A River of Stars

by Vanessa Hua

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, she presented Daisy with the CD. The printed cover, a smudged photocopy, featured the singer in profile. “You think he’s my type?” Daisy asked.

  “More than mine.” Scarlett offered her daughter a mashed banana, its scent heady, overripe, verging on fermented. Liberty smeared it around her mouth. She was starting to enjoy solid foods, encountering new tastes daily: rice porridge, with its bland sweetness and slippery warmth, egg yolks rich and yellow as the sun, and mashed peas, green and bright. She often grabbed for the spoon. Crying, impatient, as if she were starving, as if it held the last bite on earth. Down the hallway, a toilet flushed in the communal bathroom. The building was otherwise silent, their neighbors using the weekend to catch up on sleep.

  “Admit it. You bought it for yourself.” She caught Didi before he rolled into the cardboard box that served as their dresser. He immediately started over again. Given the chance, he would have rolled across America, a kaleidoscope of sky and earth and light, of independence and exploration.

  Scarlett laughed. “Don’t talk nonsense.” She popped the CD into their stereo, which needed a firm push to latch it. The babies were always reaching for its remote, studded with buttons and lights, lit with magical powers. Though it was scratchy, copied too many times, the singer’s voice sounded silky and playful on the first track.

  “Canto-pop,” Daisy said with a dismissive wave of her hand. She hit the remote, clicking through the tracks, formulaic ballads swelling with orchestral emotion—“Love Is Dying”—and thumping dance hits—“Wanted Love, Not in Love.” She had yet to reach “I Love You Hot.”

  She lingered on a song whose opening strains sounded familiar: it was a cover of the lullaby that she sang to her son, the lullaby that she’d performed with her boyfriend at karaoke. It didn’t sound like the other songs on the album; his voice was earnest and unadorned, not slick and synthesized.

  Daisy looked stricken. “It’s him.”

  “You’ve heard of him? The vendor said it was new.”

  “William. My God—it’s William.”

  Scarlett glanced at the cover, the singer’s name in a scrawl, as if he’d autographed it. Her eyes met Daisy’s, both women stunned into silence. After a few more beats, she asked, “Why is he called the Guardian?”

  Daisy puzzled for a moment before laughing. She’d once asked him the meaning of his name. Guardian, he said. The record company must have translated it into Cantonese. He was named after Bill Gates, Daisy said, though he’d taken to calling himself William in a fit of rebellion, a version of himself free of parental expectations that he’d become a tech titan.

  She’d searched online for Will Wan, William Wan, but never the Chinese translation. Sometime after he was told she’d terminated the pregnancy, he must have dropped out of school. She dug out her phone and uncovered an online encyclopedia entry that detailed his transformation and its timing. When Daisy had been sequestered at Perfume Bay, he had visited Hong Kong, with plans to backpack around China. Though raised with every modern convenience, he was fascinated by the old ways, Daisy explained. He was the kind who made pilgrimages to the villages that his ancestors had fled.

  A photographer discovered him in the subway. That led to a modeling gig for canned ice coffee (“Mr. Espresso”), a small but pivotal role in a rom-com shot in seventeen days (Delete My Love), and from that momentum, a minor recording deal (“Introducing…the Guardian”).

  Daisy repeated the name of the debut CD, the one that she held in her hand. She studied the cover photo and looked back at the online encyclopedia entry. The album must have been pirated quickly, almost as soon as it had been released. Though “I Love You Hot” had been playing everywhere in Chinatown, she hadn’t recognized his voice, processed so much it turned robotic.

  “The last movie I saw in a theater was with him,” she said. She laughed in disbelief. “And now—he’s in one?”

  In the haze of birth and its aftermath, she hadn’t kept up with Hong Kong celebrity gossip—not that she’d ever paid much attention to the men with their dewy skin and foppish hair, or the starlets with their helium-pitched voices. She’d preferred American entertainers.

