Half World (3 page)

Melanie was very hungry. The fridge had been emptied two days ago, and they had finished the last box of instant mashed potatoes the night before. It wasn't her mum's fault. Melanie blinked. She raised her legs and rested her cheek upon her knees, her black hair falling across her face.

Her mum wasn't well, had never been healthy and strong. Her complexion was always wan, and the dark circles underneath her eyes never faded. She couldn't keep a job for longer than a few months before her body broke and she had to rest in bed for several weeks. For a while Melanie had worried that her mum had leukemia or cancer, maybe AIDS, but when she forced her to go to a clinic all the tests turned out negative.

The past three years her mother had turned to drink. . . .

Melanie sniffed. The material of her jeans smelled slightly sweet, like the fur of a cat come in from the cold. It was time to do laundry.

Melanie knew it was a hard life to be a single mother. In all her memories her mother had been there, never leaving her side. Her mum had never taken a lover; she never had a boyfriend or girlfriend. When Melanie had asked her why, her mum had smiled sadly. “I'm waiting for the day when I'll see your father once more.”

Melanie had been happy to hear that when she was little, but as the years passed and her father never materialized she realized he was probably dead. Her mother had never answered any questions about her father—who he was, where he lived, how they had met. Her mother's eyes would fill with tears, and Melanie would only feel terrible for making her cry. There were many things that her mother couldn't tell her, and as time passed, and her mother grew weaker, the problems of the present, like money for groceries, became more pressing.

Were they in a witness protection program?

You're the best thing that's happened to me for all time,
her mum had told Melanie her entire life. She still believed her.

Her cold nose beginning to run, Melanie sniffed again.

Crack, crack, smack!
More mussels fell from the sky and crows gathered for their feast. Melanie glanced at them with envy. If all she had to worry about was finding enough food to fill her stomach for one day, what a simple life it would be. . . . The teachers had written her off at school, and she'd been streamed into the non-academic lot along with most of the other low-income students. So there was very little pressure for her to do much academically. That didn't stop the Valkyries from hazing her every day. And her mum was slowly fading away, as if there were hardly anything of her left.

Melanie shook her head. My mum is not dying! she thought fiercely. And I can quit school in a couple of years to get a full-time job. Maybe she could find a part-time job in the neighborhood, for after school and the weekend. They didn't own a lawnmower, and she'd never babysat before, but she could do something like walk rich people's dogs. Dog walkers didn't have to have nice clothes. . . .

Maybe she should start the long walk home and stop by to chat with Ms. Wei at Rainbow Market. She wanted to thank her, and maybe, if the store wasn't so busy, she could ask her only friend for some advice. Ms. Wei was not one to proffer advice and Melanie had never asked her for any, but the old woman had seen a lot of life. Over the years Ms. Wei had shared some of her life experiences with her. She might have some good ideas.

Something fell with a hollow
tock
upon the gray slats of the old dock. It didn't at all sound like a mussel. Melanie glanced down.

It was a fortune cookie. Neatly split in half. The end of a strip of pink paper fluttered. Melanie looked upward. High above, a crow made a slow, wide spiral. How peculiar, she thought. From that height the cookie should have shattered into bits.

The bird cawed once, then flew westward. Melanie reached out and pinched the fortune between her thumb and forefinger. She gently tugged it sideways out of its cookie shell and flattened the slightly furled strip of paper upon her thigh.

Melanie's breath caught in her throat. The crows on the beach had gone silent. They all stared at her with tilted heads, with one dark and glistening eye. Melanie's heart pounded in her ears.

What did it mean? It was just coincidence. It wasn't a
message
message meant for her.

“Hahahahaha,” she laughed weakly, for her own benefit.

The dark birds burst upward with a rush of wings. They flew hard and fast toward the west, after the message-bearing crow.

Fat droplets of rain began to fall.

Melanie leapt to her feet, her heart pounding in her chest. The
plip, plop
of rain slowly accelerated into a low roar.

Melanie thrust the fortune into her jacket pocket.

She began to run.

MELANIE WAS EXHAUSTED
by the time she passed Ms. Wei's corner store at a slow, plodding jog. The sudden rainstorm had darkened the afternoon, and the warm light shining from the Rainbow Market sent a pang of longing inside Melanie's heart. She did not stop. Her exhausted feet slipped atop slick wet leaves and she almost fell, catching her balance only at the last moment.

The few people who were out in the rain stepped far to the side to get out of the way of the stumbling girl.

Staggering through the rickety fence of their wretched rented house, Melanie didn't notice two crows sitting atop the cedar-shingled roof.

She stopped.

The front door was ajar. And though dusk gathered the darkness, no lights shone from the windows.

Her mum had been home, in bed, when she left her in the morning.

It hadn't been such a bad morning that her mum had to stay in bed all day.

She should be up, in the living room or the kitchen. For their after-school cup of hot tea.

Melanie crept up the three rotting steps, her breathing overloud, labored.

She entered the doorway and stood on the muddy mat.

The house was cold and dark.

“Mum?” Melanie called out, her voice quavering. She reached out to flick on the living room lights.

Her mum was not there.

