A River of Stars

by Vanessa Hua

  She left before Auntie Ng changed her mind, and headed to the Pearl Pavilion. She’d sworn never to return after she’d inadvertently humiliated herself in front of Manager Kwok during her interview, but the restaurant hosted banquets for Chinatown’s rich and powerful—including, Scarlett knew, the wedding reception of her landlord’s daughter.

  She knocked on his door. He was sitting at his desk, paging through a stack of paperwork. The model motorcycle, its curves freshly polished, sat on top of the liquor cabinet.

  “You again,” he said. He was courteous enough not to bring up what happened at their last meeting. She mentioned Old Wu, how he’d escaped kitchen duty back at Evergreen Gardens by dropping the jar of pasta sauce.

  Manager Kwok grinned. “He learned that from me! It worked a couple times, until he realized what I was doing and kept me on the worst duties.”

  She’d coax him into reminiscing. “What kind?”

  “Peeling and chopping hundreds of onions. Shredding a mountain of cabbage. Oh! And the slush bucket.”

  “Slush bucket?”

  “Where you pour grease, leftover drinks, any liquid. It’s heavy, it’s smelly, and you have to dump it at the very end of the shift, when all you want to do is fall into bed.” He laughed. “I learned my lesson.”

  “You can’t get anything past Old Wu, can you?” Scarlett asked.

  “I’ve stopped trying.”

  She had him affectionately recalling those days, proud of what he’d survived and what he’d become. His mood grew expansive, open to the possibilities that Scarlett wanted to offer him. “You need a motorcycle?” she asked.

  “You’re a door-to-door dealership!” he said. “Not today.”

  “For deliveries. For places the van can’t go,” she said. “It’s free to take a look. Go for a test drive.”

  Manager Kwok followed her up the street to Evergreen Gardens, where the motorcycle crouched like a tiger ready to spring. Its chrome trim gleaming mirror-bright, cared for unlike anything else on this shabby block. He circled the motorcycle, his hands twitching with the desire to touch. He kicked the tires, pointed out nonexistent dents and scratches, and she knew he wanted it but didn’t have the money himself. She proposed a trade. The motorcycle, for six hundred dollars off her landlord’s wedding banquet bill.

  “The next couple months must be so busy, with the holidays. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Spring Festival.” A hint he could pad the ledger of other banquets to make up the difference. His boss would never notice. He reached for the keys, asking for a test drive, and she knew he’d been sold.

  * * *

  —

  After Manager Kwok and her landlord had agreed on the new price, and after her landlord waived next month’s rent, dusk had fallen. Scarlett had to excuse herself and nurse Liberty in the restroom of the Pearl Pavilion. She perched on the toilet of the handicapped stall, her shoulders hunched and knees drawn up, trying not to fall in, not to drop Liberty, not to smell the stench of piss and disinfectant.

  She’d neglected her daughter in the morning, and then dragged her around all afternoon. Liberty’s cheeks were red from the cold, and snot crusted under her nose. Boss Yeung had called her an unfit mother, and she had already fallen short in so many ways. Though she’d paid off the rent for now, the month would speed by, and she’d be back where she started, climbing up only to fall backward like a crab trying to escape a basket. She would never be able to save up enough to fix her papers or to repay the hospital.

  Even though the labor and delivery had been free, she wanted to reimburse the U.S. government. She’d given back the savings she’d stolen from Ma, times ten, and someday she’d drop off payment at the hospital’s billing counter. She didn’t want her own daughter to start off in America as a beggar. On the contrary, Liberty had made a priceless gift—cord blood—that flowed through her body, Scarlett’s, and someday, or maybe already, a stranger’s.

  * * *

  —

  Daisy tracked them down outside the Pearl Pavilion. This time of the day lengthened, its span geologically slow, those long hours to go before sleep. Daisy tucked her son into a sling so that Scarlett could put her daughter into the stroller. The teenager had known Scarlett would be tired from carrying her baby around all afternoon, and it was a relief to free her aching back and shoulders. Daisy handed her a roll slathered with plum sauce, which was surprisingly tasty. Scarlett gave half back to her. An apology, or the start of one.

