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CHAPTER ONE
There was no moon or moonbow when my sister was born. Contrary to the stories, she arrived late in the morning, close to noon. I remember, because the sun was in my eyes, and its glaring heat needled my skin until I bubbled with sweat.
I was very young and playing outside, poking the ants crawling up my ankles with a stick, when the sun suddenly receded—and I heard screams. Mama’s screams.
They were faint at first. Thunder had begun to rumble, swallowing the brunt of her cries. The loud cracks in the sky did not frighten me; I was already used to the island’s fickle winds and the low howls that rolled from the jungle at night. So I stayed, even as rain unfolded from the sky and the chickens ran for cover. The dirt under my toes became mud, and the warm, humid air chilled. The ants drowned as the water climbed up my ankles.
Adah had told me not to come inside until I was called, but the rain was getting harder. It came down in sheets, soaking my shirt and sandals and drumming against my skull. It hurt.
Kicking off my sandals, I clambered up the wooden stairs to our house and ran inside to the kitchen. I shook my hair free of rain and tried to warm myself by the fire, but only a few embers remained.
“Adah?” I called, shivering. “Mama?”
No answer.
My stomach growled. Up beside the cooking pot was a plate of cakes Mama had steamed for me yesterday. They’d made her hands smell like coconut and her nails shine, sticky with syrup.
“Channi’s cakes are ready!” she would always call when they were done. “Don’t eat too much at once, or the sugar flies will come sweeping into your belly for dinner.”
She didn’t call for me today.
I stood on my tiptoes and stretched my arms high, but I wasn’t tall enough to reach the plate.
“Mama!” I cried. “Can I have cake?”
Mama had stopped screaming, but I heard her breathing hard in the other room. Our house was very small then, with only a curtain separating the kitchen from Mama and Adah’s bedroom.
I stood on my side of the curtain. Its coarse muslin chafed my nose as I breathed against it, trying to see what was happening on the other side.
Three shadows. Mama, Adah, and an old woman—the midwife.
“You’ve another daughter,” the midwife was telling my parents. “Channi has a baby sister.”
A sister?
Forgetting Adah’s warning and my hunger, I ducked under the curtain and crawled toward my parents’ bed.
There Mama lay, propped up on a pillow. She looked like a fish, all translucent and pale, her lips parted but not moving. I barely recognized her.
Adah was hovering over her, and the restless look on his face soured quickly as Mama locked her fists around the edges of the bed—as if she were about to start screaming again.
Instead, she let out a gasp, and a gush of red swelled through the blankets.
“She’s bleeding!” Adah cried to the midwife. “Do something!”
The midwife lifted the blankets and went to work. I’d never seen so much blood before, and especially not at once. Not knowing it was my mother’s life flowing out of her, it almost looked beautiful. Vibrant and bright, like a field of ruby hibiscuses.
But Mama’s face, twisted in pain, kept me quiet.
Something was wrong.
I stood rooted to my corner, unseen. I wanted to hold Mama’s hands. To see if they still smelled like coconuts and if the sugar syrup had seeped into the lines of her palms like always—and tasted sweet when I kissed her skin. But all I smelled was salt and iron: blood.
“Mama,” I breathed, stepping forward.
Adah grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the bed. “Who let you in here? Get out.”
“It’s all right,” said Mama weakly. She turned her head to face me. “Come, Channi. Come meet your sister.”