Melanie's heart thumped inside the hollow of her chest. “Lucka, lucka, lucka,” she chanted childishly under her breath. “Lucka, lucka, lucka, lucka, lucka . . . ”

That she wasn't there was both good and bad. Because she could be there, but dead. Killed. They didn't live in the safest neighborhood. Or she could have given up, weak. Then drank too much on top of it. Ended up dead. Then it would be better if she weren't there at all. Better to be alive, somewhere else, than there, but dead. Better to be gone. But then she might have been abducted. Or run away. Finally abandoned her troublesome daughter to find her missing love. She might still be alive, good, but have run away from Melanie. Bad.

Melanie clasped her arms around her soft middle. Shut up, she thought. Shut up and look!

The kitchen was empty. The kettle unplugged. The tea things were on the counter. Like her mother had set them out, waiting for her daughter's return.

But where had she gone?

Melanie creaked across the dirty floor toward the hallway. In the bathroom the leaking faucet pattered its incessant dribble. Her mother was not there. Melanie nudged open her own bedroom door. The mounds of dirty clothes and the scattered pages of unfinished homework completely covered her floor. On her bed her large cat, Stuffie, stared at her with glassy, unblinking eyes. Melanie backed away.

She left her mother's bedroom for last.

Either she was there, dead, or she was truly gone.

Biting her lip, both hands tightened into fists, Melanie prodded the door open with her foot.

It creaked almost gleefully.

Her mother's tattered housecoat was tossed diagonally across her bedspread. The sleeves outspread, Melanie could almost picture her mother's lifeless body.

A jagged sigh escaped from Melanie's lips.

Her mum had never left her alone before. Without saying a word. Ever.

Hot tears swelled in the back of Melanie's throat, but she swallowed hard and did not make a sound.

It's okay! she thought angrily. I'm fourteen after all! I'm not a baby.

Her classmates had always called her retarded. “Fat crow girl,” they jeered and goaded, because crows always seemed to be nearby when Melanie was around. “Retard!” because Melanie still held her mother's hand when they went out together. Because she did so poorly in school, never said the expected things if she spoke at all.

Melanie dragged her forearm across her eyes. She knew it was wrong of them to call her that name.

Her mum wasn't well, had never been well, and needed her to be near. Sometimes her mother looked so faded it was like she could disappear. But if Melanie stayed close to her, stayed in physical contact, her mother's color grew brighter. Her icy hands would slowly warm.

How cold her mother must be, away in the growing darkness . . .

Melanie's downcast eyes fell upon the few framed photos on her mother's bed stand. Her mother hated having her photo taken, and there was only one of her and Melanie's father, together, before Melanie had been born. Melanie had pored over the image when she was younger.

In it her parents looked so frightened and odd. Melanie took after her father, with her round face and downward-tilted eyes. “Watermelon seed smile,” her mum used to say.

The photo was sepia colored, as if it had been taken in the 1800s, and the image was grainy and fading. Her mum looked too young to be pregnant, and her father looked dazed and rather hopeless. Melanie shook her head. How could her mother be waiting for someone like him?

Melanie tilted her head to one side. She flipped the frame over and pried the cheap cardboard back. Slid out the contents.

It wasn't a real photo, it was a duplicate on a piece of paper, folded up to fit inside the frame. Melanie frowned. She slowly opened the folds. There was nothing written upon the back. She turned the sheet over.

It was a cheap reproduction of a “Wanted” poster, like the kind people posed for at carnivals and amusement parks.

Melanie read the details written below the image.

Melanie felt sick.

Had her mother really felt this way? About her? Before she had her? What an awful, awful thing to joke about.

Why had her mother kept this? If it was true that she was unwanted, then obviously her father had just abandoned them. Her mother had had her after all, because of guilt or something, but she never really wanted to become a mother in the first place. . . .

And that was why she was gone now.

Melanie let the awful poster fall to the floor.

She ran out of the room and stood, breathing hard, in the middle of the hallway.

“No!”

Melanie's voice was so loud she startled herself.

“No,” she said with quiet determination. Her mum had never said one cruel thing to her, ever! It had always been the two of them, together, against the hard and exhausting world.

The fridge was empty and there was nothing left to eat; that was why her mum had gone out in the evening. Maybe she went to Fujiya to salvage the boxed lunches they threw out at the end of the day. That was all. She had roused the energy to find them some dinner even though she had looked so ill this morning. Her mum would be back soon. Melanie would not think about the fortune cookie message. It had only been a weird coincidence.

She thrust her wet hand into her soaking coat pocket. It wasn't waterproof, and the cheap paper had disintegrated into grainy pieces.

She would wait for her mum in the living room, with all the lights on. She would watch TV underneath the blanket. As Melanie walked toward the TV, she saw the handset of the telephone on the dirty carpet. She frowned.

She glanced at the empty cradle, then raised the receiver to her ear. It was silent. She pressed the switch hook, once, twice, but there was no dial tone. Of course not. Their service had been terminated five months ago because of unpaid bills. Her mum must have knocked it off the cradle. Melanie returned the handset to its place and sat on the sagging couch.

Her eyes were pulled toward the pictures on the wall. Her mother had cut them out from old calendars and placed them into used frames Melanie had salvaged from recycling bins.