by Remy Lai
She doesn’t ask why we’re late, and I’m not silly, so I don’t bring that up. “School was the worst,” I’m about to whine, but Yanghao barges past me, yodeling, “English is too hard, Mama.”
He flops onto the sofa. Mama hands him his staple drink—caramel-flavored milk that comes in a little box with a little straw—and sits next to him, putting an arm around him.
I frown. But she’s too busy peeling Yanghao’s backpack off him to notice. I squeeze my eyebrows together. Her eyebrows scrunch up as if in reply. But she’s not looking at me. She’s rubbing Yanghao’s prickly hair, which has to be kept short because of the same cooties that made him puny. I slouch.
Instead of telling me I’ll be stuck as a humpback if I don’t stand right, she says, “Everything will be all right.”
“No, Mama. It’s been two months, and nothing is all right!” I’m about to scream, but I spot letters on the coffee table. They’re from Ah-po and Ah-gong. I tear open the one addressed to me.
In my last letter to Ah-po and Ah-gong, I told them I hoped they were able to handle pumping out all those cakes for the family cake shop on their own. In their reply, they wrote they’ve hired a diligent young baker, so everything is swell. Under their signatures is a PS: “Over there in Australia, you’re the man of the house, Jingwen. Take care of your mother and little brother.”
I’d give anything to not have to be the man of the house. But I’ll try, even if I’m only almost-twelve. I’ve always looked out for my little brother, since it’s one of the unspoken rules of the universe, and all the adults ask me to, but I’m not sure how I’m to take care of Mama. Maybe make her tea in the morning. Except she always gets up before me.
“What about you, Jingwen? How was school?” Mama asks. As if she’s suddenly very heavy, she sinks farther into the sofa. I want to give her the seashells of trouble that are weighing down my pockets, but she’s already taken the ones in Yanghao’s and put them in hers. Adding any more might make her so heavy she’d fall through the seat. For now, I should try to carry my seashells in my own pockets.
Her eyebrows smooth out, and she smiles. “I’m glad.” She grabs her chef uniform that’s draped over the kitchen stool. “Now I have to get to work. Make sure your brother takes a shower. I’ve made dumplings and noodles for dinner. They’re in the fridge. Heat them up in the microwave and make sure your brother finishes his, and do your homework. I’ll see you in the morning.” She picks up her handbag from the sofa, kisses Yanghao and me on the tops of our heads, and disappears out the door.
I sigh. Mama’s shift at Barker Bakes runs from 4:30 P.M. to 3:30 A.M., so when Yanghao and I get home from school at about half past three, we only have her for less than an hour before she has to go to work. Back at our family’s cake shop, she used to work long hours too, but because the shop occupies the front part of our house, she was always just a few steps away if I needed to ask for help with my homework or complain that Yanghao was being a turd.
“Jingwen, was school really all right for you?” Yanghao asks, slurping the last of his caramel-flavored milk.
Even if it wasn’t, can Mama help me? Will she do my homework for me? Can she attend class for me? Speak to my teachers for me? Take my exams for me? What good will telling her do?
12
I flip through my dictionary for the millionth time in the last five minutes. In my old school, I learned all about photosynthesis, so I bet I know all the answers in my science homework … if only I knew what the questions were. Imagine if Sherlock Holmes was asked to look for clues not with a magnifying glass but with old people’s reading glasses, like the ones Ah-po, Ah-gong, and Anna wear. English is my old people’s reading glasses.
SpongeBob’s and Yanghao’s laughter booms from the living room, disrupting my train of thought for the thousandth time. If only our bedroom were big enough for a table so I could do my homework in peace there, but I have to set up camp in the kitchen, on a square table that butts against the wall. Why is Yanghao laughing, anyway? It’s not like he can follow what SpongeBob is saying. Even though English-speaking SpongeBob looks the same as the one on our TV back in our old home, they’re really different, and I can’t stand this one who makes jokes I don’t understand.
“Yanghao, take a shower,” I yell.
“Five more minutes.”
“That’s what you said a million minutes ago.”
