by Vanessa Hua
“A girl!” The woman offered what must have been congratulations.
After pumping ketchup on top of her fries, Scarlett left McDonald’s with lightness in her step. A stranger wishing her well turned her hopeful she might find her way in the world again. She licked her fingers, savoring the sweet tang. The van’s alarm went off, bleating and insistent, and she fumbled for the keys, the noise escalating. To her shock, the rear doors opened and out slid Daisy.
Scarlett called her name, but Daisy took off running. She went after Daisy in a ridiculous low-speed chase, two women late in their third trimester, ungainly, treading water on land. Joints jangling, hips off-kilter, Scarlett felt like a hula hoop swinging out of control. Panting, they stopped after a few meters, eying each other. Daisy bristled with flight and fight. Scarlett broke the standoff by tipping her take-out bag toward Daisy, who glanced around with suspicion until she couldn’t resist. She stuffed fistfuls of fries into her mouth, her eyes closed in ecstasy. During the commotion at Perfume Bay, she must have sneaked into the van.
“Where were you headed?” Scarlett asked.
Daisy didn’t answer. She was American by birth. Her parents had been living in Illinois when she was born, while her father studied for his engineering doctorate. The family returned to Taiwan when Daisy was two months old and hadn’t been back to the United States since. Lady Yu and Countess Tien had considered her a snob, in that enmity between mainlanders and those whose families fled across the straits to Taiwan after the civil war.
She was the youngest guest at Perfume Bay, and used to attend a fancy international school in Taipei, where the latest American slang circulated in the hallways, where admissions required every student to hold a foreign passport, keeping out locals without the resources to give birth to their children abroad, without second homes in Los Angeles and New York. The kind of school found in cosmopolitan cities where Boss Yeung had wanted to send their son.
In this, Daisy seemed as privileged as the other guests at Perfume Bay. But like Scarlett, she’d kept to herself, never spoke of her baby’s father, and never spoke of future plans. They were alike in their defiance and determination, and maybe in other ways, too. Daisy drained the Coke.
“Meeting someone?” Scarlett asked, over the squawk of the drive-through speakers. The headlights of a passing car strobed over her face. “Is someone coming for you?”
Daisy eyed her, probably deciding whether she could trust her. The teenager attracted trouble and sought it out in equal measure. Scarlett would have to drop her off at the Taiwan consulate, where officials could tame a wayward minor. Daisy opened her mouth, as if to plead—and then vomited: the fries, the Coke, her fear, everything that must be churning inside her.
If Scarlett had been maternal, if she’d been sisterly, she might have gathered up Daisy’s hair and rubbed her back, but she did not. She turned away from the mess, gasping, trying not to vomit herself. Daisy shuddered and stepped away from the pool on the asphalt. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, sipped the Coke, and grimaced.
The McDonald’s security guard ran up. He asked her something in English and stared at her cup. He must suspect that she was drunk.
Daisy straightened and made what sounded like an apology. He rubbed his scraggly blond goatee, and asked another question. Did he say “doctor”? Probably he’d asked if she needed a doctor.
Daisy shook her head. When he noticed Scarlett and her pregnant belly, he did a double take. Two pregnant women, in matching velour sweat suits with the Perfume Bay logo. Daisy carried high as the prow of a ship, Scarlett low as a turtle.
The guard studied them. He might have been trying to figure out if they were mother and daughter. Friends? Sister-wives or lovers? He would remember later if police came looking for them, if their disappearance hit the news.
“Mexico,” Scarlett blurted.
“Mexico?” the guard asked.
Daisy gave her a quizzical look. In Chinese, Scarlett told her to ask for directions. They couldn’t get across the border without their passports, but she wanted to throw off authorities.
The guard was shaped like a gourd, his pale cheeks dotted with zits, his complexion wan under the parking lot lights. After pointing down the road toward the freeway, he returned to his post by the door. Burping, Scarlett tasted fries, simultaneously savory and disgusting. She—and the baby—were hungry again. Later, she promised her daughter. More and more, she talked to her. She couldn’t understand what the baby was saying or thinking, or feel what she was feeling, and the baby wouldn’t remember her time in utero. But Scarlett wanted to imagine the mind of her daughter in ways she was sure her own mother had never tried to imagine hers.
