Helen’s eyes fluttered open. The afternoon had become bright, and her mother winced, needing a moment to reorient herself to this world.
“You’re bleeding,” was the first thing Helen said. Her voice was raspy, as though she too had been in the fire. “By your eye—”
Marigold flew into her arms. She couldn’t tell whether the rush of relief and joy she felt was her mother’s—or her own. “I thought I lost you.”
Helen’s shoulders went soft. She held her daughter close. “Your whole life, I was afraid I’d lose you,” she whispered. “But look at you, you found me.”
“I’ve had a little practice.”
Helen thumbed the scar by Marigold’s eye. “So you have.”
A smile touched her mother’s mouth. Not just any ordinary smile. But the beaming, glowing smile that Marigold had seenonce before: the look of her mother in love. Marigold thought Helen had never looked more beautiful.
Hand in hand, mother and daughter helped each other up and gradually ventured down the other side of the hill. In the distance, Marigold heard a bird singing. “Is that—”
“A hwamei,” Helen finished for her with a nod. “I haven’t heard one in years.”
Marigold listened to its bright song, warbling high as the sun fanned down upon the valley. It was the sweetest sound she’d ever heard.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Yut Ying
We took a taxi to a pier overlooking Victoria Harbour. It was Marigold’s idea, and she wouldn’t explain. She only said there was something she wanted to show me.
We walked past the ferry terminal, past the vendors selling steamed peanuts and the boat rental stalls. My balance was still shaky, but whenever I glanced down at my feet and saw my shadow, slowly gaining substance—as I was—my confidence grew.
A few minutes after we arrived, it started drizzling. Soft white mist curled over the sea, shimmering in a way that, for the second time in my life, arrested me. I stopped to marvel. Here was a different port and a different time, yet the waters were the same. And somehow I sensed that, like me, they remembered.
I ambled along the guardrail, watching the waves lap against the pier posts. In the distance scudded the Star Ferry, cruising past clusters of fishing boats and sampans. The air was fishier than before, the hills around us shorter—or maybe it was simply the skyline that was taller. All gray and white like a crowded field of mushrooms, not so different from San Francisco. Back in my day, there were no promenades of potted palm trees and yellow waste receptacles all in a neat line, no children twirling ruffled sun umbrellas or tourists taking pictures with their disposable cameras. Yet if I closed my eyes, I became that naïve little eleven-year-old waiting for her Baba to pick her up, so fresh from the countryside I could still taste the sweetness of Mama’s cabbage on my tongue.
“What did you want to show me?” I asked Marigold once we left the crowds behind.
She’d been quiet this whole time, almost serene but for that familiar pinch in her brow. She rolled up her sleeve, and my bracelet slipped down her wrist.
“Keep it,” I said before she could speak. “Your po po gave it to me when I left for Hong Kong. I should have given it to you long ago.”
Marigold almost smiled. “Neither of us is going to keep it.”
“What?”
“Did you know that carp have thirty-three vertebrae, same as a human?” she asked. “That’s how many links there are.”
I knew how many links the bracelet had. I’d counted them a thousand times. “What does that mean?”
My daughter cupped her fingers over the bracelet, half closing her eyes. “A hundred years ago, therewasa girl like Yeh Shen. I don’t know her name, but people called her Pockface for the red birthmark on her cheek. Her family was poor, her early childhood spent toiling barefoot in the rice paddies. Because of her face she was deemed unmarriageable and worthless, so when she was six years old, her mother began binding Pockface’s feet—breaking her young toes and bending them down against her sole, for the only way for an ugly girl to marry well was to cultivate tiny feet that curved like lotus petals. Her mother was determined for the girl to lift the family out of poverty. ‘If not, you will live a miserable life like me,’ said the mother.
“Poor Pockface suffered terribly. One day she hobbled to the stream, undoing her bandages and dipping her feet into the water for a moment’s scant relief. There she met a fish that gleamed like gold, and took solace in its silent company. She visited it often, feeding it grains of rice from her own sparse bowl. Together, Pockface and the fish grew up.
“When Pockface came of marriageable age, an old magistrate was looking for a concubine. Her mother seized the opportunity. She’d heard stories from her daughter about the golden fish in the stream, and decided that to provide a dowry, she would kill it. One day, she put on Pockface’s jacket and pretended to be her daughter. When the golden fish came swimming into view, she speared it in the belly, delighted to find that both its spine and its scales were made of solid gold. She told Pockface to weave its golden scales into a veil to cover her face, and she kept the bones for herself. Devastated, Pockface wept bitterly about her fate. That night, she prayed to her friend for forgiveness and dreamt the fish told her to run away.
“‘I can barely walk,’ she cried. ‘How will I run away?’
“‘Sew my scales into slippers, not a veil, and line the soles with my spine for protection.’ The fish paused. ‘You will run swiftly and without pain. But heed my warning—as soon as you are safe, you must return my body to the water. If you do not, I will think you’ve become just as wicked as your mother. Do you promise?’
“Pockface promised, and to her astonishment, what the fish said was true. With the help of the golden slippers, she was able to walk, to run! She fled north and reached a town outside of Peking, where she married a goldsmith. For the first time, her life was happy.
“The following year, she went to the river more than once, intent on keeping her promise to the fish. Each time, she hesitated.My friend must be a divine spirit from heaven,she told herself.If I return his body to the water, my fortunes could all wash away, too. My feet will hurt again when I walk. Surely my friend wouldn’t mind if I held on to his bones just a mite longer.He knows I’m nothing like my mother.More convinced by the day, she asked her husband to weld the fish’s golden spine into a bracelet she could wear.
