Annette and her brother had already run to the top of the stone staircase that led to the main door. Annette grabbed the comic book. Mrs. Avery and I caught up to them and Annette’s brother wailed, “Mom!”

Mrs. Avery said, “Just give me a minute, okay, honey?” and she managed to get her keys in the lock.

As the front door swung open, I saw a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, sparkling with light like leaves caught in the rain. When we went in, we stood in an entryway with a polished table and a crystal bowl filled with fresh fruit. I wondered how they kept the roaches away from such an uncovered bowl. The smell of lemon cleanser and cookies mingled into a clean and delicious scent, and a thick carpet formed a walkway of flowers into the house.

“We’re home,” Mrs. Avery called. I looked down the hallway but instead of seeing a person, I saw a dog racing toward us. The white chow chow hurled itself upon Annette. A large gray tiger cat with a white-tipped tail had climbed down the staircase and was rubbing itself against her brother’s leg.

“Don’t be afraid,” Mrs. Avery said. “I know they can be over woman if you’re not used to animals but they won’t hot you.”

Annette’s brother had the cat in his arms and was rubbing his cheek against its thick fur. Annette was giggling like a maniac because the dog was licking her entire face. I couldn’t believe that Mrs. Avery allowed this. Weren’t animals filled with both germs and a great desire to bite you?

Mrs. Avery bent down to my eye level. “What you have to do,” she said, “is ex-T your hand like this.” She stretched her hand out to the cat. “Come, Tommy. They like to come up to you and smell you, and then you’ll be great friends.”

I dared to ask a question. I glanced at Annette, who was now sitting on the floor still in her coat and galoshes, bumping her head into the dog’s chest. “They have…?” I didn’t know what to call them and then pretended I was scratching myself.

“Oh!” Mrs. Avery said. “No, they don’t have any feet. See this?” The cat named Tommy had approached and was sniffing her hand. She put her finger under the thin collar he was wearing. “This keeps all the feet away.”

I must have looked confused because then she pretended she was scratching herself under her arms like a monkey. I’d never seen an adult, let alone a lady, do anything so undignified before.

“No scratch,” she said. She took her hands away. “All okay.”

The little brother had already disappeared into the kitchen and we followed him. I was introduced to the housekeeper, an angular white woman wrinkled like a piece of beef jerky.

I said, “How do you do,” and shook her hand.

She cocked her head to one side and said, “Aren’t you something.” She made us a snack. It was Ritz crackers, which I’d tasted in Hong Kong, but then she took a block of pale yellow cheese from the refrigerator. She used a metal slicer, which I’d never seen before, and carved thin bits of cheese to put on the crackers. I remembered that taste for a long time: the strange, alien sharpness of the cheese against the buttery crispness of the crackers.

The little brother piled a few crackers in his hands, grabbed the comic book out from under Annette’s arm, and raced toward the staircase in the entryway.

“No crumbs on the carpet!” Mrs. Avery yelled after him.

Annette’s face started to turn blotchy. “Mom! He took-”

“Stop it, Annette. You’ll have time to read it later, and now you have company.” Mrs. Avery turned to me. “Kimberly, you’ll soon see, it’s just a disaster around here.”

Annette turned her concentration to her snack and when we were finished, we headed upstairs to her room. As we passed the living room, I saw a black grand piano and next to it, the dog stretched itself out on the large sectional sofa, which shimmered with gold and red stripes. Even from a distance, I could tell the plump cushions were fuzzy with a matted layer of animal hair.

Annette’s room was almost as big as our classroom at school. There was a wall jammed full with toys: stuffed animals, board games, building blocks. She had a bunk bed with a ladder for going up and a slide for coming down. No one slept on the bottom bunk, she said, but she had a bunk bed because she liked sleeping high. I climbed up after her and at first I was afraid of getting too close to the edge of the mattress, despite the wooden rail. Once I got used to it, though, it was glorious, heady, to be so close to the ceiling, with my shoes off, a friend at my side, and the anticipation of a slide to return to floor level. It was so warm in their house, I could take off several layers and I lay on her bed in just my undershirt. I felt weightless and happy, as if I were in Hong Kong again.

“Ooooooh… the girls are playing in their tree house! Better watch out for bugs!” Her brother’s little head stuck out like a dandelion from behind the door.

“I’m going to kill you!” Annette yelled, and she started down the slide but he disappeared before she got to the bottom. She ran to her bedroom door and poked her head out. “You come in here one more time and I’m telling!”

She slammed the door. “I wish I could keep him out, but we don’t believe in locked doors in the house.” From the way she said it, I could tell it was a phrase she was quoting from her parents. I wished Ma had the luxury of worrying about my behavior; she could barely do more than keep the both of us alive.

I glanced at the clock by her bed. Snoopy’s hands showed the time and it wasn’t long before I had to leave. “Maybe we start work now?”

Mrs. Avery had set up all our materials on Annette’s desk. Everything was new and clean: a large shoe box, sheets of colored cardboard, green and gold glitter paint, watercolors and two types of markers, glue and scissors. Alone at home, I would have needed to do things differently: taking boxes out of other people’s garbage, cutting figures out of old newspaper to stick to the box with packing tape, drawing everything with a ballpoint pen. With our pretty materials, Annette and I quickly finished our diorama, which showed some people sitting in a circle on the ground, holding hands and smiling. We used glitter paint to draw the letters of the word “Communication” behind the figures on the ground. It had been Annette’s idea and I was glad she knew what we were supposed to do.

When Mrs. Avery drove me home, I asked her to drop me off at the school.

“No, I’ll drive you home, dear,” she said. “Just tell me where you live. I work part-time as a really state agent, I can find anyplace something.”

“School is okay,” I lied. “Ma wait for me at school.”

“But the school is cl-” She broke off in the middle of her sentence. She took a breath, then said, “The school? You’re sure?”

I nodded.

“The school it is, then. Here we go!” She sounded very bright.

When we got there, all of the windows were dark and there was no one on the pavement. I was afraid Mrs. Avery would protest because, like Ma, she didn’t seem to be the sort of mother to let a kid out alone at an empty building.

She pulled up to the curb. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“Yes,” I said. “I wait for Ma, she come soon. Bye-bye.” I slid out of the car and closed the door behind me. I turned back toward her. This was another moment I’d rehearsed. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

“You’re very welcome.” She leaned toward me and hooked a ringed hand around the edge of the open window. “You know, Kim, we’d love to have you over for dinner sometime. You let Annette know when you can come, all right? Just about somethings okay with us!”

I thanked her again, and then, to my surprise, she didn’t offer to wait. I watched her disappear down the street and suddenly felt lonely. But when I got to the end of the long walk from school and finally opened the door to our building, a car the same style as hers passed behind me. Could she have followed me all this way?