A Glasshouse of Stars Page 3

  Catching yourself, you are suddenly ashamed of your thoughts and, horrified, you hide them away with the other feelings you are not supposed to feel.

  Ma Ma plaits your black hair into long braids on either side.

  “Wait. Let me put this on. I hope it brings you good luck.”

  Onto your finger she slips a tiny gold ring with a Chinese character on the top. It is your grandmother’s—your Ah Ma’s—wedding ring. She had such tiny fingers that her wedding ring never fit any of her daughters.

  “Aren’t we a superstitious bunch? I hope you have a really great day, Meixing.”

  In the hallway the tiles the color of the earth shift so fast under your feet that you feel dizzy.

  All you can see while you go down those thirty front steps of the house are your shoes. All you can see as you walk up the footpath are those shoes. You are sure that everyone is going to laugh at you. No one would want to be friends with a girl who wears boys’ shoes.

  Outside, there is no one around, and you worry you are too early. Or maybe you are too late and everyone is already in class. What if you are going in the wrong direction? What if today is actually still Sunday? What if it is still all a dream? Or a nightmare? But you are aware of how real everything looks.

  There is always a hazy magic about Big Scary. You never see any of the mold, mildew, damp patches, or chipped paint you might expect from a house as old as her. It feels as if she is trying hard to create a fantasy for you, to keep you safe, and you move inside her as if in a dream.

  Out here, though, you are exposed. Everything looks threatening. A magpie swoops so close to your head, you can feel the flap of its wings. The huge, strange trees are flesh-colored with bark that comes off in big strips. You start feeling anxious. You wish you could go back. There is a large crack in the pavement in front of you.

  As instructed, you march right up to the man dressed in a white coat holding a stop sign. You are too shy to look at him, so you give him a side glance and step onto the zebra crossing.

  What happens next is a loud scream and a car stopping inches from your body. You feel yourself being pulled back by your collar and you stare at the Lollipop Man, who you know is angry, he’s just too shocked to shout at you.

  He thinks you’re a silly girl who doesn’t even know how to cross the road. And he’s right. You are a silly girl who doesn’t know how to cross the road. Back where you came from, there were hardly any cars. Or roads, for that matter. The workers’ housing buildings, the deep wounds in the ground from where the machines took out that precious Earth Dust, and the handful of shops were the only blights on the island. Beyond that was jungle and dirt tracks, and you went wherever you wanted. You were wild and free, and you climbed trees and lounged in them like a monkey.

  The Lollipop Man holds up his flags to stop the traffic, and he looks over to you. It is your signal to cross, but you are too scared to move. What if you walk too fast? What if you walk too slow? Now he thinks you’re even more stupid. You tremble violently.

  So you stand there unable to do anything until a mother and two children come along, and you disappear into them and pass over to the other side pretending you are part of them. You wish as hard as you can that your shoes change into pink-and-white ones like the girl is wearing.

  Standing by a utility pole is the boy from the Huynhs’ residence. He has the angriest look on his face; fists clenched. You let the mother with the two kids pass and you stand there, staring at him.

  The boy from next door is ripping the yellow flyers that were pasted on the pole, scrunching them up and throwing them on the ground, stomping on them with a foot. When he realizes that someone is watching him, he turns around. He is one head taller than you. He stares at you so long that you feel you might burst into flames from the embarrassment. He is looking at your school uniform and your shoes. It suddenly occurs to you that his mother has given you his hand-me-downs. You want the ground to open up and for you to be slowly lowered down; for the grass to cover your head so it is as if you were never there.

  He opens his mouth to say something, but then he closes it again. He takes off. You can feel your face burning bright red. Slowly, you walk up to where he was standing and look down at the crushed paper. You can’t read the writing, but you look at the ugly face that the boy has ripped in half. It is a strange drawing of a man with a triangle hat, a thin mustache, and slits for eyes, with a big red cross mark over him.

  * * *

  Miss Cicely, your new primary school teacher, is enthusiastic to introduce you to her classroom and students. It feels as though you can’t move your jaw to talk, you are still so anxious. The Huynh boy is sitting in the back, and he sinks lower into his chair when he sees you, his long legs pressing under the bottom of his desk. You are introduced to a girl with blond pigtails that your teacher talks to fondly, and you sit down next to her.

  She makes it obvious from her expression what she thinks of your secondhand clothes and boys’ shoes. You desperately wish for the checked school dress she is wearing under her sweater and the neat white sneakers with the pale purple shoelaces on her feet. She looks with distaste at the burlap bag that you are carrying your school things in. At the plastic ziplock bag you place on the desk that contains a few basic stationery items.

  Her eyes light up when she sees the little gold ring on your middle finger.

  “We can be friends,” she says with quiet deliberation.

  You swallow nervously and say nothing. You twist the ring round and round your finger.

  The class is given an activity where you have to insert the correct words into the correct sentences. Elaborate. Exaggerate. Unanimous. You can hardly read what is in front of you.

  “You can copy my work,” your new friend whispers, but you shake your head, as Ma Ma has always taught you to be humble and honest. So you guess the answers and hope for the best.

  “Do you mind if I borrow your eraser?” asks Miss Cicely, smiling down at you.

