Andy shrugged. “But don’t worry, I’ll help you out.” He reached down and took her hand in his.
Willow squeezed his hand and leaned her cheek against his palm. “Thank you.”
“I’ll bring a stagecoach around,” he said.
Andy moved away to tether the horses to the vehicle. When he returned, he assisted Willow into the carriage, a polite smile on his face. She turned her back on him as she was finding her seat. Away from her gaze, Andy’s expression turned greedy. His mouth widened, and he grinned like an alley cat pouncing on a fish bone. His brown eyes seemed to glow in the dark at that moment.
They traveled to the school grounds, to Chinatown, and then circled back. Finally, Willow realized where Jas could have gone. They marched to the front door of my parents’ shack, their footsteps in unison. Willow pounded on the door, an incessant hammering that brought my mother out.
“I’m so sorry,” my mother said. “We wanted to get in touch with you, but it was just for a day...”
“Where’s Jasmine?”
My daughter emerged from the shadows of the interior. I saw her knees trembling, although her gaze held steady under her stepmother’s scrutiny.
“You can’t run away like that,” Willow said. “It’s time to go home.”
Jas hung her head. Then she noticed Andy and took a tiny step backward. “Who’s that?”
“Name’s Andy. I’m family.” Andy lifted Jas up, her feet and arms thrashing at his grip. His arms bounced back like rubber, adjusting to her squirms. He strode over to the stagecoach while Willow stopped for a second and stared down my mother. My mother stood frozen as she watched her granddaughter being carried away. “It’s none of your business now,” Willow said, as she closed the front door with a firm shove.
Andy tossed my daughter into the carriage, and her shoulder bumped against its hard bench. Willow hurried over to sit next to her, sandwiching Jas inside the vehicle. Andy climbed on top of the carriage and whipped the crack against the horses.
I followed them back to my in-laws’ house, and even though it was dark and time for bed, I saw the flames in the oil lamps glittering brightly through the windows. The three of them got out of the carriage and approached the house. When Willow opened the door, the figures inside were so still that they seemed like statues. They sat around the table, but nobody spoke. It felt like ice in there.
Nobody glanced at Andy, the prodigal son, as he poked his head in. He deposited Willow and Jas, slinking back out with a murmured whisper to Willow that he was putting away the horses. As I followed Willow and Jas across the threshold, I could feel the heaviness in the air, like the shift in the sky before a rain storm.
Jas blinked at the scene, while all the heads swiveled toward her.
“Where have you been?” Fillmore asked. My daughter quaked at the tone of his voice, but his finger was pointed at Willow. “Stella had to do your evening chores.”
“I was out searching for Jasmine,” Willow said.
“Stupid,” Fillmore said. “Children will return. I let my boys play outside, and they were always fine.”
“For days on end?” Willow jutted her chin out at him.
Mill startled at her words. “Was it that long?” He went over to Jas and placed a protective hand on her shoulder. “What were you doing out there?”
Jas shrank away from her father’s touch. “I went to PoPo and GungGung’s,” she said.
Fillmore thumped his fist against the dining table. “You went to that cursed family’s house? I told you never to go back there.”
Jas started shaking. “I had to get away when I saw them in the barn.”
“Who?” Fillmore got up and stood over Jas. “Did you see someone taking my horses? I noticed a stagecoach was missing tonight.”
Jas rubbed at the growing bruise on her arm, a result of Andy tossing her in the stagecoach. “Yes, I saw a strange man hugging Willow in the barn.”
Mill stumbled backward and almost tripped over my mother-in-law.
“His name is Andy,” Jas said.
“Andy’s back?” Stella sunk lower in her chair and fanned herself.
“My brother?” Mill said, scratching his head.
“That no-good seed of mine,” Fillmore said. “Back to ruin my reputation. I’ll never make amends with Tanoshii with him around.”
