by Remy Lai
Yanghao’s English sounds terrible. Sometimes the words crawl out slowly, sometimes jerkily, at other times they tumble too quickly. It’s nothing like the smooth way Miss Scrappell and everyone else speak, not counting Anna, who speaks slow on purpose.
But he knows the words.
I leave the computer even though my fifteen minutes aren’t up. Mama and Yanghao don’t notice me passing behind them. I saunter along the shelves and shelves of Martian books. They threaten to collapse on me, so I jog away. Then I see Cakes and More Cakes, Book of Sweets … Most of the other titles, I don’t understand.
I flip open Cakes and More Cakes and huff. Inside, it’s mostly incomprehensible Martian words. I expected it, but I was hoping for a miracle. At least I can enjoy the photos of fancy cakes.
I tuck Cakes and More Cakes back into its place. “I’m hungry, Mama. That’s all.”
“We just had breakfast. You’re growing up too fast. Don’t you want to borrow any storybooks? Your library cards will come in the mail soon, but the librarian said you and Yanghao can borrow eight books each today.”
Like I want to spend more time not understanding anything and feeling like I’m s l o w. “Yanghao can use up my eight.”
“Come on. The kids’ books are that way.” She starts to walk away.
I’ve never seen her that way, looking like she doesn’t know what to do. This is the first time I’ve disobeyed her. Sure, I’ve moaned and grumbled in the past, but I’ve always done what she asked. Watch out for your brother when you cross the road. Make sure your brother takes his shower. Remember what to do in an emergency.
Fighting with Yanghao doesn’t count as disobeying because it’s the rule of the universe that brothers will fight no matter what moms say. The few times I haven’t done what Mama asked, she hasn’t known that I’ve disobeyed. Like making cakes.
Meanwhile, Yanghao never does what she asks him to do. Stop running around near busy roads. Stop picking your nose. Take a shower. Stop flicking snot at your brother.
But she doesn’t like him any less. So what does it matter if I bake behind her back? If she finds out, she’ll punish me, and it’ll stink to be me for a while, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. She already likes me less. What matters is keeping the cake making a secret until I’ve made all the cakes.
I pull Cakes and More Cakes out from the shelf again and flip it open.
Mama says, “I’ll pick out the books for you,” and then the soft tep tep tep of her footsteps on the carpet disappears.
When I’m older, if I decide to be a pastry chef, I’ll keep it a secret from Mama. I’ll work in a cake shop but tell her I work in a bank or something. That’s also what I told myself when I was little and still loved hanging out in my family’s cake shop. I wanted to knead dough with Mama, cut cookies into shapes with Ah-po, slide the pans into the oven with Papa, pack all the baked goods into boxes and bags with Ah-gong, and taste-test all the cakes. I said I wanted to be like Ah-po, Ah-gong, Mama, and Papa when I grew up. That was before my classmates called me Smell Like Cake. That was also the year I wanted to be a rabbit, so my words should have been taken with a giant heap of salt. But Mama got all serious and told me no, I wasn’t to toil away in a hot kitchen at odd hours.
But once Mama wasn’t listening, Papa told me something else.
Papa was so nice to me. Too nice.
Plop! A teardrop falls on the picture of angel food cake in Cakes and More Cakes. I shut the book and wipe my eyes on my sleeve.
Then I hear Yanghao yelling, “SpongeBob SquarePants!”
I peek through the gaps in the bookshelves.
I sidle up to Mama. “Can we go home now?”
25
All the way back to the apartment, Yanghao has his nose in The Little Prince, his pouty lips silently mouthing Martian words. Mama has to keep an arm around his shoulders so he doesn’t walk into lampposts.
What a booger.
His nose is still in The Little Prince when we have dinner. Most of his rice ends up on his cheeks and on the table. I peek and see there are illustrations in the book. I bet he’s just looking at the pictures. Then he scurries out of the kitchen and returns with his dictionary, the one with cartoon stickers all over the cover. Now he has his nose in two books. Double booger. Yet Mama looks at him as if he were Einstein.
