The first thing Ah Ma did when we got home was go straight to her room to burn her bedsheets. She couldn’t stomach the idea of the enemy touching her things, their commander sleeping in her bed.
Mama followed her and snatched the matches before she could light the brazier.
“What are you doing?” Ah Ma bristled. “Give them back.”
Mama wouldn’t. “You burn your sheets, what will you sleep on?”
“If Third Son hadn’t married you, I wouldn’t be starving to death, working myself to death, hiding from those Japanese bastards! I’d be in Guangzhou—”
“Locked up in a war camp,” Mama finished for her.
Ah Ma’s eyes flashed resentfully. She wrenched free of Mama and hobbled into the courtyard, knocking her cane on every doorframe and moaning at the mess the soldiers had made.
Her only audience was Mama and we children, so Ah Ma quickly tired of putting on her show and stood by the pond, where she actually started weeping. Fat pearls of tears rolled down her cheeks. Mama went up to her.
“This house was beautiful,” she said, touching Ah Ma’s arm. “It will be beautiful again.”
War had brought an unlikely peace between my mother and grandmother, who leaned her head against Mama’s shoulder, blowing her nose into Mama’s sleeve.
Our housewasspecial. According to our family annals, the emperor himself had gifted it to my ancestor, an imperial minister of great renown. Some considered it the most elegant residence in all of Guangdong Province, with its celadon-green walls and vermillion doors with brass knockers, its auspiciously south-facing courtyard and sprawling gardens. For Ah Ma, the house was a reminder of better times, a last symbol of our family’s faded glory. It was more precious to her than blood, and no matter how dire our straits, she refused to leave it.
“They took everything,” Ah Ma said, weeping. “My wedding silks, my porcelain, my paintbrushes.” She gestured at the pond with a dramatic flourish. “Even the fish are dead. They’re off to a better place.”
My grandmother covered her face, wretchedly sobbing. “Who wants to live during a time like this? I know I don’t. I should have stayed and let them kill me. I’m better off dead.”
Ah Ma made as if to throw herself into the pond.
My brothers grabbed her. “Don’t you stop me, what point is there in going on?” she cried, flailing against the boys. “They took everything from us. Everything!”
“They didn’t take everything,” Mama said. “Not our lives.”
Ah Ma wrenched herself free of my brothers. “What use are our lives if we have no money?”
“No one has money.”
“No one has food, either.”
Mama strained to stay patient. “We are lucky. If we were in the North, winter would kill us. At least here, we can still grow more—”
“Yams?” cried Yi Gor.
The thought of eating more yams made my throat close.
“Uncle Lau might have some eggs and rice,” said Mama.
“His rice has ants,” Dai Gor muttered, making a face.
I wanted to step on his foot. He had had more to eat than any of us yet showed the least gratitude. Before the war, I’d never known that hunger could hurt. I’d never had to wear my brothers’ old shoes and stuff them with cloth so they didn’t whistle with air when I walked. I’d never watched my mother starve herself so we could eat more; over the last weeks she’d grown thinner and thinner, and some nights I couldn’t sleep for worrying she might not wake up the next morning.
While Ah Ma continued to cry, Mama sorted through everything we’d brought back from the hills. At last she located a parcel enfolded in pink striped cotton, and she passed it to me.
It was my porcelain doll. She had a chip on her chin from the time Dai Gor threw her down from the rooftop to see if she’d shatter, and her tangled black hair was unevenly cropped from when I was little and thought doll hair would grow back.
I couldn’t believe it. I looked up at Mama, my eyes filming up with gratitude. “How did you—”
“Don’t grow up too fast, Ying,” Mama interrupted. She combed her fingers through my doll’s fine hair, picking out a stray leaf. “Life is more beautiful when you’re a child.”
She took two brooms and a shovel, handed them to my brothers and me, and we began the journey of cleaning up.
