by Diana Ma
I nod and go through the security checkpoint. But with Eric’s kiss on my lips and dreams of my own name being shouted someday, I can’t help but smile.
After I go through security, I blow a last kiss to Eric. My fans think I’m blowing them a kiss and go nuts. My last glimpse of Eric is of him shrugging wryly and blowing a kiss back at me before dozens of people push in front of him and he’s lost to my sight.
It’s a lot quieter on this side of the security gate, and I’m able to text Glory and Camille in peace as I walk to my gate.
At the airport. Can’t wait to see you in LA!
Glory’s reply comes back first.
You’d better not be jet-lagged.
Before I can text a confused-face emoji, Camille’s text pops up.
Epic welcome-home party in the works!
Could my life get any better? My thumbs fly on my phone.
You two are the absolute best!
I don’t get a chance to read their response to my text because I’m being paged over the airport intercom. What’s going on? Then I realize that I’m being asked to go to a different gate, than the one where my plane is leaving from. This is getting stranger and stranger.
Confused, I follow the directions to the gate, where I’m met by an airport employee. “This way please, Ms. Huang, to our VIP airline lounge.” She gestures to a sliding glass door.
Wow. I knew that the movie studio upgraded my ticket to first class, but this is ridiculous. Still, who am I to refuse a cushy exclusive-lounge experience?
The sliding glass door opens at my approach, and the lounge is as posh as I expected, with black leather couches and little bottles of champagne and bowls of oranges on tables. And the lounge is occupied. By two of my favorite people on the planet. Who also happen to be related to me.
My cousin and my aunt. Jie Jie and Yi Ma. “Surprise!” Alyssa calls out from one of the leather couches, next to her mother. She raises a toast to me with a flute of champagne.
My whole body lights up with joy. “What are you doing here?”
“We go every year to Paris,” my aunt explains.
“For the couture shows,” Alyssa chimes in, “and we thought we’d take our flight at the same time you leave for LA so we could see you off in style!”
“You’ve already done that,” I say, smoothing my dress down. “Just look at all these clothes you gave me!” For my last day in China, I’m wearing another of Mimi’s designs—a yellow silk shift dress.
Alyssa and her mother both study me—my aunt with reserved satisfaction and Alyssa with smug pride. They are both gorgeously attired themselves. My aunt is wearing a tailored navy pantsuit with a silk water-colored scarf, and Alyssa is wearing a red lace midi dress.
“Oh, the clothes! That’s nothing,” Alyssa says airily. “You’re descended from Wu Zetian, remember? A descendant of an empress who once ruled China should have nice clothes.”
The clothes Alyssa gave me are leaps and bounds over the category of nice, but I don’t quibble with her. It feels too good to be spoiled by my cousin.
“Besides,” Alyssa says, “you’re an heiress. You should get to dress the part.”
“Your mother refuses to take the money that should be rightfully hers,” my aunt explains, “but she did agree to let you inherit her share. Your grandparents have changed their will to reflect this.”
“That’s not necessary,” I mumble.
“Entirely necessary,” my aunt says firmly.
I turn to my cousin. “Are you OK with this?”
“Of course!” she declares. “We want you to know you’re part of the family. We wouldn’t want you to forget us!”
“Never.” I sit across from them on another leather couch. “And not because of the clothes or the money. You’re my family. I couldn’t forget you.”
“You’d better not!” Alyssa says, scooting over to me and having my aunt take a picture of us. Then she retrieves her phone from my aunt and plunks down next to me again. Together, we look at the picture of the two of us—alike in more than our faces. Alike in our joy in each other.
Alyssa laughs. “Look! You in a yellow dress and me in a red one. We look like the two court ladies in those paintings Empress Wu commissioned.”
“Maybe they were cousins too.” Wouldn’t that be cool?
“We’re sisters, remember?” Alyssa corrects me with a smile. “Jiemei.”
“Jiemei”—the word that our two pendants form. “Yes, jiemei. Sisters.” My heart melts in gratitude for Alyssa. It makes me shudder to think of never coming to Beijing and never knowing her. Never knowing all my family.
“We’ll stay in touch.” My aunt’s face glows brightly. “Alyssa and I will be in Chicago next summer. Your mother has a surprise planned. Will you be there?”
“Absolutely!” I say. “What’s the surprise?”
“You’ll see,” she says, and no amount of cajoling from me or Alyssa gets anything more out of her.