  The correct answer is no.

  As in, No. I don’t mind.

  But the New Language confuses you, and because you would love Miss Cicely to borrow your eraser, you say yes.

  And it is the wrong answer.

  “You can borrow mine if you like, Miss Cicely,” your friend pipes up, and the teacher takes her eraser.

  You stare mournfully down at the floor because you realize you’ve made a mistake, but you don’t know what to do about it now. You catch a glimpse of those boys’ shoes on your feet and your eyes shoot back up. You promise yourself you will try harder to be smarter next time.

  Miss Cicely hands out the worksheets from before winter break, which she has now finished marking. From behind you, there is a loud commotion, and you turn around in time to see the Huynh boy stand up and rip the paper handed to him into little pieces.

  “How many times have I told you this is unacceptable behavior? To the principal’s office, again!” Miss Cicely sighs and puts her face in her hands.

  The Huynh boy gets up and runs out of the classroom, slamming the door behind him.

  “He’s angry with himself because he is stupid,” your new friend explains. “He always gets all the answers wrong.”

  Your heart does a flip-flop and you wish like crazy that you’ll get at least some of the answers right today. In your head you imagine you get everything correct. In your head your teacher becomes very fond of you, and she tells Ma Ma what a great student you are. In your head the girl sitting next to you loves you too and becomes your best friend. Everything is going to turn out fine. But if it is, why do you have to wish so desperately for it?

  CHAPTER FIVE Ring

  Ma Ma says that you will enjoy learning at the new school as much as you did at the old school. And it’s true, you loved that tiny class where the teacher treated you like a daughter and it was like going over to a friend’s place every day. Sometimes it felt as though you were playing more than you were studying. You had learned both the Old and the Ne
w Language at the same time, but neither well. It was the best the little school could offer, on a little island that did not have much at all.

  Here, though, you have to sit up straight and pay attention to everything. This is serious; your grades must be good, you mustn’t mess up. Your parents are depending on it. You will get good grades and that will get you the toy pony. You know that you should enjoy school and learning, but you sit in your seat hoping for it to end. You can’t help but feel relieved when it is finally time for lunch.

  All the students eat outside in the covered assembly area. The wind howls from one open end to the other and threatens to lift the roof off. Even though it looks like a chaos of bodies and lunch boxes and echoing voices, there appears to be some sort of order. Groups of students have claimed the painted outlines of hopscotch and handball as their special areas. Other groups sit on the plain concrete. Then there are the students who sit by themselves on the very edges. The Huynh boy is one of them.

  With a terrible feeling in your stomach, you realize that you are also one of them and you will have to sit on the edge too. Until your new friend comes up and invites you to join a group from your class. They sit inside a magic purple circle that you imagine is used for some secret game that you’ll learn to play one day. You are both relieved and more shaken than ever.

  Your metal tiffin box—your lunch tin—sits on your lap. You don’t want to open it because you know it’s not going to contain anything like the white-bread sandwiches the other girls are eating, filled with a thin slice of something yellow and something pink. From the corner of your eye, across the assembly area, you see the Huynh boy taking out a chicken wing and attacking it hungrily. Not caring what anyone thinks of him. Your stomach gurgles, and not out of hunger.

  You take a sharp breath and flick the lunch box open.

  The girls suddenly stop their conversations.

  “Eww, are you going to eat that with your fingers?”

  “Eww, it’s got bones. I can’t eat chicken with bones. I only like chicken nuggets.”

  The girls take dainty bites out of their sandwiches, and you can’t bring yourself to eat your lunch with those curious eyes on you. Even though you love chicken wings and you eat them all the time. With your fingers.

  After they have finished their sandwiches and you have sat there hungrily after closing your lunch box and staring quietly, the girls decide to have cartwheel and handstand competitions. They ask you to join, but you decline because you can’t do either. Other kids come and watch and admire, and you find yourself jammed shoulder to shoulder with these onlookers. You blend into the crowd and then find yourself pushed back. Your shoulders slack and sag. It is obvious that you do not fit in with this group of girls.

  Fearing that there will be more things involving reading and writing after lunch, you are glad when you find out that the class is going to do art. You walk to a special wing of the school that houses little art rooms, and there today, with Miss Hornbuckle, you are making flags for an upcoming special celebration.

  Your new friend insists on sitting next to you, even though she should have realized what a disaster you are and lost interest by now.

  Oh, dear. You have no idea what the flag looks like. You are secretly relieved when your art teacher draws one on the board for everyone. You copy the design and the colors.

  Painting is messy work. But it is messy work that you love, and for the first time all day you feel at peace with yourself. Everything will work itself out, and before you know it, you will be grown up and not have to worry anymore. It is hard to grip the paintbrush properly wearing Ah Ma’s gold ring, so you take it off and place it on the corner of the desk, just beyond the paper.

  From the adjoining desk, your friend looks keenly at the shiny band. It only takes a second for you to turn away and stir your paintbrush in the jar of dirty water. When your eyes go back to the corner of the desk, Ah Ma’s ring is gone.