Back at the van, they discovered it listing heavily to the right, the front tire sunken and torn away from the rim. Did someone sideswipe it or try to steal the tire?
“You hit the curb,” Daisy reminded Scarlett.
Scarlett frowned, her body clammy. A pinball of a headache bumped around behind her eyes, the fries too rich after months of dining like a nun. She jerked open the back doors. No spare was visible, not on the door, not on the floor, and she cursed Mama Fang’s stinginess.
Daisy trailed her fingers on the floor mat and tugged on the corner. Losing her grip, she stumbled backward. Scarlett caught her. “You’ll end up like Lady Yu.” Convulsing, rushed to the hospital and sliced open, her baby yanked out.
The mat, now askew, revealed a wheel tucked into a well. Together, they could pry it out. They’d have to squat and lift at a time when merely walking tested their balance. Daisy started to sob, leaving Scarlett at a loss, irritated that she had to contend with this girl’s misery, too.
The guard came to their rescue, carrying a tall cup of lemon-lime soda. To settle Daisy’s stomach, he said, while he worked on the tire. “Sorry we don’t have ginger ale.”
“Could I get a bottle of water?” Daisy asked. Her tears stopped. It seemed she’d been trying to get his help by crying melodramatically. “I’m really thirsty for water. The sweet might make me sick.”
He jogged toward the door, and Scarlett scolded her. “Can’t you take what’s offered?”
“Everyone thinks asking for help puts you in debt. It’s the opposite,” Daisy said. “If someone helps you once, he’ll keep helping you. He would have done the same for you, if you’d asked.”
“Only if I were your age. Probably not then, either.”
The guard disappeared inside the McDonald’s, the door slamming behind him. “He’s not keeping track of every little thing,” Daisy said. “He’s telling himself that I’m worth it, and wants to keep helping me. Otherwise, he’s an idiot for helping me at all.”
“You think Mama Fang isn’t keeping track?” Scarlett asked. Her temples pounded.
“I don’t owe her a thing.” From her backpack, Daisy dug out a stack of passports and thumbed through them, the sound of the sliding covers like cards shuffling, the sound of possibility.
In her haste to get to the hospital, Mama Fang must have left her office unlocked. Daisy handed Scarlett her passport and then smiled, more resourceful than she seemed.
* * *
—
An hour later, when Daisy plucked the cheapest cellphone from the rack at the discount superstore, the clerk tried to convince her to upgrade. With his cloying cologne, slicked back hair, poufy white shirt, and thin mustache, he resembled a pirate.
“You’ll be taking a lot of photos of the little one. You don’t want to miss a thing.”
They ignored him. Scarlett was sick of the clerk, of Mama Fang, of everyone who preyed on pregnant women to turn a profit. The loudspeaker blared an announcement. Daisy translated: the store would close in fifteen minutes, and shoppers should complete their purchases.
They had to get back on the road, but Daisy wanted to get a message to the father of her child. Just like
her, he was ABC—American-born Chinese—though he’d grown up in a suburb outside of San Francisco, she told Scarlett. They met while he was attending a summer language program in Taipei. “I have to find him.” She gripped the cellphone still encased in clear plastic.
As they passed the cosmetics aisle and its scent of possibility and hope, Daisy ducked in, murmuring she wanted to clean up before she sent her boyfriend a photo. Scarlett caught sight of herself in a warped plastic mirror, her skin greasy and hair stringy as a mop. Boss Yeung wouldn’t recognize her; she hardly recognized herself. As a teenager, she used to change her style—panda-bear mascara, doll-pout lips, glam-rock aqua eye shadow, pants studded with rhinestones—to release the different selves clamoring within her. Pregnancy was a different costume altogether, one she couldn’t shed at will. The taut belly she’d expected, but not the black line that bisected her. Even her feet became alien, swollen and creased.
