by Remy Lai
“Papa said the tartness of the raspberry cuts through the richness of all that chocolate, so you won’t feel sick after a few bites.” All of a sudden, the mention of Papa makes my nose burn. Maybe because my nose knows I haven’t made a Pie in the Sky cake today. “Tomorrow, Yanghao. We’ll make it tomorrow.”
Yanghao trudges out of the kitchen. “Rule number twenty-six,” he shouts. “Jingwen is to remember SUGAR is sweet and SALT is salty.”
I start washing the dishes. “Tomorrow, I promise.”
There’s no reply, so I check if Yanghao is sobbing somewhere. He’s on the sofa, his nose in The Little Prince.
Missing out on making a Pie in the Sky cake matters much more to me than to him. Missing out on making the chocolate raspberry torte matters much more to me than to him.
Because he doesn’t know.
That it was the last cake Papa and I made together.
* * *
That Sunday, as Papa and I assembled this torte, he suggested we make rainbow cake the Sunday after next for my birthday party at school. It was the big party that he and Mama had agreed to throw for me because I’d gotten all A’s after years of mostly C’s and some D’s. In a way, I should have thanked Xirong and my other classmates for calling me Smell Like Cake and laughing at my family’s broken-down CR-V. I’d only studied harder because I wanted to prove to them my family’s cake shop wasn’t that shabby, my family wasn’t that poor, and we could afford a big birthday party.
But then there was Papa asking me if I wanted, for the most important thing in my big birthday party, a homemade cake. A cake that wouldn’t make anyone go, “Wow!” at first sight.
I said all my other classmates who had birthday parties in school had colorful cakes with fancy shapes and edible figurines on top, and their party favors were colorful stationery or lollies.
He said his rainbow cake was colorful.
I said I wanted a SpongeBob SquarePants cake, and my classmate who had his birthday last month had bought one from a fancy cake shop in the city and everyone thought it was the most awesome cake ever.
Papa said how about a Pie in the Sky cake, then.
What other terrible things did I say to Papa?
41
Our cake shop’s cakes are cheap.
Rainbow cake is fancier.
But still cheap.
Pie in the Sky cakes are definitely fancier and more expensive than both, but it wouldn’t have mattered what Papa offered to make for my birthday party. Not even if it was ten-tiered with fireworks shooting out of it. I didn’t want my old classmates to see anything he had made. I wanted a cake we purchased from another shop. Anything my classmates knew we spent money to buy.
I quickly finish Mr. Fart’s homework, not bothering to check any words in the dictionary. I don’t even double-check my math answers. Then I heat up dinner for Yanghao and me, take a shower, and go to bed.
I can’t wait to make Papa’s chocolate raspberry torte.
I can’t wait for tomorrow to come.
* * *
Tomorrow comes, but the cookbook that has the recipe for chocolate raspberry torte is gone.
When I get to school, the book isn’t in my backpack where I always keep it.
“What did you forget?” Ben whispers. He slides his pencil case toward me. “Pen? Eraser?”
I shake my head and stuff my things back into my bag.
* * *
At recess, Ben points to the door and asks, “Want to come with me for lunch?”
I shake my head and fish out my lunch box from my bag. He smiles that smile where instead of curving up, the corners of his lips curve inward. A disappointed smile that could also be a pitiful smile. Then he leaves me in peace.
I should have gone with him, but my mind is in a whirl. Which I know is silly because that booger Yanghao is probably the one who took the cookbook. Or maybe I’ve really forgotten it, and it’s on the coffee table.
Without the cookbook, I have to watch the students in the courtyard for my lunchtime entertainment. As I munch on a fried prawn, I spot Yanghao below.
Then I spot Ben.
I shouldn’t have turned down Ben’s invitation.
Suddenly, despite the din, the crunch of the fried prawn seems very loud.
42
“I didn’t take it! Ididn’ttakeitIdidn’ttakeitIdidn’ttakeit!” Yanghao doesn’t let up all the way from the school gates to the grocery store to buy the ingredients, and along the whole walk home.
