by Vanessa Hua
“Little Fox recommended a good one on Clay Street, expensive but worth it.” Daisy offered her son a rattle. “He found her man.”
“After he’d died! Little Fox is a little fool.” Scarlett balled up the rag. “What did you tell her?”
What gossip would Little Fox let slip in Chinatown, what details would bring Boss Yeung to their doorstep?
Daisy fiddled with the edge of the blanket. “Nothing.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Nothing!” Daisy said. “She brought it up. That one doesn’t stop, once she gets started.”
Scarlett nodded.
“The detective doesn’t have to know everything. All I need is what’s left”—she looked at the biscuit tin that held their savings—“William will pay the rest later.”
“Paying later won’t pay for now.” She strapped on Liberty, took the money from the tin, grabbed the plum wine, and left.
Chapter 11
Scarlett knocked on Widow Mok’s door. Fat as a grub, her neighbor had once been a famed Chinese opera singer, performing screeching ballads, with mincing steps, a jingling headdress, and snowy face paint. And despite her title, she hadn’t lost her husband. She’d been the mistress of a Chinatown leader who had kept her in style, and it was said all she had left of her former riches were her fabulous gowns. Nowadays, she wore satin sweat suits and remained vain about her tiny feet, shod in silk slippers embroidered with peonies, the only part of her wardrobe into which she could still fit.
Scarlett proposed trading plum wine for a qi pao that now wouldn’t have contained one of Widow Mok’s arms, a tunic dress that seemed modest until you noticed the tightness of the bodice and the slits up the sides designed to reveal flashes of leg. Scarlett had never owned one—nor had the occasion to wear one herself.
“For that?” Widow Mok sniffed. “My dresses were made by the finest tailor in Shanghai.”
“And this by the finest herbalist.” Scarlett unscrewed the bottle of plum wine, which released the fragrance of blossoms set afire. Liberty, strapped to her chest, started to shift, and Scarlett rocked from side to side to keep her asleep. She’d taken the baby with her to gain the sympathies of those she haggled with, but Widow Mok seemed unmoved.
“Plum wine helps with digestion, to fortify your qi.” Which could help Widow Mok lose weight, Scarlett didn’t need to add. She poured two cups, toasting to her health and longevity. The sip burned, and something unfurled in her and the widow, too, like a bright red silk banner rippling in the wind.
Widow Mok’s eyes glittered. “Is Daisy getting married?”
Only Daisy would fit into the qi pao. Only Daisy seemed worthy of a man’s attention. Scarlett’s skin prickled. She was no beauty and had never staked her ambitions or her future on her appearance, but she’d also never looked so haggard. She resembled a lank-haired, hollow-eyed ghost from the old tales, those who lured travelers to their death. If Boss Yeung could see her now, he’d recoil. During her pregnancy, the shape-shifting, however humiliating, however uncomfortable, had sustained the baby. Now the wreck of her body lacked any nobility, and she felt like an old sow before the slaughter.
The qi pao stank of mothballs, the scent of not letting go, the last reminder of Widow Mok’s youth. Glamour, grace, and desire. The dress lacked its top frog closure, only its frayed threads left behind, as if it had exploded under high pressure the final time Widow Mok tried it on. Yet it also had nearly invisible stitches, the sort that blinded a dedicated tailor, and embroidery so fine it seemed painted on with an eyelash. A quality unavailable in Chinatown, unavailable most anywhere except the imperial court, and Scarlett knew just who would want such a dress. The landlord’s daughter wasn’t the only one getting married. Little Fox was also engaged, though her groom remained in Guangzhou, unable to get his fiancé visa or afford the plane ticket. Their wedding had been postponed three times. Her last fiancé, the one who’d jilted her, the one who’d later died in a car accident, not only ran out on her, but left her with a worthless engagement ring. When she tried to sell it, she discovered the diamond was a fake. For this marriage, Little Fox would surely want a fine dress.
