“Come on,” Chichi said, taking her hand. “Let’s go to my house.”

Chichi’s hut looked as if it would melt into the ground come rainy season. The warped walls were made of red mud, and the vines, trees, and bushes around it crept in too close. The front entrance was doorless, covered by a simple blue cloth. Sunny’s nose was assaulted with the smell of flowers and incense as soon as she entered. She sneezed as she glanced around.

The only sources of light were three kerosene lamps, one hanging from the low ceiling and two others on stacks of books. The place was full of books-on a small table in the middle of the room, packed under the bed, stacked against the wall all the way up to the ceiling. The corners of the ceiling were clotted with webs inhabited by large spiders. A wall gecko scurried behind a book stack. She sneezed again and sniffed.

“Sorry, o,” Chichi said, patting her shoulder. “It’s a little dusty in here, I guess.”

Sunny shrugged. “It’s okay. My room’s the same way.”

It wasn’t as bad as Chichi’s hut, but it was getting there. Sunny had run out of shelf space, so she had started keeping books under the bed. Most were cheap paperbacks her mother had found at the market, but she had been able to bring a few over from the United States, including her two favorites-Virginia Hamilton’s Her Stories and The Witches by Roald Dahl.

The books here looked older and thicker, and probably weren’t novels. Chichi’s mother was perched on top of a stack of books, reading. She looked up and saw them, and used a leaf to hold her place. The first thing Sunny noticed was that Chichi’s mother had the longest, thickest, coarsest hair she had ever seen. It was well past her waist.