A River of Stars
Page 27
When Boss Yeung mentioned Scarlett’s name, the woman’s scowl flickered. She and Scarlett held themselves the same way, the same determined set to their shoulders. She must wonder what business brought him here, if he were a policeman or government official.
“Who’s Scarlett?” she asked, her accent heavy but comprehensible.
He held up his mobile phone and asked her to bring out hers, pointing at his and then at her. She retreated into the house. Peeking inside, he spied soot-blackened ceilings, and against the wall, a stack of fleece blankets, still zipped in their plastic case. The same ones that Scarlett had bought last year while shopping with him. Blankets that Scarlett brought every year, which Ma must have stubbornly set aside, a form of protest against her daughter for never moving back home.
Ma emerged with the phone. It seemed she wouldn’t admit to knowing Scarlett, not until she determined his purpose here. He helped her turn on the phone. It was almost dead—she probably never charged or used it—and the service was spotty. He called the number Scarlett had listed as her mother’s. The phone rang. Startled, she fumbled with it, as if it were a grenade about to go off. Confirmation that she was Scarlett’s mother, that Scarlett had grown up in this hovel, in this speck of a village. He couldn’t find her in the present—only in the past. She had walked these lanes, run through these fields, gulped in the air that he now breathed. He wanted to swallow it all and let this place circulate in his veins.
He hung up. “How is she?” he asked. Sounds carried farther here; a whisper could wing across Five Dragons without competing with honking cars, whining buses, or the shouts of hawkers. He leaned in closer to Ma so the neighbors couldn’t hear him, close enough to see her wiry catfish mustache. “How’s your grandson?”
She gaped. Scarlett must have sunk like a stone from her life, too. “What’s she done now?”
“He was born in September.”
She pursed her lips, and must be calculating whether Scarlett had been pregnant when she’d last seen her.
“In America.”
Her eyes widened again, though only for an instant. “Impossible. The women in my family, their firstborns are always girls. Me. My mother. My grandmother.”
“It’s a coincidence.”
“It’s a curse.” She folded her arms across her chest. “You saw him yourself, checked between his legs?”
Was she trying to throw him off? Maybe Scarlett had called and Ma was trying to protect her. The neighbors were murmuring, pressing closer to hear, and he held out his arms to keep them back. A little boy poked up under his armpit, curious. He wore so many layers it looked difficult for him to bend his arms or legs. Boss Yeung shooed him away, gently as he could, and asked to see Ma’s phone, a clunky silver model. If he searched the logs, he might uncover a number from the United States.
“If she owes you money—” Ma said.
He offered her the red envelope of cash for the upcoming Spring Festival. She didn’t take it, nor did she turn over the phone. “I’m just trying to help.”
He reached for the phone, but she tucked it behind her back. She studied him intently. She must suspect that he was her daughter’s lover and the father of her child, and find him wanting. If only he could tell her that he didn’t have mottled skin, puffy cheeks, and a stooped back when Scarlett met him.
“She must have called,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes—his words sounding like an act of provocation—and she dropped the phone into the bucket of water, where it buzzed and crackled. “Waaah!” “Aiya!” the crowd shouted. He plunged his hand into the bucket, wiping the phone against his pant leg. He blew on it, trying to dry it, and would have given mouth-to-mouth if it could resuscitate the phone. The screen had gone dark, but he pocketed it anyway.
“She’s fierce as you,” Boss Yeung said.
Ma snorted, but he detected a hint of a smile. He shivered in the chill, his dress shoes damp with mud. To the villagers, he must have seemed out of place as a rooster strutting in a skyscraper. He could have sent an assistant or called on the authorities to intervene, but he’d made the journey himself. For too long, he’d relied on others who failed. For too long, he hadn’t understood her. Now he was ailing, and might never recover. Would Scarlett’s mother count that for or against him in her appraisal?
“If I find her, is there anything you want me to tell her?” His tone was low and humble.