She didn’t have the money for one. If she did, she wouldn’t have been living at Evergreen Gardens, and she would have spent her savings on getting her fiancé here. Little Fox welcomed her into the apartment. Though she lacked cash, she still might have something of value she could trade. Looking around, Scarlett noticed a man’s suit—its heavy fabric matte and tasteful, its understated cut dignified as a banker—protected in a dry cleaner’s clear plastic bag. She could make an even better trade with the suit. Fit for a wedding, it must have belonged to Little Fox’s first fiancé.
Little Fox had a narrow face and delicate chin, and might have seemed sly but for her broad smile that rendered her feelings transparent. Her eyes grew wide when Scarlett showed her the dress. Little Fox held it against herself, stroking the silk. She must have been imagining herself in the arms of her husband-to-be at her wedding banquet.
“It’s yours,” Scarlett said. “Trade me that old suit.”
Little Fox wanted Fiancé No. 2 to wear it to their wedding, she said. “I can’t. I already promised it to him.”
“A dress like this, you can’t get for such a bargain.” Scarlett was sweating, the baby radiating heat like a car engine against her chest. “Bad luck. Start off new. Listen—why do you think your man can’t get here?”
Little Fox asked, “A ghost?” She bought lottery tickets every week, paid for blessings at the temple, and lit incense daily.
“Whose ghost?” Scarlett asked.
“Of my first fiancé!” Little Fox buried her face in her hands.
Scarlett must have hit upon her deepest fear. Just as Scarlett felt the relief of pulling off another trade, Liberty grunted with the red-faced exertions that heralded a bowel movement. A disgusting but now familiar warmth seeped in the sling against Scarlett’s chest. Parenthood plunged you in more shit and piss than raising pigs. Little Fox slipped on the dress, transforming her into a princess that no man ever could have abandoned. She smoothed her hands on the silk and sucked in her soft belly. If she lost a few kilos, the dress would fit perfectly, as if she’d been poured in.
Liberty squirmed, trying to escape the sling. The stinking diaper would end the negotiations if Scarlett didn’t hurry. Scarlett zipped up the qi pao, which glimmered over Little Fox’s curves. She turned Little Fox toward the hand mirror nailed to the wall—too high up and too small to reflect the stain on the hip. “Grow old and white-haired together,” Scarlett told her. “A good match of a hundred years.”
Traditional wedding congratulations that Little Fox must have longed to hear. She handed over the suit. Her fiancé—her dead fiancé—had excellent if expensive tastes. She beamed, confident in the new fiancé she had fallen in love with online, confident as Scarlett never had been and never would be. Scarlett hurried away, her eyes stinging, thinking about Boss Yeung.
On a trip to an island off Zhuhai, they’d splashed on the beach and feasted on prawns, pink and plump, sucking garlicky sauce off their fingers. He served her the parts of the crab with the most succulent, easiest-to-reach meat. Afterward, he skipped stones, and she clapped her hands with a girlish delight she had never allowed herself. She didn’t know how to swim, but she followed him into the water. She clung to him, breathing into his ear as he breaststroked through the waves. She kicked her legs along at the surface. Here she gave in to weakness, to vulnerability. His back muscles rippled beneath her, as if he were the great sea turtle Ao who held up the sky.
One time he’d swum so far with her on his back that the crescent of sand disappeared and only the sapphire sea surrounded them. The depths dropping down, down, down. After a wave splashed into her face, she sputtered. Boss Yeung told her to close her eyes. To shut out her fears. His movements, steady and sure, told her h
e wouldn’t fail her.
If he’d been slow to reassure her, in her panic she might have strangled him and dug her knees into his back, drowning them both to stay afloat for a few seconds longer. But he had calmly kicked back toward shore, the sound of his breath the only sound left in the world.
She yearned for him now, for his attentions, light and circling, her back arching to meet him. His weight on her—in her. His lips at her neck, his hands at her rib cage, their bodies sweaty. The air heavy with the scent of their lovemaking, the salt of the ocean, and the green of a bamboo grove.
Never again. Heading back to her apartment, Scarlett passed by the communal kitchen, where Old Wu called out, “Guniang!”
“Sifu!” she replied. She would change Liberty’s diaper, then come back to check out the preparations for a communal dinner. Auntie Ng had commandeered a legion of volunteers, and frozen turkeys crowded the counter, uniform and menacing as a fleet of alien spacecraft taking over earth. Three bobbed in the plugged-up sink beside a stove where a pot of boiling water steamed up the kitchen.
