by Remy Lai
Yanghao calls me a booger, but nothing more, and we sit there watching in silence as if the oven were a TV and the rising cake were a cartoon.
After fifteen minutes, he points to the oven door. “The cake’s rising.” I slap his hand away before he touches it and burns his finger. He pokes my cheek with his finger that’s teeming with germs. “A mosquito landing on your cheek.”
“Ow! Another rule: Don’t poke me in the face or anywhere else. Or I’ll cut off your finger.”
“I’ll tell Mama you cut off my finger, and she’ll kill you.” He smirks, then suddenly, the corners of his mouth drop and his eyebrows squeeze together like two caterpillars kissing. He looks straight into my eyes and he says, “I know how the rainbow cake can be too simple and too fancy at the same time.”
I let him talk.
“Let’s say I’m wearing a short-sleeve shirt. With buttons. And jeans. And I tuck in my shirt. That outfit is too fancy for that birthday party you had in our old school when you were ten years old—”
“Oh.” I didn’t know he remembered that party.
“But it’s too simple if I’m going to the birthday party of the Queen of England.”
I. Have. No. Words.
He opens his mouth to say something else, and it’s fifty-fifty on whether it’ll be something genius or something cuckoo, but he clamps his mouth shut, then his nose twitches like a rabbit’s. I catch a whiff of what he sniffs. Three little ingredients: eggs, flour, sugar. They have hardly a smell on their own, but when together and baked … I close my eyes and see Mama and Papa in our old kitchen.
The sponge cake has turned golden brown. I pierce a toothpick into the middle. When the toothpick comes out clean, Yanghao hoots—the sponge cake is ready. I slip on Mama’s oven mitts and hustle Yanghao out of the kitchen. “Another rule,” I say. “Yanghao’s feet must be on the carpet and not on the tiles. Unless Jingwen says he can enter the kitchen.”
“Why?”
“For your safety. Remember whenever the grown-ups took cakes out of the oven, we had to stay on the doormat in the corner of the kitchen?”
Both corners of his lips curl up like he’s the Grinch, then he lifts a foot. His foot hovers over the tiled floor—exactly what he and I used to do back home, except in our old house, we didn’t have carpets, just tiles. I hiss, and he stomps his foot back down on the carpet.
I’m right back in our old kitchen, Papa right next to me. I watch him take out the pan of sponge cake we’ve just folded together.
15
The cake is stuck. When I turn the pan over on a cooling rack, the cake won’t drop. “Uh-oh. We forgot to oil the pan.”
“Oh no!” Yanghao crosses into the danger zone.
“Step back! The carpet rule!”
He marches back into the safety zone and crosses his arms.
I ignore him and run a knife around the cake to separate it from the pan. It works. But the sides and the bottom of the cake are pockmarked. “It looks like it’s been eaten by mice.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Yanghao says. “We’re going to cover it in lots and lots of Nutella cream, right?”
“Right.” I start on the Nutella cream. “When the Nutella cream’s ready, the cake should be cool enough to slice.”
I swallow. “There’s tiramisu—”
“Is that the one Ah-gong said can make you drunk?”
“One of the ingredients can make you drunk, but very little is added into the cake. You’d have to eat maybe a hundred cakes to get drunk. Besides, the one for Pie in the Sky doesn’t have alcohol. Just coffee.”
“What other cakes are there?”
“Chocolate raspberry torte—”
“What’s that?”
Yanghao smacks his lips. “Tell me another cake.”
“Neapolitan mousse cake.” I wait, but he only looks at me. “Well?”
“I know that one. It’s like Neapolitan ice cream, the one with three flavors. Chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. Another cake.”
“Blueberry cheesecake.”
“Another cake.”
I bet he doesn’t know this one. “Apple mille-feuille.”
He scrunches up his face. “Apple what?”
Hah! “It’s the most difficult cake on the menu.”
“Croissants are yummy!” Yanghao groans. “Talking about those cakes makes me so hungry I’m going to faint.”
The Nutella cream is fluffy and ready, so I hand him the cream-covered whisk. “Don’t faint. Lick that.”
