Skull¹

Ma is their sun and she is their moon. Her pale face shifts over the threshold of the new house, inside to out, light to shade, as she readies space for the tiger.
Outside, the family waits.
This house is really a shack², set alone at the valley’s edge, a long uphill walk from the creek³. Gapped walls, tin ceiling. What Lucy can spy of the inside is twilit, on account of the single window. No glass—just stretched oilcloth, yellow and cloudy, admitting weak light and smudged shapes. Lucy’s heart sank at the sight after two weeks of travel, but the mine boss who led them here didn’t leave much choice. It’s this or you camp with the trash outside town, he said, spitting. He would’ve said more, but Ma put a warning hand on Ba’s chest and said, It’ll do
Ma’s voice is husky and low, with the crackle of kept fire. Its roughness strange against her mannered movements, her smooth face. A stopping beauty in that mismatch. The mine boss reddened and went on his way. Ying gai care what other people see in you, Ma has said while straightening Lucy’s posture⁴, neatening Sam’s braids, scolding Ba for his love of the gambling⁵ dens⁶ and Indian camps on the fringes of town. What people see shapes how they treat you, dong bu dong?
But once the boss left, Ma drooped⁷. Inside the shack the shadows reached for her. Her beauty’s been worn thin by travel, during which she acquired a sickness that made her retch up her food. Her beauty now hardly covers her bones. As Ma moves in the house, Lucy can see the shape of her skull.
“Girls,” Ma calls when she’s swept a portion of dirt floor smooth. Her breath jerks and pulses at her throat, seeming like to tear the skin. “Fetch me a stick.”
Sam runs around one side of the shack, and Lucy the other.
Lucy’s side lies half in shadow, thanks to a plateau that

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