“Stay with me?” Now she stared at him. “Don’t you think you’ve caused enough trouble as it is?”
Kenji winced. “I was just teasing. Can’t we be friends?”
“I don’t make friends with people like you. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Now will you bug off?”
Never had she seen anyone look so taken aback.
“People like me,” he repeated. All of him tensed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what that means,Kenji Yamamoto.”
It’d be days before Marigold realized that Kenji thought she was referring to his race, not to what he’d done to that car in LA. It didn’t matter though, she was too proud to correct any misunderstanding.
“Hai.” He swung his locker door shut and gave her the coldest salute. “Message received, loud and clear.”
From that day on, Marigold got what she wanted. Kenji stopped talking to her, stopped even acknowledging herexistence. She had made an enemy out of him, and there would be no peace between them.
San Francisco
1956
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Helen
Peony was six months old when I found out I was pregnant again.
I didn’t know how to tell Philip. I didn’t knowwhento tell Philip. We were still living in Association housing, sharing a bathroom with two other families. Every dollar we saved, we set aside toward a future apartment of our own. I dreamt it’d be soon enough that Peony could practice crawling in our new home, but with a second baby on the way...
“Then we’ll stay in the Association another year,” said Philip when he found out. “I should be a head cook by then. Things will be easier.”
He was getting close. The month prior, he’d been promoted to line cook. He was working hard, and I was grateful for the extra dollar an hour he brought home. But lately I spent more time with his dirty clothes than with him. A bucket of vinegar took his place by my bed, yesterday’s shirt soaking to get out the cigarette smoke.
At least I had Peony for company. Every day I trekked to the factory and carted home my three sacks of work. My daughterslept on my back while I sewed, lulled by the whirr of my machine. When I was done, I’d kiss her neck and be rewarded by a high-pitched squeal as she woke up. After I changed her, we’d eat. Peony already had the adventurous tastebuds of a cook. She liked steamed eggs and shrimp-head soup and baked apples, and with her three little teeth kernels she made whistling sounds whenever I made her favorite congee. I loved her more than anything, but she was growing fast. With the new baby in my belly, it was getting harder for me to carry her up and down the hills every morning.
“Find a job closer to home,” my friends at the Association urged. “Didn’t you used to make cakes? I hear Mrs. Kwan at Far East Bakery is hiring.”
“She’s not going to hire a pregnant lady with a baby,” I said.
“How do you know? Mrs. Kwan is very nice. At worst, she’ll give your daughter a free cookie.”
A young mother herself, Mrs. Kwan had come to America and started her bakery with twin boys strapped to her front and back. When she saw me with Peony, she brought out a stool for me to sit. My timing was good; it was late afternoon and most of her staff had left for the day. She gestured at the empty kitchen. “Bake something for me.”
Two restless hours later, I presented her with a dozen egg tarts. She picked one up, observing the pastry flake under her thumb, the soft yellow custard wobbling in its shell. She took a bite.
Without a word, she reached for the tray of walnut cookies on the counter and gave me the biggest one. “For your little girl, careful she doesn’t choke. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at five.”
I bowed my head, hardly able to contain my excitement. “Thank you, Mrs. Kwan.”
Mrs. Kwan treated her staff like family. Often she packed any unsold pastries into boxes for us to bring home, and when theshop wasn’t too busy, she carried Peony to the front, introducing her to the customers. Her kindness reminded me of Mama.
Not a day passed that I didn’t think of my mother. This year would mark a decade since I’d left Tunglam. I’d read in the paper that millions in China were dying from famine. She must have known that we’d be divided by the invisible walls of war, so why hadn’t she tried to come with me? It tormented me that I didn’t know her fate. I’d written to my relatives in Guangzhou, and no one knew where she was. I didn’t even know whether she was still alive.
I touched my bracelet, fingering its links. The charm had become a source of amusement among my friends. Mrs. Kwan thought it was a loaf of bread, Philip a golden tael. The only person who might know was Mama, but she was thousands of miles away, as unreachable as the bottom of the sea.
No matter how long it took, I would bring her home to me.
This I swore to myself—and to my children.