Mama gives us a kiss each. We smile widely and promise her we’ll be good boys and we’ll finish homework as well as dinner. We wave good-bye and wish her a great day at work. Once the door clicks shut, I scurry to the kitchen and sweep aside the homework I was pretending to do. I get ready to make chocolate raspberry torte, while Yanghao looks for the cookbook.
“It’s the one with the chocolate cake on the cover,” I say.
“It’s not in the living room.” He gallops toward the bedrooms. While I’m wondering how many grams of ground almonds are needed, he shouts, “I can’t find it! I can’t find any of the other cookbooks either.”
“Did you look properly?” I huff and hurry to Mama’s room.
Yanghao’s on all fours. He has pulled out the suitcases under Mama’s bed and is peering under the bed. “I did.”
I toss Mama’s blanket and pillows aside and check the drawers in her wardrobe before hurrying to my room. I toss my and Yanghao’s blankets and pillows aside. I look under my bed. Just a suitcase. No cookbooks.
I storm to the living room.
I win. “Stop crying. You started it.”
That makes him cry louder. He sounds like a thousand cats caterwauling.
Someone knocks on the door, but before I can reach it, I hear keys jingling and then the door opens. Anna. When did Mama give her our keys?
“Jingwen, what is happening—Oh, Yanghao!” She rushes past me and plops down next to Yanghao. He doesn’t resist when she pulls his head to her bosom. But still he cries and cries. Snot is everywhere.
Serves him right. He started it. I rub the spot where he bit my arm. It’s wet with saliva, warm, and throbbing.
Anna asks me something, but in her panic, she forgets to speak to us like we’re snails and, in the process, proves that I am, indeed, a snail because I don’t understand her. But Yanghao wails, points to me, and says something to Anna. His words are so garbled I can’t even tell if he’s speaking Martian.
“There, there, Yanghao.” Anna speaks like we’re snails again. She gets up, bringing Yanghao with her. “Let’s go to my house and have some cookies.”
Without any hesitation at all, Yanghao leaves with Anna. Now that he has Anna’s cookies, he doesn’t care about the chocolate raspberry torte we won’t be making today, the torte Papa and I made fifteen days before my tenth birthday. My nose tickles. I shouldn’t think about Papa.
She holds the door open for me. “Jingwen? Come on.”
Then it was fourteen days before my tenth birthday. Now my nose is on fire. So are my eyes.
“Come over later if you want. All right, Jingwen?” The door clicks shut.
Then it was thirteen, twelve, eleven days before my tenth birthday. Now my chest is on fire.
It was a nice afternoon.
Not rainy.
Not cloudy.
Papa wasn’t home.
I was home.
Yanghao was home.
Mama was home.
Ah-po was home.
Ah-gong was home.
Even Mango was home.
Papa never came back.
A policeman came instead.
Ten days before
my
tenth birthday.
43
I rub my nose raw, but thoughts of Papa keep creeping back into my brain.
I race to my backpack under the dining table and throw open my dictionary. I pick random words. “Avoid.” “Deny.” “Escape.” “Hide.” But the words can’t push out thought
s of how I was a terrible son to Papa just before he died.
The phone rings.
It’s Mama. “What are you boys doing, Jingwen?”
“I’m doing homework.” It no longer matters if I lie. “Mama, where are your cookbooks?”
“I’m keeping them in the cake shop.”
“Why? We like to—uh—read them.”
“I like to practice baking here whenever I have a break. Barker Bakes has the best baking equipment. Anyway, I found one of my cookbooks in your schoolbag. Why did you take a cookbook to school? You should read those books that I borrowed for you from the library instead.”
I say nothing.
“What’s your little brother doing?”
“Uh … he—”
The door opens, and Yanghao comes in. His eyes are swollen.
“He’s not doing anything, Mama,” I say, turning my back to him.
“Have you two had dinner?”
