by Tan, Amy
“You have Carlotta.”
“She’s a cat. She doesn’t talk to me or answer questions.”
She mentioned the names of more girls who were the daughters of her friends, all of whom I now claimed I disliked—and who despised me, which was partially true. I carried on about my friendless state and the danger of my permanent unhappiness. And then I heard her speak in a cold unyielding tone: “Stop this, Violet. I did not remove her for small reasons. She nearly ruined our business. It was a matter of necessity.”
“What did she do?”
“By thinking only of herself, she betrayed us.”
I did not know what betrayed meant. I simply sputtered in frustration: “Who cares if she betrayed us?”
“Your very mother before you cares.”
“Then I will always betray you,” I cried.
She regarded me with an odd expression, and I believed she was about to give in. So I pushed again with my bravado. “I’ll betray you,” I warned.
Her face contorted. “Stop this, Violet, please.”
But I could not stop, even though I knew that I was unleashing an unknown danger. “I’ll always betray you,” I said once more and immediately saw a shadow fall over my mother’s face.
Her hands were shaking and her face was so stiff she appeared to be a different person. She said nothing. The longer the silence grew, the more frightened I became. I would have backed down if I had known what to say or do. So I waited.
At last she turned, and as she walked away, she said in a bitter voice, “If you ever betray me, I shall have nothing to do with you. I promise you that.”
MY MOTHER HAD a certain phrase she used with every guest, Chinese or Western. She would walk hurriedly to a certain man and whisper excitedly, “You’re just the one I hoped to see.” Then followed the dip of her head toward the man’s ear to whisper some secret, which caused the man to nod vigorously. Some kissed her hand. This repeated phrase distressed me. I had noticed that she was often too busy to pay any attention to me. She no longer played the guessing games or sent me on treasure hunts. We no longer lay in her bed cuddled next to each other as she read the newspaper. She was too busy for that. Her gaiety and smiles were now reserved for the men at her parties. They were the ones she had hoped to see.
One night, as I crossed the salon with Carlotta in my arms, I heard Mother call out: “Violet! You’re here. You’re just the one I hoped to see.”
At last! I had been chosen. She gave profuse apologies to the man she had been conversing with, citing that her daughter required her urgent attention. What was so urgent? It did not matter. I was excited to hear the secret she had saved for me. “Let’s go over there,” Mother said, nudging me toward a dark corner of the room. She took my arm in hers, and we were off at a brisk pace. I was telling her about Carlotta’s latest antics, something to amuse her, when she let go of my arm, and said, “Thank you, darling.” She walked over to a man in the corner of the room and said, “Fairweather, my dear. I’m sorry I was delayed.” Her dark-haired lover stepped out of the shadows and kissed her hand with fake gallantry. She returned a crinkle-eyed smile I had never seen her give to me.
I could not breathe, crushed by my short-lived happiness. She had used me as her pawn! Worse, she had done so for Fairweather, a man who had visited her from time to time, and whom I had always disliked. I had once believed I was the most important person in her life. But in recent months, that was disproved. Our special closeness had become unmoored. She was always too busy to spend time chatting with me during her midday meals. Instead she and Golden Dove used that hour to discuss the evening plans. She seldom asked me about my lessons or what I was reading. She called me “darling,” but she said the same to many men. She kissed my cheek in the morning and my forehead at night. But she kissed many men, and some on the mouth. She said she loved me, but I did not see any particular sign of that. I could not feel anything in my heart but the loss of her love. She had changed toward me, and I was certain that it had started the day when I threatened to betray her. Bit by bit, she was having nothing to do with me.
Golden Dove found me crying one day in Boulevard. “Mother does not love me anymore.”
“Nonsense. Your mother loves you a great deal. Why else does she let you go unpunished for all the naughty things you do? Just the other day, you broke a clock by moving its hands backward. You ruined a pair of her stockings by using it as a mouse for Carlotta to chase.”
“That’s not love,” I said. “She didn’t get mad because she doesn’t care about those things. If she truly loved me, she would prove it.”
“How?” Golden Dove asked. “What is there to prove?”