Standing side by side, they stared in the mirror, their image blurred as if under water. When Scarlett tentatively smoothed Daisy’s rumpled hair, the teenager swallowed, her eyes wet. They looked at each other, and in silent understanding, Daisy reached for a makeup tester. First the toner that she swept over Scarlett’s face. Poured onto the white cotton pads, the toner had the grassy fragrance of purity and new beginnings. Scarlett sighed.
Although Mama Fang didn’t prohibit makeup, the women of Perfume Bay didn’t bother. They also didn’t have to worry about keeping up with the latest fashions or maintaining their hair coloring, manicures, and pedicures, all those time-consuming grooming rituals forbidden because of the chemicals. Not like Mama Fang, who wore permanent makeup, her eyebrows plucked and shaved off and tattooed in surprise, and her dark-rimmed eyes with the furtive look of a raccoon. Given the chance, Scarlett would have slashed her face with red lipstick in revenge.
Daisy smoothed cream on the puffy skin below Scarlett’s eyes and brushed powder over her face. A ticklish ritual, a blessing, to mark their return to the human race. She stroked Scarlett’s wayward brows with the tip of her finger, slicked on cherry-scented pink gloss, and brushed on blush. Scarlett exhaled. “I could fall asleep standing up.”
The loudspeaker crackled again: five minutes until closing. Scarlett applied Daisy’s makeup quickly, with a heavy hand, and they both looked again into the dimpled mirror. Scarlett touched her own cheeks, caught herself and smiled, embarrassed to be primping. Daisy didn’t know Scarlett’s story, and Scarlett didn’t know hers, but tonight their paths had merged.
Scarlett draped her hand on her belly, where her daughter was drumming out the song of her arrival. Soon. Soon. Soon. Stay inside, she told her daughter, where she could keep her safe, where she could keep her to herself.
The snack bar by the entrance had a popcorn machine, the smell of a movie theater, fake butter and salt. At the checkout, Daisy tore open the package to reach her new phone, ran her fingers over the buttons, and snapped a photo of herself from the waist up, in profile, and emailed it to her boyfriend. The response was immediate, as if he’d been waiting for her. She read the message and her excitement winked out. She showed it to Scarlett: Error. Address not found. She tried again with a messaging app, and then another, but couldn’t find him.
He’d disappeared.
* * *
—
In the passenger seat, Daisy yawned and rubbed her eyes. Scarlett didn’t know how she could take care of her daughter, let alone a teenager, too—a teenager who was also expecting. For more than half her life, Scarlett had been on her own. If Scarlett had gotten pregnant at Daisy’s age, she never would have made it to the city. Her mother would have insisted she marry, sentencing Scarlett to a life in the village, or else she would have ended up at the clinic, getting scraped out. Either way, she would have lost the nerve to leave home.
Scarlett pulled out of the parking lot. As ably as Daisy had handled herself tonight, Scarlett wouldn’t let the teenager slow down her escape from Boss Yeung. Daisy would have to find her boyfriend on her own. Scarlett suspected that soon enough, Daisy would move on. Reunite with her parents back home and leave her son with them, cared for by a team of ayis, while she resumed her life at school. Daisy didn’t belong on the road, on the run. With a deep sigh, the teenager slumped over asleep, her mouth slack, her hands limp. In the light of morning, she would understand that fulfilling her prison term at Perfume Bay served the interests of all concerned. The van gently rocked, the engine rumbling in a lullaby. Scarlett turned down the radio and drove back the way she’d come.
* * *
—
The van slowed and Daisy jerked awake. Just after midnight, they were across the street from Perfume Bay. Scarlett hit a button to unlock the doors. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice hoarse with the ferocity of a mother.
Daisy unbuckled her seatbelt and lunged across the bench seat—her belly clearing the dash by millimeters—and hit the horn, three long blasts. “I’m not going back.”
“You have to.” Scarlett shoved Daisy’s shoulder. Reaching her leg as far as it could go, Daisy stomped on the gas, jerked the steering wheel, and the van plowed into the neighbor’s mailbox. A crash, and the mailbox toppled and scraped against the bumper. Scarlett hit the brake. More lights blinked on down the street. The front door of Perfume Bay swung open and Countess Tien peered out, cradling her wailing son. The other guests followed.
