The negativity in the air had not diminished, the atmosphere within the market remained unchanged, but she knew that the impressions she was receiving had nothing to do with a cup hugirngsi or tse meg, were entirely unrelated to the supernatural.
' She suddenly wished her grandmother were here. Her parents had turned the corner, and Sue moved across the front of the store to the next aisle, looking toward the far end. They were not there, and she con ting ued on to the next row.
Mrs. Grimes rushed toward her from between the stacks of canned foods.
Sue stepped back, feeling as though she'd been physically pushed. This was where the hostility was coming from, the source of the negativity within the market. She could feel it rolling off the woman in nearly palpable waves.
Mrs. Grimes moved past her, frowning, saying nothing. Sue walked quickly down the vacated aisle and found her parents in the produce section, stocking up on cabbage for the restaurant. Her mother looked up at her, annoyed. 'Why are you just standing around? Help us. Get a gallon of milk.'
Her mother had a list for the house, her father for the restaurant, and they alked through the market, picking up everything they needed for both before heading back to the checkout stand. Again, the register was unattended, Mr. and Mrs. Grimes nowhere to be seen.
Her father began taking items from the cart and placing them on the unmoving black rubber conveyor belt. 'Wait,' her mother said. 'We forgot to get cereal for John.'
'Cereal?' her father said.
'He doesn't want rice every day.'
'You're going to spoil that boy,' he said, but he followed her back down the first aisle to the breakfast foods.
Mr. and Mrs. Grimes emerged from the shadowed meat department, both of them moving behind the register. 'All ready to go?' Mr. Grimes asked.
'Almost,' Sue said. 'My parents are just getting some cereal.'
Mrs. Grimes cleared her throat loudly, melodramatically, and nudged her husband. Mr. Grimes looked embarrassed and pushed her arm down, but he faced Sue. He smiled, tried to make his voice casual. 'How come your morn and dad're always talkin' Chinese. he asked. She blinked. 'Because they're Chinese.' 'But they're in America now.'
Her cheeks were hot, and she could feel herself becoming defensive.
'What does that mean? They're in America so they should be speaking American? What is American? What language is native to this country?
Navajo? Hopi?'
He laughed. 'You got me there.' He looked at his wife and rubbed his chin. She could hear the rough skin of his fingers scraping against the stubble. 'No, I just mean that, well, since they're in an English-speaking country they probably oughta be speaking English.'
'They do,' Sue said, her face growing warmer. 'When they need to. But Cantonese is their native language, and when they have personal conversations it's easier for them to speak Cantonese.' She shifted her weight uncomfortably. 'It's like if you and your wife moved to China. You'd speak Chinese when you had to, to get along in society, but when you were home alone you'd speak English. It's your native language, it's easier for you. There'd be no reason for you to speak Chinese in private, would there?' She motioned toward her parents.
'Same thing.'
He nodded thoughtfully, still rubbing his chin. 'I see your point.'
Next to him, his wife leaned forward, thin lips pursed. 'Well, I'll be honest with you. I don't like it. I mean, your parents are good folks and all, don't get me wrong. But sometimes .. . well, sometimes I can't tell what they're talking about when they talk like that. I can't help thinking that they're talking about me.'
'Right now,' Sue said drily, 'they're talking about corn flakes.'
Mrs. Grimes frowned. 'You know what I mean. I have nothing against your parents, but what if there were some of them who weren't so nice, who weren't such good people?' '' 'Some of who?' '-' .... ' ' She colored. ''You know, foreign..' people from othel countries. I mean, how would we know what they weft talking about?'
Mr. Grimes turned toward his wife. 'I think her point Edna, is that some conversations are private. Some thing'. you don't need to know about.'
Her parents returned with a box of Rice Krispies, ant both Mr. and Mrs. Grimes smiled pleasantly at them, she totaling the purchases on the register, he bagging the grocery ceries. 'Come again,' Mrs. Grimes said as they left.
Sue had often wondered what it was that had prompte, her parents to settle in Rio Verde. After moving to the United States from Hong Kong, they had lived for a years in Chinatown in New York--where she was born before heading west when she was two. But what had made them decide on Arizona? And why had they decided to live in this town instead of Phoenix or Tucson or Flagst or Prescott?
She had never Come out and asked her parents why they were here. Partly because she did not want to mention to them that she was not completely happy here, partly because she suspected that her father had been suckered into buying land in Rio Verde.
But as they walked out to the car, as the oppressive ne that had hung over her since she'd stepped into the market lifted, she found herself wondering if there were oth reasons they had come here. Had it been laht sic, fate? had her grandmother's Di Lo Ling Gum steered the here?
She pushed these ideas out of her mind. Her father unlocked her mother's door, then popped open the back of the station wagon, and he and Sue loaded the groceries. Her father closed the hatch, then went around to the driver's door. 'We'll stop by the restaurant first,' he said.
'I need to go to the newspaper office,' Sue told him. 'All right Actually, I think I'd rather walk. I can use the exercise.
And you won't have to go out of your way.'
'Are you ashamed of us?' her mother said from inside the car.
'No.'
'Then why won't you come with us?'
Sue sighed. 'Fine,' She opened the back door of the station wagon.
'If you want to walk, walk,' her father said. 'It is not a problem.'
'I don't want to cause an argument.'
'Go,' he told her.
She smiled at him. 'Thank you.'
Sue moved out of the way, and as the station wagon backed up, she expected to hear the sound of her parent arguing, but even her mother must not have considered this a big deal since both parents waved and smiled through the windows as the car pulled out of the parking lot.
Sue looked around. She was standing alone now by the green Torino, facing the smoked glass of the market door, and she turned away and hurried across the cracked and broken asphalt of the parking lot, wanting to get as fast away from there as possible.
She began walking toward the newspaper office, but! instead of heading down the highway, she found herself turning onto Jefferson, then onto Copperhead. She did not know why she was going this way--it was longer and slower and led through the crummier part of townEbut her feet were leading and her head was following, her directions running on instinct.
She turned left onto Arrow. And there was the black church.
She stopped. There was something about the way the buildings fit together that she didn't like, that set her on edge. It was nothing specific, nothing she could put a finger on, more of a general feeling--a sense that the architectural aesthetics of the union were wrong.
Although it was daytime, the street was deserted. A scrap of paper blew across the asphalt, drifdng from the construction site to the empty feed and grain store, making everything seem like part of a ghost town.
Ghost. '
That was it exactly. There was an air of unreality about this street, the sense here of something supernatural.
She wanted to go back the way she had come, but a fog seemed to have settled over her brain, and her feet
