Chapter 3

By the time the wedding was over and we got home, it was ten at night. When the reception broke up, Anna stood at the door seeing the guests off, the bracelet swaying with every wave of her hand, a green tongue licking across each guest's face.

My three-year-old came barreling over and threw his arms around my leg, smearing cake crumbs all over my dress. He still had half a melted chocolate in his fist, and his sticky little hand left a print on my leg like a slap. I crouched down and rubbed his head. There was chocolate matted into his hair, dried into a hard little crust. I handed him to his grandfather and walked straight into my mother-in-law's bedroom.

She was sitting at the dressing table, counting the cash gifts. Red bills covered the whole table, and she smoothed them out one by one, then banded each stack with a rubber band and stacked them in neat piles. Her red dress from earlier still lay on the table, the frog buttons at the collar half undone and hanging over the edge. The smile on her face was impossible to hide; the corners of her mouth stayed turned up, like a mouse that had gotten into the oil.

She glanced up when she saw me come in. "What is it? If you're tired, go rest. Let your father-in-law watch the boy."

I held out my hand. My fingertips tingled a little from how hard I was pressing them.

"Mom. Give me back my bracelet."

The smile froze on her face. Her eyes slid off mine and drifted to the stack of red bills on the table. Then her expression collapsed, and she shoved the tin box of cash gifts off to the side. The chair legs scraped across the floor with a shriek, like a nail dragged over a blackboard.

"What do you mean yours, mine? It's just a cheap bracelet."

She stood up, her voice climbing without her noticing. "Anna got married today. What's wrong with you, her brother's wife, giving it to her as a dowry? Besides, you married into our family. Isn't everything of yours ours now? I raised my son for thirty years, I spent all that money bringing you into this house, and I can't have one bracelet? Why are you so stingy?"

All that money. Eighty-eight thousand in bride price, on top of the three hundred thousand in renovations and the eight hundred thousand down payment my family had put up. And she said it like it was the plain truth, righteous as anything.

I looked at her flushed face. Her nostrils flared, her upper lip curled back to show yellowing teeth. Her finger jabbed at the air, the fresh red polish on her nails already chipped in a few places.

I smiled.

She hesitated, thinking I'd been driven out of my mind. Her hand hung in midair, like a bird frozen mid-flight.

"Fine, Mom. You're right."

I nodded. Then I turned and walked out.