Hungry Hearts

by Elsie Chapman

  The apartment for the delivery is just outside the food district, and it takes me less than ten minutes to get there. I place the take-out bag on top of the mailboxes at the main door.

  I don’t bother ringing the buzzer. Whoever’s watching for the delivery has been instructed to not answer, just as they’ve been instructed to wait for me to leave before picking up the order. After that, the order might be passed on, or it might be executed right away—I’ve never been told how long and winding the chain, how deep it goes. But I am the daughter of long-serving Kings and Queens, so soon I’ll know it all, and already I can feel the tightening of Wen’s grip.

  Heading back, I’m waiting at a light when a King crosses the street in front of me, take-out coffees in hand. Our members are scattered throughout the city, so he’s not anywhere he shouldn’t be, but seeing him still leaves me frozen.

  Cheng.

  The boy whose bullet it’d been. The boy Yun had thought she’d loved, even if he had not loved her back.

  Sometimes I think of him—older, as slick as oil, stringing along a teenaged girl he found more amusing than interesting—and I can’t breathe for my rage. He’s engaged to a Black Sea now, a twentysomething-year-old named Jia. The other gang’s leader, Shan, had proposed the match to Wen, and Wen had agreed. News is that the Sun Gods are growing fast enough to soon be bigger than even the Kings and Queens. And numbers, they can tip the balance of power—Wen would know this. So this past winter, when Shan threatened to align his Black Seas with the Sun Gods unless the Kings and Queens had a better offer, the alliance became an opportunity Wen couldn’t pass up. With the Black Seas on his side, the city would always be his—the inconvenience of Shan as an equal would, of course, be dealt with later.

  What did Wen care that he was asking my parents to work with the same gang who’d destroyed their firstborn? By having the very boy who’d doomed Yun be the one to ensure his own status? Did they not owe him for everything?

  Like salt stirred into my coffee, my mother had choked out to my father after they’d been told of the engagement. Like weevils crawling in my rice. Our leader might as well be spitting in our faces.

  Wen hadn’t bothered with a personal visit that time—a phone call to my parents was good enough.

  Then it was spring, and Wen ordered that Emperor’s Way host the engagement-party dinner. He’d forgotten Yun entirely.

  The demand had left my father pale. My mother had made a succession of all his favorites—salty duck eggs, steamed spareribs on rice, the smelly preserved fish so pungent she once used to be embarrassed the neighbors would complain—to melt back his helplessness, return it to bearable. I cry enough for the two of us, her dishes had said on her behalf, so eat, for me.

  The traffic light changes; Cheng disappears around a corner. I keep heading toward the restaurant, pretending instead I’m running into him with my scooter, a bullet driving through bone.

  I am the daughter of long-serving Kings and Queens.

  And one day I will do more than just imagine a death.

  * * *

  The dining room is crowded now. Emperor’s Way isn’t the only Chinese restaurant in Hungry Heart Row, but it’s the most popular. My mother’s at the counter, handling payments and orders; my father and uncles are in the kitchen; my cousins and aunts are waiting on and busing tables.

  There are familiar faces in the dining room: Ami Dimatibag with her regular order of dumplings and orange chicken, whose grandmother runs the Filipino carinderia a block over. A new black kid I’ve seen around a few times, headphones slung around his neck if they aren’t already clamped over his ears. And Lila Manzano from school, who I’d once nearly delivered a special order to by mistake.

  I’d caught it just in time, turning the corner on the scooter even as Lila was walking up to the apartment building I’d been headed toward. We’d exchanged casual waves as I’d passed, and I drove another block before pulling into the 7-Eleven, covered in cold sweat. I’d stayed there, hissing to my mother on my cell that no way could my sixteen-year-old classmate be involved in any Kings and Queens business.

  My mother had been confused. Maybe a relative of hers is a member of the Sun Gods?

  Mom, her family runs the bakery over on Pepper and Tansy! They sell birthday cakes for little kids and pastries for old ladies! They’re not members of any secret society, trust me.