She startled at the sound of glass shattering. Old Wu had dropped a jar of pasta sauce that spattered red like a crime scene, and Auntie Ng threw him out. He followed Scarlett to her apartment, saying, “She insisted, but she’ll never want my help again.” After cooking for decades in Chinatown restaurants, he could have prepared a feast, but these days, he spent as little time as possible in the kitchen, eating for free in the many places where he’d trained waiters-turned-cooks.
Although she stepped back, hoping he couldn’t smell the dirty diaper, he reached for Liberty’s head peeping out of the sling. He stroked her head, and the baby rewarded him with a toothless smile.
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
“Hold on.” He emerged with a pair of silver-sequined shoes for Scarlett. The soles were scuffed, but he knew a cobbler who could do the repairs, for a good price. “Fit for a princess!”
Scarlett held the shoes in the palm of her hands, exotic birds about to take flight. “I wish I had an occasion.”
“We’ll find one,” he said.
Was he trying to ask her out for a date? In the last week, he’d brought her a discarded flower arrangement and a glass bead necklace. He studied the suit she carried. “Seems like you have one already?”
Liberty wasn’t crying; maybe the diaper could wait a minute longer. Scarlett hurriedly asked if he knew anyone who needed a suit, who might be willing to trade. Not the butcher, not the orderly, not the bus driver. “The only men I know wear uniforms, not suits,” he said. “What kind of buyer are you looking for?”
Wasn’t there a youth organizer who lived upstairs? Maybe he needed a suit, she said, when he met with government officials.
“When you ask for money, you need to look poor—not rich!” He cocked his head at Liberty, who copied him. “A suit like this, you might find only once in a lifetime.”
He didn’t need a suit, but she couldn’t allow him to protect her. She could never return his affections, and she didn’t want to mislead him as Boss Yeung had misled her.
He touched the sleeve. “What are you asking for it?”
“Two sows, a goat, and a dozen hens,” she said lightly, and she excused herself.
Back at the apartment, Scarlett discovered that Daisy and her son had gone out. Usually, if one woman left the room, the other sprawled out with her baby, like one of those capsules dropped into water that expands to fifty times its size. No chatter, no breath, no presence, just you and your baby.
Daisy’s side of the clothesline was empty. No—no. Quicksand pulled at Scarlett and she stumbled to the biscuit tin where she found the birth certificates, and in the corner, Daisy’s belongings, folded and stacked, and Didi’s favorite rattle, a ball within a ball. She hadn’t packed up and left. Maybe the walls had pressed in on her, and she had to get out to breathe.
Scarlett shuddered. She fingered the savings that she’d taken the precaution of tucking into her pocket. At Daisy’s age, she would have left without question if anyone had put her down the way Scarlett had. The long days would grow longer without another pair of eyes, another pair of hands to help her. She’d known all along, but the full force of it hit her now: if and when Scarlett found a job, what would become of Liberty without Daisy to babysit and without Didi, the playmate she’d known almost since birth? On her own, Daisy might call her parents within the week, maybe within the day, and without her, Scarlett couldn’t last much longer in San Francisco. But anyone she sought for help—her mother, Boss Yeung, Mama Fang—would attempt to part her and her daughter.
She smoothed the birth certificates flat. That day, after they’d returned from City Hall, they made a silent promise to their children and to each other, but their future together suddenly seemed in jeopardy.
Liberty bawled. Scarlett hadn’t changed her diaper in time and now it had blown out. Scarlett rinsed her off in the shower, Liberty’s screams echoing off the tile; changed her into another outfit, which she fought, thrashing; and scrubbed the shit-stained baby sling while Liberty rode her hip. Her squawks bouncing off the tile made a din louder than a henhouse under siege.
Soon after Scarlett finished cleaning up, Daisy returned to the apartment. She didn’t say where she’d been. Her face was flushed, her hair windblown. She must have wandered Chinatown or might well have climbed up onto the roof to howl.
