Every evening we tie Mama down.

It’s my job to fold a clean rag for her to bite on, so she won’t hurt her tongue. Three folds, hot dog style. Now that I’m thirteen Baba even lets me place it between her teeth. Ray, four years younger, is too little to do anything except watch, but he wouldn’t want to help anyway. He still thinks only girls should bother with this stuff.

Baba does most of the important parts. He helps Mama into her seat at the dining room table. Buckles the leather straps around her ankles and wrists. Lines up three wooden chairs in front of her.

When Mama is secured and we’re all in our seats, Baba unwraps her scarf from around her neck. Peels away the soft layers of cloth, one after another, to reveal her second mouth.

It sits at the base of her throat, right above her collarbone. No lips. No teeth. Just a narrow slit like the eye of a snake, searching for prey.

Mama tilts her head back. A tongue emerges from her second mouth, wet and pink, and licks at the air. It can taste all the negative emotions we’ve accumulated throughout the day. How lonely I am at school. How stressed Baba is about the layoffs at his company. How angry Ray gets about everything, like when the older boys pick on him at recess, or when he doesn’t get strawberry ice cream for dessert.

Mama’s second tongue laps all these feelings up. Our fears, our worries, our woes. They leave our minds and take form on her body as bulges and bumps. Like tiny fists extending out beneath her skin.

On Bad Days, when we have too many feelings for her to digest, the growths split open and bleed. Mama strains against the straps like a wild animal. She screams through the rag between her teeth.

Most days, though, everything stays under her skin where it belongs. And me and Ray and Baba, we feel better. Empty. Light as air.

When it’s all over, when Mama’s eaten as much as we need her to, Baba takes off her restraints and smooths back her hair. Mama gives us our vitamin gummies. Asks us if we’ve finished our homework. Tucks us into bed, on a normal day, or lies down in front of the TV, on a Bad Day, to hide her bleeding body beneath blankets and scarves, and waits for our sorrows to scab over.

For months now I’ve been checking my neck in the mirror, hoping.

Today I find it. Just above my collarbone, where there used to be a smooth expanse of skin, there’s a tiny nub, no bigger than the tip of my pinky finger. Like a new tooth trying to poke through the gum.

Mama sees it when I come down for dinner with my chin held high. Her eyes flash down to my neck for a moment, and I think she might say something. You’re growing up. I’m proud of you. Congratulations. But her gaze skids away from mine, like a car from a wreck, and she turns back to the stove without saying a word.

After dinner, while Mama’s clearing the dishes, I sneak upstairs to the master bedroom.

Mama keeps all her scarves in the back of her walk-in closet. Dozens of them, of all shapes and colors. She has plain scarves, white and beige and charcoal, the kind every Asian mom gets at H-Mart for five bucks a pack. And scarves she brought with her from Hangzhou, embroidered with patterns of flowers and birds. Even a real silk scarf, bright scarlet, that Baba got her on his business trip to Paris last year, which she saves for special occasions. I wish she would wear it more. None of the other moms in our town have any scarves as exquisite as that one.

I’m not supposed to touch them, not even the ones from H-Mart. That rule made sense when I was younger. Less so now I’m almost a woman myself, old enough to be careful.

The dishes are still clanging in the kitchen. I pull the silk scarf off its hanger and drape it around my neck, the way I’ve seen Mama do it. Scarlet shimmers over my chest, my shoulders. I slide my hand underneath, to feel the base of my throat. What I have is still only a nub,