  People can be puzzles, Ming. We cater parties for lots of customers. We don’t really care if they’re druggies or anything, as long as they pay.

  Mom! They gave me the wrong address! Can you just check with whichever one of Wen’s guys is behind this special order and tell me where I’m delivering?

  Lei’s home from robotics, seated at the table in the kitchen. He’s eating dinner—sweet-and-sour pork, chicken fried rice, a heaping pile of fried rice noodles topped with beef.

  My uncles have a soft spot for my thirteen-year-old brother and will cook for him whatever he requests from the menu. My mother says it’s his age, his liking restaurant Chinese food more than home Chinese food, food that feeds you but never touches your heart. She once said his tongue was too quickly formed by the West so that the East could never catch up. You and Yun are steamed chicken feet, while Lei is baked chicken nuggets.

  He’s typing into his cell between bites. I bet he’s on Served, Rowbury’s online restaurant site. Users can rank and review their dining experience, and Hungry Heart Row even has its own section. Only Lei’s closest friends—and Yun and I, having caught him once—know that my brother’s “Internet famous” when it comes to Served. HungryMan07 is a Gold Plate reviewer, meaning he’s got at least a certain number of followers, and his reviews are usually rated the most helpful—the followers because his reviews are scathing and snarky, the helpful rating because he really does know a lot about the restaurants around here. He’s so popular the site’s creators advertise their other apps on HungryMan07’s profile page.

  Lei likes to keep Yun updated about Served. About what users are saying about the food district in the forums, about the latest reviews for Emperor’s Way and how right or wrong they might be. He talks to her about food because they’ve always talked about food, and he doesn’t know what else to talk about with this new stranger-for-an-older-sister.

  He waves me over. “Ming, come check this out!”

  “Hey.” I peer over his shoulder at his cell and pretend I’m trying to make out what’s on the screen. “Homework, right?” It’d once been Yun’s job to check.

  “Ha-ha, no. But look—” His voice drops to a loud whisper. “Head dudes on Served just approved me for another banner on my profile. I’m going to be making even more money now.”

  “Cool, Mr. Silicon Valley.” I pluck a pineapple chunk from the sweet-and-sour pork on his plate. The sauce seems even redder than usual today. “Just don’t forget us little people.”

  I’m kidding, though. Because while Lei and I are blood, and he’s as much a King for life in some form or other as I am a Queen, beyond all the sibling jokes and jabs, he’s the thoughtful one. His anger over Yun is for my sake as well as the rest of our family’s, while mine is still all about me—Yun, I still need you; you need to keep being the sister I understand.

  Sometimes I’m awake at dawn, so busy hating Cheng and Jia and everyone else for making this horrible wedding happen that I can’t sleep. Lei must wake up to my hate through our shared wall, because he fries me eggs for breakfast without my asking, always able to keep the yolks whole while I break them each and every time.

  Lei’s always sweet, like smooth red-bean buns, my mother says of this, while you, Ming, are the meat-filled ones, all chew and salt.

  She never says the rest. That Yun had somehow been able to be both.

  I ask Lei, “Do you have homework?”

  “Later.” He forks more noodles into his mouth and goes back to typing.

  I go to the small stove reserved for family and heat vegetable oil in a pan. I slice two tomatoes into wedges and
toss them in along with a knob of ginger and a fat pinch of sugar. The sound of sizzling is low, muffled by that of my father and uncles’ cooking in giant woks nearby.

  As soon as the juice from the tomatoes thickens, I take the pan off the heat and pour the contents over a bowl of hot white rice. This tomato-and-rice dish is also another that’s not on the menu, a grown-up version of the hunks of rock sugar my mother used to place between our lips whenever we fell and hurt ourselves. This will make it all better.

  “Want some or are you full?” I ask Lei over the sounds of the kitchen.

  “Full.”

  “So hurry up and do your homework—tonight you’re helping prep for the engagement dinner, remember?”

  He sighs extra loud as he gets up and begins to clear his dishes. Bright red sweet-and-sour sauce smears his knuckles, like he’s gotten into another fight at school.

  I head up the back stairs, steaming bowl in hand, forever searching.

