Stealing Time

She attempted a little smile. 'What's going on Ma?'

Skinny Dragon refused to look away from the TV.

When April was little she used to amuse herself by counting the different meanings of her mother's silences. She'd calculated a hundred different kinds of silence, including Skinny's crowing satisfaction when she shoved something truly disgusting—that April

really

didn't want to chew up and swallow—into April's mouth when she was little and defenseless. The silence now was number 23 silence. Number 23 contained the message:

You've been gone too long, you've been up to no good, and whatever you tell me will be a big lie.

Although most silences were no-win silences, silence number 23 was particularly no-win.

'Where have you been? I must have called a dozen times in the last few days,' April began.

'Where I, where you?' Sai demanded. Her first words were a battle cry already rising to a shriek. 'I here.'

April shook her head. 'No, you weren't. Ma.'

Sai's jaws clamped together as she remembered that she was supposed to be silent. Her eyes traveled to the steam rising from the roiling pot. April's eyes traveled there, too. The contents seemed to be some kind of thin stew, but the liquid was black and smelly beyond belief. She didn't know how her mother could sit in the same room with it. Skinny must be really angry. April had the disconcerting thought that her mother might have killed a rat, or a raccoon, or even Dim Sum because the dog had been April's gift to her. The thought of her mother killing the adorable puppy made her feel even sicker.

'I was worried about you,' she said. 'It's not like you to take off without telling me. Where's Dim Sum?'

Silence.

'Ma, where's the puppy?' April looked around the kitchen. No dog under the table. No dog in her father's chair.

Silence.

'Ma, what's in the pot?'

'Save your life, that's what.' Now Skinny's eyes were sharp as she avidly studied her subject.

April had thought she looked pretty good when she left for work the morning before. But Thursday had started in Mike's bed, ended there, too, and April knew by her mother's expression that the poison in the pot was for her. She coughed and tasted bile, wishing she'd delayed her return another few days. With the cough. Skinny came alive.

'You very bad,' Sai said ominously in Chinese.

'Yeah, well, whatever you're doing there is really making me sick. I better talk to you tomorrow, Ma.' April backed out of the kitchen. She was now pretty sure there was decayed animal matter cooking in the kitchen. She decided that wherever her mother was headed with it, Skinny Dragon had to go there alone. April wasn't visiting this particular hell with her.

'No, no, no.' Sai jumped out of the chair with amazing nimbleness for someone who did nothing all day but watch TV and brood. She grabbed her daughter, restraining her with an iron grip that transported April back to the time when her mother used to dig all ten fingernails into April's upper arms to break the skin, or her daughter's will, whichever came first. Skinny didn't dare do that now. But she held on, stopping April from escaping out the kitchen.

'No, Ma,' April said firmly, prying off her mother's fingers. 'Let go. We're not playing doctor tonight. I'm fine.'

'You sick,' Sai hissed. The top of her head with its crown of frizzy dyed-black hair came up to April's chin. April could have wrenched away, could have taken her mother down with the twist of her wrist. But she didn't. She let Skinny reach up a scrawny paw and clamp it on her forehead to prove she didn't have a fever.

Many times in her life April had longed for a hug, not a poke or a shove, but Skinny Dragon believed that the best mothering was achieved through tyranny, threats, and deprivation.

'Hot,' Sai said with satisfaction.

'No.' April moved out of range. No matter what, none of that stinking brew was going down her throat.

'Hot,' Skinny insisted.

'I'm going to bed now, Ma.'

'Liver very bad,' Sai said knowingly.

'My liver's great.'

Sai's face twisted with Chinese opera as the charges poured out. Worm daughter's face was a no-good color. Worm's pulse was racing. Pulse was elevated to ten times its normal rate. This was a sign of imminent death. Sai screamed that she personally didn't care if

boo hao

daughter bit the dust, but such a death was an insult to

her

father and mother, to their Han ancestors dating back to the beginning of time.

'My pulse is racing because I'm tired and you're screaming at me.'

'No screaming!' Sai screamed.

'What's the matter with you, Ma? You've got to calm down. You're going to have a heart attack.'

'No care about me. No care about your father. Only care about yourself.' Still in Chinese. She gripped April's arms again.

'Oh, God.' April detached herself a second time. 'It's one o'clock in the morning. I have to go to work in a few hours.' She stepped across the room and turned off the burner on the stove.

'Okay. Go to work. Never come back. But take medicine first.'

'I'm not taking it,' April told her. For the first time in her life April was absolutely determined not to take any smelly medicine.

'Yes.' Sai was acting the peasant in her black pants and jacket, trying to deceive the gods about her prosperity. But the peasant guise was ruined by the natural disaster occurring on her face. Rage like a tornado, a hurricane, blasted her because she could manage any demon but her own daughter.

'No, I'm not taking it. I'm throwing it out.' April reached for the pot handle.

'Nooooo!' Sai screamed. This sustained shriek was so loud it woke the dead. A loud protest came from the bedroom, and April's father shuffled out.

Ja Fa Woo was wearing shorts and a white T-shirt on his skinny body. His tongue was probing the place where two important gold teeth were missing from his lower jaw. His face was bleary with sleep. The top of his head was bald; the sides, where hair grew, were clipped down to the skin. He was even bonier than Skinny Dragon Mother, his head hardly better fleshed than a skull's. He fumbled with his black-rimmed glasses, got them on, and rubbed his flat nose, looking out at wife and daughter from eyes narrowed with pain and suspicion. He spoke with the powerful number 12 silence:

What is the meaning of this disturbance to my important sleeping self?

His wife replied with the non sequitur of silence number 42.

I told you so.

'Hi, Dad,' April said.

Ja Fa Woo sniffed at the pot, scowling with silence number 3:

You did it wrong.

About the medicine.

Skinny's stony face replied:

I did not.

They fought on in this vein for a while.

'What's going on?' April was the first to speak.

'Your mother thinks you're not in harmony.'

'I'm in perfect harmony,' April said, touching the phone in her pocket.

Sai glared at her husband.

'Spanish boyfriend bad for liver,' Ja Fa spat out