As he licks and slurps, I work on the cake. While I’m a professional at dividing a cake into equal pieces, I stink at sawing a cake horizontally into two layers. One layer ends up much thicker than the other, and their surfaces look like giant rats have been gnawing at them.
“Cover it with more Nutella,” Yanghao says.
Slathering the chocolaty goo on sponge cake isn’t easy. With each swipe of the spatula, more and more big cake crumbs stick to the spatula. I have to use up the whole jar to finally cover the top of one of the cakes. Before I can say no, Yanghao picks up the other layer and drops it over the Nutella-covered one. Blobs of Nutella squish out. Even though I say, “No no no!” Yanghao runs his nose-digging finger along the side of the cake, one whole round, to wipe up the excess Nutella. Then he licks his finger as if it were an icy pop.
“It’s not batter,” he says. “I’m not breaking your rule.”
Surprisingly, he doesn’t stick his fingers in the Nutella cream when I slather it all around the cake and when I pipe swirly cones on top.
“Cut me a big piece. Bigger than my face,” he says, even though the whole cake itself is the size of his face.
“Will you be able to finish your dinner?”
He doesn’t even think before answering yes, so I cut him a regular-sized piece and tell him it’s a bigger piece. He’s so mesmerized by the Nutella he doesn’t notice. After he scarfs it down in about two seconds, he helps himself to five more pieces.
All that while I was telling Yanghao about Papa, my nose didn’t burn. Somehow, the sweetness of the cakes takes away the bitter sadness. Somehow, sometime during the cake making, some of the seashells in my pockets disappeared.
16
My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of Yanghao licking his fingers. He’s standing outside the kitchen, having another round of Nutella feast. I pinch the back of his collar and haul him into the bathroom. Luckily, he doesn’t throw his I-hate-showers-and-my-sweat-smells-like-perfume tantrum, although he does start singing his silly cake song again. As he scrubs off his Nutella mask and gloves, I scrub his shirt with hand soap at the sink.
“Caaaake! You’re so chocolaty and pretty…,” he sings in the shower.
After I throw his cleanish shirt into the laundry hamper, I lay down a set of his clean clothes on the toilet tank. Just then, the phone rings. I run out and glance at the clock. It’s half past seven and Mama’s break time, which is when she calls to check up on us.
“Hello?” As usual, Mama asks me what we are doing, and I say, “Yanghao’s taking a shower. After that, he’ll have his dinner.”
I say nothing about the cake. Technically, I’m not lying. I’m just leaving out the truth.
“Make sure your brother finishes his dinner,” she says. “Is that him singing? What’s he singing?”
“A nonsense song.” Which is the truth.
“Have you finished your homework?”
“Ah.” I haven’t thought about homework and school and being an alien and Joe and Max and Mr. Fart and s l o w. Not since I decided to make a cake. “I’ll finish my homework, Mama.”
Mama reminds me to heat up dinner for Yanghao and then we say good night. I know I should feel a little guilty that I sort of lied to Mama, but I don’t. Yanghao and I had fun. I temporarily forgot that I’m on Mars, that I have no friends in school. Yanghao and I got to talk about Papa. I got to remind Yanghao of things he’s forgotten about Papa, things I’m afraid I might forget myself.
Besides, Mama’s also having fun at Barker Bakes.
I said I’d only make one cake.
But what if … what if Yanghao asks me to make another?
What if it’s the only way to stop him from crying?
What if cake is like the oxygen helmet that I need to survive on Mars?
That’s when I realize Yanghao is no longer doing what he thinks of as singing. He isn’t making any noise at all. I hurry back to the bathroom to make sure he hasn’t fainted in the shower from too much cake. He hasn’t, but he’s not moving. He just stands there, the water rushing down on him. Is he feeling queasy?
He sighs too heavily for someone so small and steps out of the shower. “Jingwen, I wish … I wish I could eat all the Pie in the Sky cakes.”
“You—You can buy those cakes, you know,” I say. “Barker Bakes probably has some of them.”
“It’s not the same.” His voice is muffled because he has a towel around his head, and he’s wiping his hair vigorously.