After dinner, we sit in the living room and eat peeled and cut-up apples. I’m watching TV. Today’s documentary is about two wolf cubs growing up, and then one of them has to leave the pack—or at least I think so. I’m not 100 percent sure, because when I say I’m watching, I really mean staring at the screen as Martian gibberish blares on. Yanghao is still booger Einstein. By the time I’m on my hundredth slice of apple, he’s still on his first. I want to finish the plate of apples because they’re turning brown, but Mama says to leave some for booger Einstein.
“No! No!” Yanghao says.
Is The Little Prince scaring him? Is it a horror book?
But turns out, he’s just reading aloud. “I don’t want an elephant inside a … a … bo-bo…”
“Jingwen.” Mama waves me over. “Read with us.”
“No thanks. An elephant inside a snake? What kind of prince is that? That book is for babies.”
“Is not,” Yanghao says. “But even if it is, I bet you won’t understand it because your English is bad.”
I like my brother a lot better when Mama’s not around.
“Yanghao, don’t say that,” Mama says. “It’s harder for your brother because as you get older, it becomes more difficult to learn a new language.”
“Then, is it really, really, really difficult for you to learn English, Mama?”
She chuckles. “I’m not that old. Besides, I learned a bit in school, and when I was learning how to make cakes a long time ago, my chef teacher spoke English. But, Jingwen, if you want to improve your English, you have to be more like your brother. You have to try to read and speak English.”
I chomp on the apples like I’m a wolf tearing into its dinner. “Who says I want to improve my English?”
“How are you going to continue in school?”
I tried, Mama. I did.
“How are you going to make friends?”
It’s impossible when I understand no one and no one understands me, when kids who don’t know me think I’m stupid just because I can’t speak their language.
Mama picks up the remote control and turns down the volume of the show I’m watching. “We’re in Australia now, so—”
“Why are we even in Australia? Why did we still come here without Papa? Why did we leave him behind?”
Mama’s lips turn into an O, which makes my lips form an O. I’m surprised she’s surprised this is what I think. Then her O flattens into a long hyphen.
I’ve done it. I’ve upset Mama. I can’t do anything right. I should say sorry.
I’ve always thought that maybe my brain is stupid for forgetting English words, but maybe it’s actually genius level and knows something I didn’t know I know until I said it out loud just then. Like in your unconscious or subconscious. Whichever. But my brain knows we shouldn’t have come to Australia without Papa. It knows picking up English equals loving Australia equals abandoning Papa equals I’m a terrible, terrible son. After all, moving here was Papa’s dream. It’s not right we’re living it without him.
26
On Sunday, Mama doesn’t ask me to read or speak English. She spends the morning quietly scrubbing the bathroom, vacuuming every inch of the apartment, even the curtains, and she spends the afternoon cooking and packing our meals for next week.
I want to tell her about the cakes. When she took Yanghao and me to that café to tell us we’d be moving to Australia without Papa, if I’d been honest and told her we shouldn’t go, she might have changed her mind. I should be honest now and tell her I’m making the cakes for Papa, and how that will help my English. Maybe she’ll understand and even join in. I cross into the kitchen and peer aroun
d her at the noodles in the wok.
When I was little, I used to follow her around the kitchen, but I stopped when I was almost nine. Shortly after, I heard Mama say, “He used to follow me around everywhere.” I froze and peeked into the shop. She was sitting behind the register, on one of the lawn chairs that had strips of colorful plastic wrapped around the metal frames. On warm days, you’d stick to the plastic and you’d have to peel yourself off the seat. She was talking to Papa, who was transferring fresh-out-of-the-oven, paper-wrapped sponge cakes from a tray into the display box. She sighed. “He’s not little anymore.”
What Mama and Papa didn’t know was, I hadn’t stopped because I’d grown up. It was because of what happened in my old school.
I was a completely different student back in my old school.
After that, I never followed Mama around the kitchen again. I was Smell Like Cake no more.
