Ona’s mother and grandmother had gone out. Grandfather turned the knob on the television set and landed on a Sunday variety show. He adjusted the antennae before sinking down on the sofa next to Ona. They sat together, watching the comedians onstage banter with a panel of pop starlets and soap actresses. The secret he’d floated out on the balcony hung between them, but she knew that there would be no more talk of it. She glanced nervously from the TV to her grandfather in profile and felt like a balloon filled to its capacity, ready to burst. It seemed as if she had to breathe very carefully or the secret would tumble out.
Ona heard her mother’s and grandmother’s voices in the hallway outside. The front door swung open.
“Mama!” Ona cried.
Knotted plastic bags hung from her mother’s wrists. “Stinky tofu,” she said. “I had a craving.”
Grandfather straightened up and cleared his throat. “Little girl’s excited from seeing the animals outside.”
“What did you see, bao?” her mother asked.
“Yes, we saw them too,” said Grandmother. “It’s a production of the Monkey King chronicles, and they’re setting up a petting zoo for the children.” She kicked off her brown leather flats and nudged them to the side. “I told you it’s a special school,” she said to Ona’s mother. “Does Miss What’s-her-name show them real farm animals?”
“A petting zoo?” Ona said, looking from her grandmother, to her grandfather, and, finally, to her mother. “You’re allowed to touch them?”
“Seems a little unsanitary to have a pig running around,” her mother said. “A monkey, too?” She shook her head.
“Of course you can touch them,” Grandmother said. “We should go back down and see if—it’s only for the school, but maybe they would make an exception—”
“You know the woman in admissions,” said Ona’s mother. “So we’ve heard.”
“Of all the farm animals, pigs are actually quite clean,” Grandfather put in.
“See? You think you know everything,” said Grandmother. “But you don’t,” she added.
Ona’s mother crossed the room to the round dining table and began to open up the bags of food. She told Ona to go wash her hands for dinner.
The auntie who cooked and cleaned for Ona’s grandparents had the week off to visit her family in the southern part of the island, so rather than eating a home-cooked meal, they picked from the night market foods Ona’s mother and grandmother had brought back from their walk. Grandfather complained about indigestion, but he ate everything in his bowl and cleaned up what remained in each of the Styrofoam boxes, down to the last pieces of deep-fried fish cakes drenched in sweet chili sauce.
* * *
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After dinner, while her mother and grandfather retreated to the balcony for their cigarettes, Ona’s grandmother led her to the bedroom at the end of the hallway, past the kitchen. Ona smelled mothballs when Grandmother pushed the bedroom door open.
“Try it,” she said, and gestured toward the child’s bed, which was set up next to the far wall. A pink-and-white-checkered blanket lay over the mattress, a pillow with a white scalloped case at the top. “What do you think?”
Her grandmother took Ona by the hand, and they sat down on the bed’s edge. Next to it stood a white bookshelf. Ona noticed a few familiar titles, books she’d been allowed to borrow from her school’s library for a week at a time. She longed to run her finger along their spines but did not dare to do so. Who did they belong to? Some lucky boy or girl, Ona thought.
“Isn’t this a nice room?” Grandmother said. “I ordered a little desk, and a chair that’s just your size. It’s being delivered next week.”
“My size?”
“All you have to do now is tell your mama you want to stay here, and this room is all yours.”
“Me?” Ona said. “Here in this room?”
She imagined a desk and chair tucked into the corner, under the rectangular window with the frosted glass, like her grandmother proposed. At home, Ona finished her homework on a Formica table in the front room, the same place where she and her mother shared their meals.
“Can Shulin visit? She lives downstairs from Mama and me.”
“Of course.” Grandmother paused a moment before adding, “But you know, you’ll make friends at your new school, too.”
Ona bounced softly on the bed a few times. This bedroom was smaller than the one she shared with her mother, but it would be her very own. She’d never slept in her own bed before, all by herself. What would happen during an earthquake? In her own bed, there would be no holding hands, no curling toward Mama, waiting together for the rocking to subside.