  They cut through Portsmouth Square, empty but for a small group of followers of the Celestial Goddess practicing their poses. A video played on a laptop with an oversized screen, in which the Celestial Goddess appeared barefoot, perched on embroidered gold cushions while devotees flocked around her. She had an eerie wandering left eye that seemed to gaze into another dimension, and plump hands that she waved before her, as if conducting an orchestra—as if she were conducting you. Her warm, cajoling manner drew you in until—unless?—you realized her words didn’t make any sense. Scarlett moved closer to the screen, and so did Daisy. If Boss Yeung’s wife was among them, she wouldn’t have known. She’d never seen any pictures of her, but the followers—of one mind, of one heart, of one future—all seemed to resemble one another, with vacant eyes and vacant smiles. Mostly Chinese, although the camera occasionally panned onto a stray German or random American whose presence displayed the global reach of the Celestial Goddess. Scarlett suspected they had been hired; a foreigner demonstrated your sophistication and appeal, whether in a temple or a boardroom.

  Daisy turned back toward the followers, intently studying them, as if trying to decode a secret message in their poses. A woman tried to hand them a flyer. Scarlett recognized her, their ringleader, the one they called Sister Fan.

  “You’re out here every day,” Daisy said. She shushed Didi, who was squirming, tucked against her chest. “Why?”

  “Everything the Celestial Goddess has done for me, I want for you.” Sister Fan was as genial as an electroshock patient.

  “For me?” Daisy asked.

  The devotees were spaced out, but Scarlett didn’t like Daisy teasing them by feigning interest.

  “For everyone,” Sister Fan said.

  “Everyone?” Daisy looked around Portsmouth Square. “There’s no one here.”

  Scarlett pushed the stroller to lead them away. Daisy shouldn’t humiliate someone incapable of defending herself.

  “They come, they go, they know where to find me,” Sister Fan said.

  “How do you keep going?” Daisy’s voice broke, and Scarlett abruptly understood what the teenager wanted to learn: how not to lose hope. She must feel like she was doggy paddling across the ocean, keeping her head above water but unable to get any closer to the father of her child.

  A view from above might ease Daisy’s despair, reminding her of the world beyond the present moment. Scarlett tugged her toward a grim gray slab studded with porthole windows looming on the east side of Portsmouth Square, the tallest building in Chinatown. She led Daisy into the elevator, which groaned and creaked to the top floor that housed a restaurant, a rival of the Pearl Pavilion. They couldn’t afford a meal or a snack, but Scarlett crossed the moss-green carpet with speed and purpose, pushing the stroller like an icebreaking ship. If you squinted in the dim bar, you might glimpse the glamour otherwise overpowered by the sweet reek of many years of spilled drinks.

  By the floor-to-ceiling windows, they pressed their fingers against the cold glass, which was reinforced with chicken wire and streaked with grime. San Francisco as they’d never seen it, high above the rooftops. Daisy went silent, awed. She loosened the sling and turned Didi toward the windows. He reached out his chubby fingers, yearning to touch and to fly.

  The waiter asked if they’d like a table, but they ignored him. Scarlett picked up her daughter, showing her the view as day slid into night. A spotlight flooded over t
he blunt nozzle of a tower perched on the hill, and moments later, the double spires of a church lit up. Liberty giggled. When bridge cables started to glow, she craned her neck at Scarlett, as if amazed and utterly convinced her mother had performed a miracle of lights.

  * * *

  —

  In the kitchen, the turkeys had been hacked in half to fit in the oven, and glazed in honey and vinegar, the crispy skin glittering. The spaghetti was boiled, then stir-fried with the canned vegetables into an enormous pan of chow mein; canned fruit cocktail was ladled upon luminous almond jelly, and the tomato sauce was thinned into a hot and sour soup.

  Blankets were spread across the hallway, like a picnic under the harvest moon for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Old Wu made a nest for the babies with a fluffy comforter, and Scarlett leaned against the wall and slid down into it. She might fall asleep sitting here, lulled by the warmth of the kitchen and the chatter of her neighbors.