I spin around, but Yanghao has already escaped into our room.
“What’s going on, Jingwen? You two aren’t fighting, are you? You have to give in to Yanghao. You’re the older one.”
“We’re not fighting now.”
“Good. Make sure your brother finishes his dinner. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I hang up the phone and rub my back. Feels like a bruise. Maybe I deserve that punch, but did he have to hit so hard?
* * *
Yanghao doesn’t say a word to me the rest of the night. After I heat up our dinner in the microwave, he finishes his dumpling noodles quietly. He watches SpongeBob without roaring with laughter or repeating English phrases he catches or asking me if I’ve finally finished my homework. He takes a shower without my needing to nag him. Then he disappears into our bedroom.
I don’t say a word either.
When I get to bed, Yanghao is already asleep.
The space between our beds is only an arm’s length, but it’s as vast as the dark sky outside the window. He looks so, so small.
I get up and tiptoe the two steps over to his bed. As gently as I can, I untangle his blanket from where it’s all scrunched up around his knees. I pull it up over his shoulders. His eyes move under the eyelids, but he doesn’t make a peep.
44
Mama must know Yanghao and I fought. First, Yanghao’s eyes are still swollen in the morning. Second, he and I don’t talk as we eat breakfast, and not even as she walks us to the bus station. Third, we do everything she asks us to without question or complaint.
It isn’t the first time—and I bet it won’t be the last time—that Yanghao and I have fought. She doesn’t press us about it, though. She must be enjoying our complete obedience while it lasts.
Even after all that wailing, Yanghao hasn’t lost his voice. During recess, I spy on him from my usual window perch. He chatters away to Sarah. She replies without scratching her head, so his English must be getting pretty good.
I notice a smudge on the window. Here I am on one side of the glass, and everyone else is on the other.
I have to come up with a way to make that chocolate raspberry torte. But no matter how I squeeze my brain, I come up empty.
When the last bell rings, I wonder if he’ll be waiting for me at the gates. Surely that crybaby wouldn’t dare take the bus by himself.
As I pack my bag, Ben says, “Want to go and have some cakes, Jingwen?”
“Ben,” Miss Scrappell says. I don’t catch what she says next.
“Is Jingwen in trouble, Miss Scrappell?” Ben asks.
“No. See you tomorrow, Ben.”
Ben smiles at me and joins the rest of my classmates-not-friends trickling out of the room. Some of them glance at Yanghao and me, but Max holds my gaze, a look of either pity or mockery on his face, until he disappears out of view.
I don’t want to lose the see-who-could-keep-quiet-the-longest contest, but I have no choice. I whisper to Yanghao, “What are you doing here? What did you do?”
He stomps his foot. “Not me. I was waiting for you at the gates when your teacher called me. She asked me to translate. She says you’re supposed to stay back for an hour every day after school so she can tutor you in English, but you’ve never stayed behind. She thinks it’s because you don’t understand what she said.”
What I’d give to be able to poof! into thin air.
“She said she’d been trying to call Mama. I think I spoke to her on the phone once when she called and Mama wasn’t home. Anyway, she got hold of Mama at home this morning. She also said Mama said I have to wait for you. I think that’s what your teacher said, anyway. She speaks a little too fast for me.” He turns to Miss Scrappell. “I told him, Miss Scrappell.”
“Thank you, Yanghao. Why don’t you—” I don’t get anything else Miss Scrappell says, but Yanghao does, because he gives a King-Kong-sized sigh and trudges to a table at the back of the room.
“Let’s start, Jingwen,” Miss Scrappell says, smiling and patting my desk as if we’re about to play the funnest board game ever. I sigh. She’s so truly excited about teaching me that I can’t even hate her for putting me through this torture.
But maybe Yanghao hates her a little bit because waiting for my tutoring to end must be torture times infinity. Throughout the lesson, he keeps distracting me.
Miss Scrappell isn’t distracted at all and keeps correcting the sentences I write.
I going read book.
