LaoLao is humming tunelessly, pausing to ask me to pass her various ingredients. Garlic, lemon, vinegar… My feet are going to smell like something that needs to go in the oven for a few hours and be cooked on a low heat.
“Of course,” my mom says into the phone, and the words are innocuous but the way she says them makes my LaoLao stop mashing together her mixture, makes me look up from the fridge, even makes Granny Dee wander in from the living room.
“We’ll be right there.” Mom’s breathless, like she’s been running.
She clangs the phone down and turns to us, tears crinkling in the corners of her eyes.
“Marcus is awake.”
Her words are a hot glue gun on my heart, sticking it back together again.
I’ve never seen Granny Dee or LaoLao move as quickly as they do after that. I didn’t know they could move so fast.
Granny Dee rambles the whole way to the hospital that she should have been there, that she can’t believe he woke up alone.
“He wasn’t alone. The doctors were there,” says my mom, merging lanes without signaling, making my newly mended heart speed up.
“Be careful, Mom!”
“I’m being careful,” she says as she runs a red light.
“Mom!”
LaoLao takes my hand and holds it. “Don’t be nervous,” she says.
I wonder how she knows. If she’s nervous too.
No one has said what I’m thinking. No one has said … what if he doesn’t remember us?
What if it isn’t him?
I close my eyes and lean my head on my LaoLao’s shoulder. She’s so round and well padded I can’t even feel the bone; it’s like snuggling a marshmallow. Soft and spongy and comforting.
“It will still be him,” says LaoLao, like she’s read my mind, stroking my head. “It will still be him.”
CHAPTER 50
I’ve forgotten what my brother’s eyes look like.
He’s sitting up. He’s sitting up. I haven’t seen him in any position but horizontal in months and months and now he’s sitting up.
And staring at us.
Smiling at us.
My mom is trying so hard not to cry. I can’t see her face but I can tell by the set of her back and the trembling in her arms, and then when Marcus says, “Hi, Mama,” it’s as if he’s opened the floodgates and my mom is shaking and sobbing so hard I think she’s going to disintegrate right in front of us.
“It’s OK,” says Marcus softly. “I’m OK.”
I step forward, nervous, shy – feelings I’m used to having but never with Marcus. I’m staring at him like he’s not real, like he’s going to disappear before I get to him.
“I’m glad you’re back,” I say, my voice hesitant and unsure as a kid on the high dive.
“I never went anywhere,” he says, smiling the smile I know so well, and I can tell he’s waiting for me to reassure him that everything is still the same.
“How are you?” I say instead.
He shrugs and winces. “All right. Been better.”
“I missed you,” I say, and he smiles again.
“I missed you too.” He looks at me like I’m not quite real. Like I’m not who he remembers.
He isn’t who I remember either.
“You got taller,” he says. “And you look … older.”
Now I shrug. I don’t know if I’m any taller than I was seven months ago. It’s possible. Anything’s possible.
I want to ask him where he’s been. If he knows we’ve been visiting. If he’s seen my dragon or my lion. I want to ask him so many things.
“Wing is running.” It’s LaoLao, she’s bustled forward and is clucking around his hospital bed like a mother hen. “You will not believe when you see. She so fast!”
Marcus looks at me, confusion scrawled across his face. “Fast? Wing? I guess I really was out for a long time.”
“You’re gonna be so proud,” says my mom, her eyes still on Marcus. I don’t think she’s ever going to look away from him again. “She’s on the track team and everything. She’s been winning all her races.”
Now Marcus looks at me like he definitely doesn’t remember me.
“That’s great…” he says. Then he lies back down on his pillows. “I’m sorry I’m not more excited. I don’t think my brain can keep up with everything.”
He looks down at his inert body and raises a limp arm. “My body sure as hell can’t.” Then he laughs, the sound a shadow of what it used to be. “Are y’all just gonna stare at me all day? I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to go back to sleep with y’all watching me like that.”
“You’ve been sleeping just fine for the past few months.” The words spiral out of my mouth before I can stop them.
He shakes his head and then winces, because the movement was too quick and must have hurt him.
“Months,” he says, disbelief woven through his words like a mismatching thread. “Months.”
He remembers us.
But he’s different. I knew he’d be different. But I wasn’t expecting my brother to be gone.