by Justina Chen
Auntie Marnie claps her hands together. “Quiet! I can’t think! All you boys do is make noise.”
I second that notion.
“No one is leaving,” announces Auntie Marnie. No wonder Jocelyn says our eldest aunt has the leadership gene, which is the polite way of saying she’s Bossy with a capital B. “You,” she says, pointing to the rest of the family, “have food to eat, and you”—she points at me—“have something to see.” She takes my arm and orders, “Come.”
A closed door down the hall could be any other in this house, but I know it’s Po-Po’s room. Auntie Marnie opens the door gently, as if she doesn’t want to wake the sleeping person inside. “Come in, come in,” she says brusquely when I hang outside the door, feeling like an intruder.
Without waiting to see if I’m obeying—proof that she’s used to everyone jumping at her every command—Auntie Marnie removes three enormous scrapbooks from the corner bookshelf. “This is what I wanted to show you.” She points me to a reading chair, switches on the lamp, and places one of the albums on my lap. Heavy and substantial, it weighs me down so I don’t float away the way I’ve felt I was going to all afternoon.
Underneath the first photograph of a chubby baby is Chinese writing that I can’t read. I look up at Marnie, knowing the answer before I can form the question.
“Your mother’s name.”
“Betty?”
“No, her Chinese name.” Auntie Marnie squats down in front of me.
I shake my head. “She doesn’t use that name.” Nor do I since mine, Zhen Zhu, meaning pearl, makes me feel more asset than beloved daughter.
“Oh.” Marnie smiles at me sadly. “It’s Yu.”
That one-syllable name sounds emphatic rather than harsh. My hand automatically touches my throat, to where Mama’s pendant always rests on her neck, and I translate, “Jade?”
Auntie Marnie nods. “Our mother wanted her to know that she was treasured. Jade is so precious in our culture, almost magical in its powers. We never forgot your mother.”
The problem is, my mother must have wanted to forget that name. Auntie Marnie cocks her head at me. “Can you read Chinese?”
I shake my head. “I can only understand it.”
Nodding, she points to the single Chinese character that makes up Mama’s name. “See,” she says and covers the tiny dot that lies like a pearl at the corner of the character. “That means ‘wong.’ You know wong?”
“King?” I ask.
“Not king. More like the family clan leader. Jade is that, the chief, plus this dot.” Auntie Marnie gets heavily to her feet as though the weight of the past is almost too much to bear. With one finger, she circles Mama’s name, a tender caress before leaving me alone with Po-Po’s memories. “Maybe one day, you can give these scrapbooks to your mommy.”
Aside from the one baby picture, there are very few photographs of Mama’s childhood, three or four of her as a toddler and no more until she’s six, maybe seven. I recognize Weipou’s stern face that matches her upright posture in a hardback chair, Weigong standing at her side, looking more servant than partner. Two plump boys are positioned in front of them, and standing to the back by herself is Mama, so tiny she’s just two eyes peering uneasily over Weipou’s shoulder, an interloper in this family portrait. In another picture of just Mama and her two brothers, her expression is more browbeaten than any homeless child in the Evergreen Fund slideshow.
“Oh, Mama,” I murmur, running my finger across her pinched face, wishing I could smudge the not-good-enough expression away.
The next page skips forward a few years to Mama at boarding school, standing next to other girls who are all white. Even without the cheongsam, Mama looks every bit the outsider, with her arms hanging awkwardly at her side. But there’s a luminosity in her eyes that wasn’t there in her Hong Kong pictures and relief in her smile, as if she knows she’s in control. And free. By the time she enters Cambridge, she looks almost like the Mama I know: gorgeous, confident, perfectly put together, not a wrinkle on her skirt, nor a blemish on her blouse.
As I skim through this first scrapbook, I could be watching one of those time-stop documentaries where plants burst from seed to full bloom on the count of three. The next scrapbook begins with Mama’s wedding announcement in the New York Times, articles about Baba’s company, photographs of my parents at various functions, and then there’s me, me, and more me. I recognize every photograph: they’re copies of pictures that Bao-mu took. I always thought it was so weird how she was never without a camera. My first successful foray on the potty: CLICK! My first dance recital with all of three shuffle-steps: CLICK!
