Dragon Chica. Mai-lee Chai

so long; I hadn’t meant to, but I couldn’t help myself. Anyway, Ma looked annoyed then. I’d spoiled her happy mood.

      Now she fell into a long silence that she refused to break, and I took to staring out the window again at the endless jade fields and the steely blue sky and the waves of shimmering heat rising above the asphalt.

      CHAPTER 4

      The Ghost in the Window

      We took the first exit for the town where Auntie and Uncle were supposed to be living, but it took us three passes through this village before we could find any Chinese restaurant.

      The business district was not quite four blocks long, marked by a J.C. Penney at one end and a hardware store at the other. In the middle, there were the Blue Bunny ice cream parlor, a five and dime, a funeral home, a sandwich shop, a fabric store, a photography studio, and seven bars. The post office was on one side of Main Street and the police station on the other. There were also two grocery stores, a Piggly Wiggly and a Tom & Bud’s, at opposite ends of town. A couple service stations were sprinkled conveniently in between. Next to the J.C. Penney was a vacant building that, we learned later, had once been a very successful John Deere outlet, but since the farm economy had taken a turn for the worse, it had closed shop and its wares consolidated into the main showroom in Yankton, a larger town of ten thousand about thirty miles northeast across the South Dakota border. A branch of the Missouri river ran along the eastern edge of town, which was consequently known as a flood plain. On the drier, western border were the local grain elevator and a few stores that sold farm implements, Purina feeds, and veterinary supplies.

      We found the restaurant finally on the far northwest corner of town, practically on the border of the town limits, just off the last exit on the state highway, near a Super 8 and a laundromat. Someone had painted the squat building a bright red; it stood out like a firecracker against the deep green of the cornfields. A lighted sign proclaimed “The Silver Palace.” It was the tallest pole in the parking lot and would become, we soon discovered, a magnet for lightning strikes. There was also a bright yellow plastic banner across the front of the building. It caught the wind and flapped ferociously, although in rare moments when the wind subsided we could just make out the words “Grand Opening.”

      As we stood in the parking lot after our long ride in our cramped car, our boxes pressing against our knees, I stared at the Palace and tried to imagine that it looked like the Family Business that would save us all, that would send me to college and rescue Ma from night shifts gutting chickens, the kind of Chinese restaurant that needed guards to protect all the money hidden inside.

      I couldn’t tell how Ma felt, whether she was still excited or if her silence meant that she was worried, or even panicked, by the emptiness of the sky above us and the flat fields around us, whether she wondered as I did where all the people were, and who were the customers, when it seemed as though we were the only living people left on earth. I looked up at Sourdi, who was standing between me and Ma, to see if I could read the answer in my sister’s face, but she looked merely sweaty and tired from the long drive. She was rubbing her eyes with one hand.

      “I’ll wake the kids up,” Sourdi said.

      “Let them sleep,” Ma said. “They wake up, they start yelling all over again.” She smiled then, and I knew she was in a good mood. Maybe she’d realized we’d made a wrong turn. Maybe she just wanted to go in and ask directions so that we could find our real family’s restaurant. Ma surveyed the Palace, a hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun beating down from the cloudless sky.

      “It’s beautiful,” Ma said finally, and for a second I thought she was joking, but it wasn’t like her to be sarcastic.

      “Mmm-hmm.” Sourdi nodded. “Our own restaurant.” She craned her neck to read the grand opening sign again.

      “It’s not ours,” I pointed out quickly.

      “Auntie’s then. And Uncle’s.” Sourdi scowled. “It’s our family’s. That means all of us. Right, Ma?”

      Before Ma could answer, an old man came running out the front door. He waved his hands in the air excitedly, and Ma gasped. Then she ran towards him. They met on the sidewalk, Ma covering her mouth with her hand, shaking her head, as the old man put a hand on her elbow. He smiled, revealing all the holes in his mouth where his teeth should have been. They spoke so fast, I couldn’t understand a word they said. Ma was crying. She wiped the tears away quickly on the back of her hand, again and again, the gesture like a cat cleaning its whiskers.

      I wondered who this old man was. Maybe a servant. Maybe a worker our rich aunt and uncle had hired to help them run their business. He was wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt despite the heat and tan cotton pants with handprints in flour along the thighs. Because of all the missing teeth, even when he smiled, his face appeared to be grimacing, as though he’d been in a fight. His hair was mostly gone, and what was left was gray. His skin was cracked and lined.

      Ma pointed in our direction, and the old man turned toward us. He smiled again, his skin pulling back from his mouth.

      “Don’t just stand there,” Ma said. “Come say hello to your uncle.”

      I couldn’t move. I stood rooted in place, hoping there’d been a mistake, that Ma had misspoken, or was only polite. He was not really Uncle, but just a man she was calling an uncle. I grabbed hold of Sourdi’s hand beside me, and she squeezed my hand back tightly.

      Then the man who was certainly not Uncle came to us.

      “You look just like my wife,” he said to me. “I mean, when she was younger. When she was your age.”

      I looked at my feet.

      “Oh, no,” Ma said, politely. “She’s much too tall. It’s all this American food she eats.” Ma shook her head. “She’s going to be tall as a boy.”

      “So beautiful,” he said, turning to Sourdi. “You’ve become a young lady since I last saw you.”

      Sourdi blushed.

      “But where are the others?” He turned to Ma, confused.

      “They’re still sleeping.” Sourdi pointed to the car, and the old man nodded.

      “Go wake them,” Ma said.

      “No, let the little ones sleep. I’ll just take a look for myself.” He ran over to the car. We watched from the sidewalk as he peered inside the dusty windows.

      “Do you remember your uncle now?” Ma asked us.

      “I think so,” Sourdi began, but I interrupted: “It’s not him, Ma. It’s not.”

      Ma frowned at me. “What are you talking about?”

      “It’s a mistake. He’s not really Uncle.”

      “Don’t talk crazy,” she whispered. Then she pinched my ear between her finger and thumb as though I were still a small child, as though a little pain could make me see things her way.

      Then the old man came back toward us, and Ma dropped her hand from my ear and smiled sweetly.

      “Let me show you inside,” the old man said, and he opened the door for Ma. Sourdi followed them obediently, but I hung back on the sidewalk. I wasn’t going to follow this Pretender, this charlatan, this man who was certainly not our rich, savior Uncle. Auntie who always had to have the best would not have married such an old man. Why couldn’t Ma see?

      It was too hot in the car so I paced on the sidewalk. To my left, the soybean and cornfields were marching up to the state highway, a sea of green as far as I could see. To my right, the large empty parking lot, with the Super 8 at one end and the laundromat behind it. A paper bag blew across the asphalt, then caught on a light pole, flapping furiously like a pinned butterfly.

      I turned back to examine the Palace, this place Ma insisted upon claiming as our own. There was a long bank of windows in the front, facing the highway and