Ashes (11 page)

Mom taught me the word "afterthought." She sometimes even calls me that. Her Little Afterthought. She smiles when she says that, but it's one of those crooked smiles where one side of your face gets wrinkly.

Except to put something inside, Mom only opens that showcase about once a month, when she takes one of those dusters that looks like the back end of a chicken. She runs that duster over the shelves and all that stuff in the showcase. I don't see why she bothers, because that old stuff in there just keeps making more dust. When the light's just right, when you hide behind the door and the sun is sneaking through that little crack between the hall and my bedroom, you can watch her. After she leaves, you can sit there and watch the little silver hairs spin and twirl and then settle down all over again.

But mostly I watch Sung Li. You ought to go up and see her. Maybe you will, after I finish telling her story.

She wears this little robe with flowers on it and she's got a cloth belt tied around her waist. The sleeves where her hands come out are really wide. She has tiny black shoes and pants that are the color of raw rice. But her frosty white face is what I really like to look at.

Her cheeks go way up high under her eyes, and they're sharp like a naked bone. Her eyebrows are real skinny and rounded. She has a nose that's almost invisible, just a little nip of whatever it is they make plates out of. Her lips are bright red and shiny, almost like they're wet. I know it's all paint, but I like to pretend about things like that.

She doesn't look much like me. Except for the eyes. Sometimes I'll look into those black glass eyes of hers, the eyes that seem to soak up whatever light hits them. Then I'll run into the bathroom down the hall, quick before I forget, and look in the mirror at my own eyes. And for just a second, or however long I can go without blinking, I can pretend that I'm pretty like Sung Li.

You really think I'm pretty? Well, it's nice of you to say that, anyway. But I'm not pretty like Sung Li.

At night in bed I wrap the blankets around me and think about Sung Li. I take off my pillowcases and put them on my arms and pretend they're big sleeves. I stick my lips out a little, like I'm waiting for a secret kiss. I pretend I'm sitting on the middle shelf and people look at me and like me because I am pretty and have good value.

Maybe I wouldn't ever have learned Sung Li's story. But one day Daddy opened the case with his little key because he bought a carved gnome and wanted to put it in there. Mom was watching him, to make sure he didn't break anything. Daddy used to break things sometimes.

No, I don't need a tissue. Everybody keeps telling me that it's okay to cry, and they give me candy bars. But why should I cry? Sung Li is going to be okay.

Usually Mom sent me away whenever the case was opened. I think she was afraid I would pick up something and make its value go down. So I hid behind the door and looked through that crack near the hinges. I heard Daddy tell Mom that the gnome was a collector's item. It was an ugly old thing, with a thick beard and a sharp nose and a face that's all wrinkly like somebody who stayed in the bathtub too long. You can see it when you go up to look at Sung Li, if you want to.

Daddy took Sung Li out of the center space on the main shelf and put that knotty old gnome in her place. He put Sung Li on the bottom shelf and leaned her against my baby shoes. They're bronze now. They weren't bronze when I wore them.

I knew Sung Li was mad about being moved, maybe just because Daddy had touched her. Her eyes burned with all that light they had soaked up over the years. But Daddy didn't notice, he just hummed his little hum and tilted his head back to make sure the gnome was centered on the shelf. Then he closed the door and I saw Mom hide the key under the showcase.

After they were gone, I tiptoed to the case and felt under the bottom edge until I found the key. I heard the front door slam and then heard Daddy start his car and drive away, back to work or wherever he stayed all day until dark. Mom was messing with the laundry downstairs. I put the key in the lock and turned it. The whole front of the case opened up, and it squeaked like a door in a haunted house.

I reached out to touch Sung Li, and my hand was trembling. She was so pretty, even when she was mad about being moved. Her lips were shining in the little bit of sunshine. Then I couldn't help myself, I had to feel her smooth skin, even if it meant her value would go down and Mom would be mad at me. I touched her secret lips and they were cold, cold like a popsicle, cold like the sidewalk in winter when you lay the back of your head against it.