My heart is a balloon, and each THUMP is a puff of helium. “What’s not the same?”
Yanghao says, “It’s just not the same.”
“Jingwen.” He pulls the towel off his head. “Would you make all the cakes? Pleasepleasepleaseplease.”
Never have I loved my brother and his little-kid ways more than at this very moment.
“Pleasepleasepleaseplease—”
“There will be more rules. We’ll write them down so you remember. You have to do everything I—”
Before I finish, Yanghao bounces out of the bathroom, wearing only his underwear, shouting, “Caaaaake! Caaaaake!”
Following his yells and the trail of puddles he left behind, I find him in Mama’s room, jumping up and down on her bed. I toss his T-shirt and shorts at him. “Put on your clothes, wild monkey.”
But he leaps off the bed and out of the room. I lie down on Mama’s bed and breathe deeply.
Am I really going to make all the Pie in the Sky cakes? Eleven more cakes. That will be many, many more lies of omission to Mama. This could be a recipe for disaster.
It’s then that I notice the bare wall above the bed.
In our old home, above Mama and Papa’s bed, there was a photograph of them on their wedding day. The frame was gold. Before we left for Australia, I’d gone room to room in my old house, drinking in everything. I didn’t know when I’d be back. When I got to Mama and Papa’s room, I saw the photograph was gone.
I assumed Mama had taken it to hang it up in her new bedroom in this new apartment. Has she forgotten to hang it up? Has she forgotten Papa?
I won’t. I will make all the pies. All the pies in the sky.
17
But the next morning, Mama asks, “Why does it smell like cake?”
I choke on my congee breakfast. I cough and cough, long after I’ve cleared my throat. Last night, I washed everything that was used in the making of Nutella cream cake. I didn’t think smell would be what gave our secret away. Yanghao can’t help me because he’s still in our bedroom, packing his schoolbag.
What should I tell Mama? Maybe that Anna likes to bake, and the smell of Anna’s cake always drifts over to our apartment.
Luckily, Mama is distracted by something else. “Did you finish your homework?” she asks as she opens the fridge.
“Yes.” It’s the truth. Last night, I returned to my homework and played eeny-meeny-miny-moe with the multiple-choice questions.
But Mama doesn’t say, “Good.” Instead, from the fridge, she takes out a plastic container half filled with noodles, as well as half a dumpling. “Who didn’t finish his dinner?”
“Not me,” I say.
Just then, Yanghao appears.
“Yanghao,” Mama says, “why didn’t you finish your dinner?”
“I wasn’t hungry.”
Of course he wasn’t. He spoiled his dinner with half a Nutella cream cake that was as big as his face.
“How come?” Mama asks.
Yanghao turns to me, his eyes wide. What should I say? Yanghao had a tummy ache. He had too many gummy snakes. Oh no. Too much time has passed since Mama asked the question. Hurry, come up with an answer. Before she turns suspicious! Yanghao is a booger, Mama, who knows why he does things? He—
Yanghao. You. Are. Such. A. Booger.
The rule among siblings is that the older one is always the guilty one. Because the older one, in any and all circumstances, should know better than the younger, clueless one.
So Mama scolds me. I hang my head and pretend I’m truly sorry, but I’m actually shooting daggers at Yanghao from the corner of my eye. He innocently and noisily chews his breakfast. As if congee needs chewing.
“What were you thinking, making a cake by yourselves? What if you burnt yourselves?” Mama shoots off her questions so fast I can’t get an answer in. “What kind of cake was it? What’s so delicious that you can’t wait until I’m free this weekend?”
“It was Nutella cream cake, Mama,” Yanghao says softly. “It was yummy.”
She stops her interrogation and sighs. “I said I’ll bake a cake for you boys, so don’t make one by yourselves. I’ll make one next weekend, all right?” Then she says I’m not to touch the oven or the stove ever again, not without her permission and supervision. If I disobey, she’ll have Anna babysit Yanghao and me every day after school. I imagine that horrible what if.
