“Your mother tell you about the park sign in Shanghai?”

I shake my head.

“No Chinese and no dogs. You hear that? No Chinese and no dogs. You know what that means?”

I say nothing, kick at a pile of maple helicopters on the sidewalk.

“DISCRIMINATION!” He thunders out the word as if he has just invented it. “In China, in our own country! Your mother and I try for one month to find apartment in California. Look all over town. No room, everyone says. No Orientals allowed. This is what Americans think of us. This is why you have to be twice as good as anybody else.”

We walk the rest of the way in silence. Marty and I have been told we cannot watch TV for a month. I wonder what David’s punishment will be. His parents must be running out of things to do to him.

In the pharmacy I hand Mr. Kramer the candy we stole in the Baggie that Ma has insisted on so “it still looks new.” I have exact change from our allowances to pay for what we ate, and I stack the coins carefully on the counter.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Mr. Kramer. That is an American thing, something I learned from TV. No one in our family ever says they are sorry.

My father makes a speech: “I have no explanation for my daughters’ behavior. We are not a wealthy family, but there are no thieves.” Mr. Kramer peers at me through his bifocals, and I know that I am never going to set foot in that store again.

When we are outside, Daddy says, “If we were in China, maybe your mother and I would not talk to you for a year.”

I look at my father, who although he is much younger, walks with his shoulders hunched over like old man Kramer. I picture sticking a leg out and tripping him so he’d crash face-first onto the sidewalk and break his nose. I know it’s possible—I once saw David do it to one of the younger bad boys.

“We’re not in China,” I say.

“But you are a Chinese daughter.”

We are passing the Cuddys by then, and I imagine the kids with their faces pressed to the porch screen, listening to everything we’re saying. Good. They just might learn something.

“You are a Chinese daughter,” Daddy repeats. His eyes are as dark as snake holes. “You have shamed me and all my ancestors.”

“I wish you would have a stroke and die,” I say. I expect my father to turn purple again, I almost want him to, but in the dusk his face tightens and grows very white and he stops walking. I stop too.

He is staring straight ahead, at our little green house, as if he can see through the walls, to Ma washing the dinner dishes and humming along to the radio, to my sister upstairs in bed, her hair spiked on the pillow as she jerks her head from side to side in a half sleep. My father finally turns to me.

“I name you Delicate, because you are a girl. Virtue, so you will be good. But in all your life, you never give me one moment of happiness.”

The next day my sister’s eye looks like a plum. We tell the kids at school she fell off the swings. At recess I see her out playing softball, running around screaming and happy like nothing happened.

At home, though, things are different. When Daddy comes into the kitchen to get his tea Ma stays at the stove with her back turned and he has to find his glass and the tea can and pour the water himself. At dinner my mother still serves my father first, but she doesn’t look at him. During the meal I notice her sneaking things into Marty’s rice bowl-extra Chinese pickles, a big piece of sweet fish.

Then my mother decides she doesn’t want her permanent anymore and gets her hair cut short like Twiggy. I know Daddy hates this because the day she does it he says to me: “Look at your mother. You want to be ugly like that?”

I want to say I do, that it’s not fair that Ma can have any hairstyle she wants. She looks good with short hair, although not like my mother. When she and Marty and I go out people start asking if the three of us are sisters.

My father no longer spanks us.

At night it’s quiet downstairs except for the TV.

13

The first year we live on Coram Drive, our family goes down to Florida to visit my Aunty Mabel who has just moved there with her new husband. On the drive down we stay in a motel that has a monkey in a cage in the parking lot. When we get to their house Aunty Mabel gives us Coke in glasses with the Flintstones on them. Everyone wears shorts, even Daddy, with his rickety white legs. Uncle Richard has a belly like a bag over his belt and smokes Camel cigarettes. I’d walk a mile, he says. There are grapefruit trees in the backyard and in the morning Uncle Richard goes out to pick some for breakfast. They are bulging and heavy and squirt out when Ma cuts them. She wipes the juice off her cheek like a tear. Ma and Aunty Mabel stand at the kitchen counter, both wearing the same apron, white with an orange flower like the sun in the corner. Uncle Richard points at them with his cigarette and says in a loud voice: “Sisters! Can you tell?”

Marty makes a mistake once, grabbing Aunty Mabel’s knees from behind. Aunty Mabel is taller than our mother, with a long face and one front tooth that crosses over the other, and there are little brown spots on her cheeks. But she and Ma have the same hair, and when they go out they both wear red sunglasses that point up at the corners.

When Uncle Richard makes his sisters joke, I know he’s talking to Daddy. “Pau-yu, eh?” he shouts. Aunty Mabel gets red and Ma pretends not to notice. Daddy looks straight ahead at nothing. “Ai-yah,” he mumbles.

At breakfast Lili the white cat climbs onto my lap and I keep as still as possible. When no one is looking I feed her bacon. Her sharp teeth scrape my fingers. We can’t have pets at home.

“She’s a stray,” Uncle Richard tells us. “But your Aunty Mabel thinks she’s family. And you know Chinese—they have to feed family.”

“I know,” I say.

My uncle winks at me. “Hey, Pau-yu, your elder, she’s a clever one, understand grown-up talk.”

Daddy doesn’t like Florida during the day. After lunch he takes a long nap and we have to be quiet or play outside. But at night, when we’re supposed to be asleep, I can hear his voice in the living room and then all the grown-ups laughing, even Ma. I hear him say my Chinese name and I know he’s telling about how when we first moved to Connecticut and I heard footsteps in the attic. In the morning Ma made me go up the stairs ahead of her and I wouldn’t stop screaming not even when she showed me there were just suitcases and old magazines. My father has told this story to all my parents’ Chinese friends: Mr. Lin, the Sungs, the Lus.

“My elder daughter hears ghosts,” Daddy says. “She has special power.” I can’t tell whether he’s making fun of me.

Sometimes at night Lili jumps up on the bed and sleeps on my feet but in the morning she is gone. There are twin beds, just like at home. Only here I sleep by the window, and my sister sleeps by the door, because Ma is afraid she’ll be sick in the night, like she was in the hotel with the monkey screaming. Marty is the real baby. Why doesn’t my father tell stories about her?

The curtains at the window are thin like wedding dress material, and there are no shades. In the morning the sun comes in and I know right away I’m not at home. There is a funny smell in the air, dusty and sharp, that stays in your nose. The first day we got here Ma leaned over Marty’s bedspread and sniffed it. “Mildew,” she said, and Marty and I laughed because it sounded like doo-doo.

My parents sleep in the fold-out sofa bed in the living room, and my aunty and uncle are in the room across the hall from us. In the middle of the night Uncle Richard has coughing fits. Over and over, like he’s going to die. Aunty Mabel never makes a sound. I picture her lying there in the dark listening, the same as me, until it’s over.