30

ZEE'S FACE, WHEN SHE HEARS THAT I'M GOING TO VERN'S PLACE TOhang, is a picture. "You are killing me." She sighs. "Are you sure I'm the flighty one?"

"I never said that."

"I know. I said it."

She insists on dropping me in front of his aunt's place, for recon purposes, and tells me to text her if I run into any trouble. I roll my eyes. It was ridiculous how little faith Zee has in Vern. Somewhat uncharitably, I wonder how much of it is tied to his socioeconomic status.

Vern lives in a single-story terrace house in an unglamorous part of Shah Alam, "where the annual floods dump their shit"—his words.

His aunt opens the door when I knock; she's dressed in an old T-shirt and a muddy-red sarong that's cinched tight around her waist, and her undyed gray hair makes her appear older than she should be. "Oh," she says in Cantonese. "You're here." She turns away and leaves the door open without another word; I take this as an invitation to enter, which I do gingerly. I take in the small, sparse living room, with its cheap curtains in a flowery print, a two-seater sofa in black faux leather, a rattan recliner, and a tiny brown dining table with two metal stools pushed against a wall. A few framed photos, mostly of Vern, perch on top of a low bookshelf next to a boxy TV, which flickers with a silent film. The living room is sectioned off from the rest of the house with a bead curtain, which parts to reveal Vern, smiling and dressed in T-shirt and shorts, like I am.

"Hi," he says, the bead curtains clattering shut behind him. "This way."

I follow him through the beaded divider with some hesitation. Vern chuckles, "Don't worry, we're just headed to the kitchen so my aunt can watch TV without disturbing us. I'm not bringing you to my room; that's only for romantic liaisons."

"Oh, I…I…didn't assume…" My face is burning.

Vern laughs. There's an edge I don't understand in his voice. "I know, Agnes, stop hyperventilating and come to the kitchen. I'm not interested in you that way, believe me."

I follow him, cheeks flaming, into the clean, bare kitchen with its beige Formica countertops and off-white everything else; only a small pot of plastic yellow flowers lend any color to the space. He gestures for us to sit at a narrow wooden table covered with a white vinyl lace tablecloth with two padded stools in the corner, next to a listing stack of newspapers.

Vern catches my questioning gaze and says, "Those are good for cleaning the windows with. What would you like to drink? I have room-temperature boiled tap water and"—he gestures expansively at the fridge—"chilled boiled tap water."

"Chilled, please."

He comes back with two glass tumblers and a plate of mixed fruit. I thank him and bite into a star fruit, my favorite.

Vern opens his laptop and brings up his set. I eye a stack of mismatched cooking pots and pans on a counter. "Do you cook?"

"Yeah, nothing fancy, though. Mostly one-pot dishes like noodles or rice." He shrugs. "Someone has to make sure we eat right. My aunt would happily eat instant noodles with an egg for every meal if I don't intervene."

His aunt raises the volume of the TV. I hear a man and a woman chatting animatedly in Cantonese. His aunt grunts at the dialogue. A memory flickers to life and tugs at me. Of my mom and me in a similar kitchen, with a similar plastic table covering, eating soft-boiled eggs, toast, and baked beans for dinner, her taking small bites while I scarf down most of mine.

"My mom and I did that for a time, maybe when I was eight or nine, way before Stanley and Rosie came into our lives," I say, unprompted. I don't know why I am sharing this. "She would never let me go hungry, even when she did." I hesitate, then ask, "Was everything in your set true? About working since age fourteen?"

"Thirteen," he corrects. "Don't look so shocked. I basically helped my uncle with wiring and minor construction work; it wasn't like I was abused. I had a very early growth spurt and I was bigger than most kids my age. My aunt and uncle loved me in their own fashion. I was always given all the support I needed."

I nod. That was mostly true for my mom, except for that one year when she lost her job and fell into a depression. That had been hard to be around, knowing that her breakdown was due to her feeling inadequate as a parent and some bills she couldn't starve herself to get us out of. It spun her out. It was only thanks to the timely help from a charity that focused on mental illnesses that she got the support and meds she needed to turn her life around. It's why I will never let my mother worry for me again. She can only see me succeed.

"My aunt has had a hard life. She didn't have to take me in, but she did. She's not even a blood relation. My uncle was the one related to me."

"Where's he now?" I ask tentatively.

"Dead," Vern replies. "Lung cancer. Five years ago."

"I'm sorry," I say softly. I thought he'd been joking, at the gala, about the suit.

"Me too," Vern says, glancing down at his lap for a while.

My phone buzzes with a text. It's Royce, again: Agnes, will you be performing at Saloma's tomorrow? Can we talk, please?

I place the phone facedown. No, Royce, I don't want to. Being with Royce was hard—and it didn't make sense. I focus on Vern. "What does your aunt do now? Does she still work?"

"Yup, she's part of a janitorial team in one of those new coworking spaces. Real fancy, an up-and-coming regional one." He twitches his lip and I think he's smiling, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "She says they don't look at her when they pass her in the space, but they certainly greet each other. Real community spirit they have. And they often make the janitorial team do nonjanitorial stuff, too, like moving stock furniture back into a space when a tenant leaves." His eyes narrow. "I don't like her working there, but we don't have a choice. She has diabetes and she has all these problems with her vision and her feet, and even with the wonderful public healthcare system we have in Malaysia, we have other expenses, and we have to think about her future when she's no longer able to work.…"

So that's why he works so hard.

I hear the clicking of the bead curtains parting, and his aunt comes in. "Eat, eat," she says in Cantonese. I nod and say I've eaten in Mandarin, and she smiles, a real one. "Bagus," she replies in Bahasa, making a thumbs-up sign, and retreats with a hot cup of water.

We work on our sets for hours, drinking hot Chinese tea and eating cut fruit and prawn crackers. Lunch is a mess of flat rice noodles stir-fried with egg and bok choy and lap cheong, his aunt eating in front of the TV watching a classic '80s Jackie Chan comedy with us seated at the dining table. I laugh at what the characters are saying, even though I don't understand some of it. It occurs to me, as I banter with him and sometimes his aunt in an implausible mixture of Bahasa, English, Cantonese, and Mandarin, not code-switching like I do in school, that I feel at home here.