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on another man’s chair after he goes off with a gal. I like the warmth he left behind. I mean if there’s something wrong with me, same thing’s wrong with him, right?”
    Matsi didn’t know what to do about the marble in her throat. And the tears that dripped from her face onto Lionel’s leg.
    â€œHey, hey,” he said, turning her around to face him. “Not hurting you, am I? I never want to hurt you.” He wiped her tears with his thumb.
    She knew Lionel loved her. It was her stubborn voice that needed persuading.
    â€œIf I could, I’d take you home with me.”
    Why couldn’t he?
    Daddy sent her away with friends of friends who turned up at the camp where you huddled in tents when you weren’t collecting bodies. From Vancouver, too, they were, the Wongs. Quite the co-inky-dink. They gave her a gift with their claw-like hands, a miniature elephant carved from teak. They called it Packy Durm.
    Matsi. Such a distinctive name, Mrs. Wong said in a voice that came out of her nose. After Ma-tsu, Daddy explained, the Goddess of the Sea. Also called the Empress of Heaven, Mr. Wong said, trying to wear the smarter pants. Astride the bribing Packy Durm, Matsi rode into the conversation: When Ma-tsu was born she didn’t cry and neither did I. Her very first name was Silent Girl. How brave she was, said Mr. Wong. Precocious, too, no doubt. Matsi wanted to stay and play detective, find Mummy in a lagoon, but seven-year-olds don’t get to vote. Daddy wrote to Whom It May that it was okay if the Wongs took her home to her aunt who would hug her, feed her, and walk her to school, like a puppy from the pound. It’s safer there, Daddy said. Only sickness and sorrow here, only corpses burning on wooden pyres.
    â€œAver so often a charmer get friendly wit a boy, tink he help her leave afore she paid up,” Maw-Maw said one night before the evening’s first contest. She was brushing Matsi’s hair, checking it for bugs that looked like sesame seeds when they fell to the floor.
    When Matsi remembered not to twist her hair into knots as she slept, Maw-Maw rewarded her with tender strokes of the brush that entered her brain and hypnotized her.
    â€œCase you tinkin dat way, let me tell you de police just gonna bring you back. Police and me take care a each other.”
    Matsi sat on a stool, her head and back cushioned by Maw-Maw’s chest.
    Maw-Maw tugged at Matsi’s ear. “You know what I sayin. T-Henry seen dat boy talkin at you, de one wit a head as swivelly as a owl’s. Seen him teachin you games. Seen you understandin.”
    Matsi closed her eyes as Maw-Maw caught her hair in both hands and cinched it with a rubber band. The briefest of memories skipped through her heart: her head in her mother’s lap, Mummy stroking her hair and the side of her face.
    â€œNever seen dat afore, me. A boy wantin the same twat aver time. Nuttin wrong wit dat. Good f’business, actually. He bid averbody else up, him. How much he gonna pay f’go-go, I wonder. You ready f’dat? Afore I pin you up, get down on de floor.”
    Maw-Maw lifted her off the stool and placed her on her back; bent her knees open like a frog’s. She’d lain like that when Maw-Maw bought her, before the price was set.
    â€œMay be dipped in de bayou, me, but I know my business. When you make de boys wait f’go-go, dey wet demselves tinkin bout it. Bring all de cash dey got, happy to give it to me.”
    She stuck her finger in Matsi’s hole and wiggled it around. Monkeys scooted across Matsi’s mind, looking for places to pee.
    Maw-Maw grunted, pulled her finger out. “Still too small. Could bleed to det. Not trowin you way like dat. I take care a my dahlins. When you ready, gonna be de best contest ever. Li’l Lotus Lady: de rabbit in a pack a foxes. Get dubba my money back.”
    Matsi heard nothing after bleed to death. She stumbled as she danced