by Vanessa Hua
Scores of same-sex couples climbed the stage, beaming and blushing, fist-pumping and whooping. The afternoon light turned molten gold. Daisy, holding her son, tugged at Scarlett’s elbow. Another photo to build their case for the immigration file.
“Go,” Scarlett told Boss Yeung. He didn’t move. She realized he wouldn’t leave, not without his daughter, and not without her. He’d wait all day, all night—all week.
She and Daisy followed the other couples, rainbow as the backdrop: olive-skinned men with dapper matching goatees and slim dark ties, silver-haired pantsuit grannies with canes. Scarlett and Daisy cradled their children, who had gone quiet, captivated by the spectacle. They ascended the stairs.
The emcee started passing the microphone to each couple. “Thank you, thank you,” Scarlett murmured, and she expected Daisy to say the same. Instead the teenager sang. “Good night, my love, to every hour in every day. Good night, always, to all that’s pure in your heart.”
Softly at first and then she belted the words, the crowd swaying and hugging in the sunshine. Daisy’s voice caught in her throat and Scarlett nodded at her, urging her on. She swallowed hard and pushed through to the end of the song, the one she’d sung with William that night at karaoke in Taipei, that became a lullaby to their son, that he covered on his album. The song now served as her farewell, soaring with a determination that made it sound like an anthem. For Didi’s sake—for her own—it seemed Daisy had finally accepted that he wasn’t coming back.
Scarlett saw him before Daisy did. Tall, with the watermelon seed eyes Didi had inherited. He plowed through the crowd, knocking against a bearded man who stumbled, and a woman with a cascade of curly dark hair who fell to her knees. William must have received Daisy’s messages, but too late to write back, or perhaps he wanted to see her in person before he knew if and how he wanted to respond. He was shouting Daisy’s name, the tendons tight in his neck and his mouth wide. The crowd heaved, the roar loud as surf. Then Daisy was running off the stage, their son in her arms, great strides closing the distance that remained between them until there was none left at all.
Epilogue
Scarlett eased Boss Yeung onto the bed, and Liberty climbed in, tucking her head into the crook of his arm. He stroked their daughter’s hair, fanned out across his chest. Her cells had given him a reprieve, a year or so in which she learned to walk, to run, to leap, a year spent becoming the daughter of the man who hugged her tight, then raised her high into the air each morning.
His wife had renounced the world and spent her days praying at the Celestial Goddess’s eco-luxury resort commune in Bali. He’d gradually turned over the company to Viann. At first she had been tentative around her baby sister, grateful that Liberty had saved her father, and grateful that Liberty wasn’t a male heir. She’d become an indulgent aunt who could satisfy Liberty’s fondness for sparkle. Viann still didn’t know the truth of her heritage, but Boss Yeung had willed her a copy of the genetics report. Upon his death, she alone would decide her fate, which was what he wanted for her more than any revenge he might have exacted upon Uncle Lo.
Uncle Lo no longer sought to punish Scarlett, perhaps because she’d bestowed the gift of life upon his friend, or perhaps—for reasons known only to him—it had become counter to his interests. Whatever the case, she was out of his reach in America. She knew he remained suspicious she might disappear on Boss Yeung again, but what he thought no longer mattered.
Mama Fang was busier than ever. She’d sold Little Genius to Uncle Lo, and had hired a surrogate, who was now pregnant with her twins, a boy and a girl, conceived from donor eggs and sperm from Chinese Americans with Ivy League intelligence and movie star looks. One or both children might grow up to reject her, and so, she was preparing for her next venture: recruiting a network of top-notch Chinese donors and surrogates. In business alone, she might exercise the control that drove away those dearest to her.
Daisy and her son lived with William’s parents in the suburbs east of San Francisco. After the paternity test eliminated their misgivings, they were involved in her life as her own parents never had been. They were pleased that she’d gotten into Cal, on the path they wanted for their wayward son. He remained in Hong Kong where stars were supposed to be chaste and filial. He wasn’t the first celebrity to conceal his engagement and his child, to seem eternally young and eternally available. Still in love, Daisy struggled every day without him, their future uncertain but for Didi.
The bedsprings squeaked. Liberty was singing to herself about two little tigers, one without ears, another without a tail. Boss Yeung filled in the words that she forgot. Sunday mornings, she and Didi took a toddler music class in Chinatown. Afterward, they feasted on dim sum at the Pearl Pavilion, often joined by Old Wu and his wife and newborn son, who had a thatch of black hair and a roar loud as a jet plane; Little Fox and Joe Ng, together after her rogue of a husband ran off; Casey and Ying; and Auntie Ng, Granny Wang, and Widow Mok, busybodies still. The big round tables always had room for one more.
Scarlett curled beside her daughter. After his illness returned, Boss Yeung made a final decision as chief executive: establishing permanent residency for Scarlett by investing a half-million dollars in her name to open a hanbaobao pop-up shop, launch a wholesale business, hire a staff of ten, and refurbish a food truck that also hawked his family’s shortbread. Following her divorce from Daisy, her application had sailed through, and she had just received her green card, marked by the hologram of the Statue of Liberty, smiling or frowning, depending on how the light fell. The fate Scarlett had avoided, the fate so many suffered—detained, deported, parted from their children—sometimes winged over her, a shadow she had outrun but would never forget.
