“No sweat. We’re working on it over the weekend,” said Caro. “I’ve got everything we need at my house. Right, Leigh?”
“Yup,” I said without missing a beat, though this was the first I’d heard about going over. I watched as Caro carefully slid our painting off the table and held it by the wooden frame underneath.
“Can you help me get this into my mom’s car?” she said. “We’ll give you a ride so you don’t have to suffer the late bus. If you could just grab my backpack for me—”
I followed her out to the main parking lot, where she marched straight up to a boxy white sedan.
“Hey, Mom,” she said, sliding into the shotgun seat. “This is Leigh. She needs a ride. Her house is over on Larchmont, right when you make the turn.”
I threw our bags into the back of the car. “How’d you know that?”
Her mom snorted. “Caro makes it her job to know where all the ladies live. Nice to meet you, Leigh. I’m Mel.”
Caro craned her head around to roll her eyes and say, “My mother is convinced I flirt with anything that’s got boobs. Which is not true.” She turned back, checking that she hadn’t smeared the painting. “Anyway, we’re actually in the same neighborhood. And you’re just a few houses down from Cheslin.”
I racked my brain. “Who?”
“You don’t know Morgan Cheslin? She moved onto your street a couple years ago.”
“Cheslin goes to Stewart,” Mel added.
“That explains it.” I was bad enough at keeping track of the people in my high school class, let alone any other schools.
“Cool if Leigh’s over this weekend to finish our painting?” said Caro.
“Of course,” said Mel. She winked at me in the mirror.
Caro saw the wink and made a noise of irritation. “It’s not like we’re going to be making out, Mom.”
Mel shrugged dramatically. “I didn’t say anything!”
They dropped me off and were already pulling out of my driveway—Caro giving me one last eye roll through the window—when I discovered the front door was dead-bolted.
As far as I knew, we never touched the dead bolt, and I didn’t have the right key. Some instinct made me feel the need to do a performative search through my pockets and backpack. Mel had paused the sedan in the middle of the street, and they were watching me. I turned around and waved, shrugging, hoping that that would urge them onward, that as they pulled away, my mother would hear me ringing the bell and open the door in time for Mel and Caro to glimpse me entering my house like a normal human being.
But nobody opened the door. There were no sounds from the inside. I banged louder, and when that seemed useless, I gave the door a few hard kicks.
My embarrassment swelled as Mel rolled back up the driveway and put her window down.
“Nobody home?” she said. “You can always come with us if you can’t get in.”
“I mean my mom definitely should be home.” I huffed a nervous laugh.
“Is there another door?” said Mel.
“Um, a sliding door,” I said, “but it’s usually locked.…”
I wanted them to go, but Mel insisted on waiting while I went around to the back of the house to check.
The door wasn’t locked, in fact. I had just yanked it wide open when I saw her: my mother down on the floor of the kitchen tiles. Curled into a ball, small and helpless.
“Mom!” I ran to her, feeling like I was about to vomit, imagining the worst.
I was able to shake her awake, but she seemed terribly groggy and confused. Everything in my chest pounded as I tried to run through the possibilities. A heart attack? She fainted?
“What happened?” I said. “Are you okay?”
She didn’t answer me. “Who are they?” She was squinting up at Mel and Caro, who had gotten out of the car and run over to find us when they heard me scream.
“They gave me a ride,” I replied.
“Should we call someone?” said Mel. It took me an extra beat to realize that by someone she probably meant 911.
“No,” said my mother. “I am fine. Everything okay.”
It took a thousand years for Mel and Caro to leave. I couldn’t even look at them—the embarrassment was spiraling inside me, firing up crimson, turning hot like a kind of anger.
After they were gone, I watched my mother like a hawk. The way her hands shook as she reached for a pan. The slowness of her footsteps as she moved.
There was a new weight pressing down upon me. What had she been doing passed out on the floor?
“Dad’s flight get in soon,” Mom said later, when she seemed to have recovered from whatever it was. She gave me a small smile. “Don’t need to worry him.”
I thought for a long time about those words. She meant that I didn’t need to tell my father about being locked out, about finding my mother on that cold tile floor. The way she said it left me unsettled. Don’t need to worry him. But what about me? What about my worry?
My worry expanded like a coral balloon, its color growing paler with every breath that filled its belly, until the worry was almost see-through, little more than the hint of a shadow, but nevertheless still constant, still there.
25
Here it is,” says Feng. “This is the store where I got the pastries.”
Waipo taps my elbow and points at a shelf. “Ni mama zui xihuan,” she tells me. Your mother’s favorite.
My eyes find the row she’s pointing to, and I recognize the danhuang su.
“Yiqian…” Waipo begins to say—in the past—and I don’t catch anything else. Her eyes are sharp and intense. She’s saying something significant, but I can’t understand.
Feng jumps to translate before I even ask. “Popo says years and years ago this was a pastry shop owned by a different family. It was your mother’s favorite because of their danhuang su, which are these round—”
“I know what they are,” I tell her, my voice coming out slightly sharp.
“Oh. Right.” Feng fidgets with her hands, curling and uncurling her fingers. “Did your mother make them for you?”
“Yeah. I used to watch her when she baked,” I reply quietly, and suddenly I’m lost in an indanthrene blue, heavy with remembering.
My mother shaping the patties of dough, pale and flour-dusted. Scooping dollops of maroon bean paste. Setting the salted yolks, little drops of sunlight, into the middle of the red.
She’d brush a lock of hair from her forehead and leave a streak of flour running across her temple like a shooting star. She’d paint the pastries with a thin layer of egg and sprinkle a few dark seeds over the top, little sesame winks.
All around us are shelves bearing trays of baked goods. Which of these would my mother have picked out for herself? The cheery yellow tarts? The fat buns? Or the strangely shaped rolls, embedded with corn and scallions?
Feng inhales noisily, and the sound grates on my nerves. “Doesn’t it just smell so wonderful? I could stand here smelling all this forever.” She points to a tray full of buns shaped like panda heads. “Look how cute these are! The ears must be chocolate. What I love is how pastries like these aren’t too sweet. The flavors are more subtle.…”
She’s been talking incessantly since breakfast this morning, smothering me under her commentary, the cadence of her voice making my temples throb.
I try to block her out and just think.
It can’t be a coincidence that this was once my mother’s favorite shop. But why is their logo a red bird?
“The bird is a new logo,” says Feng, making me jump. “They started using it a couple weeks ago. It used to just be a crescent—now the circle is meant to be a full moon.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “Why did they change it?”
“I asked the owner the other day. Apparently she’s always loved birds, and in the last few weeks she’s seen this red bird high up over the city. She thinks it’s good luck.”
The bird. My mother. So other people have seen her, too.
My heart swells with raw-sienna hope. I knew I needed to come. I knew that I would find her.
If the woman saw the bird in the sky above the city, then maybe what we need is to go somewhere with a good vantage point. I have to see her for myself.
Dad’s words echo back to me. One of the tallest skyscrapers in the world.