“No problem-o!” SpongeBob says.
“No problem-o!” Yanghao mimics.
I storm over to the coffee table, grab the remote control, and press mute.
“Poo face!” Yanghao shouts. “What did you do that for?”
“You don’t even understand what you’re watching.”
“Of course I understand. I’m smart.”
“Liar.” I march back to the dining table. “Don’t laugh so loud. I’m doing homework.”
I continue trying to do my homework. Yanghao has made me forget what I just read about stomata. It’s hard, holding on to the meaning of “stomata” while also holding on to the meanings of other words I’ve just learned from the same sentence, which are “explain” and “function.”
It’s like trying to be that clown I saw in that circus in a big tent in a big field that Papa and Mama took us to a long time ago. As a tiger jumped through a burning hoop, the clown juggled five balls in the air. I imagine myself as that clown.
I give up. Randomly, I circle B from the multiple-choice answers, then move on to the next question. Which I don’t understand either.
Urgh! I throw my dictionary open. “Photo-Photosyn-Photosynthesis … URGH! I toss it onto the table. “Yanghao? Want to play cards? Board games? Anything?”
There’s no reply. I crane my neck to look for him. He isn’t in the living room, and I can’t hear the trickle of the shower. What trouble is he getting into now?
I find him in Mama’s bedroom, sitting cross-legged on the floor, reading one of Mama’s cookbooks. Next to him is Mama’s suitcase, opened. On the suitcase handle is the sticker tag with the bar code and our flight number to Mars. I ask him why he made a mess and why he’s reading a cookbook.
“Because you don’t let me watch SpongeBob. And I have to find something else to do. And I found Mama’s cookbooks. And I’m reading them because I don’t have my storybooks. Because they’re all back home. Because the plane didn’t allow us to take more than thirty kilograms of things each. Will you make me a cake?”
“Ask Mama to make it this weekend.”
“Can you make it for me now?”
“I don’t know how.”
“But Ah-po and Ah-gong taught us.”
“They let us mix batter and play with dough. Quit stalling. When I’m done with my homework, you’d better be in the shower.” I wag my finger as I march out of the room.
“That gives me plenty of time, then. A forever of time.”
If he weren’t such a crybaby, I’d have punched him, because the truth hurts and it shouldn’t hurt only me. I return to the kit-chen and pick up where I’ve left the photo-photosun-photosyn—
I conk my head against the table repeatedly. It doesn’t matter if I permanently damage my brain. I’m already s l o w.
Conk! Conk! Conk!
S l o w. S l o w. S l o w.
If only Mama could tell I was lying about how my day went. If she’d pressed a bit more, I would have told her everything.
Conk! Conk! Conk!
S l o w. S l o w. S l o w.
My head hurts.
“Jingwen?” Yanghao sounds close by, just outside the kitchen.
There’s no reply.
I look up to find him neither in the kitchen nor the living room. Come back, Yanghao. Come back and annoy me. Argue with me. Make me procrastinate doing this homework that I’ll fail anyway. Call me a booger. I’ll punch you. You’ll kick me. We’ll fight. You’ll cry and threaten to tattle. I’ll be angry, and my brain will be filled with revenge schemes. Which are better thoughts to have than all these
s l o w s swirling around in my brain.
Just then, there are creaks—probably Yanghao’s bed—and then footsteps pitter-patter down the hall. Yanghao’s head pops out from behind the wall. He stays there staring at me like a spooky, little kid ghost.
“Stop creeping me out—”
Before I finish, he’s already by my side, his finger on a picture in the cookbook that’s already on the dining table. “I want to eat this.”
Nutella cream cake. The Pie in the Sky cake that made me feel better this morning. And now, just when I’m feeling lousy, Yanghao pesters me to make it for him. It can’t be a coincidence. It’s Papa sending me a message through the universe. Or it’s just the universe finally not being a poo face.
Cakes always bring smiles, after all.