Ma went back inside and returned with a notebook, its pale blue cover singed at the edges, like a pirate’s treasure map. She tugged the red envelope out of his hand, in exchange for the notebook. He flipped through it, through yellowed pages of tiny characters and wobbly block printing of Scarlett’s name in English. Her hands had smoothed these pages, and he could barely keep himself from rubbing it against his cheek, sniffing for a trace of her.
Ma’s face twisted with the grief she might never allow herself, over the loss of Scarlett and her grandchild she didn’t know, over any suffering Scarlett had endured alone. Nothing lasted for long in the village, paper especially, nibbled by insects, consumed by mold, shredded into nests by mice, or fed into the fire. Preserving this notebook must have required a monumental effort by Ma. All these years, she had saved it for a future that never arrived. A notebook he suspected that Ma herself couldn’t read.
Getting sick didn’t turn you into a saint; Boss Yeung—and his father—were proof of that. But he saw the world as he never had in the past. The prospect of death coming closer made you consider your life, what you wanted in what remained. And he had to get that notebook to Scarlett and their son.
The taxi driver honked his horn. The first stars were appearing, the sky the deep purple of eggplant shading into black. Boss Yeung hurried, gripping the notebook to his chest, like a kite that might carry him high and away.
Chapter 21
The newlyweds kissed, and Scarlett prepared for the rush of hanbaobao orders that would follow on a bright winter afternoon in San Francisco. She was catering her first wedding, and if she shined today, more contracts might follow, steady work with a guaranteed take.
This ceremony wasn’t in a banquet hall, but a backyard; it boasted not a tiered cake, but a cupcake tower. Not a twelve-course banquet, but a potluck of steaming enchiladas, pasta salads, chili, and the hanbaobao cart on the damp lawn. Most surprising of all, it featured not a bride and groom, but a bride and bride, which Scarlett hadn’t realized until she arrived at their purple bungalow in a neighborhood of hilly, narrow streets.
The crowd on the concrete patio parted before the lala newlyweds, the two women stopping for photos, hugs, and kisses under soap bubbles glittering with rainbows. White paper lanterns danced on the wind above the centerpieces on the long picnic tables, silver pails of rosemary, sage, and lavender.
Casey, the redhead with the mermaid tattoo on her arm, had hired Scarlett. A regular customer, she always left sizeable tips and practiced her ni hao and xie xie in serviceable Mandarin. Today she wore a short white dress edged in lace and white knee-high boots, and her amber hair in two braids. Her wife wore a tight qi pao, red satin embroidered with phoenixes. With her short black hair marcelled into waves and carmine lips, the wife resembled a Shanghai sophisticate from a vintage advertisement.
That too had been a surprise, the Chinese bride. She and Scarlett were the only Chinese at the reception, the bride entirely absent of family, who could have been abroad and unable to get visas, or maybe had refused to attend. The guests gobbled down their hanbaobao and got back in line, asking for another, crazy for the sauce’s sweetness with a tickle of tang, and the starched laundry smell of steamed buns. Many who asked if Scarlett had a website were perturbed and intrigued when she told them no—a reaction she hadn’t intended but decided to cultivate. A sense of serendipity if you discovered her hanbaobao, that set her apart from the humdrum dependability of a shop with a permanent address.
When Scarlett’s tourist visa expired next week, she risked deportation. If the government forced her out, her daughter would also have to leave, losing the opportunities that were her birthright. Even if Scarlett escaped detection for months or for years, every day she’d live under that threat. The immigration authorities could raid her at work or stop her on the street. It had happened to other families. It could happen to Scarlett.
She didn’t dare apply for asylum, not after Lawyer Loo’s arrest. She could try for a student visa. A Chinese lady in the South Bay ran a sham university that collected tuition from foreign students but didn’t require going to class. Cost: twenty-seven hundred dollars each semester. Or she could marry for a green card, but had no prospects. Old Wu had returned from China married, eagerly awaiting the arrival of his village bride. There were stranger pairings in Chinatown, where bachelors took wives young enough to be the daughters they never had.