I was thrown into mute confusion. I did not know what love was. All I knew was a gnawing need for her attention and assurances. I wanted to feel without worry that I was more important than anyone else in her life. When I thought about it further, I realized she had given more attention to the beauties than to me. She had spent more time with Golden Dove. She had risen before noon to have lunch with her friends, the bosomy opera singer, the traveling widow, and the French lady spy. She had devoted much more attention to her customers than to anybody else. What love had they received that she had not given me?
That night I overheard a maid in the corridor telling another that she was worried sick because her three-year-old daughter had a high fever. The next night, she announced happily that her daughter had recovered. In the afternoon of the next day, the woman’s screams reverberated in the courtyard. A relative had come to say her child had died. She wailed, “How can that be? I held her this morning. I combed her hair.” In between her sobs, she described her daughter’s big eyes, the way she always turned her head to listen to her, how musical her laughter was. She babbled that she was saving money to buy her a jacket, that she had bought a turnip for a healthy soup. Later she moaned that she wanted to die to be with her daughter. Who else did she have to live for? I cried secretly as I listened to her grief. If I died, would Mother feel the same about me? I cried harder, knowing she would not.
A week after Mother had tricked me, she came into the room where I was studying with my tutor. It was only eleven, an hour before she usually rose from bed. I gave her my sullen face. She asked if I would like to have lunch with her at the new French restaurant on Great Western Road. I was wary. I asked her who else would be there.
”Just the two of us,” she replied. “It’s your birthday.”
I had forgotten. No one celebrated birthdays in the house. It was not a Chinese custom, and Mother had not made it hers. My birthday usually occurred near the Chinese New Year, and that was what we celebrated, with everyone. I tried to not be too excited, but a surge of joy went through me. I went to my room to put on a nice day dress, one that had not been snagged by Carlotta’s claws. I selected a blue coat and a hat of a similar color. I put on a grown-up pair of walking shoes of shiny leather that laced up to my ankles. I saw myself in the long oval mirror. I looked different, nervous, and worried. I was now eight, no longer the innocent little girl who trusted her feelings. I had once expected happiness and lately had received only disappointments, one after the other. I now expected disappointment and prayed to be proven wrong.
When I went to Mother’s study, I found that Golden Dove and she were laying out the tasks for the day. She was walking back and forth in her wrapper, her hair unbound.
“The old tax collector is coming tonight,” Mother was saying. “He promises that some extra attention may make him inattentive to my tax bill. We’ll see if the old dog fart is telling the truth this time.”
“I’ll send a call chit to Crimson,” Golden Dove said, “the courtesan at the Hall of Verdant Peace. She’ll take any kind of business these days. I’ll advise her to wear dark colors, dark blue. Pink is unflattering on someone well past youth. She should know better. I’ll also tell the cook to make the fish you like, but not with the American flavors. I know he wants to please you, but it never comes out right,
and we all suffer.”
“Do you have the list for tonight’s guests?” Mother said. “I don’t want the importer from Smythe and Dixon to come anymore. None of his information has been reliable. He’s been sniffing around to get something for nothing. We’ll give his name to Cracked Egg so he does not get past the gate …”
By the time she and Golden Dove finished, it was nearly one. She left me in the office and went to her room to change into a dress. I wandered around her office, and Carlotta followed me, rubbing against my legs wherever I stood. A round table was cluttered with knickknacks, the sorts of gifts some of her admirers gave her, not knowing she preferred money. Golden Dove sold the knickknacks she did not want. I picked up each object, and Carlotta jumped up and sniffed. An amber egg with a bug inside—that one would certainly go. An amethyst-and-jade bird—she might keep that. A glass display case of butterflies from different lands—she must hate that one. A painting of a green parrot—I liked it, but the only paintings Mother put on the walls were nude Greek gods and goddesses. I turned the pages of an illustrated book called The World of the Sea and saw illustrations of hideous creatures. I used a nearby magnifying glass to enlarge the titles of books in the bookcase: The Religions of India, Travels to Japan and China, China in Convulsion. I came across a red-covered book embossed with the black silhouette of a boy in uniform shooting a rifle. Under the Allied Flags: A Boxer Story. A note was stuck in the middle of the pages. It was written in the careful script of a schoolboy.
