice; and puffy, white pork buns with flame-colored meat. There was also a big bowl of yellow ginger and chicken soup.
“Only women can eat that,” Uncle Leo told us. “It gives them energy so they can take care of babies.”
Since Lissy, and Ki-Ki, and I were girls, we decided to try a little. Besides, it was fun to be able to eat something the boys couldn’t have. It was thick and oily tasting. We didn’t really like it, but we pretended it was delicious—just to make Cousin Jimmy jealous.
While we were all at the table, Uncle Sam came downstairs to welcome us.
“Ja-ba, bei?” he asked us. “Have you eaten yet?”
They kept asking that. Grown-ups were so silly.
“We’re eating RIGHT NOW!” I said.
Everyone laughed. I didn’t understand why they were all laughing at me.
“What’s so funny?” I demanded.
Mom explained to me that even though “Ja-ba, bei?” meant, “Have you eaten yet?” it was also a Taiwanese way of just saying, “How are you doing?”
“It’s because food is so important to us,” Uncle Leo told me. “Everything is about food.”
“Yes,” Auntie Kim said, and she pointed to Albert’s name banner. “Do you know what Albert’s name means? It means ‘cooking duck’! See, we even name you kids after food.”
“Really?” It was funny. I laughed with everyone else. “Then can I have some more Albert?”
Everyone laughed as Mom put more duck on my plate.
Chapter 11
Tiger Chasing Pig
THERE WERE A LOT OF PEOPLE STAYING AT ALBERT’S house. All the uncles and aunts tried to plan who should sleep where. It didn’t seem like there would be enough room for all of us. Dad said they should make all the kids go sleep in the driveway. We didn’t like that! Finally, Auntie Kim unrolled a bunch of sleeping bags and all the kids slept on the floor in the dining room. Lissy, Ki-Ki, Cousin Jimmy, and I slept underneath the table.
The next morning, when I opened my eyes, I saw a pair of gold embroidered slippers full of feet in front of my face. I sat up quickly and hit my head on the table.
“Ouch!” I said.
“Careful!” I heard Aunt Judy say. “You almost made the juice spill!”
I looked around and saw legs all around me, like prison bars. I heard glasses clinking and bowls moving overhead. I pushed through two pairs of legs and crawled out from under the table.
“Aren’t you lucky?” Dad said. “You get to have breakfast in bed!”
“No, it’s breakfast over bed!” Lissy said, and everyone laughed.
Mom got a chair for me and gave me a bowl of steaming rice porridge. She put some fried egg and my favorite—flaky, salty dried pork—on top of the bowl. As I bent my head to eat, I felt a sharp pain in my neck.
“My neck hurts!” I complained.
“Oh, probably from sleeping on the floor,” Mom said. “It’ll go away.”
“Eh?” Grandma asked. Grandma and Grandpa didn’t speak English that well, so sometimes they didn’t know what we were talking about.
Mom spoke to Grandma in Taiwanese, repeating what I had said.
“Ah,” Grandma nodded her head at me wisely, “I know. I fix!”
After breakfast Grandma brought me into her room. She took out a small green silk box that had dragons embroidered on it. Was Grandma going to give me a necklace? That was the only thing that I could imagine would be in such a special box.
But when she opened the box there was only a bamboo paintbrush, the color of dried grass, and some dull black stones inside. Grandma rubbed the black stones with some water and I could see they were making a deep black ink. Grandma motioned me over, turned me around, and pushed the back of my shirt collar down. Then she had me hold up my hair.
“This is tiger,” Grandma said, and I felt the cool tip of the paintbrush touch the back of my neck like a wet butterfly wing. She made some quick movements, and I felt the paintbrush flutter. “This is pig,” she said.
Then Grandma blew a soft breeze on my neck to help the paint dry.
“Leave and tiger will chase pig,” she told me. “Running will help neck.”
What was she talking about? And what had she done? I went to the bathroom and stared. I had black marks, like leopard spots, painted on both sides of my neck. Would it wash off? I didn’t dare do it right away; Grandma had said, “Leave.” But what if my skin got stained black with those marks? And what was it that she was saying about pigs and tigers running?
I ran to show Mom. When she saw the paint, she laughed.
“She painted the Chinese symbol for tiger on one side of your neck and a pig on the other,” she told me. “The tiger should chase the pig and the running will massage your neck and make your neck feel better.”
“Will the paint come off?” I asked. “I don’t want to go to school with ‘pig’ written on my neck!”
“I’m sure it will,” Mom said, “but does your neck feel better?”
