“After you were born, I dreamt of a war. A terrible war that ravaged every land on this earth. It began in the West like a disease, leaving everything it touched rotten and wasted away.” Mama paled visibly. “I dreamt that the Japanese invaded China.I saw them take your uncles in Guangzhou prisoner and burn their factories. I saw...” She closed her eyes. “So many ghosts.”
She wasn’t finished. “I begged your father to take us away from here,” she said. “I told him we weren’t safe here, and we needed to move inland, maybe even go to Tibet. He called me a raving fool. He said that Japan was a pathetic little island, and while they’d been lucky invading Manchuria, they’d been trying for years to conquer us, never succeeding. They’d never take the capital.”
“You saw the future,” I realized. My mind was reeling, trying to understand how this could be possible.
“Yes,” Mama confirmed, “and I could do nothing about it. That is my curse. Now yours begins.”
I was quiet. Being able to turn invisible didn’t seem like a curse, I thought. After all, it had saved me from the Japanese.
Mama bent her head low, holding her rosary beads. “Every night, I confess my sins and my failures to Him. He understands my pain. He forgives me.” She lifted her gaze to take me in. “Perhaps He will understand yours, too. You, my daughter, who can become nothing.”
She seldom spoke of her faith with me. She knew I didn’t believe in it, that secretly I agreed with Ah Ma and found her piousness foolish.
“Keep what you can do to yourself,” she said at last. “This is important.” A pause. “No one will believe you anyway.”
I met Mama’s gaze. There was defeat in her dark eyes, a melancholy that I’d never seen before. It moved me to see.
“Ibelieve you,” I said.
I thought the words would bring her relief, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Mama’s dark eyes turned foreboding. “Growing up has a way of making us forget who we really are. Hold on to your secrets, Ying. Don’t let them go.”
I bit down on my lip. Mama had foreseen the death of her mother and two stillborn children, she’d had a premonition of the war and the Japanese invasion. How different would our lives have been if people had listened to her?
“Did you know Baba would leave us?” I said suddenly.
Mama looked stricken, and I wished I hadn’t asked.
To my surprise, she answered. “Yes, I knew.”
“When he left—you didn’t fight him.”
“What use is fighting when it is bound to happen?” Mama said. “I cannot change it.”
My mother, whom I had always considered the strongest person I knew, was brittle inside. A prisoner of fate because of her visions. “Then try!” I started. “Try to change it.”
“No. That is your youth speaking. When you’re older, you’ll understand.”
When I was older? I’d lost my childhood to a war. What more was there for me to learn—to understand?
“Please,” I pleaded. “Come to Hong Kong.”
“I wouldn’t be welcomed. Besides, someone has to watch your grandmother.”
“Why does it have to be you? She isn’t your mother.”
“Ying.” Mama’s voice took on an edge.
I wished that for once Mama wouldn’t simply simmer. That she’d let out her anger and burst. “Sorry.”
A muscle twitched in Mama’s jaw. “Having this curse does not make you special.”
“I know that.”
“Then hold your tongue and don’t chase wild dreams. Marry well instead. Choose a good man who will take care of you and your children.”
I was silent, but my thoughts rebelled. Now armed with the dark secret that Mama had shared with me, I made a resolute vow that I would never marry. I’d seen firsthand what womenbecame once they were wives. Their husbands owned them, and they were no longer part of the household that had raised them. I didn’t want that for myself.
I didn’t want to become nothing.
