“I didn’t hide it.”
“No, I know exactly what going on. Go put on your jacket.”
“Why?”
“I show you something. We leave now.”
“But—”
“What did I tell you to do?”
It was too late. There was no going back now. No changing her mind. Ma raised her brows at Thom, and Thom slumped up the stairs to get her jacket, even though it was 80 degrees outside and she was already wearing one.
7
MA DIDN’T SAY A WORD on the drive, but she blasted Vietnamese ballads the whole way, which was even worse than any amount of lecturing. The staccato chords of the đàn bâu were painfully sharp, each beat throbbing through Thom’s head. She pressed her face against the glass and watched the traffic rush by.
When the car stopped, Thom opened the door, dragged herself outside, and followed Ma across the parking lot. They were at the Thien Than Temple. She hated this place. It was always dimly lit with creepy fake candles and eerily quiet, and it smelled like smoky incense and old prunes. The curving roofs sharpened sinisterly to razor points against the blue and orange sky. The eyes of stone dragons outside followed her, their shadows elongating in the golden light of the setting sun.
“What are we doing here?” For some reason, Thom felt the need to whisper.
Ma didn’t look at her. Thom was almost jogging to keep up with her brisk strides.
“To show you that Asian things are just as cool as white people things.”
“I believe you. Let’s go home.” The back of Thom’s neck tickled. “Is it even open? It looks closed.”
“It’s fine. Look, there are people praying.”
Inside the temple, candles punctuated the darkness, casting flickering shadows across the three statues. Guarded on either side by goddesses, a huge Buddha grinned at them like he knew a secret, a joke he didn’t intend on sharing, his huge earlobes sagging down to his chin. Thom recognized some of the mythical characters, but most of them blended together in her mind. They had once been mortals who had reached enlightenment and gone to the heavens, where they performed duties as fairies until they achieved true immortality and became gods.
“Look,” Ma said, pointing at all the statues. “Aren’t these cool? Better than your white-people heroes, right?”
Thom rolled her eyes. “Yup. I agree. Let’s go.”
“I want to light incense while we’re here. Come on, I’ll buy you a candle.”
“I think that’s a Catholic thing, Ma.” Thuy’s family was Catholic, and they were always buying prayers from the priest on behalf of their dead relatives.
“If I want to buy you a candle, I buy you a candle. Here—take this cushion before someone else does.”
Thom looked around to see who Ma thought might want to steal cushions. They were the only people there except for an old lady shaking her incense sticks at Buddha. Thom wouldn’t have to worry that anyone from school would see her here, or witness how embarrassing Ma was while she tried to prove to Thom how cool the Vietnamese culture really was. She sighed and knelt on the red-and-gold cushion, making sure there was enough space for Ma, and pretended to bow her head. The faster she got through this, the sooner they could go home.
Ma came back a few minutes later and handed Thom a few sticks of incense, which she obediently held up to the golden statues. The gods’ expressions were straight-faced and unamused, except Buddha, who, with his wide, dimpled smile, was permanently having a good time. It was silly, worshiping these inanimate objects with their frozen faces. Besides, you would think the gods had better things to do than listen to Thom’s petty complaints and silly pleadings.
Ma bowed low, her forehead touching the ground. What was she asking for? She had everything—a nice job, a house, and an obedient daughter. They had moved away from their friends just so Ma could have these things—what more could she want?
Ma tsked sharply, as if she could hear Thom’s thoughts, so Thom turned forward and pretended to pray even harder. Buddha would just tell her that suffering was a part of life. She couldn’t remember who the statue on his left was, a beautiful fairy goddess with a jade tiara on her head. She turned to the one on the right. Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, seemed like the best candidate to get Thom out of her mess. She aimed the smoke at her.
Please, please, Guanyin.
What exactly did she want?
It wasn’t much. Not really. Thom wanted her old life back. To be normal again. To not be superstrong. She wanted to be able to touch something without breaking it. She wanted everyone at school to like her. She wanted to be able to play soccer again—really play it like she had at her old school. She had been good. Soccer had been fun. Now, it was something she dreaded, feared. But how else was she supposed to make friends? She wanted Bethany and Sarah and Kathy to smile and talk to her, not about her. But if she quit soccer now, she would be giving up. Not that Ma would let her quit in the first place.
If only she weren’t so strong, she could prove to everyone how good she was. They would like her. She would have a chance.
“Let’s look around the temple,” Ma said. “You done praying?”
Thom nodded and followed her mother out the main room, half listening as Ma lectured about the temple’s history, the fairies and the gods, the sculptures on some of the walls. Most of the stories were ones she’d heard before, like the one about the Jade Emperor, who ruled the heavenly kingdom over the gods, who in turn ruled certain parts of the world. The fairies had always been portrayed as beautiful, giggly goddesses, playing the đàn bầu and tending to gardens. Her favorites were the ones about the dragons, the immortal warriors who took the form of humans and guarded different areas of the earth, the seas, and the skies.
Ma stopped in front of a mural of what looked like David and a hundred Goliaths. It was a small boy, practically a baby, standing up against an army of huge soldiers.
Ma didn’t say anything for a long time, just stood there staring at the image, so Thom wandered away, feeling bored and antsy to leave. She had never liked going to temple, even in West City, but back then all of her friends had also had to go and they didn’t like it, either, so they would all just hang out and complain about things together. Here in Troy, no one went to temple, and even though there was no way she’d run into anyone from school, it gave her the feeling that if anyone did see her here, they would use it as one more piece of evidence that Thom did not belong.
A noise distracted her, the clink of something dropping. She stopped in front of a shelf built into the wall, displaying a miniature cast-iron sculpture of a temple. As she approached, the door of the sculpture swung back and forth on a half-broken hinge. Thom tried to close the door, but the latch also wasn’t working.
Inside the tiny temple was an even tinier gourd, a peanut-shaped bottle carved from dark, polished stone, lying on its side. Thom recognized it from Chinese dramas—monks always used gourds to trap demons and evil spirits, and sometimes she’d seen them sold in Chinatown as souvenirs. That was probably what she’d heard fall. She glanced over her shoulder, but Ma was still staring at the pictures on the wall, so Thom reached in and picked up the gourd to place it upright.