by Remy Lai
When I get to our apartment building, I’m still lost in my thoughts about what a terrible friend I am to Ben, and I crash face-first into the glass main door. “Fudge!” I hiss, cursing whoever wiped the glass so spotless I didn’t see it was there. But as I walk up the steps, I can’t help but think about how I thought lies of omission are invisible and so I could tell as many of them as I wanted. But what if they’re like glass? I might not see it when I’m not paying attention, but it’s there, and I might walk into it and hurt myself. Or someone else might.
At our apartment, I lay out the ingredients slowly. But Yanghao doesn’t come back. That booger. He must have run off to the playground again.
Ginger is nowhere to be seen, so Anna must have used her keys to take Ginger back home while Yanghao and I were at the grocery store. Crap. If Anna tells Mama we weren’t home, what should I say?
I’ve got it. I’ll say we were at the library. To read storybooks. Mama might get mad that we went out, but not as mad as if we made cakes by ourselves.
I sit at the table and watch the clock for ten minutes, then I get up to march to the playground and drag Yanghao back home. But before I step out of the kitchen, there’s a creak, followed by a few moments of silence, and then a bang. That booger. He went straight to Anna’s apartment instead of coming home.
Pfft. I don’t need him anyway.
66
I made Papa’s rainbow cake, just like I wanted.
I made all the Pie in the Sky cakes, just like I wanted.
Just like I wanted.
So why am I the exact opposite of happy?
67
I bang on Anna’s door. “Anna! Yanghao! Anna! Yanghao!”
No one answers. He must be at the playground. But can he really climb up and down like a monkey for three whole hours?
I scurry down the steps, almost slipping and getting a bruise on the brain or a gash on the temple. Which I deserve.
I almost crash into Anna.
For the first time, I’m glad Anna speaks to me like I’m a snail. The creak and bang I heard three hours ago must have been Anna coming back to get her wallet.
I zip past Anna. She shouts, “Jingwen, where are you—” I’m out of the building before she finishes.
There’s only one kid at the playground, and it’s not Yanghao. I search under the tower and inside the slide. No Yanghao.
He can’t still be at the bus station, can he?
I run pell-mell to the bus station. I circle it once, twice, detour to the grocery store, zoom up and down the aisles once, twice, return to the bus station, and circle it again. No Yanghao.
I sprint back toward the playground. When I zoom past Barker Bakes, I glance inside. Ben isn’t there. How long did he wait for me before he gave up? Will he still want to be friends with me after I stood him up like that?
Back at the playground, Yanghao is still nowhere in sight.
I lost Papa. I lost Yanghao. I lost Ben.
When Mama finds out, I’ll lose her too.
* * *
I hurry home as fast as I can with my exploding lungs. I need to call Mama and tell her what happened. I’m so terrified about how angry, how disappointed she will be that I tremble.
But when I get home, Mama’s already there. Anna must have called her and told her I went out.
“Jingwen.” Mama’s voice is ice. I am an ice cube at the door. “I told you no more making cakes.” Her eyes dart to the left and right of me. “Is Yanghao hiding behind you? Get inside, Yanghao.”
68
I tell Mama all my lies. My red, bleeding lies.
She says nothing to me, but speaks in Martian to Anna. I catch the word “doctor.”
Anna propels Mama out the door, saying, “It’s all right. I’ve been eating too much. I’ll go later.” With that, Mama disappears.
I’m surprised I caught everything Anna said, even though she spoke like a normal person to Mama. And then I’m horrified. Yanghao once said Anna said the doctor told her to eat healthily. We gave her cakes. Technically, it was Yanghao, but I was the one forcing Yanghao to make cakes. Did I make Anna sick? Or make her have to get her toe amputated because of too much sugar in the blood like Ah-gong?
Anna looks at me and sighs. “Jingwen, those cakes Yanghao gave me … You made them. What were you thinking?”
I go into my room. My and Yanghao’s room.
I lie down on Yanghao’s bed. It smells just like me, because we use the same shampoo and the same soap and the same toothpaste. Our clothes smell of the same detergent. Under his pillow I find an empty gummy wrapper and a book. The Little Prince.
Scribbled all over the pages, in pencil, are meanings. Meanings of words Yanghao didn’t know. Meanings in the margins, meanings in the spaces between sentences, from the first page with the drawing of an elephant in a boa constrictor right till the end. His big, fat alphabets all squished into the blank spaces.
I wish and wish for that boa constrictor to swallow me up.
I flip the book to the later pages. Did the little prince make it home?
I read much faster than I expected because of Yanghao’s words. They’re written in pencil. He must have planned to erase them all before returning the book to the library. I wonder if he did this in all the other storybooks he read. It’s no wonder his English is much better than mine.
I wish and wish for that boa constrictor to swallow him up too. He could have told me instead of making everything look so darn easy for him.
The little prince dies. He gets a poisonous snake to bite him, and he dies.