13
We’re so excited about the cake we forget to turn our shoes upside down and tap-tap-tap them before putting them on. It’s actually a matter of life and death. Poisonous Australian spiders like to hide in shoes. People with bigger feet and shoes have to watch out for not only spiders but also snakes.
“After we’ve made this cake,” I say as I lock the apartment door behind me, “you’re not to annoy me again. I need to finish my homework. And on our way to the grocery store, and then back home, we’re not stopping at the playground. Not for five minutes. Not for one minute.”
Yanghao runs down the stairs. When he gets a flight of steps ahead of me, and out of my reach, he shouts, “You’re such a nag!” Then he zooms off. The slapping of his shoes echoes all around the stairwell, totally out of beat with the horrible made-up song he’s belting out. “Cake cake caaake caaaaake!”
I’m so going to regret this.
We have the ingredients for making a basic sponge cake at home, because Mama bought them to make cake “this weekend,” but she’s always tired when “this weekend” rolls around. The Nutella cream cake also needs heavy cream and Nutella. We have Nutella at home, of course—who doesn’t?—except it’s down to the last couple of spoonfuls.
“Hurry up, slow turtle,” Yanghao keeps saying to me as we make our way to the grocery store by the bus station. I’d have shut him up, but his eagerness means he doesn’t ask to stop at the playground. When we approach Barker Bakes, I stop him. Mama won’t be at the storefront, but it’s better to be safe. If she sees us sneaking out to buy stuff to make a cake in an oven by ourselves, there will be an apocalypse.
“Who’s the slow turtle now?” I continue running all the way to the grocery store. I’m not going as fast as I can, of course, because I don’t want to lose Yanghao and get a scolding from Mama.
At the grocery store, Yanghao goes nuts over Nutella. The recipe calls for a total of one cup of Nutella for the cream frosting and the filling, but he insists on buying the biggest tub on the shelf.
Since Mama pays for everything whenever we go anywhere, and I don’t have to buy lunch from the school cafeteria, my allowance has been untouched for two months. Which makes me at least as rich as a billionaire’s butler. But that doesn’t mean I want to spend ten dollars on one kilogram of Nutella when the three-dollar-and-seventy-cents jar is enough.
“No,” I say, and grab the smallest jar.
“But I want to buy the papa Nutella.”
I almost drop the jar in my hand. No one has said “papa” out loud for a very long time. “What—” I start, but choke.
He clutches Papa Nutella to his chest. “I’ll finish whatever we don’t use for the cake, Jingwen. I promise. Buy Papa Nutella, please?”
I walk away. “I’m going to get the heavy cream.” If he says “Papa Nutella” one more time … don’t know what I will do, but it won’t be good.
Luckily, Yanghao doesn’t mention “papa” again, and we go to pay. As the cashier scans our items, she scans Yanghao and me too. Then she looks around to see if any of the grown-ups nearby is with us. I quickly hold out the money. She eyes me suspiciously, but then Yanghao flashes his Colgate smile at her and she chuckles and takes the money from me.
All the way home, Yanghao skips ahead of me. From time to time, he turns and yells, “Slow turtle!”
When we reach Barker Bakes, he waits for me so we can do our stealth dash past the café again. “This is so fun!” he says, colliding into me as we hide behind the mailbox.
We take a peek at Barker Bakes.
There are three kinds of lies: kind-intentioned lies told to avoid hurting others’ feelings, lies of omission where you simply leave out certain facts, and lies told to benefit yourself while harming others. What I told Mama, about school being all right, was a kind-intentioned lie, which is the least bad type of lies. My kind intention was to make Mama happy, and the lie worked.
So I don’t understand why seeing Mama happy doesn’t make me happy.
Maybe when Mama says everything will be all right, she means for her. Everything will be all right for everyone except me.
The deities, or the universe if deities don’t exist—but don’t tell Ah-gong I said that—if they could read my thoughts, they’d probably say, “Look at that evil boy who doesn’t want his mother to be happy. Let’s hex him. May he miss all his buses and may all his socks have holes.”