  * * *

  I knock out of habit, and because I don’t like that I no longer need to.

  Her room is mostly quiet, threaded through with the beeps and hisses from the machines that have become a part of her. The air is stagnant, uninviting.

  But the sun’s setting late now, and everything inside is warm, painted amber. My mother has replaced the flowers on the desk, fresh peonies for wilted carnations. My father has hung up yet another oil painting of stars—because it’s for Yun, because he once promised her plane rides so she could get closer to the sky, because he never got around to it. My brother has left behind on the desk a national magazine, open to an article about Hungry Heart Row. There’s a photo of Emperor’s Way below the article’s headline. I’ll need to ask my parents if they’ve seen it. They would be pleased.

  Yun is propped up in bed, staring at nothing.

  I place the bowl on the bedside table and sit down beside her. “Hi, Yun.”

  She blinks.

  If not for what the doctors say, I could lie and pretend she’s the same. I could pretend she’s about to start senior year. That her popularity at school continues. That she will once again be on the student council, the volleyball team, and the drama club. That she’ll know better this time than to fall for older guys with sweet faces and cold hearts.

  “So I made tomatoes and rice.” My voice is too loud in the room, even against the beeps and hisses. I feed her, pretending also that she can tell it’s one of her favorite dishes.

  I talk and imagine answers.

  “Has anyone told you about Cheng’s engagement?”

  Yes. I can’t believe I ever thought he was hot.

  “I’m sorry we have to host the dinner.”

  What can Mom and Dad do? It’s the Kings and Queens. Family’s family.

  “Wen’s not family.”

  Except he is. You think he’s as powerful as he is because he has guns, knows them? All of us do. But we don’t all have his blood, his silver tongue that reminds everyone of his love, what the absence of that love means. So he leads as he does, just as Mom and Dad serve as they do. Don’t do something stupid just to avenge me, Ming.

  “Will you understand if I do? One day, when I think of a plan?”

  Her lips tighten slightly against the spoon. The doctors say this, too, is merely reaction. A boat drifts, carried by a current. A kite flies with the wind. Things burn in the face of fire.

  * * *

  The restaurant closes at nine, and my mother sets Lei and me to work. Her mouth smiles because of the staff still finishing up, while her eyes glow bitter because of Yun forever upstairs.

  At least there’s nothing traditional about an engagement dinner, so we’ll be spared having to prepare a twelve-course wedding banquet loaded with meaning. There will be no roasted pig to symbolize purity. No bright red lobster for luck. No shark fin soup for wealth.

  But Wen will still expect a menu full of significance. Each dish must bless his power, must symbolize the rising of his Kings and Queens.

  My parents must celebrate a betrayal.

  I ask, “So what are we serving, then?”

  “Beef and broccoli?” Lei looks hopeful. “Egg rolls?”

  My mother begins to pull out ingredients from the huge fridge. There is nothing I don’t know, everything restaurant staples. Bean sprouts. Snow peas. Blocks of tofu. Fish searching for steam, their mouths agape.

  “Yes, Lei, we will cook the delicious food we’re known for.” My mother hands us knives, but the blades in her eyes stay—they wear labels of tired despair, of useless fury. We will cook the food that feeds, though it does not touch the heart. “No more, and no less.”

  Lei and I start chopping.

  “But I wanted to try fancy Peking duck,” he whispers to me.

  Duck.

  For loyalty.

  * * *

  After Lei yawns for the tenth time, I tell him to go to bed.

  “We’re nearly done, anyway,” I say, starting the dishwashers and grabbing fresh rags to wipe down the counters. It’s just the two of us in the kitchen, which smells of garlic and raw meat and detergent. My uncles and cousins and aunt have gone home, one by one. My father is doing paperwork upstairs in our apartment, and my mother has retreated to her room, sleeping off a headache. “And set your alarm—we have to start early tomorrow.”

  Lei’s footsteps have just faded away when the restaurant phone rings.

  I keep wiping the counter—this late, the answering machine should pick up—but the phone rings and rings, and finally I answer it just to make it stop.