That is where Yanghao’s words ended. He hasn’t finished reading the book. Forty percent of me wants to hurl the book across the room, ten percent wants to curl into a ball and cry, but fifty percent of me needs to find out what the rest of the Martian words in the remaining pages say.
I grab my dictionary from my backpack and plop myself back on Yanghao’s bed. And I read.
The little prince’s body disappears. The book doesn’t say for sure, but it hints that his body can’t be found because he has returned to his home. I don’t know what to feel.
It’s like that time Papa happened to see a live sea turtle for sale at a fish market. He bought it, we kept it in our bathtub and fed it shrimp until the weekend, then he took Yanghao and me on a tiny rented motorboat out to sea. Yanghao and I lowered the sea turtle back into the water and watched it fly in the ocean. When it was out of our view, I turned to see that Yanghao had a ridiculous look on his face.
I laughed and laughed, not understanding why he had that look on his face, but maybe now I finally know what it meant. Sadness mixed with happiness. The author of The Little Prince could have ended the story differently, with a happily ever after, but this is how it happened.
Gently, I close the book and slip it back under Yanghao’s pillow. I lie there, imagining myself as the little prince lying alone, possibly dead, in the desert. But Yanghao’s face keeps replacing mine, and that makes me want to cry, so I go to the kitchen. Anna says nothing and doesn’t move from the sofa.
My salty tears mix with the sweet caramel.
Even though I have no idea how to make everything better, I have to try to make one thing better.
I quickly slip on my shoes and wave good-bye to Anna.
69
I’ll help Mama look for Yanghao.
They aren’t at the playground, but when I reach the bus station, I see Mama. She stands at the other end, some distance away from me. She stops passerby after passerby and talks to them. I can’t hear her, but she’s making a motion with her hand to indicate Yanghao’s puny height. He is so tiny.
I step in front of a man.
So many buses pulling in and out of the station.
So many buses taking so many people so many places.
But none of these buses can take me where I want to go.
Or bring me the people I want to see.
70
I can’t catch any of the Martian words
the police officers say after yes! I wave my hands frantically and run toward Mama. I keep glancing behind to make sure the police officers are following me.
When Mama spots me, she’s shocked, then angry, then she sees the police officers. They speak, but the words are too fast, and my brain is too excited and nervous and hopeful and terrified to translate.
Mama grabs my hand, and we follow the police officers to their patrol car, which still looks like a taxi to me, parked next to the bus station.
“They’re taking us to the police station,” Mama says as she helps me buckle my seat belt.
She tells me what the police officers told her. Yanghao didn’t move from where I left him at the bus station. Someone noticed the little boy standing all alone. When the little boy didn’t move for a good half an hour, that someone asked him what his name was, where he lived, and what he was doing there all alone. He never replied. That someone called the police to report a lost boy.
Two police officers responded. They asked Yanghao what his name was, where he lived, and what he was doing there all alone. He never replied. Not a word. So they dragged him, kicking and screaming, in a language the police officers neither understood nor recognized, into their patrol car and drove him to the police station. He lost his fight and his tongue somewhere in the car.
It was a challenge trying to get information from him.
The police officers guessed he didn’t understand English, so they gathered colleagues who could speak languages other than English to ask him what his name was, where he lived, and what he was doing there all alone. They spoke Irish, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Indonesian, and Tamil. But he said nothing. He just sat there at a detective’s table, looking small and glum.
Then the detective had the bright idea of placing a telephone in front of Yanghao. Without saying anything, Yanghao picked up the phone and punched the buttons, with the detective frantically jotting down the number. The detective then took the receiver from Yanghao but found that the number didn’t connect. The detective tried the number again, to the same effect. Then another policeman said the number Yanghao punched in had eleven digits, but Australian telephone numbers only had ten. The detective pointed to the telephone, and Yanghao dialed again. Still eleven digits.
All the police officers were at a loss. It was at that moment that a cake was brought out. A carrot cake with cream cheese topping. Apparently it was the detective’s birthday. The detective cut a piece for Yanghao and placed a slice on a paper plate on his lap, not expecting him to eat it.
But he took a big mouthful. Then he placed the cake on the table. He picked up the phone. The detective and the other police officers scrambled to memorize the number he punched. It was a different number. This time, there were only ten digits.
This time, he called our new home, instead of our old home, which he’d forgotten couldn’t be reached without dialing the international code first.
The detective grabbed the phone from Yanghao and found Anna on the other end. She told him Mama was out looking for Yanghao, but she’d tell Mama to go to the station as soon as Mama got back, and would the police please look out for Yanghao’s older brother too.
While the detective was on the phone with Anna, Yanghao suddenly burst into tears. A concert of tears, wails, snot, and cake crumbs.
* * *
“So he’s okay?” I ask.
Mama nods.
The car isn’t going very fast at all, but the other cars, the buildings, and the trees are a blur.
All the words I couldn’t say.
All the words I needed to say.
Then I bawl. A concert of tears, wails, snot, and cake crumbs.