I like my socks without holes, so I try to get more excited about making a Pie in the Sky cake. If I’m happy, then I won’t be jealous that Mama is happy. But by the time Yanghao and I get home, I’m still feeling like crap. Even Yanghao dropping the one-kilogram jar of Nutella on his foot doesn’t make me smile. Without a word, I rummage in the bottom cabinet in the kitchen. There are mixing bowls, cake pans, and cooling racks—things Mama lugged all the way from our old kitchen but hasn’t used in this new kitchen. I glumly take out what I need for the Nutella cream cake. Yanghao tries to help.
“Why?” He clambers down and hands me the tiny container of baking soda.
“Because you’ll make a mess, and then I’ll have to clean it up. Also, you’re too little to be near the hot oven.” I step onto the stool and exchange the baking soda for baking powder.
He sticks his finger into the jar of Papa Nutella. “Jingwen, do you know what time it is?”
I look at the clock above the TV. “Quarter to six.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Can’t you read time?” I say. “The small hand is between five and—”
14
“Gross!” I say, screwing the lid back onto the Nutella jar. “I don’t want to eat your germs.”
“Everything’s going into the hot oven anyway. All the germs will be dead.”
I ignore him and start mixing the ingredients, and he pesters me to let him help. The smart aleck turns out to be the GREATEST HELPER in the whole universe.
Once I take over, things go a lot more smoothly.
Yanghao blows a raspberry, but he also folds his arms. While I continue whisking the eggs, sugar, and butter, he sings that silly cake song over and over.
I place a hand over his mouth. “Shush.”
Something wet touches my palm. “You licked me? GROSS!” I yell, but he just continues belting out his cake song.
I move on to sift the flour mixture into the egg mixture while at the same time gently using a spatula to fold.
“Don’t you know how to mix?” Yanghao says. “Do like this.” He makes quick, forceful circles with his arm.
“I’m not mixing, but folding. You have to do it gently until the wet and dry mixtures are just combined.”
“Who says?”
“Papa.” I haven’t said that word in a long while. It sounds familiar and strange at the same time. Like a shout and a whisper. A cry and a laugh.
Papa and I were making this exact same cake when he told me that when you whisk eggs and sugar together, you are whisking air into the mixture. That’s how the mixture ends up three times bigger than when you started.
“So when you add flour to this egg mixture,” I tell Yanghao what Papa told me, “you need to do it gently so you don’t squish all the air out. Otherwise, your spong
e cake won’t be fluffy.”
“Oh,” Yanghao says. “I didn’t know.”
I pour the batter into the round pan. “It’s called folding.”
“I mean I didn’t know this cake we’re making is on the menu for Pie in the Sky.”
My heart skips a beat. No one has ever mentioned Pie in the Sky since the accident either.
“Ah-po told me that was what you and Papa did in the kitchen on Sundays. But I don’t remember what cakes you and Papa made. I only remember they were yummy. Is rainbow cake on the menu?”
“No. Rainbow cake is too simple for Pie in the Sky.” I slide the pan into the oven and sit in front of it.
Yanghao plops down next to me. “Too simple?”
“Yeah. All the cakes of Pie in the Sky are more expensive because they have things like cream and chocolate and fresh fruit.”
He rubs his head. “Rainbow cake has cream and fresh fruit.”
“Yes, but—the thing is—” I don’t know how to explain it to him. “Pie in the Sky cakes are more difficult to make because of the layers and the techniques.”
“Rainbow cake has seven layers. Nutella cream cake has only two.”
“Yes, but Nutella cream cake has chocolate, in the Nutella.”
He sits upright, all excited. “So do all the Pie in the Sky cakes have chocolate?”
“No, but— You— I don’t— You’re giving me a headache. Rainbow cake is not on the menu of Pie in the Sky, okay?”
“But we don’t sell rainbow cake in our shop either.”
“Because the layers and cream and fruit make it too fancy and expensive for our shop back home.”
He squints at me. “How can something be too simple and too fancy at the same time?”
“You’ll understand it when you’re older—” I gulp. I hate it when grown-ups use that line on me. Am I all grown up now? Am I going to start getting all hairy all over?