I may not have been known, but I was loved. And so was Mama. Without having to study every page, I know it. And I know it because the third book, more empty than full, is waiting for Mama’s life and mine to fill it.
If Mama had any inkling of how much she was cherished, would that change anything? Randomly, I flip from page to page, picture after picture of bone-thin Mama. Then as now, she’s emaciated, like she’s not worthy of food.
Suddenly, I’m so tired, my eyes go out-of-focus. It’s as if hands lead me to the bed where Po-Po had slept since she moved to Vancouver. Considering that I normally sleep in a bed used by four hundred years’ worth of people—doing who knows what and please don’t tell me—I have no problem lying down and closing my eyes. I keep one hand on the scrapbook I’ve carried to bed, as if I could soak up the love that went into clipping every one of those articles and gluing each picture down in this ultimate brag book about two little treasures, one Jade and the other Pearl.
31
I wake to The Boys thudding around their indoor track of a living room.
“Shhh!” I hear one of the aunties shushing them. “You’ll wake up Syrah.”
I smile then, thinking how great it is to wake up in a house full of noisy life. As soon as I pull my hair back into a messy ponytail and wipe the sleep out of my eyes, I head downstairs toward the scent of potstickers frying in the kitchen. Suddenly, I’m homesick for Bao-mu, who always foisted a container of the fresh dumplings onto Age whenever he came over to visit, telling him, “You not cook tonight. You study!”
“Syrah’s finally up!” yells one of The Boys, zooming around me. I swear, there’s got to be an easy way to remember which one is which. Give me enough time, and I’ll figure it out. “Is this how fast you go on your snowboard?”
“You’re way faster,” I assure him.
“I’m faster than Syrah!” he bellows more victoriously than a first place winner at Wicked in Whistler.
Laughing, I follow my nose to where the Leong sisters are seated around the kitchen table, a well-oiled potsticker production line.
By way of greeting me, Auntie Marnie looks up from the long strips of dough that she’s slicing into one-inch segments and asks, “Chi bao le ma?” Funny, isn’t it, that her greeting—a standard Chinese one, have you eaten yet—is a question I’d never hear out of my own mother’s mouth, so concerned is she that I don’t gain an unnecessary ounce?
With a dough-caked hand, Auntie Marnie motions me over to the empty chair, unaware of the drifts of flour flaking with her every movement. Quickly, she bustles to the stove, where she wipes her hands on a kitchen towel and lifts the cover off the frying pan, sizzling with potstickers. “Almost done.”
As I sit in the one remaining empty spot at the table, I wonder where Grace is, since she’s not in here with the rest of the women. Auntie Marnie reclaims her seat across from me. Next to her, Auntie Yvonne rolls the cut-up dough in her palms before flattening the balls with a tiny rolling pin into pancakes. Jocelyn drops a mound of pork and cabbage filling in the center of each skin before folding the edges over into fat crescent moons.
That’s where the production line hiccups. Jocelyn nods at the growing stack of pancake skins in front of her. She whispers to me, “They’re way too fast.”
“No,” teases Auntie Yvonne. “Your young hands are too slow.”
>
While the conversation rolls ahead in rapid Mandarin, I take my place in the production line as Jocelyn’s backup helper. Just as I did with Bao-mu countless times over the years, I pick up a doughy skin, dollop some of the meat into the center, dip one flour-dusted finger into the bowl of cloudy water, and wet the edges of a skin. I fold over the dumpling, and the way Bao-mu taught me, I crimp the edges.
“Just like Pi-Lan!” cries Auntie Yvonne, delighted. “She is such a good cook.”
Surprised, I ask, “You know my Bao-mu?”
“Of course.” Auntie Marnie pops up to check on the potstickers, moving them around with long chopsticks in some order only she understands. “She was your po-po’s best friend. Pi-Lan was so sad that she couldn’t make it to the memorial. But the baby came home from the hospital yesterday, and she had to be there to help.”
Then it comes to me. Bao-mu was the one who brought Mama to her new parents. That’s why her photos were in Po-Po’s scrapbooks. So why did she come back to take care of me for all these years?
As I pick up another pancake skin, I notice Grace hovering by the kitchen door, as if she wants to join us but doesn’t know how. It’s the way I feel around the girls at school who seem to speak another language. In this case, we do. Grace doesn’t speak Mandarin.
