“You sit here,” Mrs. Cheung says as they reach the kitchen. She taps a chrome chair with yellow vinyl upholstery that matches the Formica tabletop. The chicken is flopped into the sink. “I clean outside in a minute.” She sits opposite Westen, hands folded in front of her, embroidered orange maple leaves on her sweater vest, each surrounded by small beveled rhinestones that could be rain or sunlight breaking through a fall canopy. “Your auntie ask me talk to you. Why you not a happy boy?”
“I’m happy,” Westen says, but he knows there is no conviction in it.
Mrs. Cheung places her hands flat on the table and stands. “Wait,” she says, exiting the kitchen. When she returns she is holding a pad of paper and a large red book with gold Chinese lettering. She asks Westen a series of questions: his birth date, the time he was born, how to spell his first name. With each query she consults the book and writes on the pad of paper. Her work is certain and officious, as if she is interviewing a job applicant, her lips thinned in tight concentration. Westen watches her blunt fingers press the pencil, embedding dense Chinese characters into the paper. Mrs. Cheung makes a single nod with each notation. In a quiet moment when she is double-checking her work Westen watches a drop of water collect at the lip of the kitchen faucet until it relents to gravity. “Maybe I should go find Uncle Cane,” he says when the drop falls.
Mrs. Cheung looks up from her pad. “They drinking. Don’t worry. I take you home.”
Westen knows he will not see his uncle for the rest of the day.
“You will visit China,” Mrs. Cheung says, pointing to her math. “But I think you will be an unhappy boy and an unhappy man until then.”
Westen cannot comprehend the forecast, but he makes an attempt. “China will make me happy?”
“No,” she says emphatically. “Nothing make anyone happy. But I going to help.” She reaches into her pocket and retrieves four items: a thin red ribbon, matches, a candle, and a palm-sized box covered in worn blue velvet. She ties the ribbon around the box, leaving a bow the size and shape of a small butterfly. “My mother give me before I come to U.S. I give you now.”
There is something about this gesture that comforts Westen as he watches Mrs. Cheung light the candle and drip dense wax onto the knot of the bow. “My mother do this too. She tell me I’m unhappy girl after my father die.” The pair sit quietly looking at this new red-winged creation sitting atop the blue box. “Now you open in China only at right moment,” Mrs. Cheung continues. “Maybe you be happy. Before that, no good. You tell someone, no good. This only your box.”
“When will this happen?”
“Wait for your father like I wait for Mr. Cheung,” she says. “He come back. You put away until then. Be a good boy and remember to listen to your auntie. She love you.”
Westen feels a flush of heat and hope at the prospect of his father’s return, but he wonders just how long he is going to have to wait. Picking up Mrs. Cheung’s box, he carefully feels its weight. “Is it magic?” he asks.
“No,” Mrs. Cheung says firmly. “It hope.”
