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and get us boiled water for tea.”
    She was getting rid of me so they could talk, as if I was a child and Erich wasn’t. I looked at my brother closely. His shoulders were broader, his waist narrower. There were rusty shadows on his cheeks. A wave of fear scuttled through me as Erich tore out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.
    I snapped up the Thermos and bamboo chips, followed him and sensed somebody following me . I looked over my shoulder, and there was Liu, a half block behind. What did he want from me? He knew I had no food to share with him, no money.
    Three boys I’d never seen before waited for Erich at the corner of Kinchow Road and Baikal. He must have known they were waiting; that was why he’d picked the fight with Mother—so he could bolt from the house.
    He fell right into step with the boys, all of them walking so fast that I needed three steps to each of theirs just to keep them in sight.
    At the gate of the Baikal Cemetery, one of the boys gave a lit smoke to Erich. The tallest one snuffed his out with his bare fingers and tossed the stub of it over the fence into the cemetery. Then, as if on a signal, all four of them turned around and walked back down Baikal Road, laughing and punching each other and generally acting like obnoxious boys. I ducked into Ah Ching’s Bird Shop, where it was dark and jammed with cages and fluttering wings.
    â€œYou don’t buy a bird, you don’t stay in my shop,” Ah Ching growled, and his mynahs and canaries cackled in agreement.
    Finally the boys passed the store, and I raced up the street to keep a respectable distance between us.
    At Yangtzepoo Road the tall boy dangled a key around his neck and bent toward the lock of a godown, one of the decrepit warehouses along the docks of the Whangpoo. The four of them disappeared into the building. The door slammed shut; all the windows were boarded up. I listened at the door, but not a sound escaped the building. Was this one of the meetings Erich talked about? Just what were they discussing so quietly in there? I held my breath and listened more closely. Nothing.
    Straddling a wide stone bench next to the godown, I waited. For what?
    Liu darted in and out between the godowns, clearly hunting for something—dropped coins, maybe, or food. Each time he appeared, he studied me and once got close enough that I snapped, “Why are you always following me?”
    â€œWhistle, I come to you, missy,” he replied.
    â€œI didn’t whistle.”
    â€œI come anyway!”
    I groaned, and he got the hint, disappearing into an alleyway just as the door of the godown opened. My first instinct: hide. In wartime Shanghai the impulse was always to sneak, to lie, to make yourself invisible. I jumped off the bench and crouched under it, hidden by the great lion’s claw legs.
    The men were in their twenties, blond hair cropped short, smooth-cheeked, and crisply turned out in pressed khaki shirts and trousers. Whispering in German and shifting from foot to foot with their trousers tucked into their high boots, they looked so much like Nazi soldiers that for a moment my heart stopped. I tightened myself into a smaller target and studied them.
    They weren’t Nazis at all! They were two of the men we’d seen at the café. Before I could scuttle out from under the bench, the short, stocky one spotted me.
    â€œLook here, there’s a rat in the sewer,” he said to the other man, who yanked me out from under the bench.
    I struggled up from the dirt and landed on the stone seat.
    â€œWhy are you spying on us?” he growled
    â€œI’m not spying, I’m …”
    â€œJust hiding under a bench. And you speak the mother tongue? Who sent you?”
    â€œNobody. I was just following someone, no one you know, really, just a friend, just exploring,” I stammered.
    â€œWhat do you want me to do with her, Gerhardt?” the shorter man asked, his beefy