Blonde

The main things I remember about my mother are her hands. They were covered with small scars, and always had a bandage or two on them.

My mother was like me, she changed when she sneezed. Sometimes her hair was pink, sometimes it was yellow, like mine. The hair change was obvious. The other change that went with it, less so. When her hair was pink, she was very lucky, and everyone around her was unlucky. When it was yellow, she was accident prone. And, unlike me, she wasn't split in two – no gaps in her memory from when she was being someone else for awhile. And she spent most of her time blonde.

I hated that I shared a hair colour with her.

Because it wasn't by accident, she did it on purpose. She always had pepper or something tickly in her pocket so she could make herself sneeze if she needed to. Because 'she didn't want to be lucky if it meant hurting other people.' She was such a martyr, it disgusted me, even as a kid. And it showed me that if you have to choose between yourself and others people, you should choose yourself, because choosing others just gets you hurt; look out for yourself first. My mother was the weakest person I ever knew, and she taught me to be selfish.

Which is why I guess I was able to have Surpa. I didn't care that the kid could end up ike my mom, or me, or worse, and I didn't tell Tien the risk of that happening. I wanted a kid and I was gonna have one! Blackie was with me on this, the having a kid thing. And yeah, we do communicate. A pad of paper and a pen or a tape recorder, a pot of pepper, and, boom, conversation. It's not something I talk about to other people, it's none of their business. But I bet they'd be surprised on how much the two of us agree on. They shouldn't be – I mean, we're friends with the same people, wear the same clothes, like the same foods, we even fell in love with the same man. It's mostly just stuff like how quickly you should resort to violence and fiddly details about ownership we disagree on. Mostly though, when we talk, we get along.

She surprises me sometimes, though. I didn't expect to come to aching but buzzed, like when they give you the really good painkillers and they're still kicking in, with this little red-pink bundle of person in my arms, its squishy little face topped with a tuft of dark purple hair. Tien was sitting on the bed next to me.

"Congratulations, Mrs. Shinhan, it's a girl."

Tien's got a dumb sense of humour sometimes (when he's not being all stoic and stuff). Could be worse, though – he could have a dumb sense of humour all the time. I probably should have punched him or something, but I had a baby in my arms, one I'd put a lot of effort into getting ready for in the past nine months. Like hell I was gonna risk dropping her. Plus, those were some good pain killers. Still don't know how Blackie did it – we both admit I'm the braver of the two of us.

We did a good job on the kid, though. She was all splotchy and stupid-looking, with the faint bulge and line on her forehead that indicated she'd inherited Tien's eyes, all three of 'em. Absolutely perfect. Probably a good thing Tien was there to ward off the nurse, because she would have been so kidney-punched id she's tried to take my little girl away. It was definitely the drugs talking, but at that moment I was seriously considering carrying the little twerp around until we both died, and to hell with the fact that yesterday I couldn't wait to pop the thing out and be done with it. …well, maybe Tien could hold her sometimes, she was part his after all. And maybe Chaotzu if he was being good, 'cause he helped me land Tien in his own extremely special snowflake way. But I had done most of the work, so I got to hold her the most.

That decided I leaned on Tien and he put an arm around me. "She's got your thing," I said, gesturing to the third eye our daughter sported, "Does she have my thing?"

"She asked you to check," Tien said quietly, all three eyes focussed on our daughter.

I'm always impressed when Blackie pulls shit like this on me – makes me proud to be the same person as her. So I brushed the ends of some of my hair under that tiny, squished-up nose, tickling, and, after a moment, my little girl frowned, then sneezed.

Nothing happened. Nothing I could see, anyway – even her hair stayed the same. I was still deciding whether I was happy or annoyed at this when Tien reached over to gently take her from me, frowning. "Her ki changed," he said when I gave him a Look that he knows by now means he'd better damn well explain himself, "It's subtle, but something happened. It's almost like-" brows knitting, he unwrapped our baby and we both stared.

"I thought you said we had a girl."

"We did have a girl."

"You obviously need to get your eyes checked, because that's a boy. Still perfect, but very much not a girl."

"I know, I can- look, make him sneeze again."

The pain meds made me magnanimous, so I tickled our little boy's nose until he sneezed, at which point she opened all three eyes to give me that look newborns give because they can't control their faces yet and damn if it didn't get me right in the maternal instincts, which was actually a bit of a relief, because I honestly hadn't been sure I had any. It was good to know I wouldn't have to leave all the parenting to Tien, Blackie, and the midget after all.

I didn't admire my mother, but she taught me to be selfish, and that got me Surpa, who is the best thing I ever got that I didn't steal (the best thing I ever stole was Tien's heart, and I'm still never gonna give it back), so I guess I'm grateful to her.