I felt her soft black hair that was smoothed behind her head. I touched her robe with all its folds and tiny stitches. I rubbed that little pinch of a nose. I picked her up.

I thought she would be made out of that hard stuff they make plates out of. But only her head was. The rest must have been stuffed with rags or cotton or something like that. When I picked her up with my hand around her skinny waist, her head flopped over and banged against the bronze shoes. The showcase rattled and I was afraid Mom would hear it even over the noise of the washer.

I quick put my hand around Sung Li's head. I felt a sharp pain. I pulled my fingers out from under her hair and there was blood on them. Her head had cracked.

My heart must have skipped at least two beats. I was afraid Mom would be mad because Sung Li's value had gone down and Daddy would give me one of his special spankings. And I was afraid that Sung Li wouldn't love me after that.

Isn't that funny, how you love somebody but you end up breaking them?

But Sung Li's eyes weren't mad anymore. They just looked off over my shoulder and soaked up the sunshine. That's when I heard Mom coming up the stairs. I leaned Sung Li back against the bronze shoes and closed the case.

I think I was breathing again by then because I could see fog on the glass. I put the key back in its hiding place, and that's when I remembered that I hadn't locked the case. But I thought maybe I could do that later, if Mom didn't notice that I'd messed with anything. It almost looked exactly the same as before. The crack in Sung Li's head was hidden by her hair.

But one thing I knew Mom would notice. The dust on the shelves. Daddy had been real careful when he set Sung Li there on the lower shelf. But I was in such a hurry to pick her up, I had wiped a clean trail where Sung Li's robe had brushed across the wood. And one thing I had learned from watching dust settle all those times, you just can't hurry dust.

My tummy felt like it had a stone in it. When Mom reached the hall, she asked me why I was so pale. She said I was as white as a
China
doll. She felt my forehead and said I might be getting a fever. She was so worried that she forgot to look in the case.

She tucked me in and then Daddy came later and tucked me in twice. After he left, I stared up at the ceiling in the dark and thought I could see Sung Li's eyes. Even when I thought I was asleep, I still saw those eyes. And my head hurt. And the eyes got bigger and bigger until they filled up everything. And then it was like I was looking through Sung Li's eyes. You know how you get a fever and things get mixed up?

That's how I was feeling. How could my eyes feel cold and glassy and big like that when I was asleep? But all I know is that Sung Li wanted me to look through her eyes.

Sung Li saw the edge of the shelf, she felt the cold of the bronze shoes against her back. But the robe was soft and snug around her body, the sleeves as loose as pillowcases. She stretched out and then she was standing, raising up on those wiggly legs and walking to the glass door.

She tripped over an ivory elephant that came up to her knees. The elephant fell over and landed on some of Uncle Theodore's army medals. The noise was so loud, it would have woken me up if I hadn't been dreaming so heavily. Then Sung Li crawled over a toy metal train that was old and rusty. Curly flakes of paint stuck to her robe.

She pushed open the glass door to the showcase and jumped to the floor with something from the shelf, something that was dark. She landed on her little shoes, her head flopping up and down because it was so heavy. In my sleep, I heard a thumping and scratching down the hall, at my parents' door. Or maybe I was awake, because a dog was barking somewhere down the street.

Then I heard Daddy's breathing, sort of long and loud, not the short and fast way it gets on Mom's library nights. Sung Li felt the edge of the blanket that was hanging down to the floor. She pulled herself up, the volcano knife tucked under her arm, and the next thing I knew she was on Daddy's chest and rocking up and down like a boat on the ocean.

I don't know what happened after that, only I heard Mom screaming and I think I woke up and I was glad it was only a dream because I was scared. But Mom kept screaming and screaming, then I knew I was awake because my finger hurt where I had cut it.

I cut it on the crack in Sung Li's head, just like I told you. Not on the volcano knife. I never touched the volcano knife.