I stopped and thought for a moment.
“Well, yeah,” I nodded, “it does!”
Chapter 12
Luck
THE PAINT DID WASH OFF AND SOON WE WERE hugging all our cousins and aunts and Grandma and Grandpa good-bye and driving home. When I went back to school, even though I had been gone for three whole days, nothing had changed. The only thing that was different was that I was behind on all my homework.
; Melody was glad I was back. As soon as she saw me, she ran to tell me the news.
“Guess what?” Melody said. “Becky said that Heather said that Teddy likes someone.”
She was talking about Teddy Jackson. We both had a crush on him. He had brown-blond hair, the color of sand, and blue eyes like a rainy sky. He was the cutest boy in the whole school. Or at least, I thought so; Melody thought Sam Mercer was cuter.
“Really!” I said. “Who?”
“She doesn’t know,” Melody said. “But she said it is someone who plays the violin.”
“Then it could be one of us!” I almost shrieked.
Melody nodded vigorously with a big grin. Then she stopped. “But there are lots of other girls who play the violin.”
I started to count—Emma Richards, Sophie Williams, Charlotte Fitzgerald, and then Melody and me. That was five girls. Which one of us did he like?
Melody and I became spies. We watched Teddy talk to every girl and studied him. Every time he walked into the room, we noted what he did, what he said, and who he spoke to. Melody wrote everything down in her notebook.
“Today, Teddy talked to Emma three times, Charlotte five times, you four times, and me six,” Melody reported. “He picked up Charlotte’s pencil, he held the door for you, and he let me cut in front of him in the lunch line.”
“What about Sophie?” I asked.
“He never talks to Sophie,” Melody said, “or even looks at her. It’s definitely not her.”
By Friday, Melody had filled her notebook. She came over to my house for dinner and then we went over our Teddy notes. We had wonton soup (white, silky dumplings swimming in a bamboo-colored broth), stir-fried green cabbage, white rice, and sticky red-brown spareribs for dinner.
“I love spare ribs,” I said as Mom cleared the plates from the table.
“I almost didn’t make these tonight. You were going to get leftovers,” Mom told us. “You’re lucky!”
“We’re supposed to be lucky,” Melody told me as we went upstairs to my room. “We were both born in the Year of the Tiger, and tigers and dogs are friends. So the Year of the Dog is a lucky year for us.”
“Do you think it’ll be so lucky that Teddy Jackson likes one of us?” I asked, as we studied the notebook.
“It’s either you or Charlotte,” Melody said. “He smiles at both of you equally. He talked to her three more times then he did to you, but he did sit next to you in art class.”
I thought about Charlotte. She had curly brown hair like a poodle and a freckled nose. She played violin better than I did.
“Maybe it’s her,” I said.
“But in art class, Teddy said his favorite color was black,” Melody said, “and you have black hair.”
Maybe it WAS me. A warm feeling started to bubble up in me. Melody and I colored in a heart in her notebook.
“Teddy likes you! Teddy likes you!” Melody sang. “You’re so lucky. Can I be a bridesmaid?”
“Okay!” I said and we drew pictures of the wedding dress, the bridesmaids’ dresses, and the cake.
That whole weekend, Melody called me “Mrs. Jackson.” It was funny. Once, Mom answered the phone and said, “Sorry, you have the wrong number,” and hung up on her. I had to call her back.
“Maybe Teddy will ask me to go out with him,” I said to Melody. “Maybe he’ll ask me to eat lunch with him!”
“Maybe,” Melody said.
“Teddy and I could do a science fair project together!” I said.
“But we were going to do a science fair project together,” Melody said, and suddenly she didn’t sound so happy anymore.
“Well, all three of us can do it together, right?” I said.
“Maybe,” Melody said again.
Then I remembered that Melody had liked Teddy, too. Maybe she felt bad because Teddy liked me and not her. Maybe she felt unlucky. I didn’t realize that my good luck would be her bad luck. I didn’t know what to do.
If Teddy became my boyfriend, what would I do? Would Melody be mad at me? Would we no longer be almost twins? I thought that maybe I shouldn’t go out with Teddy. But he was so cute!
The next day at school, I met Melody on the playground.
“Is Teddy here yet?” I asked.
Melody shrugged. “I don’t know.”
For the first time since we met, Melody and I didn’t know what to say to each other. Melody kicked small stones in the dirt and I watched them roll.
Becky came running up to us.
“Hey, did you hear,” Becky said. “Teddy Jackson has a girlfriend!”