  Daisy zoomed in on a movie still. “It’s him.” She shook her head, marveling. His abrupt change in fortune explained his disappearance from Cal and social media. Hidden in his stardom, hidden as much as a hermit in the mountains.

  She scrolled through the bio. He’d studied wushu since he was eight, trained to perform in competitions, spinning and flipping. She showed Scarlett a picture of him as a child in a flowing satin outfit, brandishing a plastic sword.

  “Why go back?” Scarlett asked. Why did Chinese Americans rush to the homelands their parents abandoned?

  “He’s been all over China with his family—Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an,” Daisy said.

  Places that Scarlett had yet to see. The package tours had stopped at every monument and museum, but what he remembered most were the crowds, the heat, and all those Chinese.

  “Everyone looked like me,” he’d told Daisy. He’d never blended in like that, his black hair, slanted eyes, and angular frame just like many people around him. No one stared or sneered at him.

  It was a desire Scarlett couldn’t comprehend. You could feel just as out of step surrounded by people with similar hair and height. “He could have gone to Chinatown,” she said.

  “Not the same. The people who left—they’re not like the people who stayed,” Daisy said.

  She kept opening and closing the CD case. Click, click, click. Scarlett suspected that the Hong Kong entertainment industry’s fascination with this newcomer would have made up for any of his inadequacies as a singer. His flaws were common enough to fix in post-production, but his smile, his build, and his look were rare: Chinese and yet not, American and yet not.

  He and Daisy had talked about living and working in China someday, she said, after college. She found another picture of him at a movie premiere, a model on his arm with golden skin and feline eyes, a fierce beauty who called to mind Hua Mulan, the woman warrior who had taken her father’s place in the army. Daisy squirmed. Though the elasticity of her youth had helped her recover faster than Scarlett after giving birth, her body must feel ill-fitting, and she glanced down at her baggy sweater, shapeless jeans, and thick wool socks. Her grown-out pixie cut was a shaggy mess in need of a trim.

  “He never looked for me.” Daisy couldn’t hide her bitterness. How quickly he’d tasted fame and forgotten his vows to her. Or, Scarlett wondered, he might have given up on Daisy, thinking she’d given up on him. Daisy should remember that she had borne his child, a claim that no one else could make. Daisy ran her fingers through her tangled hair. She must be thinking how he had once pursued her, but no longer. She tapped another query onto her phone. “We can get him a message.”

  To get the attention of a celebrity on social media, you had to be loud and conspicuous. For now, Scarlett had to stay hidden. For now, she needed Daisy to stay hidden, too.

  A photo of Daisy snuggling with their son would catch her boyfriend’s eye—and any detective’s.

  “Here!” Daisy scrolled through the posts, photos of him at various premieres, a different woman on his arm every night. She frowned. “This one is full of links to knockoff Gucci purses. And Viagra.”

  A fake profile. Liberty batted away the spoon, no longer interested in eating, and Scarlett set her on the floor. The threat of Boss Yeung loomed until—if—she got her papers, Scarlett reminded her.

  Daisy set down the phone. “I’d give you mine tomorrow, if I could.” Her citizenship.

  Scarlett couldn’t bring herself to propose. Throughout most of history, marriages didn’t spring out of romance, but grew from practical considerations of family compatibility and future progeny. She certainly didn’t have any illusion th
at a man would ever present her with a ring, on bended knee. But Daisy might still have that hope, and who was she to sully that? That lala couple—for years, they’d been fighting for the right to declare their commitment before the law, before God, before their friends, family, and community. But Scarlett wanted to exercise that right in order to deceive.

  Music blasted unexpectedly, William rapping, loud enough to rattle the window and send concentric rings through a mug of tea gone cold. Her daughter, clutching the stereo’s remote, must have turned up the volume. In the apartment above, their neighbor rapped on the wooden floor—quiet! Scarlett slid the remote a few centimeters away and Liberty didn’t crawl so much as drag herself toward it, grunting from exertion. Daisy snapped a photo with the phone. Liberty used her left elbow to travel across the floor, a movement as ugly and awkward and determined as Scarlett’s own journey in life had been. It was the first time either baby had crawled.