My dear Miss Minturn,
If ever you need an American lad who knows how to obey orders, will you consider using me as volunteer aide? I’d like to make myself as useful as you desire.
Your faithful servant,
Ned Peaver
Had Mother accepted his offer to be her faithful servant? I read the page where the note had been inserted. It was about a soldier named Ned Peaver—aha!—during the Boxer Rebellion. After a quick glance at the page, I concluded Ned was a dull, prissy boy, who always followed orders. I had always disliked anything to do with the Boxer Rebellion. I was two years old in 1900 when the worst of the rebellion took place, and I believed I could have died in the violence. I had read a book about young men who swore themselves into the brotherhood of Boxers when millions of peasants in the middle of China were starving due to a flood one year, and a drought the next. When they heard rumors that foreigners were going to be given their land, they killed about two hundred white missionaries and their children. By one account, a brave little girl sang sweetly as her parents watched her being sent by the whack of a sword to heaven. Whenever I pictured it, I touched my soft throat and swallowed hard.
I looked at the clock. Its newly repaired hands said it was now two o’clock. I had been waiting nearly three hours since she announced we would have lunch. All at once, my head and heart exploded. I ripped up Ned Peaver’s letter. I went to the table with my mother’s plunder and hurled the case of butterflies onto the floor. Carlotta ran off. I threw down the amethyst bird, the magnifying glass, the amber egg. I tore off the cover of The World of the Sea. Golden Dove ran in and looked at the mess, horrified. “Why do you hurt her?” she said mournfully. “Why is your temper so bad?”
“It’s two o’clock. She said she was taking me to a restaurant for my birthday. Now she’s not coming. She didn’t remember. She always forgets I’m even here.” My eyes were blurry with tears. “She doesn’t love me. She loves all those men.”
Golden Dove picked up the amber egg and magnifying glass. “These were your gifts.”
“Those are things that men gave her and she doesn’t want.”
“How can you think that? She chose them just for you.”
“Why didn’t she come back to take me to lunch?”
“Ai-ya! You did this because you’re hungry? All you had to do was ask the maid to bring you something to eat.”
I did not know how to explain what the outing to the restaurant had meant to me. I blurted a jumble of wounds: “She tells the men that they are the ones she wants to see. She told me the same, but it was a trick. She doesn’t worry anymore when I’m sad or lonely …”
Golden Dove frowned. “Your mother spoils you, and this is the result. You have no gratitude, only a temper when you do not get your way.”
“She didn’t keep her promise and she didn’t say she was sorry.”
“She was upset. She got a letter—”
“She gets many letters.” I kicked at the confetti of Ned’s note.
“This letter was different.” She stared at me in an odd way. “It was about your father. He’s dead.”
I did not understand what she had said at first. My father. What did that mean? I was five when I first asked Mother where my father was. Everyone had one, I learned, even the courtesans whose fathers had sold them. Mother told me that I had no father. When I pressed her, she said that he had died before I was born. Over the next three years, I pressed Mother from time to time to tell me who my father was.
“What does it matter?” she always said. “He’s dead, and it was so very long ago I’ve even forgotten his name and what he looked like.”
How could she have forgotten his name? Would she forget mine if I died? I pestered her for answers. When she grew quiet and frowned, I sensed it was dangerous to continue.
But now the truth was out. He was alive! Or he had been. My confusion gave way to a shaky anger. Mother had been lying all this time when he was alive. He may have loved me, and by not telling me that he was alive, she had stolen him from me. Now he was truly dead and it was too late.
I ran into my mother’s office, shrieking, “He was never dead. You kept him from me.” I blubbered every accusation that went through my head. She did not tell me the truth about anything that mattered to me. She lied when she told me I was just the one she hoped to see. She lied about lunch … Mother was speechless.
Golden Dove rushed in. “I told her that you had received a letter announcing her father had just died.”
