Chapter Six. the Legend of Gertrude Khong #2
Cartilage snapped. Elaine screamed. Adeline felt dizzy. She’d never actually hit anyone before, and was surprised by how much it hurt her own hand—then shocked again at the blood pouring from Elaine’s nose.
“Where’s your friends?” Adeline spat.
Elaine stared at her in utter loathing, hand pressed over her face. “Where’s your mother?”
Adeline slammed her against the wall. “Do you think this is what happened to Gertrude?” Their necks were both red now. She dragged Elaine sideways with her wrist pressed against her windpipe until they were almost up against the clock, minutes of light soaking them.
Elaine kneed her in the stomach. Adeline’s fist closed tighter, sending them both toppling.
They fell to the floor grappling and pulling and scratching and stamping.
At some point they collided into boxes and Adeline crushed a corner of them in her fist, trying to get back on her feet.
Her face was stinging, her ribs possibly bruised.
She screamed, some obscenity that Elaine shrieked right back as she tried to tear Adeline’s hair from her scalp.
“Elaine!”
Hands grabbed Adeline’s shoulders. She let herself be dragged off, panting and tasting blood.
It was En Yi pulling Elaine to her feet, which meant it was Siew Min with her arms wrapped tightly around Adeline, breath in her ear shallow with shock.
Across from her, Elaine pressed a rapidly reddening handkerchief to her nose and started to cry.
“Get off me,” Adeline snarled at Siew Min. “Get off me.”
Siew Min did, but then pointed. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
Adeline turned. Behind her, the empty boxes had caught fire.
She could still see the crumpled imprint of her fists where she’d fallen into them. Had she done that? She’d never set a fire she didn’t remember. But then again she’d never been this angry. She backed away, another first for her, stunned.
“What do we do?” En Yi cried. “We should call the fire service! We should call the police!”
“I—I’m going to get a teacher,” Siew Min stammered. Their hysterics snapped Adeline out of her own stupor. If there was anything she had practice in it was putting fires out.
“Get an extinguisher!” They stared at her. “Are you stupid? A fire extinguisher.”
“There’s one right downstairs,” Elaine spat, her voice coming through thick and distorted. “En Yi! Beside the water cooler!”
En Yi ran, and after a second, Siew Min ran after her.
Adeline stared at the bonfire. The floor was resisting it for now, but eventually something would spark, in a dusty place like this. The molding, the plaster …
“I’m going to tell them it was you,” Elaine said softly. “They’re going to expel you. Bye-bye to your mommy’s dreams.”
No one else ever saw this side of Elaine. No one else would have believed she had that kind of venom in her little round face. But before they’d been enemies they’d found something kindred in each other to befriend.
“I know where you live, Jie Ling,” Adeline replied, just as softly. “And now I know how easy houses burn.”
Elaine dropped the soaked handkerchief, apparently deeming it useless. Her nose was slanted to one side now, and swelling by the minute. “You’re done, Adeline.”
Adeline walked up to her, lifted a finger, and tapped her on the chest. Elaine stumbled so hard she tripped over her ankles and crashed to the floor.
As En Yi and Siew Min rushed back in hoisting the extinguisher and managed to get it working, Adeline pitched her voice below the spraying foam.
“You’re afraid of me,” she said to Elaine. “It doesn’t look good on you.”
After Genevieve fetched her from the principal’s office, and after a silent car ride and a washup during which Genevieve had a long, shouting telephone call with Mr. Hwang, Adeline sat at the dining table eating chicken congee while Genevieve broke the news.
“You won’t be able to stay.”
Adeline prodded at a chunk of chicken. “She started it.”
Genevieve sighed. “Elaine’s father is a close friend of my husband.”
“My mother was a close friend of yours.” But what she’d always known went unspoken: she was ultimately here at Mr. Hwang’s allowances.
She’d seen the way he nodded when she was the grieving orphan girl; had known then that despite the fact that he boasted about brushes with danger, he would not be nodding any longer if he saw what she was capable of.
Now everyone had seen, in a way. And Elaine had seen … she wasn’t sure what Elaine had seen.
“We’ll pay for your damages, and help you find a small flat nearby to live. You can come back to Jenny’s when you’re ready and redo your exams next year.”
“I don’t want that.”
Genevieve pinched the bridge of her nose. She hadn’t been sleeping well. There were dark circles under her powder, and she was listless despite appearances otherwise. “I can’t let you stay.”
“Not that. School. I’m not going back.”
“We’ll find somewhere to take you. Your mother would want—”
“She’s dead,” Adeline said. “What she wants doesn’t matter.
” She knew she wasn’t being fair but she couldn’t care.
She touched her gauzed cheek. Adeline missed Elaine, suddenly, because at least Elaine had had the guts to actually use her hands.
She wondered what it would take to get Genevieve to hit her, shout at her, do anything.
Anything but sit there with too much duty and not enough power, unable to fight even for what remained of a woman Adeline was almost sure had loved Genevieve more than she’d loved her daughter.
“One more thing,” Genevieve said tiredly. “Mrs. Fan came into the store. She claims someone stole her bracelet there. Do you know anything about it?”
“No.”
Genevieve, of course, looked like she didn’t believe her. “Sleep,” she said. “We’ll talk about this in the morning.”
Screw Genevieve. Adeline cleared away her dish, already sure there wouldn’t be a morning to talk in.
Cecilia came into the kitchen and Adeline turned to her, surprised at her own want for a friendly face, but the younger girl practically bolted out the door at the sight of her.
She must have heard what happened in school.
So what was Adeline to do? No one wanted her.
She thought of sneaking out to the Orchid or Wang’s coffee shop again, just to try to find the Butterflies, but the idea of showing up like a pathetic cast-off dog would disgust them as much as it disgusted her. They would never respect her, like that.
She was still in time to catch the last bus to Jenny’s with a purseful of little things, Fan Tai Tai’s bracelet, and twenty dollars Genevieve had given her for an emergency. “All the shops are closed, you know,” a woman on the bus said as Adeline tugged the cord to disembark.
“I know.” She got off, staring at the store in front of her as the bus pulled away. She didn’t know what she had planned on doing once she got here, but all her ideas had assumed she would be alone. Instead, there was a single light in the upper window.
The grate was still down over the front entrance, but the back door was unlocked, swinging open gently when Adeline tested the handle. She stared into the shadows, almost expecting movement within the shelves. But, of course, whoever was in the building was upstairs.
She had never actually been in Jenny’s at night.
It was oppressively stale without the air-conditioning on.
She lit a narrow flame and proceeded quietly through the dark first floor atrium.
Her light caught the mannequins in grotesque ways, but she refused to be afraid here, on her own turf.
She’d seen this store before it became this big shiny place. She knew it; it could not scare her.
She had already guessed which room she was looking for. And yet when she turned into the hallway that contained the offices and saw the strip of light emanating from her mother’s open office door, she still stopped in her tracks.
It couldn’t be Genevieve. For a moment Adeline stared at that light and allowed the idea that her mother had returned.
It was the cusp of ghost month. Her mother had died suddenly and violently.
There was no better candidate, surely, for a restless return.
And wouldn’t she come here, since their house was gone?
Perhaps this was why Adeline had been drawn here.
A replay of the last time she’d accompanied her mother home—she would walk in the door, stand in front of that mirror, and her mother would be there, over her shoulder, pinching her ribs.
Adeline swallowed, blinking back tears that were finally coming, and barged through the door.