  Scarlett and Daisy locked eyes. This achievement summoned up everything they’d survived until now. For the sake of Liberty’s forward progress, Scarlett had to do whatever necessary to keep their family together.

  “You can help,” Scarlett told Daisy. “If we—if we get married.” Eyes averted, she explained in a rush that the wedding reception she’d catered had been for a lala couple, an American who married a Chinese.

  Daisy stared at her. “You’re lala? You want me—that way?” She grimaced. “I don’t feel that way about you.” She wrapped her arms around herself, probably questioning every glance, every touch that had passed between them, as if every kindness by Scarlett had been a seduction.

  No, Scarlett said. She wasn’t lala, and she knew Daisy wasn’t, either. If they married for show, then Scarlett could get her papers fixed.

  “I’m hardly an American,” Daisy said.

  Scarlett popped the lid off the tin where they stored their important documents. She handed Daisy her passport: brand-new, stiff and unscratched, embossed with a gold eagle, proof of her claim to this country. “You’re American enough.”

  “What will people—” Daisy said. “I don’t want them to think I’m that. I don’t have anything against lalas. But I’m not that.”

  Because Scarlett had never married, because no one knew she was dating Boss Yeung at the time, some at the factory might have harbored such suspicions about her. A gossipy clerk had once mentioned how a lala couple in Taiwan had married in a Buddhist ceremony, exchanging prayer beads instead of rings. She had studied Scarlett, as if to see if she might flinch, might grimace, might reveal her inclinations.

  “But who paid for the reception?” Scarlett had asked. By custom, Chinese grooms paid. With two brides, who knew? The clerk had laughed, and Scarlett felt as if she’d warded off an attack. She was not the lala her co-workers might have supposed, who engaged in acts they considered unnatural, crimes against nature, acts that were none of their business, traditional or not.

  “You can marry William. Eventually, after college,” Scarlett said.

  Daisy flipped through the blank pages of her passport. As much as she loved him, in their months apart, she must have realized how little she knew him, how little she could predict of the life they might lead together. Like Scarlett with Liberty, she must have fallen in love with Didi more and more every day, his fat big toe, like a ballerina’s en pointe, and his easygoing laugh. Scarlett had caught Daisy sniffing his tiny sweaty socks, which had his stink and no one else’s. She must crave him viscerally, just as Scarlett craved Liberty. She gazed at her son. “Didi needs his father,” Daisy said.

  He gnawed on a soft chew toy with the enthusiasm of a beaver. On the bed, Liberty used all her might to drag herself forward, throwing out her arm as if at the edge of a cliff, practicing her new skill over and over again. Standing, walking, and running would come next.

  “If anyone finds out—” Daisy said.

  “No one has to know,” Scarlett said. “No one except the government.”

  “Won’t they be suspicious?” Daisy asked. “Won’t they wonder if we’re really lala?” She listed the consequences if they got caught: She might get thrown in jail, fined, or maybe have her own citizenship revoked. And Scarlett would be deported and banned from returning to the United States.

  “That could happen to me, either way. Getting married gives me a chance to stay,” Scarlett said. She had to break the law to be within the law.

  “Won’t they ask who the fathers are?” Daisy closed her passport and smoothed the cover.

  The immigration officer should understand that matters of the heart were complicated, and that relationships might take as many twists as a hero’s tale. They lived together, had for months, unlike many partners in a sham marriage, and unlike the men and women who wed and divorced overnight on a drunken binge or the celebrities who took vows for the publicity while the cameras rolled.

  Getting married was another act of devotion, of the many they’d shared in forming a family and starting a business together. Some lalas had children—didn’t they?—with men playing a minor role at conception.

  “I got pregnant with a friend who donated his sperm,” Scarlett said.

  Daisy stared at her, until she realized Scarlett was lying. She looked down, thinking, before she triumphantly announced, “And I hooked up at a party!”

