I should've got a basket. I had come in for eggs, which was why I hadn't, but the milk was cheap and we were out of soy sauce, or would soon be. A bag of bread was squished between my arms and my chest, the eggs balancing precariously on top, and a packet of minced pork was pressed against my ribs by my elbow. I ought to be able to manage this, I thought. Other people managed children.

Then my phone began to vibrate. 

I shifted the milk into the crook of my arm. The spring onions were slipping. I pushed them back with my chin, holding everything against my stomach while I worked the phone free. Once out, it continued vibrating, working its way towards my fingertips. I nearly lost it trying to answer.

"Hello?" I wedged it between my cheek and shoulder. The spring onions brushed my mouth.

"Is this Chan Wai-mei?"

"Yes," I said, watching the eggs.

"Your biopsy results are here. Could you come in tomorrow at ten-twenty?"

"Uh-huh." I could feel the pork sliding away.

"We'll see you then."

The pork plopped at my feet. Maybe I should just leave it there.

The doctor asked me to sit down, even though I was already sitting. I scooted a little farther back in the chair. 

"Before we discuss the results, how have you been feeling?"

"Fine," I said. Then, because this didn't sound quite medical enough, "A bit tired."

He nodded, and moved the keyboard slightly to one side. "I'm afraid the biopsy shows that the lump is malignant."

I waited.

"That means cancer."

"I've been sleeping quite late these days," I said, looking down at my hands.

"I know this is difficult news."

"Maybe that's why I've been tired."

"That could explain it, potentially, yes."

He rested his hands on the desk. I looked at them instead. After a moment, he cleared his throat, took a pamphlet from a holder on his desk, and glanced at the front before handing it to me. On the cover, a smiling cartoon circle flexed its little arms. I wasn't sure whether it was supposed to represent me or whatever was growing inside me. I put the pamphlet in my bag.

The doctor began to explain that he was referring me to an oncologist. "Any questions?"

"No," I replied.

The questions were waiting outside the clinic. Is it my fault? Will I lose my hair? Was it because I tried protein powder? Will Mami remember to feed my fish?

In the lift, I pressed my fingers against the small, round bandage on my neck. It had been there since last week. Last week it had just been a bandage. I'm not sure why I hadn't taken it off, but I certainly wasn't going to now. 

Mami asked me to pick up some pork on the way home. I stood in front of the butcher for a long time, choosing. It seemed important to get the right cut.

TALKING TO YOUR FAMILY

She was chopping pork for soup when I told her. It turns out there was still some in the freezer. The chopping stopped. Then: chop-chop-chop-chop-chop. 

That evening she gave me soup with dinner and more soup after dinner. Before bed she asked whether I wanted some warmed up.

"Tomorrow," I said.

At six the next morning, she woke me up with a bowl by my bedside and told me to get dressed. She was wearing her serious blouse.

"Where are we going?"

"Eat first."

At the temple, she handed me the cylinder of sticks and told me to shake. Shake-shake-shake. A stick clattered to the ground. She bent down to pick it up.

"What does it say?"

"You weren't concentrating enough. Shake it again."

I shook until a stick fell out. Mami read it.

"Again."

I had to fully concentrate five more times before Mami looked satisfied.

Outside, my mother's phone rang before she had put the fortune away.

"A good one," she told my aunt. "Yes. Eventually."

On the minibus she explained what the doctor had said. Then she explained it again, louder, because my aunt had gone into a lift.

"She wants you."

I took the phone. "Hello, Auntie."

"Are you eating?"

"Yes."

"You must eat. And you must drink soup. The soup must have meat in it, for the iron."

I looked at my mother. She was listening closely, in case this had not occurred to her.

My uncle wanted to know the exact diagnosis. I told him what I remembered.

"That's not enough information."

"I know," I said.

The woman across the aisle looked away when I caught her watching. The man in front turned round when I said "malignant", then faced forward again. 

I gave my uncle back to my mother. She handed me a flask of soup I didn't know she had in her bag, and gestured for me to drink it.

"What's the prognosis?" I could hear him asking her, as if it would get him a different answer.

Later, the fortune teller asked to see both my hands. He peered into my palms, studying their creases. Then he squinted at my face. I squinted back. 

"Have you been having trouble with anyone?"

"What kind of trouble?"

"Anyone jealous."

While I was still racking my brain, Mami had already rattled off four.

She took those names with her, written on the back of a receipt, to the grannies under the Canal Road flyover. They sat on plastic stools, each with a shrine the size of a microwave and a pile of shoes. Buses and trucks rumbled overhead. The granny we chose wore a sun visor, even though we were well out of the sun. She moved a stool towards me with her foot.

"Name?"

My mother gave her three names and a description. The lady wrote the first on a paper man no bigger than my hand, laid him on a brick, and began to beat him with a slipper.

"Beat your little head, may you have breath but nowhere to catch it!" she chanted. If you didn't understand the words, you could have skipped rope to it. By the last person, I knew when the slipper would come down. "Beat your little hand, may you have money but can't collect it!" 

When the final paper man was in pieces, she gathered up their remains, smeared pork fat on the mouth of a paper tiger—so it would gobble up whatever was left of my bad fortune—and set the lot on fire in a biscuit tin. She turned to me.

"And you? Anyone you want to hit?"

I tried to think of someone. There was only the thing in my neck, and it didn't have a name. I shrugged.

"All done. Two hundred dollars."

Mami gave her two hundred. For once, she did not haggle.

On the minibus home, Mami was listing ingredients for another soup when my phone rang.

"Ms Chan?"

"Yes?"

"I'm calling about your biopsy results. There's been an administrative error."

Wrong Chan Wai-mei. Same name, same year of birth, different lump. Yours, benign, they said. They apologised for any inconvenience.

Mami pressed her ear against the back of my phone. I had to tilt my head to make room.

"See," she said when I hung up. "Worked."

Then she asked whether we had any pork left.

At my follow-up, Mami brought soup in the good flask, the one I was never allowed to take to work.

"Chan Wai-mei?"

Two of us stood.

The nurse came over to check our appointment slips. The other woman held hers out with both hands.

"Sorry," the nurse said to me. "Not you yet."

I sat down. The other woman bent to pick up her bag. No one stood with her.

Mami looked at me. Then she reached into her bag and took out the flask.