For the Chinese—for most everyone, she supposed—nationality and identity used to be synonymous. You left your ancestral province only under duress, fleeing famine, bandits, and war. You were Chinese, would always be, and you’d no sooner swear allegiance to another government than give up your firstborn. No longer. You might change your citizenship to practice your religion and your politics, to become a voter in a new land where you were making a life for yourself and for your children. You might do it just to lower your taxes, and get ahead in the world.
* * *
—
Arms at each other’s waists, the brides strolled through the crowd, passing under the banner—CONGRATULATIONS CASEY AND YING, in colorful patch letters, like a quilt. A musician in a straw hat tilted at a jaunty angle plucked on a banjo. Wind chimes tinkled. Like a country fair, but for the whine of the siren and hum of traffic far down the hill. Scarlett assembled Casey’s usual order: double meat and extra green onions. Instead of plum sauce, ketchup, which her wife would consider an abomination.
“Surprise!” Casey said, leading Ying to the hanbaobao cart. Ying smiled tightly, preparing to be disappointed by Americanized Chinese food, too sweet and too bland. Scarlett selected the fluffiest bun and added each ingredient in the traditional order and ratio. She wanted a good recommendation, a referral that might land her on the lawn of a lala wedding every weekend. Ying took a bite and widened her eyes with delight and surprise.
“Hen you ming,” Casey said. Very famous.
“Bu cuo,” Ying said. Not bad. She licked her fingers clean. Her nails short, her hands muscled and wide-knuckled.
Casey squeezed her wife’s waist, looking into her eyes with such ardor that Scarlett had to turn away, struck with longing. She and Boss Yeung once couldn’t keep their hands off each other, once couldn’t bear to be parted for the night.
In the village, lalas were alluded to only as a decadence an innocent girl should avoid.
When Scarlett was a teenager, her bunkmates at the factory dorm were rumored to be lovers. The pair spent all their free time together, and in the dark, if Scarlett heard fumbling, gasping, and the squeak of bedsprings above her, she popped in her headphones. In time, the curvy girl left, pressured by her parents to marry someone from back home. Scarlett always wondered what happened to the abandoned one. If she remained in the city, finding other women, unfilial daughters who did not bear children to continue a man’s family line. Or did she give in and marry a man she could never love, suppressing desires that could lead to jail, a beating, or getting fired?
Scarlett tried to place Ying’s accent. “Ni cong nali lai?” she asked. Where are you from? Which among Chinese didn’t mean where you lived or had been born, but where your grandfather hailed from. Who were your people? Were they known for being crafty, for their sincerity and honesty, for their spicy foods and spicy temper? A standard question, one of the first asked when two Chinese encountered each other, before inquiring about marital status and the number of children. Ying didn’t answer. Her expression turned shifty, as if she were hiding a secret.
Beautiful, Scarlett said, gesturing at their dresses, trying to change the subject. A friend brought the brides glistening Mason jars of cocktails, bubbly and garnished with sprigs of mint. The hanbaobao line never flagged, and not until the brides took the microphone did Scarlett have a chance to rest.
Casey turned teary-eyed, sharing how they’d met in the conservatory a decade ago. A violinist from Salinas and a pianist from Shanghai. Two only children. Ying got a laugh when she thanked the guests for coming to their special day, in a wedding season without end. After the court decision, lalas in the United States must have been marrying in droves.
A handful of celebrities in Asia had declared themselves lala, including the daughter of a Hong Kong tycoon. After she married her longtime lover, her father had offered $65 million to any man who stole back her heart. Ma had tried to rule Scarlett’s life, but she had never been blind to her daughter’s essential nature. Her mother’s clear-eyed view of her was a virtue that Scarlett had never considered until now.
