Free A Cab Called Reliable by Patti Kim Page A

wrote down the name and story I had told, filling the back and front of a sheet of paper with words. I folded it into a small triangle and took it with me into the kitchen, where my mother kept candles underneath the sink. With my triangle, a book of matches, a steel bowl, and a candle in hand, I walked toward the sleeping Loo Lah and sat down on the floor in front of her. The woman on the stereo sang so sadly that I thought maybe she knew how I was feeling. I lit the candle and burned my triangle telling God I would never read palms again, praying that He would forgive me and change me, make me blind, deaf, and dumb.
    As I watched my writing turn to ashes, I sighed in relief and let the wax melt and drip into the bowl. I brought the flame close to my face, then held it to Loo Lah’s, when I felt her turn on her side. She was dreaming about something—about moving on, taking the next step, going on: First her distant cousin, then my father, then would follow another man she could use as a stepping stone to go on to bigger and better things. During the year she had lived with us, I had become thankful for the way she giggled to get out of trouble and put my father at ease moments before his temper blew. My mother and I never knew how to keep him from kicking things. Loo Lah had a way about her that made my father smile, even if she was telling him she had driven his car all the way to Baltimore and lost his muffler on the way home. Loo Lah’s arm dangled off the couch. I took her hand and held it close to my cheek, whispering to her how sorry I was for hating her, how beautiful I thought she was, how I loved the way she carved little boats out of apples. I turned her hand onto my lips and kissed her palm.
    I read Loo Lah’s palm by candlelight. Her mount of Jupiter was fleshy, which meant she was full of pride and ambition. She had no line of marriage, but a deep and beautiful line of the heart. I wondered how many men had taken her in, and how many she had left. As I began to trace her line of life, she moaned and pulled her hand away because the flame burned too close. When she opened her eyes and saw me with fire in my hands, she quickly sat up, turned on the lamplight, and called me a little bitch for trying to burn her to death. I blew out my candle, and Loo Lah slapped me across the face. She said she didn’t feel sorry for me anymore. She said she didn’t feel safe here anymore.

8
    The summer I turned twelve, Boris asked me to go with him. “Go with you where?” I asked. He said, “Nowhere, you dummy. Go with me like boyfriend/girlfriend go with me.”
    For three days, Boris and I went together. The first day, he gave me a necklace strung with pearly buttons taken from his mother’s sweater. The second day, he called me at midnight to play a slow song for me over the telephone. The third day, he told me to close my eyes. He held my hand, walked me to the ABC Drug Store, and bought me a chocolate bar, lip gloss, and a bottle of shampoo that smelled like coconuts.
    The fourth day, Boris’s father drove his truck back to Burning Rock Court from somewhere in Texas. Boris showed me the photograph of his father’s new house in Houston. Two large trees grew in the front yard. Boris’s father’s truck was parked in the driveway. The windows had curtains on them; the shutters were green. Boris told me his mother and father were packing to move the next day. I asked him if he wanted me to return his gifts. He told me he wanted me to keep them.
    â€œI’m happy for you, Boris,” I said.
    Boris, his mother, and his father disappeared into the front of the truck. The truck then rolled out of Burning Rock Court, turned right on Wilson Boulevard, and disappeared as well.
    When I later told my father that Boris had moved away to somewhere in Texas and I was having a heart attack, he called me a stupid head for loving a one-legged foreign boy. “It’s just you