Excerpt: "Ships in the Night"

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Lily worked at Hung Lung Enterprises, boning chickens. Mrs. Wong got up early and cut the guts out of fishes. Her garden was overgrown with vegetables—bok choy, yu choy, snap peas and chards. She dug her kitchen scraps right into the earth. Whenever Baby left the little house, she had to pass Mrs. Wong, squatting outside with her sleeves rolled up, doing something wet and violent to food. She scrubbed black earth off white radishes as fat as legs, cracked ribs of pork, scaled red snappers for luck, decapitated turtles for longevity. Sometimes when Baby went out to buy cigarettes for Cayenne, Mrs. Wong would wipe her forehead with a bloodstained knuckle and call out to her—You! You!—hoisting herself to her feet and parting the tendrils of the pea vines that climbed up the chain link. She had a gap-toothed smile that squeezed her eyes into crescents as she thrust things into Baby’s hands—a dusty bunch of mustard greens, the head of a cabbage. Guy told Baby she must always accept the gift and always say thank you. She could say, "Tao-che," which meant, ‘I appreciate you many times.’

One day, Mrs. Wong hauled a garbage bag from the house. The bag smelled raw and leaked blood, and Baby recoiled into the hydrangeas.

"You! You!"

Baby took the bag, holding it away from her. "Tao-che," she remembered to whisper, and Mrs. Wong smiled and nodded.

"What the fuck—?" Cayenne said, as blood dripped on to the linoleum.

"Fish heads!" Guy cried. He pushed back his chair. "It’s Chinatown, Bébé!" He and Cayenne had been weighing marijuana, but now he cleared the table, flung open the cabinets and started pulling out spices—star anise, dried dates, bone-white shark cartilage. The fish heads slithered from the garbage bag, sticky and wet. An hour later Guy lifted the thick lid from a steaming clay pot, ladled out large bowls and set them on the table. Baby stared at her fish head, resting on a nest of noodles. It stared balefully back.

"Eat!" Guy cried, poking his chopsticks into the fish’s cheek.

Steam rose off the bowl, into her face. Baby pushed it away. "It’s gross!" she said.

Guy reached over and skewered the large milky eyeball. He waved it in front of Baby.

"Stop it," Cayenne said. "Stop tormenting her."

Guy shrugged and popped the eyeball into his mouth. He closed his eyes, grunting with pleasure. His lips moved as he sucked, and his forehead was greasy with sweat and steam. He opened his eyes and spit out a hard white kernel the size of a small pearl.

Baby pushed back her chair and ran upstairs to her room. From her bed, she heard Cayenne complaining, and then Guy declared, "Bien. If she must eat hamburgers, then take her back to America."

Their voices dropped, and after a while it was quiet, and all Baby could hear was the wind in the alley and the dry sporadic cough of an asthmatic hooker. The sound made her feel lonely, like she wanted to cry. The coughing continued. Baby lifted the curtain and looked out into the dusk. A girl was standing alone in a cone of light cast by the street lamp. She was weaving and dancing—two steps to the left—cough—two steps to the right. Her head looked like a balloon on a string, bobbing and partly deflated.

Baby heard the stairs creak, then footsteps. Guy’s voice was low. Cayenne giggled. "Shhh!" she said. The door to their bedroom clicked shut behind them.

Outside, the girl had started to wheeze and gasp for air. She dropped to her knees and spat. Baby wanted to call Cayenne to come and see, but she didn’t. The girl clutched her stomach and looked toward the moon. She caught sight of Baby instead.

"Hey!" she called.

It was the hooker from before, the one with the needle. Now Baby could see she was just a kid, Native, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old. She was wearing bike shorts that hugged her rear end in a way Baby admired. Her black hair was razored into a bad shag. It may have been a trick of the streetlight or the watery flux of the windowpane, but as the girl stared upward, it looked like her eyes were crossing and uncrossing as she swayed from side to side.

"Hey you!" the girl called. "Up there. Yo, Princess!"

In a tower, Baby thought. Like Cayenne said. Sounds were coming from the bedroom. The house seemed to tremble when Cayenne and Guy made love. Baby could hear her mother moaning, "Oh, Guy, je t’aime..." but she was faking. Baby could tell. Guy was no longer romantic. Baby wondered where they’d wind up next.

The street was silent, so she pulled back the curtain. The girl was still there, and now she moved her arm in a big, inviting arc.

"Come down here!" Her voice was thin behind the warped glass.

Baby shook her head.

"What’s your name?"

Baby didn’t answer.

"I’m Lulu," the girl said. "You got any money?" She started to wheeze again. "I gotta get to the hospital?" She covered her mouth with her hand. Her shoulders shook.

Baby watched.

"Come on," Lulu said. "Help me out, Princess! I’m fuckin’ dying down here...."

Just then Mrs. Wong peered over the back gate, brandishing a large pair of pruning shears. "You! You!" she yelled at the girl.

Lulu spat again and stared at the old lady. Baby held her breath. Mrs. Wong had a small brown paper bag, and now she waved it at the girl like she was signaling to her with a flag. She reached over the gate and thrust the bag into the girl’s hands. Lulu opened it and pulled out a round white bun. She turned it over and took a bite, and then another. Mrs. Wong gave a grunt and nodded, then she went back into her garden.

Baby let the curtain fall.

"Hey!" she heard Lulu call. "Thanks!" Then, like an afterthought, "Fuck you, Princess!"

"Hoi sam ma," Baby whispered to her sloping ceiling, in the dark.