by Tan, Amy
“My father’s dead.”
She flinched. “I can’t say I’m sorry.”
“He collapsed the day of the abdication and lingered another six days. I wrote to you the day after he died. I felt a burden removed. But I warn you, my mother has a strong will equal to my father’s. He used his to possess what he wanted. Hers is to protect the family. Our son is not just her grandson, but also the next generation and all it carries forward from the earliest of our family history. You may not respect our family traditions. But you should understand them enough to fear them.”
Lu Shing handed Mother an envelope. “I’ve written down what I’m sure you want to know.”
She put her letter opener along the seam, but her hands were shaking so badly she dropped the letter. Lu Shing retrieved it and opened it for her. She pulled out a photograph, and I strained to find an angle that would enable me to see it. “Where am I in his face?” Mother said. “Is it truly Teddy? Are you pulling another trick on me? I’ll shoot you with my pistol …”
He murmured and pointed to the photograph. Her anguished face turned to smiles. “Such a serious expression … Is that really what I look like? He resembles you more. He looks like a Chinese boy.”
“He’s twelve now,” Lu Shing said. “A happy boy and also more than a bit spoiled. His grandmother treats him like an emperor.”
Their voices fell to gentle murmurs. He put his hand on her arm, and this time, she did not push him away. She looked at him with a wounded expression. He stroked her face and she collapsed against him and he embraced her as she wept.
I turned away, slumped to the floor, and stared into the pitch-dark of nothingness, of all possibilities for fear. Everything had changed so quickly. This was their son and she loved him more than she ever had loved me. I went over all that she said. New questions jumped out, each more troubling than the last, sickening me. Her son was of mixed blood as well, yet he looked Chinese. And this man, my father, whose eyes and cheeks I wore, did not bother to take me to his family. He had never loved me.
I heard rustling in Mother’s office and turned back to peer through the curtain opening. Mother had already put out the lamps. I could not see anything. The office door closed, and a moment later, I heard her bedroom door open and close. Did Lu Shing and the photo of Teddy go into the room with her? I felt abandoned, alone with my agonizing questions. I wanted to be in my room to mourn for myself. I had lost my place in the world. I was second best in Mother’s eyes, a castoff to Lu Shing. But I could not leave the room, now that the servants were rushing through the hallway. If Golden Dove saw me sneak out of the room, she would demand to know why I was there, and I did not want to speak to anyone else about what I was feeling. I lay on the bed and wrapped myself in the quilt. I had to wait until the party began, when everyone would go downstairs to the Grand Salon. And so then and there, I began my bout of self-pity.
Hours later, I was awakened by the sound of a distant door opening. I rushed to the window and looked through the lattice. The sky was a wash of dark gray. The sun would be up soon. I heard the office door open and close and I went to the glass doors. His back was to me and her face was visible just over his shoulder. He was murmuring in a tender tone. She responded in a high girlish voice. I felt heartsick. She held so much feeling for others, such gentleness and happiness. Lu leaned forward and she bowed her head to receive his kiss on her forehead. He tipped her face back up, and said more of those soft words that made her smile. She looked almost shy. I had never known her in so many new ways, so wounded, so desperate, and now bashful.
He embraced her, held her tightly, and when he released her, her eyes were shiny with tears, and she turned away. He quietly left the room. I darted back to the lattice window just in time to see him walking past with a pleased expression, which angered me. Everything had turned out well for him.
I stepped out of the room to return to mine, and immediately Carlotta strode toward me and rubbed my legs. Over the last seven years, she had grown fat and slow. I picked her up and hugged her. She alone had claimed me.
I WAS UNABLE to sleep, or so I thought, until I heard Mother’s voice talking to a manservant, instructing him to bring up a trunk. It was not quite ten in the morning. I found her in her bedroom laying out dresses.
“Oh, Violet, I’m glad you’re up.” She said this in a light and excited voice. “I need you to select four frocks, two for dinner, two for daytime, shoes and coats to match. Bring also the garnet necklace and gold locket, your fountain pens, schoolbooks, and notebooks. And take anything else that is valuable. I can’t list everything for you, so you’ll have to think for yourself. I’ve already called for a trunk to be sent to your room.”
“Are we running away?”
She cocked her head, which she did when a guest presented her with a novel idea that she actually considered unsound. She smiled.
“We’re going to America, to San Francisco,” she said. “We’re going to visit your grandparents. Your grandfather is ill … I had a cable … and it is quite serious.”
What a stupid lie! If he were truly ill, why was she so happy just a moment ago? She was not going to tell me the true reason, that we were going to see her darling son, and I was determined to force the truth out of her.
“What is my grandfather’s name?”
“John Minturn,” she said easily. She continued to place dresses on the bed.
“Is my grandmother alive as well?”
“Yes … of course. She sent the cable. Harriet Minturn.”
“Do we leave soon?”
“Perhaps tomorrow, the next day. Or it could be a week from now. Everything has become topsy-turvy and no one is reliable these days, even when paid top dollar. So we may not be able to arrange immediately for passage on the next steamer. Many Westerners are trying to leave as well. We may wind up settling for a trawler that goes around the North Pole!”
