Chapter Twenty-Nine
California
Marigold was nine years old the first time she witnessed her mother disappear.
The three Yuen sisters liked to sit in order of birth, which meant Marigold was in the middle, sandwiched between Peony, the eldest, and little Rosie, who were quibbling over what they’d eat for dinner at the mall.
Peony wanted pizza, Rosie wanted a burger.
Marigold didn’t bother offering her opinion.
She knew from experience that they’d end up eating Chinese.
“We haven’t had a cheeseburger since I was born,” Rosie exaggerated. “I never get to pick.”
“You always pick,” Peony said. “We should get pizza.”
“Marigold, what do you want? Burgers or pizza?”
Marigold flipped the page, feeling a tickle in her throat. She cleared it. “Mom and Dad are going to choose, not us.”
“But today’s special,” said Rosie, peering over her shoulder, purposefully blocking her light. “C’mon, stop reading. All the Nancy Drews end up the same, she solves the case every time.”
“Will you cut that out?” said Marigold. “I can’t see.”
Their mother twisted back, bestowing Marigold with her sternest look. “Are you reading in this dark? Put it away, you already wear glasses.”
“But Ma, I’m almost done—”
“No buts. And speak in Chinese.”
Through the rearview mirror, Philip sent Marigold a sympathetic look. “She’s got a flashlight, let her finish the book. We’re almost there anyway.”
Thank you, Ba. Marigold smiled at him, then lowered her gaze back to her book.
With a sigh, Helen turned back to the front. “They’re getting too big to sit back there.”
“Let them enjoy it while they still can.”
“We can sit in our seats after we buy the TV,” Rosie piped up, ever the eavesdropper.
“We’re only buying it if the sale is still going on,” Helen reminded them. “There might not be any left.”
How could the girls not get their hopes up? For the longest time, they’d had to go to their uncle’s house to watch TV, and his was only in black and white. After today, they’d be true Americans, their modest home finally endowed with the staple of every middle-class family. Even Marigold was giddy.
It was past seven when the Yuens parked at Hillsdale Shopping Center, but no one was hungry. The three sisters sprinted for the entrance to Sears as Helen shouted, “Careful! Look out for cars.”
They ran past the catalog order desk and the demonstration tables. In the electronics section a wonderland of televisions awaited, their raised antennae like beckoning caterpillars.
Marigold and her sisters stood transfixed by the flickering screens. Soon, one of these magical devices would be theirs. No more having to listen to their friends’ recaps of the latest Jetsons episode, no more missing the Saturday cartoons.
Their world would be in technicolor.
All the screens were playing Lassie, which Marigold had seen before. She stood with her sisters to watch, but she didn’t like watching movies twice the way she read books over and over. Her throat was growing tight and she peeled away to look for a water fountain.
“Where are you going?” asked her mother.
The lights in the store were a bright and reflective white, and Marigold was starting to feel dizzy. “The bathroom,” she replied, slightly breathless. “I need water.”
Helen’s lips pursed. “You look pale. I’ll come with you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Don’t argue, Mei Yoong. You’re Chinese, not American.”
Marigold shut her mouth. She followed her mother to the ladies’ room, where she found a water fountain and took a big gulp to soothe the strain in her throat.
“Better?” said Helen.
Marigold nodded. She’d inherited her father’s asthma, and these moments of tightness in her chest were familiar. She wasn’t worried. Still, when her mother wasn’t looking, she sucked in a fistful of air.
Outside the bathrooms, while on their way back to rejoin the family, a saleslady cornered Helen to try some lipsticks and perfumes.
“Free sample?” Helen asked, slowing.
“No,” replied the lady brightly, “but let me show you how pretty this new color is.”
Helen resumed walking. “I no speak English.”
“Oh, then does your dau—” The lady halted, taking in Marigold’s uneven complexion, her pencil-thin mouth and wide-set eyes, looking unsure whether they were related. She started again, “Will you tell your aunt those gorgeous lips of hers would pop with some color.”
For once, Marigold was grateful when her mother pushed her along.
Next was the home appliances department, which was right by electronics, and they had samples. Helen stopped to watch a representative from General Electric doing a blender demonstration. She pretended to look interested while she waited to collect the free soup.
“This model is top of the line,” the salesperson was saying as he poured soup into Dixie cups, “with a thirty-six-ounce blending capacity and no spill—”
Helen pinched together two pairs of the steaming cups. “Take an extra for your father.”
“You already have four.”
“There’s five of us.”
Reluctantly, Marigold took a sample. The salesman had barely blinked when Helen had taken a batch, but he gave Marigold a look and she shrank under the attention.
Thank God for Rosie, who came squealing, “Dad needs help at the register!”
Philip had gotten out of the line. “I’m forty dollars short,” he said in Chinese. “Do you have your purse?”
Helen gave Rosie the Dixie cups and looked discreetly into her purse. “I have twelve.”
“What happened to the money I gave you last week?”
“I used it to buy groceries—you know, so we can eat.” Helen snapped her purse shut. “Is that why old Mr. Choi came this morning? Did you owe him—”
“I didn’t owe him anything,” Philip interrupted. “I lent him a few dollars, that’s it.”
“A few dollars.”
“He needed to fix his car so he can take his mother to the doctor. She doesn’t walk so well anymore.”