I going read a book.
I am going reading a book.
I am going read a book.
I am going to read a book.
I look up.
45
Now that he’s won our see-who-could-keep-quiet-the-longest contest, Yanghao is once again a chatterbox. “It’s so booooooring! I have to wait for you like that every day,” he says as we get off the bus at the station.
“Not every day.” I pause. “There’s no school on Saturdays and Sundays.”
He rolls his eyes. I’d never tell him this, but he’s too cute to pull off eye rolling.
“You don’t have to wait for me. You can go home on your own, you know. Take the bus on your own.”
“Ma-Mama would never allow that. I’m only nine.”
“Almost ten,” I say, and I realize he’s now the same age I was when Papa died. That makes me a little grateful, that I had more time with Papa than Yanghao did, and then that makes me sad.
Suddenly, Yanghao guffaws and points to my arm.
He chortles into my sleeve.
“Don’t get snot on me,” I say, and that sends him into another bout of giggles. Suddenly, as we pass by Barker Bakes on our walk home, he stops laughing and points into the window. “That’s your classmate, right?”
On the other side of the glass, Ben stands by the display case. What a coincidence, that he asked me to get cakes from Mama’s workplace. I ask Yanghao if he wants a cake.
“But we don’t have the cookbooks anymore.”
“No, I mean we can buy a cake—” That’s when I see Ben is with someone else.
Are Ben and Joe good friends? Joe did ask Ben to join his math project group, but that doesn’t mean they’re good enough friends to hang out after school. I turn on my heels.
“What about the cake, Jingwen?” Yanghao asks, running beside me.
“Another day. Now, be quiet.”
“Ten minutes, Jingwen.” Yanghao tugs at my snotty sleeve when we reach the playground. “Mama won’t know since she already left for work by now, and we can’t make cakes anymore anyway. Please?”
“No.” I continue walking. I don’t hear his running footsteps or his “Jingwen, wait!” but he must be right behind me, sulking.
But when I reach our apartment building, I don’t see him in the reflection of the glass door. Oh no. Oh no. I dash back where I came from. We must have walked this route a million times. He can’t possibly have gotten lost from the playground to home, can he? If anything happens to him, I’ll be blamed for sure.
He’s not at the playgrou
nd. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Then, among the kids scrambling up and down like monkeys, I spot Sarah, she-whose-words-are-golden, whooshing out of the tube slide. Sure enough, Yanghao whooshes out after her. He sees me and gives me a pleading look.
“Ten min—” Before I finish, he’s zoomed up the steps to the airplane-shaped tower. I crawl into the space under the tower and twirl the giant tic-tac-toe cubes. Yanghao can play for ten, fifteen minutes. Mama won’t know. If Yanghao and I go straight home after my tutoring, the earliest we’ll reach home is four thirty, and she’ll have just left for work. As long as we’re home when she calls around seven, we’re safe.
“No way, Joe.” The familiar voice cuts through the din. It’s Ben’s voice.
46
I need a distraction. “What happened to the prince?”
Yanghao squints at me. “The little prince? Why do YOU want to know?”
“Fine. Don’t tell me.”
“The little prince lives on an asteroid, but he got stranded in the desert, and he wants to go home. But he doesn’t know how to.”
“You told me that. What happens next? What happened to the elephant? And the very big snake?”
“They’re drawings the author made. The author is the pilot who met the little prince in the desert. There are a sheep and a fox in the story, though.”
“Does this desert have a zoo?” Stories with animals are the best.
Before I can find out if that desert did have a zoo, there’s a flash of orange.
“You scared me,” Yanghao says. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Anna must have gone out and dropped Ginger off before we came home.”
“How come she only came out now? We’ve been home almost an hour.”
“Who knows. Cats are weird.” I crumple up a piece of yellow notepaper and toss it. Ginger leaps off Yanghao’s lap and chases after it. I pick it up and toss it again. After several rounds, I hear a creak and a bang. Anna’s home.