“Who was that man who visited you yesterday?”
“Someone I once had dealings with in business.”
I said in a thin voice: “I know he’s my father. I saw his face when you were coming up the stairs. I look like him. And I know that we are going to San Francisco because you have a son who’s living there. I heard the servants talking about it.”
She listened silently, stricken.
“You can’t deny it,” I said.
“Violet, darling, I’m sorry you are wounded. I kept it a secret only because I didn’t want you to know we had been abandoned. He took Teddy right after he was born, and I have not seen him since. I have a chance to claim him back and I must because he is my child. If you had been stolen from me, I would have fought just as hard to find you.”
Fought for me? I doubted that.
But then she came to me and wrapped her arms around me. “You have been more precious to me than you know.” A tear formed at the corner of her eye, and that small glistening of her heart was enough for me to believe her. I was soothed.
In my bedroom, however, I realized she had said nothing about Lu Shing’s feelings toward me. I hated him. I would never call him “Father.”
For the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, as we filled our trunks, she told me about my new home in San Francisco. Before that day, I had not thought much at all about her past. She had lived in San Francisco. That was all. To hear about it now—I felt I was listening to a fairy tale, and gradually my anger turned into excitement. I pictured the Pacific Ocean: its clear blue waters with silvery fish darting through the waves, whales blowing their spouts like fountains. She told me my grandfather was a professor of art history, and I imagined a distinguished gentleman with white hair, standing before an easel. She said her mother was a scientist, who studied insects, like the ones in the amber pieces I tried to smash. I imagined a room with amber drops dangling from the ceiling and a woman with a magnifying glass looking at them. As she talked, now quite easily, I could see San Francisco in my mind: its small hills next to water. I could picture myself
climbing and looking out over the Bay and its islands. I was climbing up steep sidewalks flanked by Western houses, like those in the French Concession, busy with all sorts of people of all classes and nations.
“Mother, are there Chinese people in San Francisco?”
“Quite a number of them. Most are servants and common laborers, though, laundrymen, and the like.” She went to her wardrobe and considered which of her evening gowns to take. She selected two, then put those back, and selected two others. She chose shoes of white kid leather, then noticed a small scuff on the heel and put them back.
“Are there foreign courtesans or just Chinese ones?”
She laughed. “People there are not called foreigners unless they are the Chinese or the black Italians.”
I felt humiliated. Here we were foreigners by our appearance. A cold thought ran through my veins. Would I look like a Chinese foreigner in San Francisco? If people knew Teddy was my brother, they would know I was as Chinese as he was.
“Mother, will people treat me well when they see I am half-Chinese?”
“No one will be thinking you’re half-Chinese.”
“But if the people there find out, will they shun me?”
“No one will find out.”
It bothered me that she could be so confident over what was not certain. I would have to act as confident as she was to maintain the secret that she had a half-Chinese daughter. Only I would feel the constant worry that I would be discovered. She would remain unconcerned.
“We’ll live in a handsome house,” she went on. She was the happiest I had ever seen her, the most affectionate. She looked younger, almost like a different person. Golden Dove had said that when a werefox possessed a woman, you could tell by her eyes. They sparkled too much. Mother’s eyes sparkled. She was not herself, not since seeing Mr. Lu.
“My grandfather built the house just before I was born,” she said. “It’s not as large as our house here,” she continued, “but it’s also not as cold or noisy. It’s made of wood and so sturdy that even after a very big earthquake shook the city to its knees, the house remained standing without a single brick out of place. The architectural style is quite different from the foreign houses in the French and British Concessions. For one thing, it’s more welcoming, without those tall fortress walls and gatekeepers. In San Francisco, we don’t need to defend our privacy. We simply have it. A hedge in front and a low iron gate is all we need, although we do have fences on the sides of the house and in back. But that is so we can keep out stray dogs and put up trellises for flowering vines. We have a small lawn, just enough to serve as a grassy carpet on the sides of the walkway. Along one fence, there are rhododendron bushes. And on the other side there are phalanxes of agapanthus, scented roses, daylilies, and, of course, violets. I planted them myself, and not just the ordinary kind, but also the sweet violets, which have a lovely fragrance, the scent of a perfume I once wore that came from France. I had many clothes of that color, and I used to eat candies made of sweet violets and sprinkled with sugar. They are my favorite flower and color, your namesake, Sweet Violet. My mother called them Johnny-jump-up.”
“They were her favorite, too?”
“She despised them and complained that I was growing weeds.” She laughed and seemed not to notice my dismay. “Once you step inside the house, you’re in the vestibule. On one side is a staircase, like the one we have here, but a bit smaller. And on the other side is a thick toffee-colored curtain on a brass rod, not as wide as what we have here. Step through the curtain and you are in the parlor. The furniture is likely old-fashioned, what my grandmother placed there. Through a large doorway, you enter the dining room—”
“Where will I sleep?”
“You’ll have a large lovely bedroom on the second floor, with sunny yellow walls. It was my room.”
Her room. I was so happy I wanted to shout. Outwardly, I showed little.