My aunt reaches over and covers my hands with hers. “I’m so happy to find my sister again, but that’s not all. It’s finding you too. We love you so much, Gemma.”
“Don’t make me cry!” Alyssa warns. “I don’t want to smudge my makeup.” But it’s too late. Tears are already forming in her eyes.
Just like they’re forming, hot and thick, in my own eyes. “I love you both.”
“And I love you too, Gemma,” Alyssa says, giving up on the battle to save her makeup and sniffling into a silk handkerchief.
It’s the perfect way to leave China, seen off by my cousin and my aunt. But all too soon, it’s time to say goodbye and depart for my gate. Alyssa hugs me hard, crying so much that I fear her makeup is a lost cause. Yi Ma kisses me on both cheeks and whispers her hope of seeing me soon.
At last I board my plane and sink into the luxurious first-class seat. This time I’m not squished between two other passengers. I have the row to myself and can stretch out. Smiling, I think of my arrival three months ago, when I had been frantically emailing my parents to keep them from finding out that I was in Beijing and then unexpectedly envious of the Chinese grandfather who was returning home to his family in China.
The plane taxis down the runway, and as it rises into the air, I see the Beijing skyline glittering and bright in the slowly darkening sky.
When I first came here, I had no family to meet me in China, and I was lying to the only family I had. Now my family in China sent me off with love and promises to meet again. And my parents and I understand each other in a way I never thought possible.
Don’t get me wrong—designer clothes and money are nice, but their value for me is that they’re gifts from people who love me and whom I love. That is the real inheritance that Wu Zetian has left me.
My family.
EPILOGUE
There she is—surrounded by a large expanse of white wall. Under the muted museum lighting, the colors of the painting are lush and rich—the dark gold background, the saturated red of her dress embroidered at the hem with pink peonies, the blue-jade shawl loose around her shoulders with a sash around her waist in a matching color, and her glossy black hair piled on top of her head with jeweled hair ornaments. The lady herself has a look of concentration as she touches her calligraphy brush to a blank scroll. The placard next to the painting reads “Court Lady of the Tang Dynasty Writing Calligraphy.” The lady has certainly gained new grandeur on the wall of a Chicago museum as part of the exclusive international exhibit of Empress Wu’s art collection.
But I still like to think of her gracing the wall of my mother’s office.
It’s opening night of the exhibit on loan by “an anonymous donor,” and the doors of the museum will open to the public soon. As we wait, I turn to my mother. “Who do you think she is?”
Alyssa and my aunt stroll over in time to hear my question.
“Wu Zetian herself?” Alyssa guesses.
My mother is shaking her head. “Wu Zetian was considered a great beauty of her tim
e. Look at this lady. Slight figure and delicate features. She wouldn’t have been considered a beauty the way Wu Zetian was with her sturdy figure and strong features.”
“A lady of the court then?” my aunt asks.
“Maybe.” Mom, the art historian, sounds doubtful. “Except that Empress Wu was not known for favoring court ladies. If this painting is in Wu Zetian’s collection, she must have commissioned it. I just can’t imagine any court lady so high in Empress Wu’s esteem that she would commission a painting of her.”
I remember Alyssa’s theory that one of the two lost paintings was of Princess Taiping, Wu Zetian’s daughter. “Princess Taiping?”
“I don’t think so. Your po po said that the lady in the other painting was wearing a yellow dress—the imperial color. It’s likely that she was Princess Taiping. And Princess Taiping was supposed to have resembled her mother—unlike this lady.”
My heart twangs in pain at the thought of that other, destroyed painting. Of the only painting of Princess Taiping engulfed in flames during the Cultural Revolution. But . . .
If this isn’t Wu Zetian, a court lady, or Princess Taiping, then who is it? We all turn to look at the painting again. As a child, I spent hours staring at this painting, admiring the lady’s dress and wondering what it was that she was going to write on the blank parchment.
“I actually have a theory about who she is,” my mom says casually.
“Who?” I ask.
“Tell us,” Alyssa demands.
“Of course you have a theory,” my aunt says with exasperated fondness. “Let’s hear it.”
Mom waves off all our questions. “It’s just a hunch. I have no proof.” She contemplates the painting, and for a moment, the look on Mom’s face and the lady’s look as she studies the parchment are eerily alike. “I suppose we’ll never know for sure who the lady in the painting really is.”