71
By the time Mama and I reach the police station, Yanghao and I have stopped crying. Mama talks with the detective while I’m left in an office with Yanghao.
72
Mama doesn’t scold me for the rainbow cake, or for leaving Yanghao. She even lets Yanghao eat the too-sweet rainbow cake with caramel sauce. But I will have my allowance halved until the emergency money is returned.
“Jingwen, you said you two were making Pie in the Sky cakes,” she says. “Do you know why Papa chose those cakes for the menu?”
Yanghao quips, “Because they’re delicious?”
She chuckles. “They are, but … For a long time, Papa had the idea of opening a cake shop called Pie in the Sky in Australia, but he never really thought about what would be on the menu.”
It seemed that way when I asked him about it.
“It was only when he and Jingwen started making cakes on Sundays that Papa knew the Pie in the Sky cakes had to be different from the ones at our family’s cake shop,” Mama says.
“How come?” Yanghao and I ask at the same time.
“Do you remember, Jingwen? That you and Papa started making Pie in the Sky cakes together after you’d stopped hanging out in the kitchen?”
I nod. Mama had told Papa I’d stopped following her around and I wasn’t little anymore.
“He realized that he’d been so busy with work he’d hardly spent any time with you and had missed you growing up. Soon you’d be a teenager who’d rather die than spend time with his parents. So Papa thought making cakes was a good way to spend time with you while he could, but he knew you weren’t interested in our shop’s cakes anymore. That’s why the Pie in the Sky cakes had to be different.”
That is all I can say. All this time, I’ve been making Pie in the Sky cakes for Papa. But it was Papa who first made Pie in the Sky cakes for me.
73
That evening, Mama dials the international code, followed by the eleven digits Yanghao punched in at the police station. Yanghao speaks first. He prattles on about being “arrested” by the police, as if it’s something to be proud of. After he’s done, I thank Ah-po for the rainbow cake recipe. She keeps asking me about what really happened because she doesn’t believe the police would arrest a kid, and like me, she knows Yanghao’s tales have to be taken with a giant heap of salt. I hear Ah-gong in the background, pestering her for answers, so I pass the telephone to Mama.
I want to say Yanghao isn’t all sweet. He is often very, very annoying.
* * *
In the middle of the night, I’m woken up by a series of knocks.
Yanghao is fast asleep, drooling onto his pillow. The light streaming through the doorway of our room is brighter than usual, so I know the light in Mama’s bedroom must be on. I tiptoe out.
In her room, Mama’s suitcase is open on the floor next to her bed. Next to the suitcase is a hammer.
Mama stands on her bed, facing the wall. Her head is down, like she’s looking at something in her hands, but I can’t see what it is. She lifts her arms. Something golden gleams.
She hooks it onto the nail in the wall.
She takes a few steps back, the bed creaking with each step, then looks up at the photograph.
“Maybe now,” she says softly. “Maybe now I can see your face and not cry.”
74
I go back to my room. I lie in bed thinking about how I can fix one other thing.
* * *
On Sunday morning, I get up early.
I shake Yanghao awake and ask if he’ll help me with a cake.
I find Mama in the kitchen and ask her if she’ll help me with the cake.
I go next door and ask Anna if she’ll help me with the words.
* * *
In the kitchen of Barker Bakes, I lay out on the counter the cake-making ingredients that Mama helped me buy. Then I wait.
Maybe I’ll end up looking like a humongous booger. But the twenty-fifth rule in Rules for Making Cakes is never give up.
Ben shows up. “My mom told me you need my help,” he says, not looking angry at all. But because he doesn’t smile like he used to when he sees me, I know he’s at least a little upset. That’s just how nice he is, willing to help someone he probably wants to call a nincompoop.
Even though next term, we won’t be in
the same class, he’s been nothing but kind to me, and I shouldn’t be a jerk. I say the words Anna helped me with.
“I’m sorry I didn’t show up for our meeting. Please make cakes with me.”
His eyes pop. He’s probably surprised about the cake making, or the fact that I spoke so many English words, or both of those things. But it doesn’t matter, because he grins and says, “Okay.”
75
I don’t have English tutoring on Monday because of Math Fair, which runs from four to eight. When the dismissal bell rings at three, all my classmates rearrange the desks and chairs for the fair.
Yanghao says he’s staying behind to help Ben and me set up our display, but I know it’s really because he doesn’t want to take the bus alone. I don’t say that, though.
Mama and Heather take time off from the café to come to the Math Fair. Even Anna drops by after her doctor’s appointment, where she was told to eat less cake.
The principal and Miss Scrappell come to see our display. For some reason, Miss Scrappell looks nervous. She wrings her hands and keeps looking at the principal’s face as the principal inspects every inch of every cake as if she’s picking one out to eat.
Finally, the principal straightens her back and says, “All right, Miss Scrappell.”
“Yessss!” Miss Scrappell clasps her hands together and turns to Mama and says a bunch of English-that-sounds-like-Martian.