Page 15 of A Forgery of Fate

Things will look up from here,I’d thought.They have to get better.

I was wrong.

Come spring, Mama couldn’t find work. Losing a husband was not good for business, especially if your business was seeing the future.

Dejected, she found her way into Gangsun’s gambling dens, certain that her Sight would give her an advantage. “One more try,” she’d say every time she lost. “The sprites of fortune are with me still. They’ll carry me through anotherday.”

One unlucky round of tiles was all it took. Just like that, Mama lost our house, and my sisters and I lost the world we’d known. Our clothes, our toys, the paints in the cupboard, and Nomi’s prized collection of books, the coppers in a jar Fal had been saving to buy her silk slippers. We didn’t even have enough warning to take Baba’s box of wooden trinkets.

I snuck inside a few days later, but everything had already been sold off. All I could salvage were some old blankets, Nomi’s dictionary—torn and missing pages—and one of Fal’s dolls. The box of trinkets was gone, along with anything else we’d had of Baba’s.

Fal wouldn’t speak to Mama for over a month.

“That was the last time,” Mama pled to us. “No more. I’ve learned my lesson.”

But there was a reason A’landans called bad habits “thetouch of demons.” They were like curses, hard to break. Mama would keep her word for a little while, but before long she’d be back to her old ways again.

“It’s up to you and me now,” Fal had said to me after we lost the house. “Promise me, Tru. No matter what happens between us, no matter how much we fight, we stay together. For Nomi. For Mama.”

She’d taken the words from my own heart. “No matter what it takes,” I added slowly, “we get out of Gangsun.” I raised my chin. “We start again.”

And after five years, we were close. So close.

I helped Mama up, pulled out a stool for her from behind our table, really a wooden board that sat on the bucket we used for storing rice. This was our home now, a ramshackle room behind the fish market, which Fal and I had rented because it was cheap and had no roaches. The landlord hadn’t lied about the roaches, but instead there were mice, and a rotting stench that wouldn’t go away no matter how much incense Mama burned. I couldn’t complain. We had a window, which Nomi—who was getting tall—stuck her feet out of some nights so she had enough space on the bed, and we had a narrow closet that I’d converted into a tiny place to paint. Most importantly, it was warm in winter.

Mama leaned against the table. There was a bowl of rice beside my empty cup of tea, a small well in the center. I imagined Mama picking at it for hours, eating one grain at a time.

I’m lost, Tru,her eyes spoke.Like your baba.

I took Mama’s hands in mine. “How much do you owe?”

Shame flushed her cheeks. She looked away.

“How much?” I asked again, as gently as I could. “Tell me. I won’t be upset.”

Then I saw the bruises on her wrist. Four fingerprints, and the arched indents of fingernails.

Anger rose to my throat. “Who did this?”

From the way Mama’s body folded, she didn’t have to say anything. I already knew.

“Mama, why?” I cried softly. “You know better than to gamble in one of Madam Yargui’s dens.”

Mama flinched. “It’s not what you think. I was trying to find answers.”

I’d heard this story before. Mama was convinced that Yargui had something to do with Baba’s disappearance. It was an obsession that drove her, an excuse she made to justify her habit.

Did you get those answers?I wanted to ask.Was it worth risking everything? Our house, our future?

“What does she want?” I said instead.

“She said if we can’t pay…” Hopelessness pooled in Mama’s eyes. “She’ll take Falina.”

The air punched out of my lungs. The world swayed, and my mouth tasted like ash. My sister was a pretty girl; Yargui had had her sights on her for a while. If I couldn’t pay off Mama’s debt, she’d sell Falina in the forbidden markets to become a servant, a courtesan, a concubine. I didn’t want to imagine the possibilities. The only certainty was that my sister would be taken far from Gangsun, and we’d never see her again.

A fate I would never allow.

“When are they coming back?” I said.

---