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had been thrown at me so frequently that they rang like place names in my mind. Was I already dying?
    Then I saw her.
    She was old. Thin as a beggar woman. White hair pulled back into a tight bun.
    Her white tunic and black slacks instantly told me she was—or had been—an amah. Silently, she took three paces forward and stopped at the foot of my bed. I realized when I tried to sit up that I was paralyzed. It wasn’t fear. Emotion didn’t enter into it at all. A kind of supernatural glue was holding me to the bed. I couldn’t move a muscle or even blink.
    I’d heard many stories from Sister Kwan, and in them, ghosts were usually vengeful harlots or poorly tended goats, alternately screeching for blood and bleating for sympathy. This one was neither wraith nor beast. Her skin was ochre. Her eyes lacked the sparkle of life that is noticeable only when it’s missing. But she looked at me with such a beneficent gaze, dead eyes notwithstanding, that had I been a religious little girl, I might have taken her for some sort of nun. She didn’t fit the description of a ghost. For starters, she didn’t frighten me at all.
    Aside from her jaundiced complexion and the pant legs that vanished into thin air, she looked to be solid, three-dimensional. Real. Not floating. No unruly hair or black holes for eyes. She could have easily passed for one of the amahs we had working for us, or one of their friends. But a part of me just knew , and I was flooded with a mute, abstract sadness. She conveyed absence, silence, loss—like the primordial emptiness that entered my mind every night before I drifted off to sleep. Had my tear ducts worked, I would have wept.
    I could tell she had lived a long life, but it hadn’t been enough.
    I wanted desperately to question her, but my mouth could form no words. What did she want? Did she have friends over there? Was she lonely?
    It was possible that she registered my questions, but her expression remained unchanged. She looked at me and only me; Li did not exist. She reached out slowly with both hands for my feet—bony, immobile things poking out of the wool blanket I’d long outgrown. I was happy to offer her solace, if that was what she sought. I held my breath, certain I would soon feel the coldness of her claws. I watched as her gnarled fingers wrapped themselves around my toes, one set in each hand. To my surprise, I felt absolutely nothing. But could she feel me? It was hard to tell. I studied her features and committed them to memory: black mole just under her left eye, unusually high cheekbones, the pronounced overbite I’d often noticed in the servant class—essentially a kind face. Regulation amah uniform, white jade bangle around her right wrist, no earrings. I told myself to report these specifics to Sister Kwan in the morning.
    Out of the blue, she made a noise, a soft gurgle in the back of her throat, like someone about to gag. Or speak. She tried again, but all she could manage was a single guttural word:
    “One…”
    And just like that, she vanished.
    I could now wriggle my toes and part my lips. I hissed, just to make sure my voice had returned. The air lost its sepulchral bite and my skin was again coated with sticky summer perspiration. The melancholy was lifted from me. I kicked off the covers and leapt to the floor, peering under the bed. But no, there wasn’t an old woman lying there with her joints folded across her chest like a giant bat.
    I flew back to bed. I couldn’t wait to announce my achievement to Sister Kwan—I saw a ghost and wasn’t scared!—and watch her mouth fall open in wonder. “You brave soul,” I could almost hear her say. Did Li see her? No, it was me, only me. I was first. I was special.
    My brother, meanwhile, continued to doze unfettered. I thought about shaking him awake and telling him about my encounter, but I knew he’d only fly into a rage and call me a liar.
    Should I keep the sighting a secret? Reporting it might make my parents