Mom wants to keep one more secret to herself. Not for the first time since Beijing, I realize that I have yet to learn all of her story. I put my arm around Mom’s waist so we’re hip to hip, looking at a portrait commissioned by our ancestress of an unknown woman. I’ll never know who this mysterious lady was. But I still have a chance to get to know my mother.
To know her story.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Reader,
Growing up, I wanted to read about Asian American teens who get to have adventure and romance. But books like that weren’t around back then. Gemma’s story isn’t my story. But her story is the one I wanted to read as a kid searching for myself in books.
When I went to China for the first time as a young adult, I thought I’d feel an instant sense of belonging to the country where my parents and grandparents were born. I built up this visit as a magical homecoming. That’s how much I needed a place where I belonged.
As you might imagine, it wasn’t that simple. In Heiress Apparently, I wanted to write a story about a Chinese American girl who goes to China and gets that homecoming. While I was writing the book, I thought a lot about belonging. Asian Americans’ right to belong in the United States has always been challenged. As I write this, we are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic when anti-Asian racism, harassment, and violence have been increasing at an alarming rate. It is harder and harder to feel like I belong in the country where I was born.
But when I wrote the last scene of Heiress Apparently—I felt it. A hope humming in my blood. I thought of you, reader, and I hoped you would recognize some part of yourself in Gemma—a Chinese American girl who gets to be the star of her own story. And that felt a lot like belonging.
In Chinese, the character for “jia” means both family and home. I hope you find both family and home in Gemma’s story.
Warmly,
Diana Ma
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have so many people to thank for getting Gemma’s story into the world! Thank you to my agent, the fantastic Christa Heschke. Thank you also to the fabulous Daniele Hunter. I’m honored to work with the two of you. Christa and Daniele, you’re both so brilliant and lovely, and your faith and support mean everything to me.
Thank you to my editor, Anne Heltzel, whose incredible vision and wisdom guided this story. You were a dream to work with! Thank you also to Jessica Gotz, Amy Vreeland, and Hana Nakamura. I’m sorry if I’ve missed anyone, but please know I’m grateful to everyone who worked on this book and for the entire Amulet/Abrams team. This was the perfect home for Heiress Apparently.
I’m so grateful to my amazing beta readers—Terri Chung and Melissa Grinley. I couldn’t have asked for better readers or friends. Terri, you read scenes with zero notice and stayed up unreasonably late to finish a read so you could give me just the feedback I needed. Thank you for the many treats—I’m so lucky that food is your love language. Melissa, you worked through so many sticky scenes with me when we probably should have been grading or prepping for our class. Thank you for your confidence in me and always encouraging me to speak my truth. I appreciate and love you both so much!
I also want to thank Terri, Melissa, Dani Blackman, Cat Cabral, JC Clapp, Ann Culligan, Laura McCracken, Christy Scheuer, and Karen Stuhldreher for gifting me with a weekend writing retreat so I could finish my first draft. Your support and love kept me afloat! Christy, thank you for your willingness to follow me down rabbit holes—and for always pulling me out. Cat, your keen insight has saved me more times than you know. Jane Harradine, thank you for introducing me to M. Butterfly all those years ago. Cam Huynh, thank you for your friendship. Thank you to all my students and colleagues at North Seattle College—I’ve learned so much from you. Thank you to We Need Diverse Books for your mentorship program and all the wonderful things you do. Swati Avasthi, thank you for being the best mentor I could ask for.
This is a book about family, so no acknowledgment would be complete without thanking my family. First, I want to thank my parents for supporting my dreams of being a writer. David, my little brother, thank you for reading my very first stories—and not making fun of them. Thank you to all my cousins, especially Xiao-lan, who inspired a crucial scene in the book by calling me “Jie Jie”—sister—instead of “Biao Jie,” cousin.
Joel, thank you for understanding every time I gazed steadfastly at the computer, mumbling, “Let me just get this scene down before it’s gone forever.” Often, a hug from you was just what I needed to keep going.
Liam, thank you for all the times you’ve patted me sympathetically on the shoulder and asked, “How’s the book going?” Thank you for only occasionally asking, “Done with the book yet?” Kieran, thank you for inspiring me with your own wonderful books. Your drawings are funny and whimsical, and I adore your six-year-old phonetic spelling with no spaces between the words. I love you both, my beautiful children.
Finally, thank you, dear reader! I loved writing Heiress Apparently, and I’m grateful to you for joining Gemma on her journey.
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