skull

ma is their sun and she is their moon. her pale face shifts over the threshold of the new house, inside to out, light to shade, as she readies space for the tiger.

outside, the family waits.

this house is really a shack, set alone at the valley’s edge, a long uphill walk from the creek. gapped walls, tin ceiling. what lucy can spy of the inside is twilit, on account of the single window. no glass—just stretched oilcloth, yellow and cloudy, admitting weak light and smudged shapes. lucy’s heart sank at the sight after two weeks of travel, but the mine boss who led them here didn’t leave much choice. it’s this or you camp with the trash outside town, he said, spitting. he would’ve said more, but ma put a warning hand on ba’s chest and said, it’ll do

ma’s voice is husky and low, with the crackle of kept fire. its roughness strange against her mannered movements, her smooth face. a stopping beauty in that mismatch. the mine boss reddened and went on his way. ying gai care what other people see in you, ma has said while straightening lucy’s posture, neatening sam’s braids, scolding ba for his love of the gambling dens and indian camps on the fringes of town. what people see shapes how they treat you, dong bu dong?

but once the boss left, ma drooped. inside the shack the shadows reached for her. her beauty’s been worn thin by travel, during which she acquired a sickness that made her retch up her food. her beauty now hardly covers her bones. as ma moves in the house, lucy can see the shape of her skull.

“girls,” ma calls when she’s swept a portion of dirt floor smooth. her breath jerks and pulses at her throat, seeming like to tear the skin. “fetch me a stick.”

sam runs around one side of the shack, and lucy the other.

lucy’s side lies half in shadow, thanks to a plateau that looms over the valley’s edge. she kicks through heaped rubbish: dead grass, burnt wire, ashy sticks. at the bottom, a promising piece of wood. she tugs and a sign comes free.

hencoop, it spells once she’s brushed off the soot.

those aren’t burnt twigs—they’re feathers. and this isn’t a house. ma calls again as lucy stomps the sign back into the rubbish.

“hao de,” ma says when lucy returns. “that’s all of us together.”

despite sickness, ma is smiling. she holds the stick that sam found as if it’s something precious. for all the worry that chased them here, there is a hum of hope in the air, as there always is at the start of this ritual. a proper home, ba said before they set out. a settling-down kind of place this time.

ma begins to draw her tiger.

ma’s tiger is like none other. always eight lines: some curved, some straight, some hooked like tails. always in the same unchangeable order. only if lucy squints, looks away, watches from a slant, does the tiger that ma draws flicker, for a moment, like a real tiger.

by the last stroke ma is hunched in pain, skull once more straining through her skin. the protection is complete.

quick then, bad leg forgotten, ba is at ma’s elbow, steadying. he calls for the rocking chair. sam hurries it over the threshold, the plates piled on the seat beginning to slide. lucy lunges to catch one. as she does, her foot smudges the last line of the tiger.

she considers telling. but ma would insist on doing the whole ritual over, and ba would scowl and call lucy da zui, and say there’s a time and a place to use her big mouth. lucy says nothing, as she says nothing about the pungent house, the imprint of old chicken shit unmistakable. learning to keep her own secrets.