“Grace, hurry, we need reinforcements,” I tell her in English, then dust the flour off my hands and grab the extra chair tucked under the telephone nook.
Pretty soon, Grace is shaping The Son of Blob in her hand. “What’s the trick?” she asks me quietly, embarrassed at the miscreant in her hands.
“It’s all about putting the right amount of meat on the skin,” I tell her. “Too much, and it oozes out. Too little, and you’re eating the Pillsbury Doughboy.”
Auntie Yvonne squashes another ball into a large medallion-sized pancake and looks at me in the same way Bao-mu does when she embarks on a fact-finding mission. As if she’s merely relaying information, Auntie Yvonne says casually, “Pi-Lan said your mommy bought her a big house in California.”
It’s hard to say who’s more surprised, me or Grace. On Bao-mu’s last day at The House of Cheng, I had visions of Winston Churchill sending his allowance to his nanny after she’d been cut off penniless despite years of service, and I worried out loud to Bao-mu about her retirement. She had brushed off my concern: “You not worry. I be lots okay.”
“Pi-Lan told Po-Po that your mommy took three trips to find her the perfect house. Three thousand square feet, four bedrooms, and a housekeeper,” says Auntie Marnie proudly, as if she were the one who’d arranged it. She carries a platter from the stove to the island, steaming with dumplings. “All furnished.”
Three trips to San Francisco? When had Mama found the time? Suddenly I remember the emergency shopping expedition tacked on to her last D.C. trip. Only Mama wasn’t shopping for the newest “it” shoes or the season’s “must-have” pieces, but for Bao-mu’s future. There is a whole life that Bao-mu and my mother have kept secret.
As if we’re all preschoolers, Auntie Marnie orders us, “Go wash your hands, and then we’ll eat.”
Soon, Auntie Yvonne is scooting the platter that we’re sharing family-style closer to me. “Eat,” she urges. “Eat.”
Under the doting eyes of my aunties, I choose one, which gets a fast rejection from Auntie Marnie: “No, no, that one is too skinny. You take this one,” and she hands me the plumpest, choicest dumpling. I take a careful bite, and close my eyes. Hot, savory juices flood my mouth. When I open my eyes, Auntie Marnie is watching me closely, weighing my love for her in my response.
It is so delicious that I want to shove the rest of the dumpling into my mouth, but restrain myself to careful chewing and enthusiastic nodding.
“Good?” Auntie Marnie demands.
The ultimate compliment would be to tell her that these are better than Bao-mu’s, but I’d feel too disloyal to do that. Besides, the potsticker is too hot in my mouth for an answer, a verbal one anyway. So I spear another with my chopsticks, which is all the answer Auntie Marnie needs, and she smiles, satisfied. That is, until she notices at the same time I do that Grace isn’t eating.
“You need to taste,” commands Auntie Marnie, using her chopsticks to nudge the potsticker closest to Grace toward her. “This is good for you.”
“I’m not really hungry, thanks,” says Grace. Her eyes dip to my aunt’s rounded stomach, and I can read her mind: if Marnie thinks she’s the poster child of good-for-you cooking, Grace isn’t buying. “Ample” would be one way to describe Aunt Marnie. “Fat” would be my family’s. It’s not that her seams are bulging, because they aren’t. She’s just curvy like I am, in a way that stick-thin Chengs aren’t supposed to be.
“The other day I was at Children’s Hospital, visiting my friend’s little sister. Cancer,” I say amid the aunties’ sympathetic clicks, sounding like a pod of concerned dolphins. “And none of the kids on her floor could eat. I just felt like it was so, I don’t know, disrespectful not to eat when I can.”
Auntie Marnie nods, understanding me. “To stay healthy, you need to eat. Not too much, not too little. This was one of your po-po’s favorite things to make with us girls growing up,” says Auntie Marnie, looking sadly at the plump potsticker at the end of her chopsticks.
“No, she liked eating them,” corrects Auntie Yvonne.
Auntie Marnie shakes her head and says authoritatively, in what I’ve already identified as her eldest sister, I-know-best-tone, “No, no. It’s the talking part she loved best. She always said that we brought our secrets to the kitchen table.”
