Chue Sent Me Toward the Back Door Before the Rice Cooled

Chue pointed his serving spoon at the door beside the washer.

"Service entrance, Mai. You contribute nothing here. You can leave where the help leaves."

The rice still steamed between us. Outside, sleet ticked against the kitchen window. It was late March in Rockford, and winter kept coming back for things it had forgotten.

My mother put down her glass.

"She brought dinner," she said.

"I'm talking about this house."

I was a thirty-eight-year-old Hmong American woman with a blunt black bob, warm brown skin, and a small pale scar across my left thumb.

Thao was my late husband's surname; Yer and I had grown up as Vang girls.

That thumb rested against my napkin. Under the table, my other fingers tapped my knee. Three taps. A pause. Three more.

Six dots made a Braille cell. I had borrowed their order for hard choices long before I earned my first dollar as a Braille transcriber.

"I paid you six hundred fifty dollars on the first," I said.

"Room money. That's different."

"You called it my share of the mortgage."

Chue laughed toward the far end of the table, where our cousin Bao sat with his work boots tucked beneath his chair.

"Listen to the book lady tell me about mortgages."

Chue was a forty-three-year-old Hmong American man with a wide chest, close-cut black hair, and a gold watch that slid over his thick wrist.

He used that wrist to point out expensive things. The stove. The windows. The brick townhouse he owned with my older sister, Yer.

"Four bedrooms," he said. "A roof. Heat. Do you know what I carry alone?"

Yer kept picking at a loose seam in the tablecloth.

I knew what the roof cost. I also knew the loan number, the interest rate, and the exact date of his last payment.

The original papers were in my attorney's locked cabinet.

"Your little machine downstairs uses my electricity," he said.

My embosser was worth $7,400. It made raised dots on heavy paper. I used it for proof copies before sending finished files to schools and small publishers. My laptop held science books, bus guides, and math worksheets whose columns had to stay straight when a child read them with both hands.

That month, my business had brought in $9,260 before costs and taxes.

I had stopped telling Chue my numbers after he called my first school contract "charity work."

"Mai," Yer said. "Let's eat."

"She can eat somewhere she pays for," he said.

My mother pushed her plate away. "I send five hundred every month. Bao sends three hundred."

"And I make it all work."

Seven payments of $1,450 had not reached the person owed them.

I knew that, too.

Six weeks earlier, I had used most of my savings to keep that debt from going to a stranger. I wanted time to keep my family housed. I had hoped Chue would tell us the truth before I had to send a demand.

Instead, he had given me a door.

I folded my napkin.

"I'll collect my work tomorrow."

"Pay what you owe before you haul anything out."

"Write down the amount."

He blinked. "Don't get smart."

"You asked for money. Write down what it's for."

Bao looked at me then. Really looked.

Yer followed me into the hall. Our childhood photograph hung beside the coat hooks. Two girls in handmade jackets, each holding one side of a paper kite.

"He's worried," she whispered.

"About what?"

"The house."

"Have you seen a statement?"

She shook her head.

I took my coat from the hook.

"Ask him for one."

Chue called from the dining room. "The front door sticks. Use the back like I said."

The front door did stick. I had asked him to repair it in January. Now I pressed my shoulder beside the latch and opened it myself.

My mother came after me carrying the bowl I had brought.

"You forgot this."

"Keep the food, Mom."

She held on to the bowl. "Did I do something wrong by staying quiet?"

I wanted to tell her no. It would have been easy, and it would have been a lie.

"We all got used to it," I said. "That needs to change."

I drove to the small studio I had rented near a bus route on the east side. Its key had been in my purse for a week. I had planned to move my machines there slowly, without a scene.

There was a folding chair, a kettle, and enough room for six shelves.

I set my phone on the bare desk. Then I tapped three times, paused, and tapped three more.

Odette answered on the second ring.

"He told me I contribute nothing," I said.

She waited.

"Send the final demand."

"To both borrowers," she said. "Your sister must receive it, too."

"I know."

Before we hung up, a message from Chue lit the screen.

Anything left downstairs after Sunday belongs to me.