Boss Yeung dozed off with their daughter, as the breeze drifted through the window. He loved Liberty more than any male heir, for sons carried the burden of expectation and obligation. A late-season fruit had never tasted sweeter. As the toddler’s mobility improved, his had declined. Liberty might not remember the helium balloon he bought her every week or her hand clutching his, but Scarlett hoped their daughter would retain a sense of him, the feeling of his arms holding her, of his lullabies sung low and deep.
She reached for her phone and snapped a close-up of Liberty’s lashes and her apple blossom skin. The time for naps would soon end, the nestling warmth and fluttering breaths of her daughter that she was already starting to miss. Liberty’s pleasingly rounded limbs were lengthening into those of a girl, into the woman she’d become. Scarlett texted the photos to Ma, who had learned how to use a phone—her way of expressing the tenderness she couldn’t put into words. The longer Scarlett had been a mother, the more she understood Ma and her decisions.
Once upon a time, the Goddess of Heaven, furious her daughter had fallen for a lowly cowherd, gouged out a river of stars with her hairpin. She stranded the lovers on opposite shores. Each year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, she relented, allowing the magpies to bridge the sky and reunite them. Love lost, then found, again and again. Now the legend held another meaning for Scarlett: a mother’s forgiveness. In the story she would tell Liberty, not even the Goddess of Heaven could undo the past, but she’d commanded the magpies to complete her daughter’s heart, by conjuring a flock that spanned the universe.
To my husband
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to those who read many drafts and provided advice along the way, including Maury Zeff, David Baker, Jane Kalmes, Angie Chuang, Yalitza Ferreras, Kirstin Chen, Angie Chau, and Kevin Allardice. Others who offered support, encouragement, and places to stay include Dawn MacKeen, Pia Sarkar, Josue Hurtado, Irene Chan, Jason Husgen, the Pak-Stevensons, the Taylors, the Freedes, Geoff Nilsen, Alicia Jo Rabins, Aimee Phan, Beth Bich Minh Nguyen, Reese Kwon, the other women writers of the Karaoke Book Club, and fellow debut authors Nicole Chung, Lillian Li, Lydia Kiesling, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, and Crystal Hana Kim.
M
uch love to the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, where I wrote much of this book, with special thanks to Bridget Quinn, Yukari Iwatani Kane, Mary Ladd, and Kaitlin Solimine. I am grateful for additional support from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Steinbeck Fellow Program at San José State University—especially Nick Taylor, Paul Douglass, Tommy Mouton, and Dallas Woodburn—the San Francisco Foundation, Aspen Summer Words, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Voices of Our Nation, and Hedgebrook, among others. While writing, I left my twin sons in the devoted care of Jaqueline Perez.
Mei Fong’s One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment and Leslie T. Chang’s Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China were among the most fascinating and useful books I studied while researching this novel. I’m also thankful for the editors at the San Francisco Chronicle, who backed my reporting in the villages and factories of the Pearl River Delta and in San Francisco Chinatown, and to the many migrants who shared their stories and dreams with me.
Early versions of chapters first appeared in ZYZZYVA and Guernica. A heartfelt thanks to ZYZZYVA editors Oscar Villalon and Laura Cogan, for their long-standing support of me and my work. They do so much to enrich literary culture in the Bay Area and beyond.
My agents, Emma Sweeney and Margaret Sutherland Brown, have championed this book, providing friendly, wise counsel and making my dreams come true. I am indebted to the Random House team for their expertise and generosity, including Emily Hartley, Susan Corcoran, Christine Mykityshyn, Stephanie Reddaway, Beth Pearson, Robin Schiff, Belina Huey, Madeline Hopkins, Chin-Yee Lai, Virginia Norey, Debbie Aroff, Colleen Nuccio, Toby Ernst, and others. Many thanks to publisher Kara Welsh, deputy publisher Kim Hovey, and editor in chief Jennifer Hershey for welcoming my debut novel. My deepest gratitude goes to my editor, Susanna Porter, who has tirelessly guided me through revisions with much insight and good cheer.
Thank you to my family for your enduring love and support—my mother, Sylvia, and my late father, Lo-Ching; my sister, Inez; my nephew, Declan; my brother, Lawrence; and my in-laws, Robert and Patricia Puich, and my sister-in-law, Kristine Puich, and her partner, Jeff Elmassian.
I was pregnant when I began writing this novel, when I began to discover how motherhood would open my eyes, my heart, and my imagination in ways I couldn’t foresee. Every day remains an adventure with my sons. My husband, Marc, has been on this journey at each step, at each turn, and I thank him for everything, always.
By Vanessa Hua
Deceit and Other Possibilities
A River of Stars
About the Author
VANESSA HUA is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and author of a short story collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities. For two decades, she has been writing, in journalism and fiction, about Asia and the Asian diaspora. She has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, as well as honors from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post. A River of Stars is Vanessa Hua’s first novel.
vanessahua.com
Facebook.com/VanessaHuaWriter
Twitter: @Vanessa_Hua
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