“There’s one last thing I have for you.”
From under her sleeve Mama unclasped a slender gold bracelet with a peanut charm on one end. I’d caught glimpses of it before, on the scant occasions Mama’s wrist wasn’t covered, but I’d never seen the charm up close. Peanuts were symbolic of a long and fruitful life, and also one of my favorite foods. I missed their satisfying crunch between my teeth.
“This bracelet has been in my family for generations,” Mama said softly, rubbing the charm between her fingers. “It belonged to my grandmother. My mother said that she could speak to spirits, and that she walked the sky with her bound feet to find a home for us.”
“Was she . . . like us?”
Mama’s face closed. “I never met her,” she chose to say instead. She laid the bracelet over my wrist. It was made of solid gold, worth a small fortune. “Even when times were hard, my mother kept this hidden from my father and refused to sell it. I meant to give it to you when you became a woman, but you’ll take it now”—she pinched the hook clasp tight—“for luck and protection.”
I regarded Mama, too moved to speak.
She was still holding my hand. “Don’t run after you eat, and don’t sleep with your hair wet,” she said. “Cover your neck and your feet from the wind, remember not to chew loudly when you eat, and don’t drink cold water or it’ll make you sick.”
As she let go, I looked down at the bracelet. It was thin and delicate as a string, yet its chain was strong, bonded by tiny forked links. Almost like fish bones. “Will I see you again?”
Mama rounded her lips, about to say something. Then the look shuttered, and her eyes turned faraway. “You haven’t been listening.” She unbuttoned the top of her shirt, showing me the birthmark on her back just below her shoulder blade. It was the size of a large bean, slightly raised. It matched the red spot on my collarbone.
“This is the mark of my suffering,” she said. “I carried you on my back, but it is time for me to let you go. I am your past, don’t cling to me anymore.”
“But—”
“That’s enough.” She wore a defeated look that I would never forget. “Go. Close the door behind you.”
I turned to leave, but before I could change my mind I wrapped my arms around Mama’s waist and hugged her.
Caught by surprise, she stiffened. One by one her shoulders went soft, and she pressed her cheek to my forehead. We held each other, neither speaking but both silently saying goodbye.
When finally I left Mama’s room, I heard a sob behind the door.
Hong Kong
1945
Chapter Six
Baba wasn’t at the pier.
I shouldn’t have been disappointed, but after three days of traveling elbow to elbow with my brother—first from Tunglam to Guangzhou, where we had a half-hearted reunion with my uncles, all thin and gray like the cigarettes affixed to their mouths; then on to a Hong Kong–bound steamboat so crowded that in spite of the open-air decks I couldn’t even glimpse the sea—I had indulged in fantasies of Baba’s coming to fetch us. I pictured his arms full of iced gem biscuits, maybe even a soda. I’d never had a soda before.
My stomach growled, and I sorely regretted giving Mama’s last cabbage bun to Yi Gor.
“What do you think she’ll be like?” he asked while we waited at the wharf. The entirety of the boat ride, he’d snubbed me in favor of our fellow passengers. By now everyone had disembarked, leaving behind people such as us—remainders waiting to be picked up.
“What do I thinkwhowill be like?” I asked, pretending not to know.
“Our stepmother, stupid. Who else?”
I fidgeted with my bracelet, which I kept under my sleeve to deter pickpockets. In truth, I’d been thinking of nothing but Sai Ma for days, mostly to avoid brooding over Mama and ourlast conversation, but it was impossible to disentangle the two. I prayed that my stepmother would be kind, that Baba hadn’t told her about Mama’s visions, that she wouldn’t treat me like the daughter of her husband’s deranged first wife.
“Baba was never happy with Mama,” I reasoned. “For a new wife, he’d choose someone very different. Someone who didn’t grow up with dirty fingernails.”
In my head, I added,Someone whose nightmares don’t come true.
“He wrote to Ah Ma about her,” Yi Gor divulged. “Ah Ma told me that she’s beautiful but short, and she breathes in perfume and wears silks to sleep. Also”—he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper—“she has a baby boy on the way.”
At that, I jerked. “She’s pregnant?”
My brother looked smug.