  “Emperor’s Way Chinese Restaurant, but we’re closed. Sorry.”

  “This is a special order,” the distorted voice says on the other end, “from the special menu.”

  I nearly laugh. Another of Wen’s most trusted who’s hardly a genius. “It’s almost midnight.”

  “For tomorrow. The special order is for a creature, served whole. A chicken.”

  My heart pounds; my mouth goes as dry as western brand instant rice.

  A whole chicken is a symbol of completion, of completeness. For celebrations it means family, for weddings, unity—as a special order, something else entirely.

  The last one had been before I was born, and it had been for our own. Some members of the Kings and Queens had grown crooked, the type of crooked that didn’t suit Wen’s plans. He’d ordered the entire family destroyed. An entire diseased branch cut back to healthy growth.

  Whose family this time? My mind races with thoughts of my mother, my father, the sprawl of my cousins. Is it possible? What can any of them have done—?

  “Is it—who—?” My voice stutters.

  “Not yours.”

  But relief is short lived. Killings are a normal part of secret societies, like a currency of dirty cash, like rules never meant to be broken. But I’m only used to killings at a trickle. Floods—they drown people in their path.

  I ask, “The address?”

  “Emperor’s Way Chinese Restaurant.”

  A hollowness fills me. “What?”

  “By order of Wen, you will execute this order during the engagement dinner tomorrow. Kill all those in the wedding party, Kings and Queens and Black Seas both.”

  Me? I would execute this order? My mouth is beyond dry now—even my lips hurt when I move them. I knew I’d kill as a Queen one day, have already trained in all the ways I might have to do it and how to do it well, but— “Why me?”

  “Your sister—don’t you want revenge for what’s happened? You must dream about it, right? I’m doing you a favor, giving you this chance to make it personal. For you to find some kind of peace.”

  It’s like having someone reach into my brain, into the darkest parts of my heart, and pluck out the truth like a song from strings. Of course I want revenge, to be the one to do it.

  I try to swallow. “How?”

  “Check the delivery scooter.”

  The line goes dead.

  I hang up and run outside, pulse like thunder.


  The scooter’s exactly where it’s supposed to be. Who was the last person to use it tonight? Kris? Lulu? Might they have seen anything?

  But it actually doesn’t matter. Whoever Wen called in for this special order is whoever he called in, no questions asked and no answers expected. It’s been this way for as long as he’s been a leader. Since his family’s power is also his, so that it draws in others—others like my parents—the way nectar draws in bees. Making them dizzy, keeping them close.

  I lift up the lid of the scooter’s delivery box.

  There’s a gun inside.

  * * *

  Eight courses, the most expensive dishes served first. This means seafood, meat, vegetables, rice, noodles, and finally dessert.

  In the kitchen, my uncles plate the Kung Pao chicken, and Lei and my cousins bring out the food, platter by platter. My father stands by, helping the transition go smoothly. My mother watches over all, a silent, appraising statue with a face of stone.

  The dining room—closed for a private occasion, as per the sign on the front door—is the most crowded I’ve ever seen it.

  Every single one of us is a criminal.

  Kings and Queens fill the tables on the left side, Black Seas the right.

  And seated around the head table are Cheng and Jia and their parents, the best man, the maid of honor—the wedding party I’m supposed to kill.

  I hadn’t been sure, at first. I’d wavered, standing there beside the restaurant scooter, gun in hand. My thoughts had raced in all directions.

  Just where did my loyalty lie? The Kings and Queens, a part of my life as much as Hungry Heart Row is a part of my life, a fixture as Emperor’s Way is a fixture? Wen, who trapped my parents in saving them? My parents, who continue to serve despite being half-broken? My new sister who would also hate this kind of revenge?

  In the end, it’d been the stars that helped me decide. A clear night, they’d winked down like lights, guiding me along. And I’d sensed Yun at my side, peering up at the sky the way she once used to, full of the future she thought would be hers. She might never cry for the change of it. But I would know. I would cry. Each star I ever saw would be one less than she did, when she’d been the one to always remember to look.