“He always says that. How many years have you been friends, and how many times has he paid us back? The girls have been looking forward to a new TV for months, and now—”
“It’s okay, Mom.” Peony, dear sweet Peony, dared to step into the war zone. “We can get the TV another time.”
Helen fixed her with the reproachful glare she’d given Philip. “They won’t have a sale like this again. That’s the last set they have. Someone else is going to buy it the moment we put it back.”
“What do you expect me to do,” Philip said, “go outside and beg for twenty-eight dollars?”
“Don’t you raise your voice at me,” Helen snapped.
“I didn’t raise my voice.”
“Yes you did. People are looking at us.”
Truthfully, they were both yelling, and the other customers were staring. Rosie looked like she was about to cry. She hated when their parents fought.
With her parents quarreling, no one paid attention to Marigold. When she breathed in, her nose made a wheezy whistling sound.
“Let’s just go home,” her mother said abruptly. She took two cups from Rosie, drinking the soup before she tossed them into the trash can by the exit.
The sun had set while they’d been in the store, and the night air was cold. It shivered down Marigold’s lungs, making her cough.
Helen dropped her coat over Marigold’s shoulders. “Next time bring a jacket. I don’t know what you were thinking, wearing short sleeves out tonight.”
Something happened when her mother grabbed her hand. Her fingers went through Marigold’s completely, as if she were a gust of air.
Marigold gasped.
The briefest flicker of panic played on Helen’s face, which Marigold would later tell herself was only a trick of the light, then Helen took her wrist. Her grip was so firm it almost hurt.
Without a word, Helen picked up her pace, dragging Marigold with her. Soon they were twenty steps ahead of Philip and her sisters. Marigold was accustomed to Helen’s moods, but today’s seemed darker than usual.
“Mom,” Marigold said. The world was starting to sway and every breath burned. She couldn’t keep up. “Can you slow down?”
No answer. Helen’s eyes had turned flat. She wore a faraway look that Marigold had never seen before, as if she weren’t in the same world as everyone else.
Marigold focused on her feet, counting the triangular beams of light cutting down from the lamp poles. Counting usually helped.
One. Two. Four. Eight.
Wait. Where was her mother’s shadow?
She glanced behind, in front, in every direction. Helen’s shadow was nowhere to be found.
Which was impossible, wasn’t it? Marigold hadn’t yet studied physics, but she had common sense. Shadows couldn’t take off on their own. They were anchored to an object and created by blocking a source of light.
So Marigold, who was still young, did what she thought was most sensible. She tugged on her mother’s sleeve, and said, “Mom, I think you lost your shadow.”
Helen stopped short, her back going straighter than a curtain rod. “What did you say?”
“Your shadow, Mom. It’s missing.”
A normal mother might have laughed. Might have stepped into the light and wriggled her fingers to show her child just where her shadow was. Helen did no such thing. Rather, she went paler than the moon.
Headlights flashed then, white and brilliant. A truck was accelerating through the parking lot.
“Helen!” shouted Philip. “Watch out!”
Marigold heard an anguished scream as Helen shoved her out of the way.
She tumbled back, glasses flying off her face, elbows scraping the pavement. The tires screeched.
“Mom!” she shrieked.
The instant before the truck would’ve hit her mother, Helen vanished.
Vanished. Disappeared. Without a trace. Into thin air.
Marigold had read about vanishing illusions in a magic book from the library.
She’d learned how magicians made coins appear and disappear through sleight of hand.
But nothing in that sharp and logical brain of hers could explain how her mother was there in the parking lot one instant, then gone the next.
Peony and Rosie raced to her. “Marigold!” her little sister screamed. “Oh my God, are you okay?”
They helped her up and Peony handed Marigold her glasses. “You’re bleeding and you’ve got a bump by your eye,” she said. “Does it hurt?”
Marigold rubbed the spot, and sure enough there was a raised bump, like a scar, that she hadn’t felt before. Was it from her glasses?
“She’s fine,” came their mother’s voice.
Marigold whirled. There was Helen, sitting on the pavement. The barrette clipping her bangs had fallen off, leaving her hair disheveled, and she’d lost a shoe. Aside from that, she appeared untouched. Unshaken, too, the same of which couldn’t be said of Marigold.
The young girl gaped at her mother. “I . . . I saw—”
“Girls, get in the car,” Helen interrupted. “Let your father handle this.”
The driver had gotten out of his truck. Marigold observed his wide shadow cast over the white parking lines, weaving in and out as he approached her father, whose shadow was far slimmer, the stance of his legs like a pair of open chopsticks.
“Marigold!” said her mother.
Marigold didn’t listen; she was too busy staring at the ground. Everyone had a shadow. Everyone except—
Her throat squeezed tight, an invisible cord strangling her. She started coughing. She couldn’t breathe.
“We’re taking you to the doctor tomorrow,” said Helen.
“What . . . what about . . . you?” Marigold asked breathlessly. “The truck was about to hit you, then you . . . you vanished.”
“Vanished?” Her mother regarded her darkly. “Don’t talk nonsense.”
It was no use arguing. Marigold climbed into the back.
Her book was right where she’d left it, except Marigold didn’t feel like reading anymore. She had a real mystery on her hands now. The Case of Helen Yuen’s Vanishment, Nancy would call it.
But unlike Nancy Drew, who was famously only happy when there was trouble, Marigold was the opposite. More than anything, she wished she had never found out her mother’s secret.
Because she had a feeling, sooner or later, it was going to bring big, big trouble.