“And she devoured them like they were fat potstickers!” says Auntie Yvonne, laughing.
The lure of these fresh potstickers is irresistible, even to Grace, who selects the tiniest one with her chopsticks, nibbling at its end. I don’t say anything, and I keep my eyes off Grace. I know what it’s like to have every bite scrutinized and not feel worthy of the most minute morsel. But I hear her chewing, and take another bite myself.
Auntie Marnie sighs. “I wish Mei-Mei was here right now.”
There are many places I can picture Mama: on the jet, at a fashion show, in her gym. But sitting at a dirty table with dough and raw minced pork on her fingers, I think not. Then again, maybe I’ve dismissed Mama too quickly. Maybe she would be at home here with her hair pulled into a careless ponytail, the way she was at a daycare for homeless kids. And I wonder what Mama is doing now, whether she’s eating anything in Hong Kong, stealing a bite here and there. If she’s thinking about her mother. What she would do if she knew I was here, surrounded by her sisters.
“She should have come yesterday.” Auntie Yvonne’s mouth purses disapprovingly. “You’re supposed to honor your mother. No matter what.”
A little accusation goes a long way. Mama should have come. It’s what I’ve been thinking since Mama left for Hong Kong. She should have come to her own mother’s funeral. She should have come with me.
“Aaah,” Auntie Marnie sighs, a sound loud with guilt that all but says, what can we do? “We gave her away.”
Auntie Yvonne sets down her chopsticks, ready to fight. “What could we have done?”
Softly, Grace says, “I don’t think I would have come if I were Betty.”
Just then, The Boys clamber into the kitchen, following the scent of these little pieces of our hearts, dumplings served up as morning dim sum. “We want some, too!”
There are only a half dozen left, and instead of brushing The Boys off, Auntie Yvonne smiles indulgently at them and bustles to get them clean plates and forks, telling them in her actions that they are worthy. The doorbell rings, and Auntie Marnie orders The Boys, as if there’s safety in numbers, “Open the door and then come back to eat.”
Obviously, no one dares to flout one of Auntie Marnie’s orders, and The Boys leave together, one giant mass of noise and dirt.
“Your father’s good to her?” asks Auntie Yvonne, who’s abandoned all pretense of politeness.
“Auntie Yvonne!” cries Jocelyn, rolling her eyes. She leans toward me. “Consider yourself an official part of the family. All questions are fair game now. Just wait.”
“She’s always been part of our family.” Auntie Marnie spins around indignantly to face us. “Syrah is a true Leong.”
“No, she’s not,” says a voice, sharp with an accent that sounds a world apart from this little home in Richmond. Standing in the doorway, faces grim, are Mama and Baba.
How many times have I imagined them so hell-bent on being with me—to catch my soccer games, dance recitals, spelling bees, snowboarding competitions—that they’d cancel meetings, reschedule appointments, turn down lucrative speaking engagements, and surprise me with their appearance? Only now that they’re ready to take me away (why else would they be here?), I don’t want to go.
“Mama?” I say at the same time that Auntie Marnie steps uncertainly away from the stovetop and toward her. She breathes in disbelief, “Mei-Mei?”
Words waiting to be said for nearly forty years come rushing out of Auntie Marnie in a spate of hot and sour Mandarin: how they made a mistake and sent Mama away, how their mother would have been happy that the family is finally reunited. But Auntie Marnie has no idea that Mama doesn’t speak Mandarin. That with her every word, she’s widening the unbreachable emotional gap between them, the one that yawns with so much more distance than the scant four feet that separates them here in this kitchen.
Arms crossed, Mama answers in Cantonese, her words burning like the forgotten oil on the stovetop: I. Am. Not. Your. Little. Sister.
Her older sisters look bewildered first at her, then me. Baba, ever in control, commands, “Syrah, get your things.”
Even with everything going on, I notice that our father doesn’t spare a single glance at Grace, who’s standing so straight and immobile, she could be a longtime military cadet.
“Now?” I ask. “Wait, what are you doing here?”
“My business in Hong Kong finished early. So I’m able to make it to the meetings in Whistler after all,” says Baba. “But when we went home to pick you up, you weren’t there.”