  You are certain that there is a little weight inside the front pocket of your friend’s painting smock of the same corresponding size. But overwhelmed by the thought that someone would do something like that, and by the realization that your new friend is nothing but a nasty thief, you do something unexpected.

  You burst into tears. The whole class looks at you while ugly, fat tears roll down your cheeks and your mouth makes a terrible wailing noise.

  Miss Hornbuckle tries to work out what is wrong, but the words you know of the language are useless in beginning to explain to her. You are crying too hard anyway.

  Your art teacher puts it down to it being the first day of school and that it has been a long journey for this new girl to get to this New Land. She thinks the best thing for you would be to sit on the bench outside the classroom and catch some fresh air.

  It really is the worst thing she could have done. Sitting by yourself outside, you feel frighteningly abandoned, as though you are being punished somehow. It is this thought that breaks your heart a little and stops you from crying any further. You wipe your face down with the back of your hands.

  The next thing you realize is that the Huynh boy is unexpectedly sitting next to you. When you turn, all you can see is the crisp and clear logo on his new uniform. The old jacket of his that you’re wearing has been washed so many times that the logo has cracked and taken on the appearance of an evil skull.

  “Can you understand the language everyone speaks in this country?” he asks in a snarl.

  You nod.

  “Look, I saw Paige take your ring and put it into her front pocket. Do you want me to tell the teacher?”

  You stare at him.

  “Can you speak?”

  Of course you can. What type of dumb question is that? In fact, you have so much you want to say, so many emotions brimming inside of you, so many stories of things you’ve seen and experienced, waiting to come out…

  Just not today. Not right now.

  “There you are! Did I say you could leave your desk, Kevin?”

  Kevin Huynh looks down at his feet. “No, Miss Hornbuckle,” he mumbles.

  “Then please come back inside.”

  “Yes, Miss Hornbuckle.”

  “What do you have to say first?”

  “Sorry, Miss Hornbuckle.”

  The art teacher shakes her head and folds her arms, striding back inside.

  Kevin turns to you and says, “They probably wouldn’t believe me anyway,” before his hunched frame disappears from sight.

  It was really nice of Kevin to want to help, but you are still confused by him. All your life you’ve been told to do everything your parents and teachers tell you to do. You don’t know why he behaves the way he does. Why doesn’t Mrs. Huynh just tell him to be a good boy? Ma Ma tells you to be a good girl. Suddenly, you find yourself thinking about this not with love and respect, as you’ve always been taught, but with a bitter resentfulness.

  When you get back to class with Miss Cicely, you confront your supposed new friend yourself by pointing at her.

  “I can’t understand you,” she replies with a sweet smile. That is all she has to say to you because you both know what she means.

  * * *

  When it’s dismissal time, now that you know how the school crossing works, you wait for a group of kids to reach the edge of the walkway and then you hide among them. You are still too embarrassed to face the Lollipop Man alone. As soon as you get to the other side of the street, you are running, tearing out the bands of your braids. The too-big shoes slap the pavement loudly, your heart thumping in your ears. At the top of the thirty steps you kick the cursed things off your feet and you run straight into the safety of Big Scary.

  You can hear Ma Ma moving somewhere inside, but the house is so big, you cannot tell where. You freeze in the hallway, wipe down your face with a hand, and listen. It is the clang of a mop bucket being pushed around. You are trying to work out if Ma Ma is upstairs or downstairs when something small and shiny falls past your eye. It hits the tiles with a pin
g and spins furiously.

  When it comes to a stop, you kneel down and pick it up. It is a small silver disk with a hole punched in the center. You look up, and Big Scary taps you a pink message along the wall, as if to say, What do you think?

  You feel compelled to thread your finger through the disk to see if it fits, but before it is even on, you rip it off again. It is not the same. Nothing is the same. You place it on the side table for Ba Ba to find and put back into the house wherever it came from, and you run away down the hall. Big Scary seems to sag all around you in disappointment.

  CHAPTER SIX Chicken

  Ba Ba is home early, arriving not long after you do, and he says he is going to take you out to eat, as a family. You don’t know where the money has come from because there is supposed to be no money. Even Ma Ma is giving him that look, but it is a nice idea, so you head down to the car. Ba Ba holds Ma Ma’s hand tightly as they descend the steps; you watch this and it makes you feel safe and secure. Inside this moment, everything is good.

  The little junk heap of a car putts along with the three of you in it, occasionally backfiring.

  “This car is worse than the dune buggy we had back on the island,” says Ma Ma.

  “Don’t lie, you loved that dune buggy,” replies Ba Ba.

  Ma Ma leans her elbow against the window, and when she turns her head, you can see a smile on her face.

  “You used to tear along the beach in that buggy real fast,” says Ba Ba. “For someone who doesn’t have a driver’s license.”

  “Shush,” says Ma Ma. She is still smiling.

  It starts to drizzle. As the windshield wipers scrape ineffectively at the rain, you nervously rub at the skin where the gold ring should be. You feel you can’t tell your mother the truth. You can’t admit that you were foolish enough to take it off. You can’t admit that she trusted you with such a precious treasure and you broke that trust. Most of all, you can’t face the fact that the ring was supposed to bring you luck and all it has given you is misery.