I wince. Several hours of that per day, five times a week. No, thanks. I already get enough of feeling stupid from school.
Yanghao, too, has his face scrunched up like he’s eaten an orange gummy snake—the worst of them all.
I want to tell Mama how fun last night was, how I forgot for a moment all about failing school and failing at friendship. But before I can, she says—
I remember when I was five and playing roll-down-the-hill with Yanghao. It was a game where we lay down on my bed hugging each other, and we’d roll off my bed onto Yanghao’s trundle bed below. We rolled, rolled, rolled, until the back of Yanghao’s head smashed right into the corner of my bed. There was no wound and no blood, but he cried and cried. When Mama rushed in and asked what was going on, I said Yanghao wanted my toy, but I wouldn’t give it to him, and she believed me. Shortly after, Yanghao said everything was spinning, and he started walking funny, like after I spun around on the spot a hundred times and made myself dizzy.
Only at the hospital, after Yanghao was wheeled off to get a picture of his brain, after Mama cried a lot, after Ah-po and Ah-gong prayed to the deities a lot, after the doctor told us Yanghao had a bruise on his brain but would be fine and did not need surgery, just a lot of rest and quiet time, only after all those things did I tell Papa what happened. He didn’t scold me.
I want to make cakes. I even slipped Mama’s cookbook into my backpack so I can read it at school. But I don’t want to tell Mama the worst kind of lie. So I sigh and tell the truth.
“I won’t make any more cakes, Mama.”
18
I used to love the walk to the bus station with Mama.
This morning, all I can think about is the crap that’s waiting for me in school. I won’t even have making a second Pie in the Sky cake to look forward to. Time will move so s l o w l y. Glaciers. Snails. Getting old enough to do anything anytime you want.
Then it’s rewind and replay for tomorrow. And the day after. Forever and ever.
Last night was the happiest I’ve been since we landed on Mars. I wasn’t doing cartwheels when Mama said we were going ahead with the move, as if it didn’t matter to her that Papa wasn’t coming along, but I thought I was okay with it. I thought I was okay these last two months. Sure, sometimes I felt terrible, like the thing with the aliens and with Joe, but life is like a packet of gummy snakes—there’ll always be the sour orange ones nobody likes. But maybe I haven’t been okay for two months. Maybe I’ve been … distracted.
Mama, Yanghao, and I reach the bus station, and the bus is already boarding. A queue of passengers snake
s into it. Yanghao and I wave good-bye to Mama. Once we hop on, I hiss, “Booger! Why did you tattle?”
“You didn’t—”
“Shhh! Don’t shout.” I glance around to see if anyone is staring at us. Luckily a group of noisy students drowns out Yanghao and me.
He whispers, “I wasn’t shouting. And you didn’t tell me I couldn’t tell Mama.”
He’s right. It’s my fault. I should have told him outright. It’s common sense that we have to keep the cake making a secret from Mama, because back at our old home, when Yanghao and I helped out at the cake shop, we were forbidden from touching the stove or the oven. But my little brother doesn’t have common sense on account of my doing everything for him.
More passengers board the bus and jostle us toward the back. “But,” I whisper, “what about when we passed by Barker Bakes on our way to and from the grocery store? Why did you think we hid behind the mailbox?”
His lips form a perfect O. “I was following you. I thought we were playing a game.”
It’s not fair. He should have said something wacky; then I’d have the right to call him a booger.
“Jingwen, can we make one more cake?”
My eyes pop out. I don’t want people staring, so I pop them back in. “Be quiet,” I whisper, but what I really, really want is for Yanghao to shout, “It’s CAKE TIME!”
* * *
In my classroom, I slump at my desk, Mama’s cookbook open in front of me, and stare at the triple cookie cake that I won’t get to make. Someone says, “Cakes?”
I look up to see Ben. He just arrived and is settling into his seat. His eyes are on my book.
Cool! I’m cool! Okay, he might be saying that cakes are cool, but at least I know being called cool is a good thing. When I first heard the other students saying this to one another, I wondered if this was what everyone here did in the summer, because Australian summers are hot like hell, so people went around wishing everyone was cool.