“You have single,” she announces to me. Marty she studies with more attention. “Too early to tell,” she concludes. “You could be double when you grow up.”

Ma cuts our eyelashes to make them grow fuller. The stubble hurts every time we blink, and Marty gets an infection. Finally the school nurse writes a note to our mother telling her that it’s dangerous, so she stops.

“Foolish,” Daddy says to Ma. “Why you want them to look cheap?” He points at me. “She has natural beauty, like all unmarried Chinese girl.”

The way he says it makes me feel ugly.

At breakfast when Ma makes my braids she complains about the knots. “What’s the matter with you, Sal-lee? Such a big mess! You look at that Darcy, always so neat.” I don’t say anything.

Daddy is reading a newspaper, an American one, the New Haven Register.

“You don’t eat,” Ma says to me. Usually it’s my sister who’s the finicky one; I have a big appetite, a Chinese appetite.

When we come home from school Ma is out in the backyard raking. “Help your mother,” Daddy says, so my sister and I change into our play clothes and go join her. The metal prongs of the rake scrape the grass, turning up curled bewildered worms. My sister says they make her want to throw up.

By the stone fireplace we make two huge mounds of leaves: spiky brittle brown oak, red maple with delicate points, yellow almond-shaped dogwood. I’m almost sorry we have to burn them. Our mother feeds armfuls to the fire while my sister and I watch.

Ma goes in to start dinner. It’s almost dusk, and Marty and I light the ends of twigs and twirl them to make orange figure eights. My sister’s hair flies up behind the collar of her gold corduroy jacket as she screams: “Look at mine, look at mine!” Waving our sticks, we jump onto the picnic table bench and then onto the table itself, leaping down so it gives us shocks in our ankles, then hurtle over the springy grass to the swing set. It’s then that I spot it, the biggest worm I’ve ever seen, curled up under one of the swings. I stoop down and nudge it onto my twig with my finger. It doesn’t really want to move, but I angle the stick to force it.

“What’s that?” Marty demands, nosy as usual.

I hold up the stick and my sister shrieks and takes off, streaking along the fence that separates the Katzes’ backyard from ours. I chase her, twig held up like the Statue of Liberty’s torch. “Baby! Baby! It’s just a worm!” She’s close enough so I can hear her panting, or sobbing, I can’t tell which.

“Get that away from me!”

On the patch of ground that is our vegetable garden in the summer, my sister trips on a weed and falls sprawling. I pretend not to see and keep running, past her, back toward the piles of leaves. By the dying fire, I see that the worm is gone, and I toss the twig away. I fling myself onto one of the piles spread-eagled and lie there, breathing hard, inhaling the sweet dusky smell.

Across the yard, I can hear Marty wailing, and then the back door slams.

“Sally, what happen?”

Instead of answering my mother, I turn over onto my stomach and bury my face in the leaves. They are cold and itchy.

“Sally, STAND UP. It’s dirty there. Answer me. Did you push your sister?”

I have no words for her. I wait, counting One Mississippi Two Mississippi, until suddenly my head is jerked backward as my mother pulls me up by the braids. “You’re acting crazy,” she hisses.

Sitting up, I watch her march across the yard to where Marty is. My sister is crying even louder than before. Ma stoops over her, asking questions. Then she picks my sister up, grabbing her under the arms and hoisting her over her shoulder like she does a bag of rice. “Sally, open the back door!”

I can’t move. Somehow my mother manages to get the door open herself.

I lie back into my leaf bed. The sky is now almost completely black, but the tops of the trees are blacker, like fingers reaching up. Although the fire is so low I can no longer see it, I can still smell the smoke. It feels peaceful to lie here like this. It feels safe. There are things going on in the house: Ma’s loud voice, Daddy grumbling from his chair in the living room, my sister whining. They have nothing to do with me. I feel sleepy.

I hear the roar of the bakery truck pulling into the driveway next door, into the garage, the truck door slam. Mr. Katz is home from work. “Oh, look at the Wangs’ yard, so nice and neat,” I hear Mrs. Katz say as she opens the back door for her husband. Neither of them see me in the pile of leaves.

I think of different animals I can be: a chipmunk, a squirrel, even a bear.

But all I feel like is myself, a big fat human being.

In our house the kitchen light goes on. Ma’s face is at the window, peering out. Then it disappears. The back door opens. I wait, listening to the padding footsteps across the swept grass.

“I think your sister has sprained ankle,” she says. “I called Dr. Di Leo and he’s coming over.”

Nothing about it being my fault, although I can’t imagine Marty not telling on me.

“Sally, get up. Come in and eat your supper.” I sit up and rub at my face, which is wet. My mother doesn’t seem to notice. She simply stands and waits for me to get to my feet and follow her back to the house.

My sister is careless, a tomboy, her bed has lumps after she makes it. I always take care to smooth mine out, tugging the corners so that the white chenille spread lies perfectly flat, the fringe hanging down evenly all around. My mother doesn’t notice. In fact, although Saturday is the day for changing the sheets, sometimes when I come back from school I see that she has changed my bed on a weekday. I know because Piggy is sitting smack in the middle of my pillow like a throne. I like to leave him lying down with his head propped up.

After school I lie on my perfect bed and listen to David and Darcy calling from outside: “Oh, Sal-lee! Oh, Mar-tee!” I heard Mrs. Katz say I must be going through growing pains, that is why I am always so tired.

My sister pushes open the door. Her ankle is completely healed now, although sometimes she stands on one foot, like a stork, to remind me. “You want to play kickball?”

“No.”

“David said you could be first up.”

“I don’t want to play.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t feel well.”

I look past her to the baby rocking chairs, to the window framed by curtains just a shade whiter than our bedspreads. The curtain borders are edged with the same lace as Raggedy Ann’s apron.

“You are bor-ing,” Marty says to me, and slams the door on her way out. I hear that irregular clomp that means she is taking the stairs two, sometimes three at a time.

Mrs. Lister, my third grade teacher, writes my mother a note:

Although Sarah has always been a reserved child, for the past month or so she has been unusually withdrawn, and I’m a little concerned. When I called on her today, she put her head down on the desk and refused to answer. When I asked her if there was anything wrong at home, she said no. I suggest you make an appointment with your family doctor.

The doctor says that I am healthy as a horse. I sit outside in the waiting room, while he talks to Ma, wishing I really had a disease. I just know she’s going to say something about waste, wasted money. But when the door to the office opens her face is normal.

“Come on, Sally. We go home now.”

I know for sure she’s not mad when we get to the car, because she lets me sit up in front with her. When we’re out on Whitney Avenue she begins to hum to herself—some old Chinese tune. In church Marty and I used to be embarrassed because she sang way louder than anyone else, with shakes in her voice. Then one day at coffee hour the organist came up and asked whether she wanted to join the choir. “Your mother has perfect pitch,” he told Marty and me. She didn’t join, but I noticed she sang more in the kitchen. Hymns, old-time songs like “Someone’s Rocking My Dreamboat.”