Predict

How will Bá feel as she begins a new chapter in her life?

She arrived in a strange new land with blinking lights and speeding cars and towering buildings that scraped the sky and a language she didn’t understand.

She worked many years, day and night, and so did her children and her sisters and her cousins, too, living together in one big house.

Last summer my little brother found the special seed and asked questions again and again. He’d never seen a lotus bloom or an emperor on a golden dragon throne.

So one night he stole the seed from beneath the family altar and planted it in a pool of mud somewhere near Bá’s onion patch.

Bá cried and cried when she found out the seed was gone. She didn’t eat, she didn’t sleep, and my silly brother forgot what spot of earth held the seed.

Illustration of tall buildings in a city at night
Key Vocabulary

  • chapter n., one part of something

  • arrive v., to reach a place

  • bloom v., to open up or grow into a flower

  • forget v., to not remember something

In Other Words

  • towering buildings that scraped the sky very tall buildings

  • what spot of earth held where he had planted