With Mama Fang still at the hospital and no one telling them what to do, they seemed lost as children in a fable. Daisy hit the gas again, and the wheels spun in place on the lawn, throwing up loamy earth and grass that spattered against the windshield. Deeper and deeper the tires sank. Scarlett released the brake and the van jounced onto the street. Daisy’s foot slipped off the accelerator, and her hands flew up to protect her belly.
“Stop! Stop at once,” Countess Tien shouted.
Scarlett took control, hitting the gas, tires squealing, stinking with burning rubber, and Daisy braced herself against the dashboard. The engine strained and then stampeded, hurling them forward. She’d have to struggle to force Daisy out of the van, and police might already be on the way. They peeled around the corner and took the next freeway on-ramp. Scarlett pounded on the steering wheel, furious. “You do whatever you want, because you know your parents will save you. The police will come after us.”
“The police will come after Mama Fang.” Daisy hastily explained that last week, when she’d run away to find her boyfriend, the neighbor across the street had taken her in. What was going on, he had asked. Why were there so many pregnant women at the house all the time?
“A hotel,” she told him.
“Here?” he asked.
“For pregnant women.”
He scowled and told her Perfume Bay’s overflowing septic tank had spilled filth onto the adjoining lawns several times, stinking up the neighborhood.
Mama Fang had to be breaking the law, cramming too many guests into Perfume Bay. Daisy asked to borrow the neighbor’s phone, but when she called her boyfriend’s number, it wasn’t in service. She had punched it in again, trying not to panic. Maybe his parents had canceled the account.
She’d looked back at Perfume Bay. “You want her out? I can help you. I’ll get pictures from inside the house, and then you can take me to the bus station. Please?”
Sighing, he’d rummaged in a kitchen drawer and returned with a disposable camera. But when she tried to sneak back inside, Mama Fang had been waiting for her.
As Scarlett accelerated on the freeway, Daisy hastily buckled her seatbelt. “Remember the trash cans that fell at dinner?” Daisy asked.
“The raccoons.”
“I bet it was the neighbor.”
No one but Daisy had suspected he was going through the garbage to collect evidence. No one but Daisy had known he was spying on Perfume Bay and following the van on the way to the clinic. No one but Daisy had known,
and she said nothing.
“After tonight, the neighbors will call the police,” Daisy said. “Mama Fang will be ruined.”
“You don’t know that! You don’t know a thing!”
“Mama Fang jailed us. Now we’ll shut down Perfume Bay.”
The other guests had conspired against them, fallen silent or turned their backs when they’d entered the room, Daisy said. They’d called Scarlett a xiao san, a little third. A mistress, a third party, small in every way: a young woman with a selfish heart and a lesser status. Surely, Scarlett must have heard them whispering. They’d called Daisy xiao dangfu, little slut.
Mama Fang would be unaware of the havoc they’d wreaked. By tomorrow, police would swarm Perfume Bay and take her in for questioning. By tomorrow, these pampered women and their spoiled babies would be forced onto the street.
As Daisy mimicked Countess Tien’s high-pitched, haughty tone, they laughed, united against the world. Scarlett felt like a bottle of champagne shaken up, and yet she knew she could not let loose. Daisy was a danger to herself, to her son. She was rash, as rash as Scarlett when she’d left home for the factory city. Rash as when she’d started an affair with a married man. Rash as when she’d stolen the van and driven it into the night.
* * *
—
As they descended the steep mountain pass out of Los Angeles, the pains began. At first Scarlett blamed the change in altitude. She swallowed, her ears popping; they’d gained and lost more elevation than she realized. The winding road left the dun-colored hills and flattened out into a wide valley. How long the day, how vast this country. For now, despite her reservations, she’d accepted Daisy as a passenger. An unspoken agreement, by its nature nebulous and temporary, but all the agreement they needed to get through the first leg of this journey. Something or somebody must trouble Daisy back home, and Scarlett did not want to deliver her into harm.