  Despite the labors of Auntie Ng and her assistants, the turkey was dry and tasteless. Chinese didn’t usually eat turkey. Big as a peacock, ornamental rather than edible, and mythical as a phoenix, the bird was found nowhere in the villages or in the markets, nowhere in song or memory in her country. The Chinese preferred roast ducks hung in shop windows, the skin lacquered brown, the plump birds dripping grease into metal pans. Every part but the quack consumed: slices of the mahogany skin and the bones boiled into a broth. Her mouth watered. Puffy buns held juicy dark meat so savory you wished you could catch the ducks flying in formation high in the sky.

  Neighbors brought out their jarred condiments to add flavor to the turkey: red chili, mouth-numbing peppercorn, black bean, plum, and soy sauces. Scarlett spread plum sauce on an American roll, layered dark meat and sprinkled chopped scallions, and served it to Daisy.

  Delicious, Daisy proclaimed. “It’s like a Chinese slider.” Scarlett understood the word only because she’d eaten miniature hamburgers, a snack at a fancy hotel bar with Boss Yeung. The sliders had annoyed him. A scam, he said, to replace beef with bun, yet she’d understood their appeal. Nothing tasted as good as the first bite, your teeth sinking into perfection for you and you alone. Nothing signified your wealth and refinement more than dining on toy-sized food. The American way: nothing to linger or labor over, instant gratification gone in an instant.

  Soon Scarlett was making enough for everyone.

  “It’s good, but I prefer mantou.” Old Wu took another bite. “American bread is so sweet. So dry. It’s soaking up all my saliva.”

  Joe Ng stormed into the hallway, yelling that his motorcycle had been stolen. His mother pulled him into their apartment, where the fighting continued. The door opened and the suit flew out, trailing empty arms and legs, hit the wall and slid down. He and his mother emerged, glowering at Scarlett. “Cheat! Cheat!” he said.

  “She’s a snake,” Auntie Ng hissed.

  “You could convince a chicken to fly into the pot,” Scarlett retorted. “You’re no fool.”

  “Where is it?” Joe Ng shouted.

  “Ask Manager Kwok.”

  Scarlett knew he couldn’t get the motorcycle back, not unless he wanted to face the wrath of Manager Kwok’s gangster cronies. A vein pulsed on his forehead until Old Wu handed him a plate of food, and he grudgingly began to stuff himself. Someone else ran out for a batch of steamed buns from the bakery around the corner, and Scarlett assembled more sliders. Even better, everyone agreed.

  Good enough to serve at the Pearl Pavilion, Old Wu said. “Sure to sell out.”

  A joke, yet Scarlett pictured a shiny cart, the steamer tray of buns and the roasted meat, basted in a honey-sweet glaze, for five dollars per sandwich—not in Chinatown, but a few blocks away, in the neighboring nightlife district. Chinese slider, tastier and more unusual than the bacon-wrapped hot dogs Scarlett had seen for sale. She’d scavenge frozen giveaway turkeys no one wanted in Chinatown, and she’d soon sell enough sliders to pay for future rent. Small enough for drunks streaming out of clubs to gobble in a few bites while catching their ride, cheap enough to encourage gluttony, to fill their American hunger, a hunger like nowhere else in the world, born from abundance and prosperity.

  Chapter 12

  Scarlett knocked on Old Wu’s door. The floorboards inside creaked, and he stifled a cough. He was avoiding her. She knew his routine. He usually slept in and then strolled to a bakery for a bun and a cup of tea, played mahjong at his social hall, ate lunch, napped, joined card games in Portsmouth Square, and visited surrounding neighborhoods to scavenge.

  It was past ten, and he must be hungry for breakfast. With the frozen turkeys culled from the church handout and Old Wu’s help, she’d assembled dozens of her rendition of hanbaobao, the Chinese word for hamburgers. By her third night, she’d known she had a hit. To support her family and Daisy’s, she needed his introduction to suppliers, his advice on how to cook quickly and efficiently at volume, his tantalizing recipes, all the knowledge he’d accumulated in his decades in Chinatown’s restaurants.