Fillmore had been too greedy with the pool hall owner. And now he’d never get another contract with Andy around. The adolescent son who my father-in-law had chased away from town for betting on horses.
A joy bubbled inside me. I danced around and started giggling. The pressure built up inside my throat, until the laughter swelled in volume and seemed to overflow the room.
Presently, I became aware of a repetitive sound. It was the rhythm of a rocking squeak, and I followed its source to my father-in-law. Fillmore sat on his heels, moving back and forth, while his hands covered his ears. I couldn’t see any mist in the air; no dark swirling color or bright white light. Another sense came alive for me, though. I smelled something strong in the air. It was the scent of rotten eggs, the stench of sulfur.
I went closer to him, and he stopped moving. His eyes looked straight at me, and he started cackling like a witch in a children’s story.
“It all makes sense now,” he said. “You did it.”
“Maybe you should go to bed, Fillmore,” Stella said. She tried to help him from his position, but he stayed there, his focus on me.
“Have it your way,” Mill said, sighing. “But who are you talking to?”
“The she-devil,” my father-in-law said.
Stella shuddered and wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders.
Fillmore pointed right at me, and they all swiveled toward me, their eyes squinting but not seeing anything.
“Are you speaking to me?” I asked him. My voice came out sounding rusty, a tiny squeak.
Fillmore didn’t answer, but his nostrils flared. He lunged forward and tried to tackle me. Even knowing that he couldn’t harm me, I moved out of the way—and watched as his forehead collided with the dining table. It was a nasty knock, and I could see a bump already swelling on his head. “I remember your voice in my dreams,” he said.
I stepped closer, into his private space, and he flinched. “It’s about time you heard me. You never did when I was your daughter-in-law.”
“You brought a curse to this family.”
“A ghost,” Stella said, gasping and crossing herself. Mill stood there, rubbing at his ears and shaking his head, disbelief etched across his features.
I didn’t care if they believed I was real or not. Fillmore recognized me. If it was a battle of will he wanted, so be it. I wouldn’t back down. “It’s your own fault,” I said. “You overreached, trying to expand your business, and you failed.” My voice was strong now, like steel. “Your time is over, old man. I’ve heard that the railroads will devour the stagecoach business.”
“Your daughter messed it all up. Marriage would’ve sealed the pool hall deal forever. I could have made it into another Hughes Hotel.”
The Hughes Hotel, built just last year, smacked of money and had cost $300,000. It was a four-story building with two hundred rooms. It was the largest hotel between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I doubted that Fillmore could ever have converted Tanoshii Pool Hall into anything half as glamorous.
My father-in-law spat on the floor, a gob of wet bright yellow. “Jasmine should have never been born. Better that she rotted away with you from the start.”
Jas gave a little yelp of pain and rushed into the bedroom to hide. I screamed at Fillmore, and the sound was like a sword blade. With the keen of metal, I rushed at his head and saw it flop backwards. Then a shrill sound multiplied from all around me. Thousands of golden slivers darted toward him. My spirit friends. I saw them gliding in past his clothes, infiltrating his whole body.
Fillmore slumped over. I cupped my ear against his chest. He wasn’t dead yet. I heard his heart beating: a
slow, dull sound. His eyes were glazed over, like the vacant glass stare of a porcelain doll.
Stella hovered over her husband. She draped her shawl around him, but he didn’t react to her touch. Her tears wet his cheeks. Maybe she had hoped to transfer some emotion to him, but it was already too late.
Mill and Willow, a few steps away from the older couple, turned and looked at each other in fright. Their fingers reached out and entwined. They drew close to one another, and I saw Mill rub her back the way I’d seen him calm horses before, the ones he called back from illness and fear. He always ended up saving them.
CHAPTER 25
No Interest in Others, Rule 10
A GRIM-FACED SAGE came by and said, “Shame about your father-in-law. They say you reap what you sow.”
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” I said.
“Always be careful what you wish for.” Sage straightened up, and her wings lay sleek and flat against her back. “It’s time for the tenth rule.”
