“Mau-mau, you are my little cat,” Ma says, stroking Marty’s hair.

That night I don’t read. In the dark I tell Marty I’m going to run away to Florida.

14

And finally this: Disneyland. It was the last summer we lived in California, my parents had accepted teaching posts at Yale, and Nai-nai had already returned to San Diego.

I’ve never seen so many people in all my life, people in shorts and T-shirts, with sunglasses on. Mothers with fat arms pushing strollers. Fathers carrying kids on shoulders, like a parade. It looks like a town, with streets and signs but there aren’t any cars, people are stepping off the curb, walking right in the middle of the street. Daddy has a map like all the other fathers. He has on a white shirt with black and red swirls and black pants and a maroon baseball hat—what he wears when he takes me to the beach on Sunday afternoons when Ma is cleaning the house and Marty’s having her nap.

My sister wants to go on the teacups, but when we get there the line is way too long.

“Come back later,” Daddy says.

We keep walking until we get to a little house with a green-and-white-striped awning. Ma buys four big glasses of orangeade. While I’m drinking, a bee floats into my cup and buzzes there right in front of my face, trapped.

“Sealy, don’t move,” Daddy’s voice says, quiet. I close my eyes. I feel the cup being pulled away gently, slowly.

He shows me the bee floating dead and then takes the cup to the trash can. Then he walks off, in the other direction.

“Sally almost got stung!” Marty says, like she’s disappointed I didn’t.

I ask Ma where Daddy went.

My mother frowns. “He’ll be back.”

There are cartoon characters everywhere: Pluto, Goofy, and Marty’s favorite, Donald Duck. “Dono,” she calls him. I can tell Donald Duck likes my sister, because he comes over so Ma can take a picture of them together. He has real feathers, a soft little white tail that sticks up. But I am holding out for Mickey and Minnie, especially Minnie. At home I have a Mickey Mouse Club T-shirt and ears, and a pen with Minnie Mouse on it that shows her winking if you move it from side to side. I love Minnie’s white gloves, her polka-dot princess dress, her big red high heels, and most of all that enormous smile that takes up half her face. Along with flowers and snails and houses, that’s what I draw the most, Minnie Mouse, on the backs of the old flash cards my parents bring home from work. Sometimes I draw her dressed in my own clothes: shorts and T-shirts, my favorite aqua overalls, PJs.

Ma is sitting on a bench, humming “It’s a Small World After All.” That’s a ride we’ve already been on, where you get in a boat and go through a dark tunnel and miniature people from different countries pop out at you. Ma and Daddy laughed really hard when they found out we had to go on a boat. When Marty asked what was so funny Ma said: “Your father is not a good sailor.”

“Watch your sister,” Ma says to me. Marty is standing off to the other side of the bench watching this little lake that has a stone bridge over it. It must be a famous bridge—people keep stopping to get their pictures taken on it.

“Dono,” she says.

“No, silly, he isn’t there.”

The next time I look my sister has disappeared. I glance back at Ma, but she has her red pointy sunglasses on and isn’t looking in my direction. The bridge isn’t very far, only about ten people away, so I edge my way over and sure enough, there’s Marty, crouched by the railing, staring into the water.

“He’s not THERE!” I yell at her, and when she sees me she gets up and runs farther away, over the bridge and onto the other side of the lake. Luckily she is wearing red—a red T-shirt with white snowflakes and red shorts and sneaks—so I can follow her easily through the crowd.

“Dummy,” I say when I catch up with her. I take her hand and look back over the bridge to the bench where Ma is sitting, but I can’t see the bench. Marty looks too. I tell her: “We better go back.”

“Where’s Ma?” my sister whines.

“She’s there.”

But when we cross the bridge the bench where Ma was sitting is taken up by another family, a big Negro woman with a newborn baby and two boys who just stare at us.

There is a low concrete wall behind the bench, and I take Marty over and lean her up against it. “Don’t move,” I tell her before climbing up. My sister’s face is scrunched up but she obeys. I know what to look for—Ma’s puffy black hairdo, Daddy’s maroon baseball cap. But all the colors in the crowd—except for the family sitting on the bench below—are pale-pinks and light blues and yellows.

Marty starts to cry.

“We’ll find them,” I tell her. It doesn’t occur to me that they’ll find us. People are noticing us, alone together, and this makes me nervous. There’s big old Goofy in the distance, and I consider asking him what to do, but Ma says none of the cartoon characters can talk. Anyhow he’s kind of scary-looking. Who ever heard of a purple dog? He doesn’t even look like a dog.

My sister has stopped sobbing, although tears are still sliding down her face.

“Don’t worry, Mar-Mar,” I say, hugging her. Though we are only about a year apart I am so much taller, and sometimes we pretend that she is my baby. She’s small enough to still fit in the buggy and I used to wheel her around the backyard until Ma told me to stop. My sister sticks her hand into mine again, and we continue walking, away from the bridge, which seems the right thing to do.

Suddenly we’re at the teacups again—I recognize the little pink house where you get your tickets. There’s still a line of people in front, but I just keep walking and no one stops us. At the window there’s a lady with curly blond hair and a diagonal band across her body, like Girl Scouts. She leans down.

“What? I can’t hear you, little girl.”

I repeat: “We’re looking for our parents.”

This causes a commotion. The lady in the booth speaks to someone behind her and then tells us to stay put. Now the people in the front of the line are paying attention to us. One of the mothers with fat arms is saying she’s surprised this doesn’t happen more often here, kids getting lost. A man in a flowered shirt squats down in front of Marty to offer her a Tootsie Pop. She shakes her head, which I am glad of. The man tells his wife: “Looks just like one of them Japanese dolls, doncha think?”

The lady in the booth comes out and says we should come inside to wait. She puts her fingers, with their long purple nails, on our shoulders, to pull us in.

The booth is dark, with lots of shelves and a table with a big roll of green tickets and some paper napkins and empty paper cups. The other person in the booth, a man with a brown face and a black mustache, points to a couple of stools in the corner and says, “Take a load off!” As we sit down, Marty is still clutching my hand. I shake my own hand until she lets go.

“Don’t be a baby,” I whisper.

“Okay,” says the lady. “Tell me your last name again.”

“Wang,” I say.

She wrinkles her forehead. “Won? Your name is Won?”

“WANG. Sarah and Martha Wang.”

“Okay, Denny, you hear that?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, hons, we’ll find who you belong to.” The man adjusts his microphone, which I notice for the first time, and leans into it. “ATTENTION ALL PARENTS. WE HAVE TWO LITTLE LOST ORIENTAL GIRLS AT THE TEACUP RIDE. I REPEAT, TWO LITTLE LOST ORIENTAL GIRLS AT THE TEACUP RIDE.”

He doesn’t say our names. How are Ma and Daddy going to know, unless they hear our names? I look over at my sister. Although she has finally stopped crying, I can tell from the expression on her face that something bad is about to happen.

“That should do it,” the man says.

Marry is peeing in her pants, right on the stool, and it’s spilling onto the floor.