  Daisy was listlessly paging through an SAT prep book. Progress, however small, a sign that she was reclaiming what she’d put on hold. The first time Daisy changed a diaper or offered a bottle to her son, she’d done so with trepidation and curiosity that gave way to satisfaction when she figured out how. But now, these tasks had settled into thankless repetition, with no relief in sight, and her sorrow was deepening. She could not yet accept what Scarlett had long suspected: William didn’t want to be found, and Daisy would have to forge a life without him.

  Scarlett had to get her out of the apartment before she fell into a state of hibernation from which she might never rise. She shifted Liberty on her hip and knocked again. No answer. She cleared her throat and could hear Old Wu’s labored breathing on the other side of the door. “I’m in trouble,” she said.

  The door swung open and Old Wu peered at her in alarm. “Liberty—is she okay?” He doted upon the baby who now cooed, offering him a wide, toothless grin.

  “I need your help,” Scarlett said. “Can you train me, Sifu?”

  He didn’t return her smile. For once, he wasn’t teasing. “I’ve been asking around. An electronics factory is hiring.”

  “The hanbaobao sold out every night,” Scarlett said.

  “That’s no life for you,” he said roughly. His voice was scratchy, thick with mucus. “That life—she’ll never see you. You don’t want that life.”

  “You did.”

  He coughed and spat into a rag. “I left that a long time ago.” He opened his door. His room was tidy, small as Scarlett’s, though his held a leather armchair patched with duct tape. He’d lived here for decades, so long that the room seemed an extension of him. The faded brown windowsill matched the color of his cheeks, and his scent of mothballs and tea was strongest here. He gave her a look, a warning. If she didn’t hold on to her daughter, she could end up alone like him.

  “Trying to run your own business, it’s too risky,” he said.

  “On a good night, I’d take in more than I would in a week in the factory.” In China, she’d lacked the guanxi to start her own business and to grease the palms of local authorities, Party officials, and vendors. She didn’t want a job comparable to the one at Boss Yeung’s factory—she wanted better, and she believed she had that chance now.

  “On a bad night, you’d make nothing,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of people who wanted what you want. They failed.”

  “All of them?”

  “Take a factory job for a while. Then you can decide.”

  She didn’t have a while. Her visa would expire toward the end of January and fixing her papers would cost thousands of dollars—if they could be fixed at all. She might not make enough selling hanbaobao to pay for an immigration consultant, but she most certainly wouldn’t at a factory. She wanted to avoid a green-card marriage and the years-long ruse it entailed. Old
Wu might agree to marry her, but he cared for her far too much. And she cared far too much for him. More than a few times, she’d been aware he was staring at her. Auntie Ng’s jealousy told Scarlett that his attentions were unusual. If he attempted to woo her, she didn’t relish the thought of turning him away.

  “You can take pieces home, to work on at night,” Old Wu said. “Or I could put in a good word with Manager Kwok.”

  The Pearl Pavilion. “He didn’t hire me the first time.”

  “If you worked there, then you’d see what it’s like to run a restaurant.”

  The more he attempted to dissuade her, the more stubborn she became. “I’ll ask Granny Wang.”

  He snorted. He wasn’t impressed by their neighbor’s cooking.

  “Show me,” she said. “Everyone says your buns are so light they could float to heaven. That your roast pork could make a monk give up his vows.”

  “They don’t know. Just talk.”

  Liberty squirmed, restless. She wanted the ground. On her belly, she’d raise her head, sleek as the Sphinx. On her back, she’d kick her legs, pedaling an invisible bicycle. The thrum of life, pulsing, twitching, that vibrated through Scarlett, too.

  He sighed.

  “Let me try to run my own business,” Scarlett said.

  “I never did.” He looked away. He might regret the family he never had, the restaurant he never opened, but he’d resigned himself to his circumstances. Liberty squealed, heavy in her arms.

  * * *

  —

  The flayed beige skin, ghoulish grins, and flexed muscles red and raw as sirloin didn’t disturb Scarlett—the eyes of the corpses did. Each and every one had Chinese eyes: undeniable in the man running, the lovers embracing, and the woman bending to touch her toes. In the man seated at a chessboard, the top of his skull popped off to reveal the wrinkles and folds of his brain.