My final chance to make an impression on my daughter. “Can I get some more time?”
“You agreed to this, so keep your promise. The last commandment is: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house… or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
“Fine. Jas won’t be interested in the people around her.”
I left before Sage could even move a muscle, making my way to my in-laws’ house to see my precious child before time ran out.
Jas was sitting at a small wooden desk, a few childish drawings brushed off to the side. My father-in-law also sat, bent over, in a wooden chair in the corner of the room. I ignored the empty shell of a man in favor of my own vibrant daughter. She was writing on a clean sheath of paper in her child’s block letters, the day’s date centered at the top.
She placed the tip of the quill pen against her mouth, the feather brushing her lips. “I’m so alone. Nobody’s here. BaBa and Willow have each other, but who do I have?”
Oh no. I had isolated my child by implementing the last rule. “You have me,” I said. Maybe I could get through to her, since I was not really a “person” around her, in the typical sense.
I tried to enter her mind and tell her about my unending love. Jas was strong, though, and barred my entry. She was no longer the sick child whom I had reached years before.
There must be something I could do to break the barrier between us. I thought back to the porcelain plate I had shoved off the table. Maybe I could harness physical force again. I made myself visualize iron and pushed the pen in Jas’ hand with my will. It stayed still. Perhaps something more shaped for the task? I thought of myself as a giant metallic hand grasping the delicate quill. It wobbled a little on the paper, leaving a tiny dot of ink.
“MaMa?” Jas dropped the pen on the paper.
It took me several tries before I could maneuver it and make the proper swishes. I delighted in seeing my own handwriting appear before me, the familiar curlicues of each letter. “Yes, it’s me,” I wrote.
A smile appeared on Jas’ face, the first I’d seen in a long time, ever since the debacle with the pool hall business. She took the pen and wrote, “I wish I were with you.”
“It’s better here with your family.”
“What family?”
A tear streamed down her cheek and made a splash mark on the page. She stopped short of a full breakdown, but a faint sob rose from her throat. Mill must have heard it from the other room because he soon went over to her side. “What’s wrong, Jasmine?”
He looked at the paper before her. “Are you writing in your diary again? You should talk to me instead.” Mill picked up the sheet, while Jas tried to grab it away. His arm was faster. “You feel lonely?” Then his eyes widened. “Did you learn cursive already?”
“What’s that?” Jas asked.
Mill’s eyes squinted at the print. Then his chin started quivering. He looked all around him. “Topaz?” Of course he had recognized my handwriting, the same flourishes that had stolen his heart in a dozen old love letters.
“Right here,” I said, forgetting that he couldn’t hear me. I wanted to embrace him, even after all the grief he’d given me with his remarriage. If I got close enough, I could probably breathe in his heady smell of straw and sun. I moved toward his chest, my head aching for that sweet spot on his shoulder, but I smelled nothing as I edged forward.
I dragged myself over to the pen. “Yes, Mill.”
“Dad saw you,” he wrote. “I can’t believe you destroyed him.”
Such a strong word. It was Fillmore’s own greed that had really broken him down. Besides, I was secretly glad my father-in-law was gone. What did the man really deserve? I was just speeding things along their natural course by whispering to him.
“I’ve been helping Jas,” I wrote.
“No, you haven’t. The past needs to be over.” Mill took the sheet of paper, ripped it into shreds, and scattered it across the desk.
Jas picked up every tiny scrap and stared at the slivers in her hand. “That’s all I had of her.”
Mill looked at our daughter, and his shoulders slumped. He made his way over to the supply cabinet with heavy steps and found a bottle of paste. “I suppose it’s right to remember your mother.” Mill and Jas began organizing the shredded pieces, gluing them back together.
I went over to Fillmore. Mill had respected my memory, and it was time to give back in kind. I saw my father-in-law bathed in the golden light of the worms, which colored his skin an unearthly yellow. I went over to the mass of wriggles and spotted my first friend, Kelvin.
