Excerpt from Ghost Girl, Banana by Wiz Wharton, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Panic wrenched her from her distraction as passengers appeared from all directions. Where was her family? She fought her way back along the pier, searching for her brother's hat, her mother's hand on her pink umbrella, until through the swell of the crowd she saw a face she recognized, even though she doubted her instinct. Ba-Ba?

"Sook-Yin, good," he said. There was the familiar tightness to her father's jaw, and the heat of her anger resurfaced from the last time that she'd seen him. Was it four or five years ago? She'd gone with ah-Chor for ah-Ma's housekeeping and woken their father's mistress even though it was almost noon. Sook-Yin had dared to protest and her father had slapped her with an outstretched hand. Once. Twice. Now he'd grown fat and she resented his happiness.

"So, you're really going?" he said.

"Why? Did you come to make sure?"

"Sook-Yin, no hard feelings, okay?"

He reached for his wallet and pulled out a foreign note. It was pink, with a portrait of the Queen on it and a single word that she recognized: Ten. "This is all I can give you," he said. "Ah-Bao's funeral took most of our savings."

Her father's secret son. Ah-Ma had mourned him for all of a minute, and not in sorrow, but only as a woman.

When she shook her head, he pushed the money toward her. "You are still my daughter," he told her. "No matter what ah-Ma tells you."

For a moment, she dared to hope. "Ah-Ba ..."

He turned his face toward the ship. "Prove you can do better, ah-Yin. Make your family proud of you, and perhaps we will see you again."

Ah-Chor appeared through the throng, grabbing at the neck of her coat as he shouted above the noise. "Deck D! Deck D, silly dreamer! Are you trying to waste our money?" The effort strangled the words in his throat before he turned and saw their father. Bent his head. "We didn't expect you today, sir. Did you want to speak to Sook-Yin?"

"I have said what I came to say."

"Very good then, sir."

Sook-Yin looked from one to the other, at her older brother like their father's shadow and herself without a voice. "Goodbye, then, Father," she said, but when she turned, he had already gone.


Standing on the approach to the deck, people pushing her this way and that, she didn't know what to say to ah-Ma. "Write to me often," she told her, and then to ah-Chor, "Please look after our mother."

"Yes, stop fussing! We'll be fine."

Thrown forward by the weight of the crowd she had no option but to follow it upward to the gaping mouth of the ship.

It was a long way down to the harbor. Her brother was still on the dock but ah-Ma had moved farther away. She could see the retreating shape of her raincoat with its red chrysanthemum pattern. Was her mother cold? Were her shoulders shaking?

Sook-Yin waved her arms and shouted, her words lost among the others louder and more excited than her own. Goodbye! Goodbye! Goodbye! Some of the passengers had brought colored streamers—bright reams of red and yellow that exploded from their hands like fireworks. She picked one up at her feet, hoping it would reach her own family and let them reel her back to safety. We didn't mean it. We love you. Come home. She held the end and cast it out, but it was too short and her voice too faint for anyone to come to her rescue.

Three
Lily

12th Day of Mourning

I was still holding the letter when the phone rang, tinny and muffled beneath the sofa cushions. That's where it lived in those days, amid the dust and the rot and stray candy because it was disgusting and the bringer of bad news and I had no desire to talk to anyone. "No one's asking you to marry it," Maya said. "You only need to answer when I call you." I pulled out the handset and there she was. Had to give her that, I suppose. Despite my sister's faults she'd maintained an uncanny ability to know when something had happened.

Excerpted from Ghost Girl, Banana by Wiz Wharton. Copyright © 2023 by Wiz Wharton. Excerpted by permission of HarperVia. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.