Jade harrumphed, rustling through her purse for her apartment keys.
“All I’m saying,” Elizabeth replied, “is that the neighborhood means something.”
“You are being very dra-ma-tic,” Jade said, striking the hard consonants of English for emphasis. She relished the contrast of a sharp English syllable against the melodic rises and falls of Chinese.
“Kitty,” Elizabeth called. “Get off your ass and help.”
Lydia’s leg fired at an angle to boot Kitty off of the sofa. “You heard her.”
Kitty rolled her eyes, flinging her Tamagotchi at Lydia’s arm. “You could get up too, you know.”
“Your aim sucks,” Lydia replied.
“Kitty!” Elizabeth called, and Kitty came, feet dragging on the hems of her pajama pants.
“LB, you’re so unfair,” Kitty replied, dutifully sinking her hands into another plastic bag and retrieving a head of cabbage. “Jane never talks to me this way.”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “Jane babies you.”
“Says the baby,” Kitty snapped.
“Jane’s at the library, and I’m asking you to help me, okay?” Elizabeth said.
“Why me? It’s always me! You never ask Lydia to do anything. And Mary’s just sitting there!”
“I’m studying,” Mary retorted.
“V. C. Andrews?” Kitty replied.
“Unpack the bag,” Elizabeth said.
Lydia cackled in triumph.
Jade threw her handbag onto one of the kitchen chairs. “No one is going to ask me what I did?”
In unison, the three girls intoned, “The rec.”
Jade stretched a finger high into the air. “The rec!”
Practical and austere, dependable and dull, The Greater Chinatown Neighborhood Youth Recreational Center had once been a brave new world of city funding and dedicated resources, only to fade into old age as the rest of the neighborhood did. The brick dirtied, the signage shedding letters in vandalism or neglect until it came to resemble its neighbors: a little haggard, a little hardened, but not unwelcoming.
The unimaginative and unsophisticated might look at it and see unpaid property taxes and urban decay, a sign of the troubles from the last decade, but in the right light at the right angle, it could be opportunity for the cunning and quick. Jade saw a sizable commission for an intrepid upstart; the girls saw another victim of the changing city, waiting to be cannibalized into cupcake shops and coffee shops in the circle of life; but Elizabeth felt it as a keen loss, a passing of the heart of the neighborhood and the joys of her schoolyard days.
“Your mama doesn’t even have her license yet, but she is closing big, big deals.”
The girls mumbled half-hearted congratulations.
“You’re helping them turn the city into a strip mall,” Elizabeth said.
Jade shuddered an aggrieved sigh. Some children come as gifts from heaven, dutiful and compliant, quiet and sweet; some are karmic punishments. Jade considered Elizabeth, on occasion, a karmic punishment. It wasn’t that she ignored every single bit of well-meaning advice (though she did); or that despite Jade’s many pleas for her to study something profitable, she’d chosen communications and photography (at a median income of forty thousand dollars!); or that she insisted on working dead-end jobs (destroying her hands!) until she could make her own way rather than pumping any of Jade’s connections. She supposed she knew so much, and couldn’t admit that her mother might know things she didn’t. “I am investing in the neighborhood. I am raising the property values.”
“Mother, what values? We don’t own this apartment.”
“Elizabeth, what kind of daughter can’t be happy for her mother, aa?” Jade replied.
“I’m happy!”
Jade preened. “When I told your friend Alexa at the store, she congratulated me right there.”
Kitty crumpled a plastic bag between her hands.
“Good for her,” Elizabeth said.
“Alexa said that she was going to teach me how to drive,” Lydia said, rising to join them in the kitchen. “Did you get any snacks?”
Kitty whipped a bag of baby carrots at her chest.
“Kitty!” Lydia cried. “Ow!”
“How’s my aim now?”
“Girls, stop fighting,” Jade said. “Dinner soon.”
“Alexa’s not going to teach you how to drive,” Elizabeth said.
“Shows what you know,” Lydia replied. “We’re friends now.”
Jade answered with a sly smile, “She has an ad at the pay phone on Canal Street. Did you see it?”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t go scanning phone booths for Alexa Hu.”
“You should,” Lydia replied, tearing into the bag and crunching a carrot between her teeth. “She’s everywhere.”
Jade lifted a threatening finger. “What did I say, Lydia? Dinner soon. Start the rice.”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “I’m meeting Chester.”
“What, again?” Elizabeth said. “You have a shift tonight.”
“Kitty’s taking it.”
“What? No, I’m not.”
“You’re taking it, Kitty. You said, aa.”
“I didn’t. Like I don’t have a life?”
Lydia snorted. “You don’t.”
Jade sighed. “Ai, giving birth to a slab of roast pork would have been more useful than you, LB. Why don’t you find a good, well-paying job like that Alexa?”
“I’m doing okay,” Elizabeth replied.
Jade snorted. “Opening doors and delivering food . . .”
“Helping our neighbors,” Elizabeth said, talking over her. “And enough to help with the groceries, which is more than I can say for some people around here . . .”
Mary raised her book to cover her face.
“Why do you insist on being stupid?” Jade sighed. “You are not a social worker. You have a college degree, and you’re wasting . . .”
“Mother, she’s a weather girl for Channel 5. I’m not desperate.”
“You’re not finding anything either,” Jade replied, jabbing her in the chest with the sharp end of a nail.
“Service jobs don’t look very good on a résumé,” Mary replied.
“And when was the last time you chipped in without being asked first?” Elizabeth replied.
Lydia crunched another carrot. Wet orange flesh speckled her large teeth. “Alexa could get you a job, LB.”
“I’m not asking Alexa for a job.”
“Why not?” Lydia said. “What’s the point of knowing people if you aren’t going to take advantage?”
Jade slapped Lydia hard on the shoulder in agreement. “Your baby sister knows better than you.”
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. “Why don’t you start the rice?”
“Why don’t you, big mouth?”
“Girls, girls!” Jade clucked. “Don’t you want to know how your mama did it?”
They groaned in chorus.
Elizabeth couldn’t think of anything she’d want to hear less. Climbing over the groceries gathered on the floor, she shoveled loose notebooks and a bulky laptop into the large pocket of her black JanSport and slung the strap onto her shoulder.