Something in the wok sizzles. Mama takes two steps to the fridge. I follow. She fetches a bottle of soy sauce and takes two steps back to the stove, but bumps into me. I step aside and bump into the trash can. Luckily it doesn’t topple and spill. She says nothing. I get a box of caramel-flavored milk from the fridge as if that’s what I’ve come to the kitchen for all along.
I linger in the kitchen. I’m going to tell Mama I’m sorry for last night and confess that I’ve been baking, but not just any old cakes—Pie in the Sky ones.
I can’t bring up Papa. Mama’s pockets are already full of seashells, and the biggest, heaviest ones are from me.
“Jingwen,” Mama says, “stay out of the kitchen. Read the books I borrowed for you yesterday.”
I step off the tiles and back onto the carpet. She’ll never understand.
If she ever finds out about the cake making, even if I say all the best, most convincing words in the world, she won’t understand. If she catches me, there’s no second chance. I have to make quadruply sure I don’t get caught. I have to lay down more Rules for Making Cakes.
I come up with another one just then. Rule number thirteen: All cake-making garbage to be thrown in the big Dumpster outside the apartment. Thank all the deities and the universe Mama didn’t notice those empty jars of cream and Nutella and empty packets of flour and chocolate chips I’d so carelessly thrown into our trash can.
Yanghao’s in the living room, still reading The Little Prince. This time, he doesn’t read aloud. I plop down next to him, and I’m about to tell him to write down the new rule, but I catch a glimpse of an illustration in the book. It’s a boy standing on a very small planet, which has tiny volcanoes and not much else.
“What’s the book about?” I ask.
“A prince,” Yanghao says. “The prince is from another planet, and now he’s stuck in a desert on Earth, where he meets a pilot whose plane crashed in the same desert.”
27
I smuggle Mama’s cookbook to school again to study the recipe for the cake Yanghao and I are going to make after school. Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.
Papa and I didn’t make the Pie in the Sky cakes in any particular order, but he was an expert, so Yanghao and I should start with the simplest. Which we did, with the Nutella cream cake and the triple cookie cake. It was either a happy coincidence or the deities or the universe were helping us. Yanghao and I will build up our skills until we can make cakes of higher and higher difficulty level, like in a video game. The last one, the king of the cakes, will be the apple mille-feuille.
Without the book, the ten minutes before class begins would be torture. Having my eyes on the book means I don’t have to stare at my classmates-not-friends chatting, joking, playing. Still, I can’t help but take a peek.
I concentrate on the cookbook, feeling all jittery like I am a chicken about to be fed to those alligators. Luckily, cakes make something else all right again because once more, the book catches Ben’s attention when he arrives in class.
“More cakes?” he asks.
I want to reply, “Do you like cakes? What is your favorite cake? Do you like carrot cake with cream cheese frosting?”
Ben smiles and then starts taking his books and pencil case out of his backpack. A part of me wishes he’d continue talking, but a bigger part of me is afraid I won’t understand what he says, and even if I do, he probably won’t understand my reply.
When Mr. Fart comes into the class, I’m curious if Ben will help me again while I’m reading aloud.
“Jingwen,” Mr. Fart calls.
I’m about to stand, but he hands me the multiple-choice homework from last week, the one I did using eeny-meeny-miny-moe after making Nutella cream cake. I expect a big fat goose egg.
Surprise, surprise. I got three out of ten, which is the same score I got on my previous homework, which I spent hours on looking up the meanings of all the Martian words. All that hard work didn’t matter.
Maybe things work differently here on Mars, because in my old school, I had to study like heck to change my C’s and D’s to A’s. A few months before I turned ten, I asked Mama and Papa if, instead of a small celebration at home, I could have a birthday party at school, like some of my classmates did. Mama and Papa agreed, but only if my grades improved. I’d never been a bigger bookworm than in those months, and it paid off.
But on this topsy-turvy planet, Newton didn’t have an apple fall on his head. Not only because the gravity is much weaker, but also, all the apples have been used up by me to make apple mille-feuille.