Mother stared hard at her. Was she angry? Would she dismiss us both, as she did those who displeased her? She put down the terrible letter. She led me to the sofa and sat me next to her. And then she did what she had not done in a long time: She petted my head and whispered soothing words, which made me cry even harder. “Violet, dearest, I truly thought he was dead all these years. I found it too painful to think about him, to say anything about him. And now, to receive this letter …” The rims of her eyes were shiny, but the dam of her emotions held.
When I could breathe again, I asked her question after question, and to each she nodded and said yes. Was he nice? Was he rich? Did everyone like him? Was he older than she was? Did he ever love me? Did he ever play with me? Did he say my name? Mother continued to stroke my hair and rub my shoulders. I felt so sad and did not want her to stop comforting me. I continued to ask questions until my mind was exhausted. By then, I was weak from hunger. Golden Dove called for a servant to bring my lunch to Boulevard. “Your mother needs to be by herself now.” Mother gave me a kiss and went to her bedroom.
As I ate, Golden Dove told me how hard my mother had to struggle without a husband. “All her work has been for you, Little Violet,” she said. “Be grateful, be nice to your mother.” Before she left, she suggested I study and become smart to show my mother how much I appreciated her. Instead of studying, however, I lay on the bed in Boulevard to think about my newly deceased father. I began to put together a picture of him: His hair was brown; his eyes were green, just like mine. I soon fell asleep.
I was still drowsy and thickheaded when I heard someone arguing. I realized I was not in my own room but still in Boulevard. I went to the window and looked out onto the hallway to see the cause of the commotion. The sky was dark gray, at that suspended time between night and morning. The hallways were empty. The windows across the courtyard were black. I turned around and saw a warm sliver of light coming through a small opening of the curtains over the glass French doors. The angry voice
was my mother’s. I looked through the curtain opening and saw the back of her head. She had loosened her hair and was seated on the sofa. She had come back from the party. Was anyone else in the room? I put my ear to the glass. She was cursing in a strange low voice that sounded like Carlotta’s deep-throated growl. “You’re spineless … a dancing monkey … as much character as a filthy thief …” She threw down a folded piece of paper. It landed near the unlit fireplace. Was it the letter she had received? She went to her desk and sat down, seized a sheet of stationery, then slashed at it with her dripping pen. She crumpled the half-written page and threw it onto the floor. “I wish you really were dead!” she shouted.
My father was alive! She had lied again! I was about to rush in and demand to know where my father was. But then she looked up and I nearly cried out in fright. Her eyes had changed. The green irises had turned inside out, and the backs of them were as dull as sand. She had the eyes of dead beggars I had seen lying in gutters. She abruptly stood up, turned down the lamps, and went to her bedroom. I had to see the letter. I opened the French doors carefully. It was dark and I had to move forward blindly, sweeping my hands to avoid bumping into the furniture. I went to my knees. Suddenly I felt someone touch me, and I gasped. It was Carlotta. She pushed her head against me, purring. I could now feel the tiles of the fireplace. I patted the hearth. Nothing. I found the legs of the desk, and raised myself slowly. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, but I saw no sign of anything that resembled a letter. I crept out of the room, bitterly disappointed.
The next day, Mother acted as she always had—brisk and clearheaded as she laid out the tasks. She was charming and talkative in the evening, smiling as always at her guests. While she and Golden Dove were busy during the party, I sneaked into Boulevard, opened the French doors just wide enough to push through the curtains and into my mother’s office. I turned on one gas lamp. I opened desk drawers, and one was filled with letters whose envelopes had embossed names of companies. I looked under her pillow, in the little cabinet next to her bed. I lifted the lid of her trunk at the foot of her bed. The smell of turpentine flew out. The source was two rolled-up paintings. I unfurled one and was astonished to see a portrait of Mother as a young girl. I placed it on the floor and smoothed it out. She was staring straight ahead, as if she were looking at me. Over her chest, she held a maroon cloth. Her pale back glowed like the cold warmth of the moon. Who painted this? Why had she been so scantily dressed?