“He does?!” Melody and I said together.
“Yes,” Becky said, “he and Sophie Williams are going out! He told her he liked her yesterday at the soccer game. Look!”
Melody and I looked at where Becky was pointing. We saw the back of Teddy and Sophie’s heads, like two dandelions in the grass. They were holding hands.
Melody and I looked at each other and smiled.
Chapter 13
The Book Contest
MY TWO FAVORITE CLASSES AT SCHOOL WERE library class and art class. At the library we were allowed to borrow three books at a time and Ms. McCurdy would read to us. I loved books. I read every Betsy book in the library. Then I read all the books by an author named Ruth Chew. Her books were all about magic and witches. They were so exciting.
I loved art class, too. Mr. Valente taught us how to mix colors. My favorite color was red, but you can’t mix red. You can make orange from red and yellow or purple from red and blue, but you could never mix two colors together and get red. We also got to make pictures on scratchboard. Instead of drawing black lines on a white sheet of paper, you scratched away the black surface with a special pen. I did a drawing of some flowers against the moon.
One day, Ms. McCurdy came to our art class. It was funny seeing her there because we usually only saw her in the library.
“Hello, class,” she said, “Mr. Valente and I are combining our classes for a very special project. We are going to have all of you write and illustrate your own books!”
Our own books? Could we do that? Could I do that?
Ms. McCurdy told us there was a contest that we would be entering. It was called “Written and Illustrated by… The National Awards Contest for Students.” For this contest, you entered books that you wrote and drew yourself. If you won first place, they would publish your book, just like the books in the library. Ms. McCurdy would help us with the writing, and Mr. Valente would help us with the drawing. But we had to think up our own ideas.
All day long, I thought about the project. Becky said she was going to do her book about a unicorn. Melody said she might write a story about a singer. I heard some boys talk about how they were going to do their stories about pirates or wizards with swords. I couldn’t decide what to do mine about.
At home, I told everyone about the project.
“Do a book about a girl that can read minds,” Lissy said.
“Do something with panda bears,” Ki-Ki said.
“How about a cookbook?” Mom said.
“Better make it an eating book,” Dad said. “You’re good at that.”
“No,” I said, “those aren’t good ideas. I need a good idea so I can win the contest.”
Mom shook her head. “It’s not easy to win a contest. You have to work very hard.”
“Yes,” said Dad, “like how you practice the violin. Everything takes time and effort.”
“So, I have to practice making a book every day?” I asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No,” Mom said, “but you’ll have to work on your book a little bit every day, if you want it to be good. Just like practicing an instrument. Did I ever tell you about Grandma and the paper piano?”
THE PAPER PIANO
When I was a little girl, maybe a little bit younger than you are, before Grandpa started his business, we were very poor. Our house was small and old with a cracked cement floor that was never clean, no m
atter how much Grandma swept and scrubbed it. The bathroom was broken down and rotten, green mold grew underneath the sink, and when it rained, worms would come out of the walls.
Grandma didn’t like being poor. Before she married Grandpa, she had been a fine lady. Now, we were the poor family of a medical student. But Grandma knew it was only temporary. Once Grandpa became established, we would live in a nice house and I would grow up to be a fine lady, just like she had been. So while we were waiting for Grandpa to get established, she wanted me to learn all the things fine ladies knew. And one of those things was how to play the piano.
Grandma looked all over for a good piano teacher that we could afford. Finally, she found one. He was a young man who lived over a mile away. Since we were too poor to buy a piano, he said that I could come to his house to practice every day after he was done giving lessons.
Every day, I walked the long way to his house. He lived in a grand house. I used to think that it was probably just like the house Elvis Presley would live in because it was an American-style house. Outside the house was a garden with a rainbow of flowers. There were exotic flowers in the garden—red and yellow roses with their vivid petals spilling over each other, marigolds looking like bursts of orange sunshine, and brilliant violet pink petunias. The house, itself, had two floors. I never got to see what was upstairs, but the downstairs was so magnificent! The floor was smooth and glossy wood, polished like a piece of golden amber. There were curly carved tea chests and furniture, shiny chestnut-colored striped curtains, and ivory glass vases with blue flowers painted on them. On the porcelain cover of a gold box, an English lady smiled at me. She wore a big pink dress, the skirts puffing like an upside-down peony. She always seemed to be inviting me to open the box, but I never dared. The paintings of wealthy ancestors were watching. Their stern gazes forbade me to touch any of their riches. My piano teacher had a fascinating house.