  * * *

  —

  Later that morning, when Scarlett rang Casey, the redhead bride, the call went to voicemail. An iron band tightened around her chest. The newlyweds might have left for their honeymoon, turned off their phones, parked themselves in the mountains or along the coast or on an island where they couldn’t be found for a week or two. She needed a referral for an immigration attorney, one who didn’t bilk his clients, who had experience with lala marriages, who wouldn’t judge or gawk, and she didn’t know who else to ask. Down the hallway, a door slammed and someone pounded down the stairs in a hurry.

  If she hired a lawyer in Chinatown, word might get out, and she and Daisy and their children would be shunned. Old Wu would be heartbroken that she’d kept this secret from him. Shrimp Boy and Manager Kwok might turn the scheme into a money-making racket; they’d tell other newcomers in need of papers to do the same, in the hopes of doubling the bookings for wedding banquets at the Pearl Pavilion. Immigration authorities would question the uptick in lala marriages.

  She didn’t leave a message. A moment later, the phone rang.

  “Someone called my number?” Casey sounded hoarse after a late night.

  Scarlett almost hung up. She shouldn’t bother them on the day after their wedding.

  Daisy put the phone on speaker. “It’s Scarlett and Daisy.”

  A pause.

  “From the hanbaobao cart,” Scarlett said.

  “We had leftovers this morning for breakfast!” Casey said. “So good! Thank you—people kept raving about it. Did you leave something at the house? We’re around, if you need to come by.”

  If they went by the house, Casey and her wife would sniff out their deception at once. Scarlett cleared her throat. “Your lawyer…?”

  “My lawyer? Was there a problem with the contract?”

  “We’re getting married,” Daisy said.

  Casey gushed out her congratulations, the phone’s speaker crackling, and said she’d text the attorney’s number. “Tell her you know me.”

  A muffled voice called out on the other end of the line—Ying. Scarlett started sweating as Casey told her wife. What did Ying suspect? Silence, followed by ominous whispers until Casey brightly asked if they needed referrals for a photographer, for a florist, she had a spreadsheet of vendors and they should book soon. A newlywed in such bliss she wanted everyone in the world paired off and married, too.

  “We’re going to City Hall,” Scarlett said.

  “You’ll need a witness,” Casey said.

  “Witness?” Scarle
tt couldn’t hide her dismay. She couldn’t ask Old Wu, Manager Kwok, or anyone in Chinatown. She served scores of customers every day, including regulars like Casey she wouldn’t call friends but looked forward to seeing. But no one she could ask to join them at City Hall.

  “We don’t know many people. Not so popular, not like you two.” Scarlett laughed nervously. “You had so many guests!”

  “You can get the clerk or someone waiting at the office to sign,” Casey said.

  Scarlett wondered if the immigration officials would question a couple who couldn’t come up with a single friend to celebrate with them.

  “With the babies, with the business, we don’t have much time for friends,” Scarlett said. She was sharing too much; she felt as if she were trying out what she’d say in her green-card interview.

  “You have a baby?” Casey asked.

  Her tone, curious and concerned, gave Scarlett an idea. What if Casey and her wife were their witnesses? A friendship with another lala couple would bolster her immigration case.

  “Babies,” Daisy clarified. “A boy and a girl.”

  More whispers on the other end of the line. Ying might remember being alone in a new country, ignorant of local laws and customs, hoping for the kindness of strangers—including the stranger who became her wife. And Casey might feel a kinship with newcomers to America.

  “There’s so much we don’t know,” Scarlett said. She hoped they could hear the invitation and desperation in her voice. “We’re lucky we met you.”

  “We’ll come,” Casey said.

  “Are you—what about your honeymoon?” Scarlett asked.

  “We’re waiting until spring break,” Casey said. “We’ll be your witness. If you’ll have us.”

  * * *

  —

  The immigration attorney said their petition would likely be flagged, due to Daisy’s short tenure in the U.S., and because Scarlett’s visa was about to expire at the time of their upcoming wedding ceremony. During the interview, officials would grill them on the facts and circumstances of their relationship.