When Didi fussed, Daisy started building a tower out of bags of rolls, boxes of stuffing, and cans of fruit cocktail to entertain him. It tumbled over, cans rolled in every direction, and Daisy drove the heels of her palms into her eyes, at the end of her patience.
When Scarlett touched her shoulder, she whirled around and grabbed the suit’s pant leg. “What’s this? If we don’t have money for a detective, we don’t have money for this.”
Scarlett might have told her but for Daisy’s ungrateful tone. She’d been living off of Scarlett for months, and she shouldn’t be questioning her. They tugged on the suit, the seams straining, until it flew out of Scarlett’s hands and knocked over a bottle, splashing formula all over. Scarlett blotted the snail’s trail with a wet wipe, darkening the stain. The smell of wet, oily wool rose up in the stuffy room, the smell of winter and brisk mornings.
Daisy reached for the suit. “Let me. There has to be someone—”
She’d lived with ayis all her life, and knew only how to issue orders.
“You make messes. I clean them up.” Scarlett had become a scold like Ma and for the first time, she understood why she’d enraged her mother, who yelled because she felt old and because her flailing arms and shouts might cover up her fear. Because Daisy, willful and impulsive, reminded Scarlett of all her own failures since.
* * *
—
In the hallway, Scarlett fanned the wet spot on the suit, blowing on it while trying to lull Liberty back to sleep. She tucked the sling over the baby’s head and paced. Joe Ng bolted out of the apartment he shared with his mother, his jeans sagging so low he tripped on the hem. Auntie Ng stood in the doorway, the fight gone out of her. They’d been arguing ever since he spent savings earmarked for his tuition on a used motorcycle he restored to showroom perfection. Auntie Ng wanted Joe to finish school, to land a desk job in the glass towers where she toiled, cleaning offices in the Financial District.
Scarlett followed her back into the apartment. How better to imagine her son in the life she wanted for him than with a new suit? With this suit, he could interview tomorrow or next week, start off in Chinatown at a real estate office or insurance agency.
“The suit will inspire him,” Scarlett said.
Auntie Ng’s face, wrinkled with worry, resembled a paper sack crumpled and smoothed out. “The only thing that inspires him is the motorcycle.” He parked it on the sidewalk in front of Evergreen Gardens. The apartment was chilly, the window open to air out
the stink of polishing cream and motor oil in bottles stacked against the wall.
“Get rid of the motorcycle,” she said, in a flash of inspiration—the most uneven trade yet, and Scarlett wasn’t sure if Auntie Ng would risk the wrath of her son. Auntie Ng sighed, glancing at Liberty, as if longing for the days when she alone satisfied her son’s needs.
“I have to check on the turkey.”
“He can never repay what he owes you,” Scarlett said.
Auntie Ng brushed her fingers on top of the combination television and DVD player. “Take this.”
To an outside observer, the exchange would seem reasonable, with a slight edge in Scarlett’s favor. She’d find many takers for electronics. Or would she? Old Wu had scavenged a slender silver stereo that he’d found in the street, and few would want a television boxy as a fish tank. Auntie Ng’s son probably planned to replace it.
“We don’t have room,” Scarlett said. She laid the suit on the bottom bunk. Auntie Ng placed her son’s jeans and shirt against the suit. Too big, but he’d fit.
“He’ll grow into the suit.” Scarlett tugged the keys out of her hands. “Or you can get Tailor Hu to hem it.”
Auntie Ng touched the lapel. “It’s a serious color. For serious business.” She turned the television on, a cartoon. “Your kids can learn English, by watching.” Just as Scarlett had invoked Auntie Ng’s son, so too would Auntie Ng appeal to maternal guilt. She was shrewder than Scarlett had supposed.
“It’s only a matter of time until he gets in an accident,” Scarlett said.
“He says he’s careful.” Auntie Ng stroked the suit again.
“He can’t stop a driver who doesn’t see him from running him over.”
Auntie Ng rubbed her temple. “I should ask him.”
“Missy wouldn’t like it, if he sold it,” Scarlett said. His girlfriend, who wore bright lipstick and denim miniskirts that showed off her thighs when she straddled the motorcycle. “With a job like that, he’d never have time for her. Zaogao.” How unfortunate.