* * *
Today Miss Scrappell teaches us about adjectives. I find the word’s meaning by searching ten other words in my dictionary. But by the time I look back up at the blackboard, “adjectives” has been erased, replaced by another word, “antecedent.” If only she would talk much, much slower, or write out every single word she says, then I might have a chance to look up those words in my dictionary. I toss my dictionary to the edge of my desk and read the cookbook instead. I keep one ear on Miss Scrappell, listening for if she stops prattling gobbledygook or sounds like she’s coming closer. But most of my attention is on carrot cake.
Carrot cake with cream cheese topping was the first Pie in the Sky cake Papa and I made. I was nine and had been avoiding the kitchen and the shop because I didn’t want to be Smell Like Cake at school. But then I saw Papa alone in the kitchen on a Sunday.
At first, it was the unfamiliar cakes that drew me to Sunday cake making, but later it was Papa who kept me there. I’d never hung out with him like that, just the two of us, and for once he wasn’t in a hurry to pump out hundreds of cakes or didn’t have to rush off to deliver orders or buy supplies. Still, each time after Papa and I made cakes, I acted like an ingrate and did something I shouldn’t have.
Just the thought of it makes me feel warm all over like I have a fever. But I’m not ill. I’m ashamed of myself.
“Jingwen.” Miss Scrappell walks toward my desk. I quickly slip the cookbook under my English textbook. A string of Martian words rolls out of her mouth, but I catch only it’s been two months and Mr. Fart said.
Whatever Mr. Fart said about me, it isn’t a compliment. I should say, “I am sorry.”
She sighs and says something about help. Help about what, I need help to find out. “What do you say, Jingwen?”
What do I say about what? The weather? World news? My secret cake making? Probably none of those.
She smiles. “Yes? No?”
I have a 50 percent chance of being correct. “Yes?”
“Good.” She walks to the front of the class and says something. All at the same time, my classmates-not-friends flip their textbooks and concentrate on whatever page we’re supposed to be reading. I flip my textbook to a random page and worry about what I just said yes to.
Yes, Miss Scrappell, I’ll read the whole textbook aloud in front of the class.
Yes, Miss Scrappell, I’ll be best friends with Joe and Max.
Yes, Miss Scrappell, I love it when people laugh at me.
* * *
I get to the s
chool gates before Yanghao. As students trickle through, I keep my nose buried in the cookbook. A few of them glance at the book, surely curious about the non-English title on the cover. I quickly stuff the book into my backpack.
“Yanghao!” someone shouts.
Yanghao is skipping toward the gates, a girl close behind him.
He laughs, throwing his head so far back the silver filling on his back tooth is on exhibition for the whole world to see. The girl talks some more, but it’s actually much harder to understand a little kid speaking English than an older kid. Although little kids use simpler words, they don’t pronounce their words clearly, and they’re always too excited and speak too fast. But Yanghao nods.
“Bye, Yanghao.” Sarah skips through the gates.
When Yanghao and I ran into Sarah the other day, I assumed the most they’d ever said to each other was hi and bye. I was very wrong. If only I could speak with Ben the way Yanghao does with Sarah.
Yanghao spots me. His eyes flicker to the cookbook, and they light up. “What’s today’s cake, Jingwen?”
“Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.”
“Can I grate the carrots?”
I’m so surprised I only nod. My brother thinks vegetables are poison. “You don’t mind eating carrot? What are you up to, Yanghao?”
“All the cakes you’ve made so far look a bit funny, but they’re yummy. If it’s not yummy, you have to finish it all yourself. But it’ll be yummy because it’s a Pie in the Sky cake, right? Papa knew what’s good.” With that, he skips ahead to the bus stop.
Papa didn’t know I wasn’t good.
Papa didn’t know that each time after he and I made Pie in the Sky cakes, I’d stand under a very hot shower and scrub my skin really hard till it was red, and shampoo my hair three times till it was as dry and coarse as a broom. I was so clean even Mango didn’t recognize my scent, and his eyes would bore into me as his tail twitched angrily. Worse, every night before school, I would hang my clean, dry uniform on a hanger outside my bedroom window to get rid of the smell of cake my uniform had absorbed while sunning dry in the courtyard behind the kitchen.