Daddy doesn’t like Florida during the day. After lunch he takes a long nap and we have to be quiet or play outside. But at night, when we’re supposed to be asleep, I can hear his voice in the living room and then all the grown-ups laughing, even Ma. I hear him say my Chinese name and I know he’s telling about how when we first moved to Connecticut and I heard footsteps in the attic. In the morning Ma made me go up the stairs ahead of her and I wouldn’t stop screaming not even when she showed me there were just suitcases and old magazines. My father has told this story to all my parents’ Chinese friends: Mr. Lin, the Sungs, the Lus.
“My elder daughter hears ghosts,” Daddy says. “She has special power.” I can’t tell whether he’s making fun of me.
Sometimes at night Lili jumps up on the bed and sleeps on my feet but in the morning she is gone. There are twin beds, just like at home. Only here I sleep by the window, and my sister sleeps by the door, because Ma is afraid she’ll be sick in the night, like she was in the hotel with the monkey screaming. Marty is the real baby. Why doesn’t my father tell stories about her?
The curtains at the window are thin like wedding dress material, and there are no shades. In the morning the sun comes in and I know right away I’m not at home. There is a funny smell in the air, dusty and sharp, that stays in your nose. The first day we got here Ma leaned over Marty’s bedspread and sniffed it. “Mildew,” she said, and Marty and I laughed because it sounded like doo-doo.
My parents sleep in the fold-out sofa bed in the living room, and my aunty and uncle are in the room across the hall from us. In the middle of the night Uncle Richard has coughing fits. Over and over, like he’s going to die. Aunty Mabel never makes a sound. I picture her lying there in the dark listening, the same as me, until it’s over.
We go to the beach. “Just the girls,” Aunty Mabel says. Daddy wants to sit at home on the patio and read and Uncle Richard doesn’t come with us because he has to work. Aunty Mabel has a dark blue bathing suit made of thick material like a winter coat. Ma’s is green with flowers. They are wearing their matching sunglasses. I watch Marty walk over the sand to where the waves are and just stand there.
“Sally, you remember California?” my aunt asks me.
“No, no, too long ago,” Ma says.
Aunty Mabel says something in Chinese.
My mother translates: “Your aunt says you girls both look very healthy. Must be that American food.”
Marty is stooping down now, looking at something around her ankles. She puts her hand into the water, then snatches it back.
Back at the blanket she tells us, “I saw a crab.” She has her fingers in her mouth.
“Baby,” I say.
“He bit me.” Marty’s face crinkles up and she starts to cry.
I collect lots of shells, tiny oval white ones with pink insides, like ears. Ma gives me a Kleenex so I can wrap them up and put them in the pocket of my shorts.
When it’s time for lunch we pack up the beach things and drive to the mall for hamburgers deluxe—with lettuce and tomato. Ma lets us have orange soda but she calls it orange juice so the waitress gets confused. After lunch we get ice cream cones. Marty picks pistachio because she likes the color, but it tastes so awful she spits it out in the parking lot. Ma lets her have the rest of hers, raspberry sherbet. I have chocolate, as I always do, licking it slowly into a point like a Hershey’s kiss.
I sit at the kitchen table gluing my shells to a piece of shirt cardboard. When I am done I want to draw on it, so I go looking for crayons or a pen. In the living room Aunty Mabel is sitting on the sofa with the shades pulled down, a washcloth over her face. At first I think she’s asleep, but all of a sudden she says in a creaky voice: “Who’s there?”
“Sally.”
“Oh.” She lifts up the towel and looks at me. “You having a good time?”
“Yes, Aunty Mabel.”
“You so much like your father,” she says in a soft voice, and then lays the towel over her face again.
My sister is sitting on the front steps, scratching the back of her legs. She can’t find Lili, she says.
Uncle Richard saw Lili when he was driving home from work. That’s all he says, but Marty and I know she was run over, like the animals on the side of the highway when we drove down.
“Too bad,” says Ma. Aunty Mabel just looks tired, like her headache came back.
Daddy wants to know why I’m not eating anything. When Ma says it’s because of Lili he laughs.
“She so upset about an animal?”
“This cat was like family,” Uncle Richard reminds him.
“I hope she’s half as sad when I die,” says Daddy.
Everyone laughs except me. I am picturing Lili at the edge of the road, waiting to cross, but the cars won’t stop coming, so she finally runs out anyway. It’s the only way she knows to get home.
In the morning I go out to the patio to give my father the shell picture.
“What’s this? For me? So beautiful! Thank you, Sealy.”
I don’t say anything.
“What’s the matter? You miss home?”
I shake my head. He opens his arms so I can climb onto his lap like I used to do in California. “Ai-yah!” he says like I’m too heavy for him and it’s true that I’m the biggest girl in kindergarten. He holds me stiff, too tight, and I want to get back down again.
The sliding door opens and there is my sister. “I got bit by a crab,” she announces.
“Ai-yah,” my father says again. He lets me go. “You girls be good now. Go eat your breakfast.”
The next day, when we are getting ready to go, I see the shell picture out on the patio. It’s caught under a chair leg, already ruined by rain.
Back in Connecticut all I can think about is Florida. The ocean, the little palm tree in the backyard, every meal we ate at the yellow kitchen table. The way the air smelled, heavy and sweet. Uncle Richard saying to Daddy, “Clever, she’s clever, eh?” about me. Daddy nodding.
I think about it at night while Marty and I wait for Ma to come in and read us to sleep. We lie there stretching our legs down as far as we can.
“I will NEVER fill up this bed,” I say, and my sister laughs, kicking up the covers. I arrange all my stuffed animals with my big golden giraffe, Charlie, at my feet to protect me, and Piggy by the pillow.
Ma is reading to us from a book of Chinese folktales. It’s in Chinese, so she translates as she goes, holding up the book so we can see the pictures before she turns the page. We don’t mind her slowness, it just adds to the suspense. She sits in one of the baby rocking chairs Nai-nai gave us when we were born.
One of the stories is called Monkey King. The Monkey King is a god and he doesn’t look like a monkey at all. His head is painted blue and red and yellow and he has the body of a man and a long curly tail. He has a pole that he can make small to carry, big to hit people with. Even though he has eternal life, he’s not happy, and is always making trouble in heaven. When he’s assigned to guard the Queen Mother’s magic peach garden, he ends up gobbling up all the peaches himself.
“Such a greedy, greedy monkey,” Ma says, looking at us like we’re greedy too.
Marty looks scared. I know she’s remembering the hotel monkey.
“He’s just make-believe,” I say.
“I saw him once,” Ma says. “When I was a little girl, my family went on a cruise down the Yangtze River. My father say, ‘Around this bend you look up at the cliff and see the Monkey King.’ Sure enough, we see him standing on the rock looking out with mischievous face.”
“Did he talk to you?” Marty asks.
Ma shakes her head. “Of course not. I tell you, he’s not interested in humans, in a small boat like that. He just watches us.” After we’re finished with the book of folktales Ma tells us stories we remember from Monterey.