Her voice thick with emotion, Casey thanked her parents, plump and gray-haired, though a trace of cinnamon remained in her mother’s curls. She thanked their friend who had played the banjo throughout the reception, the lala couple with a multitude of piercings who mixed a big batch of cocktails, as well as their statuesque neighbor, her mahogany hair knotted into squiggles, who had sewn the banner by hand. Scarlett’s attention wandered until she realized people were looking at her. Casey was talking about the hanbaobao cart. “Get one—there’s plenty!” Casey said. Was she planning to thank every guest individually while at the microphone? She was charmingly exuberant, but the crowd was beginning to fidget. Ying whispered in her ear, and Casey nodded, telling her guests she’d thank each one before the night ended. “I’ll let you get back to dinner, so we can get on to dancing! But—just one more thank-you,” she blurted, and named the guests who’d traveled farthest, from London and another from Sydney. “Soon we’ll have a chance to visit. Some of you have been waiting a long time.”
On their honeymoon, because they finally had enough in cash wedding gifts to buy tickets? Or was it possible, Scarlett wondered, that Ying didn’t have her papers and hadn’t been able to travel until now? During the first dance, under the glow of tiki torches and beneath the whir of heat lamps, the brides swayed to jazzy music, heads resting on each other’s shoulders. If they met in school, Ying must have come on a student visa and stayed after it expired. Teaching piano lessons for cash and taking odd jobs allowed her to live in the shadows. Now that lala marriage was legal, maybe—most certainly—Casey could sponsor her wife for a green card.
Family, related not by blood, but by marriage. And if Casey could sponsor her wife, so too could Daisy.
* * *
—
On her walk home, Scarlett jingled the change in her pocket. She didn’t have enough for a birthday cake or flowers for Daisy, who might well prefer a set of test tubes and chemicals to make more explosives. She entered a music shop and asked the clerk what he had on sale—cheap. The Guardian, Hong Kong’s latest pop idol. The singer posed against a brick wall, his head turned to one side, his eyes distant and dreamy. He wore a black T-shirt, jeans, and stylish suede sneakers, his long bangs falling sideways into his eyes. On the track list, she noticed “I Love You Hot,” the song she’d been hearing all over Chinatown. Until then, she hadn’t known the name of the singer behind it.
Back in the hallway of Evergreen Gardens, Auntie Ng pulled out a jar of freshl
y squeezed ginger from the pocket of her cardigan. Despite the screw top, it smelled strong enough to clear out your sinuses. The babies had been crying all day, she said. “Sprinkle a few drops on their bellies, then massage. Move the wind down. Not up!”
In the apartment, she discovered Daisy passed out on their double mattress. The children were wailing in diapers heavy and wet as fresh cement, with an eye-watering stink that could strip paint off the walls. Scarlett changed the babies, nursed Liberty, and gave Didi his bottle. He reached for her nose and she let him tug, then reached for his, pretending to swipe it off his face. He lit up, as if there were no one else in the world he’d rather see aside from his mother. She rubbed his back in slow circles until he fell asleep.
She and Daisy had survived the first four months of motherhood, the hardest months of sleep deprivation, short tempers, and terrifying first fevers and falls that had humbled them. Neither of them was as self-righteous and unyielding as they’d once been. They had groped their way up, each pulling the other one to her feet, celebrating the first hundred days of their babies, and forging a bond that ran deeper than the ones they held with the men with whom they’d conceived. If Boss Yeung hadn’t betrayed her, if William hadn’t disappeared somewhere across a river of stars—kept apart as if by the Goddess of Heaven—she and Daisy never would have become sisters. Sisters not by blood, but by choice.
Soon both babies had nodded off, their deep breaths lulling Scarlett like crashing waves. Tucking the blanket around Daisy, Scarlett curled beside her. Even if they started off apart in bed, or back-to-back, by morning, Daisy’s hand tangled in Scarlett’s hair, and Scarlett’s feet crossed Daisy’s legs for warmth.