But the boy sitting on Niam Tais’s favorite wicker stool was a white teenager. Hlee had been expecting an older Hmong woman, like the aunt who’d stayed with Niam Tais a few months ago. The boy was sawing at a wooden sculpture with a small knife. Splinters of wood lay scattered around his shoes.

As she approached, his gaze lifted. For the briefest of moments, his eyes flashed silver, like the sudden flare of a falling star. Then she was looking into bright gray eyes framed by lashes so pale that they could have been frosted in white.

“Hi,” he said, mouth stretching into a broad smile. He brushed flecks of dirt and wood off his jeans. “You must be Hlee.”

“Yeaaah,” she replied, uncertain. She gave him an awkward hip-level wave and then hurried past him into the house.

Aside from the bathroom and the altar room, the house was mostly one large space. A bed took up the corner, piled with blankets. Hlee recognized her mom’s embroidery among the pillows. A large paj ntaub hung on one wall, the story cloth depicting figures with black hair and traditional Hmong clothing in careful, skilled stitches. Beneath it sat an enormous cube of a television that was probably several decades old.

Niam Tais stood at the kitchen counter, bent over a heavy stone mortar and wielding a pestle the size of a small baseball bat. Crumpled sheets of old newspapers crowded the countertop, nestling bunches of dried herbs.

“Tuaj los?” the woman said in greeting, a smile splitting her brown face. Niam Tais was a tiny woman, barely five feet, with dark hair that had just begun to gray pulled back into a messy bun.

Her diminutive size was deceiving, though. A huge cleaver rested in a butcher block at the far side of the counter, and Hlee had seen her take apart a pig carcass with terrifying efficiency. Hlee didn’t doubt the woman could take care of herself, despite the way the Hmong elders clucked in disapproval at Niam Tais’s choice to remain unmarried.

Although Hlee understood Hmong well enough, she couldn’t really speak it herself. Niam Tais was the same, except with English. So Hlee stood awkwardly inside the door as she struggled to find the right words to ask about the boy outside. Frustration pressed at her temples as the language eluded her.

Giving up, she asked in English instead, and they managed to piece together enough of a conversation for Hlee to gather that the boy was the son of a friend.

“Can I help?” Hlee gestured to the countertop and the array of herbs.

Niam Tais shook her head, instead pointing to the table where a tray of football-shaped sweet buns waited, steaming faintly. “Koj puas tshaib plab? Los noj. Saib seb nws puas xav noj ib qho.”