“There is a tall bed next to large windows. One window is next to an old oak tree and you can open the window and pretend you’re a scrub jay in the branches—those are the noisy birds I remember—they hopped right up to me for a peanut. There are plenty of other birds, herons, hawks, and singing robins. You can look them up in the ornithology books my mother collected. Your grandmother’s father was a botanist and a naturalist illustrator. I also have a nice collection of dolls, not the babyish kind you push in a pram. They’re prettily painted. And throughout the house are walls of books, top to bottom. You’ll have enough to read for the rest of your life, even if you consumed two books a day. You can take your books up to the round turret to read. As a girl, I decorated it with shawls and hassocks and Persian carpets to look like a seraglio. I called it Pasha Palace. Or you can look out the windows through a telescope and see clear to the waterfront and the Bay, to the islands—there are several—and you can count the schooners and fishing boats …”
She chattered on, her recollections blossoming. I could see the house in the stereopticon of my mind, a place that took on color and the movement of life. I was dazzled by the thought of room after room with walls of books, of a bedroom with a window next to an oak tree.
My mother was now busy removing her jewelry cases from a locked cupboard. She had at least a dozen each of necklaces, bracelets, brooches, and pins—gifts she had received over the years. She had sold most of the jewelry, and the ones she kept were her favorites, the most valuable. She placed all the cases in her valise. Were we not coming back?
“Once you find Teddy, will he return to Shanghai with us?”
Again, there was an awkward pause. “I don’t know. I cannot predict what will happen. Shanghai has changed.”
A terrible thought sprang to mind. “Mother, will Carlotta come with us?”
She immediately busied herself with hatboxes, so I knew already the answer. “I won’t leave without her.”
“You would stay behind for a cat?”
“I refuse to go if I cannot bring her.”
“Come now, Violet. Would you cast away your future for a cat?”
“I would. I am nearly grown up and can choose for myself,” I said rashly.
All affection left her face. “All right. Stay if you like.”
I had been foiled. “How can you ask me to choose?” I said in a cracked voice. “Carlotta is my baby. She is to me what Teddy is to you. I cannot leave her behind. I cannot betray her. She trusts me.”
“I am not asking you to choose, Violet. There is no choice. We must leave, and Carlotta cannot come. We cannot change the rules of the ship. What you must think instead is that we may indeed return. Once we are in San Francisco, I will then know better what to do. But not until then …”
She continued her explanation, but grief had already set in. My throat knotted up. I could not explain to Carlotta why I was leaving.
“While we’re gone,” I heard my mother say through my haze of misery, “Golden Dove can take care of her.”
“Golden Dove is scared of her. No one loves Carlotta.”
“The daughter of Snowy Cloud’s attendant—Little Ocean—she loves her dearly. She will be happy to care for her, especially if we give her a little money to do so while we are gone.”
This was true. But my worries remained. What if Carlotta loved the little girl more than she did me? She might forget me and would not care if I ever returned. I fell into a tragic mood.
Although my mother had limited me to four dresses, she was quickly becoming more generous with her own allotment. She decided the two steamer trunks she had were not large enough, and because of their rounded tops they could not be stacked, which would limit what she could bring. Also, they were old, what she had brought from San Francisco. She called for Golden Dove to buy four new steamer trunks, larger ones. “Mr. Malakar told me last month that he had smuggled in a large shipment of Louis Vuitton trunks from France to Bombay. They’re the flat-topped ones I want. I also need two steamer bags, the small ones. And tell him he better not think I won’t know if he s
lips me the counterfeit …”
She threw her choice of gowns onto the bed. She was bringing so many, I figured she would attend balls as soon as she stepped off the boat. But then she called in Golden Dove and told her to be honest in saying which dresses were more flattering, which brought out the color of her eyes, her complexion, and her mahogany brown hair, and which of these would American women envy, and which would cause them to think she was an immoral woman.
Golden Dove disapproved of all her choices. “You designed those dresses to be shocking and to lure men to your side. And all the American women I’ve seen staring at you in the park were hardly clapping with admiration.”
Instead of having to choose, Mother took most of her evening gowns, as well as her newer dresses, coats, and hats. My four dresses dwindled to the two I would wear during our journey. She promised that many beautiful frocks awaited me, better than those I now owned. My favorite books were not necessary to bring either, nor were my schoolbooks, since those could be easily replaced with better ones in San Francisco, where I would also have better tutors than the ones here in Shanghai. I should simply enjoy a little holiday from study on our voyage.
Into my valise, she placed a maroon box with my jewelry, two other boxes she retrieved from a drawer, two scrolls wrapped in silk, and a few other valuables. On top of this, she placed her fox fur wrap, believing, I suppose, she might need a bit of glamour as we stood on deck and watched Shanghai recede from view.
At last we were done. Mother now needed only to find from among her coterie of influential foreigners someone to buy us passage to America. She gave Cracked Egg a dozen letters to deliver.
A day went by, then a week. The werefox eyes left and her old self returned, the one that was agitated and snappish. She gave Cracked Egg another packet of letters. Two berths, that was all we needed. What was so difficult about that? Every message came back the same: Her American compatriots were also anxious to leave Shanghai, and they, too, had found that others before them had grabbed every berth on ships for the next month.