“I need to help him come back,” I said.
“Fillmore is lost in the abyss. Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“Yes… but then again, no.”
The other slippery golden things started focusing on me, slithering to a single point on Fillmore’s chest, level with my line of sight. “He’s ours now,” they said.
“No, he’s my family,” I said. “I want him back.”
The worms morphed in shape, lengthening into snakes. They wrapped around me, choking my neck. I flung them away with my ghostly hands, but they danced in the air and somersaulted on top of me. Then they started multiplying, splitting apart into tinier lines—but new spikes appeared on their backs. The vicious thorns seemed to tear at my flesh. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t beat the serpents away.
How would I fight them? Kelvin had taught me to imagine my body as a solid item to attack the physical world. When I attempted to think of myself as a wall, a strong brick one, the worms kept battering me. I felt faint with pain. How do you retaliate against things that had no substance? Then I recalled seeing Bao’s thoughts as black, dark things. What if I thought about the positive? I started saying Fillmore’s good traits out loud:
“My father-in-law provided well for his family.”
“He embraced new things.”
“He had good business sense.”
“He was creative in making his way in America.”
With each word spoken, the creatures backed up a little, until I had formed a shield, a thin bubble, surrounding Fillmore and myself. My father-in-law’s eyes unclouded, and he sat up, his back straightening against the chair with a loud knocking sound. Jas glanced over from where she and Mill were still gluing the paper fragments. “BaBa, look!”
Mill called out for Stella and Willow, and they all crowded around Fillmore. When they had gathered near him, my father-in-law looked at all of them, his eyes lingering on each familiar face. “I love you. Forgive me my faults.” After he uttered that sentence, our bubble burst.
The crowd of worms doubled up on me, clinging to my pores. They started screaming at me, a hailstorm of screeches. In the madness, I heard their taunting, every negative jab at my entire existence:
“Do you know you just supported a man who despised you?”
“How could you let another woman take your place as a mother?”
“You left your daughter at childbirth.”
/> I covered my ears with my hands, but the words kept ringing in my head. Exhausted, I lay writhing on the floor, watching the evil worms with their golden exterior creep underneath Fillmore’s skin. After they left my side, I heard a whisper in the sudden lull.
Mill, with his back turned to Willow, said into the air: “Thank you, my bride.” It was what Mill had called me after our marriage ceremony, when he’d carried me across the threshold of our new home. Mill’s voice filled me up on the inside, and I pulled myself off the ground.
“Go in peace,” he said. He meant well. I needed rest, but I couldn’t follow his advice yet. I might have done my duty to my husband, honoring our wedding vows by assisting his father, but he didn’t realize I had another promise to keep. I still had to see to the complete education and upbringing of our daughter.
CHAPTER 26
Locked in Jail
THE FAMILY’S TINY BLIP of happiness, restored by a moment of awareness from Fillmore, disappeared the next day. Early morning brought a policeman knocking on the front door.
“I’m looking for Millerton Woo,” the uniformed officer said.
Mill stepped up to the policeman. In his undershirt, his broad shoulders looked imposing. “How can I help you?”
“Hands behind your back,” the policeman said.
Mill complied, but asked, “What’s this all about?”
The policeman handcuffed him. “You thought you’d be smart, doing it at the break of dawn, but somebody saw you.”
“There must be some mistake.”
“We know you’re involved. Your stagecoach was waiting outside the pool hall, emblazoned with the Woo family name. Time to come with me.”
The policeman led Mill away, and the rest of the family finally started understanding. Stella whimpered. Jas hid in the corner, one hand covering her eyes. Willow moved over to the policeman, her voice loud in the shocked quiet of the room. “Let me go with him. My husband needs my support.”
“No.” The policeman shoved her and closed the front door in her face. Willow couldn’t go, but I could tag along in my invisible form on the journey to the local police station.
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