“Stop it,” I say. “I’m not the Lucy you wanted, okay? I’m not. I get it and I’ve accepted it, and you need to as well. Sorry I can’t actually perform like you need so the Hua name can mean something again. At least you made some money off me. Dad is right: That’s all you want from me.”
Shock twists her features, so like mine, and I’m sickly thrilled tohave finally said something to break through and affect her. Yet it’s also scary. I want to take it all back, even as I keep going because I feel a ferocious need to push right to the limit to see what will break. “You always resented me for going my own way.”
“I didn’t resent you.”
“You’re lying.”
My mother slaps her hand on the couch. “Stop saying I’m lying! You never want to see what’s in front of you. I know how I feel. I was angry you gave up your potential because you refused to ask for help. I was angry because I was hanging over the edge of the well with the ladder, and you wouldn’t look up. I couldn’t get through to you and you twisted every word I said.”
“Stop trying to put this on me.”
“If I asked you how you were, you accused me of only wanting to know so I could get you working. If I didn’t ask and gave you space, you were upset because you thought I didn’t care, because you couldn’t contribute. Nothing I did was right.”
“Because you made it clear to me I had a duty!”
“You do, and I won’t apologize for that. We have a duty to the women who came before us, all those Hua women.”
“I don’t want that responsibility.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “It’s yours.”
“See?” I’m drowning under the waves of my anger. “You’re doing it again. Making me feel bad.”
“You should feel bad,” she says coolly. “I had to do what I did because one of us had to act.”
“You decided, unilaterally, it had to be you. That you knew the best for me.”
“You’re impossible. As always. Too scared to try, too proud to ask for help. Always willing to believe the worst in people.”
“Where do you think I got that from? You think you’re the best role model I could have had?”
In the sudden quiet of the room, I can hear the canned laughter of my neighbor’s television. He’s addicted to old sitcoms, where everything is solved in less than thirty minutes. I wish I could step through the wall and into that show, because this fight has gotten to be too much and I don’t know what to say or how to feel—or what happens after this because something between us has bent and changed. What we had wasn’t much, but it was familiar, and whatever comes up next will be unknown.
Mom passes a hand over her eyes. “All I want is for you to be happy. I didn’t want you back home because of the store. I wanted you. I wanted to be in your life, the way all the other women in our family were in each other’s.”
For some reason, her low, sad tone infuriates me more. It’s like she refuses to understand that this is not all me or my fault, and the unfinished fury from the fight we had the other day surges back up. “Yeah, well, I wanted my mom. I wanted you to want me for who I was, not for what I could bring the family. I wanted you to love me, not what I could do for you.”
“I do, Luling.”
“Call me by my fucking name,” I snap. This is the first time I’ve sworn in my mother’s presence, let alone to her face. “I’m Lucy.”
“You were named Luling.”
“It doesn’t matter what I was named, I chose something different.”
Her mouth tightens. “There are some things that are chosen for you. They’re gifts.” She shakes her head. “I thought Rafe would convince you to come home. None of this would have happened if you stayed at Yixiang.”
I knew it. Iknewthere was something with Rafe. I’d feel triumphant if I weren’t so disillusioned. “I don’t want to go back. And I can tell you what else I don’t want. This.” I point at the bottles, hand trembling until I draw it back to my side in a fist. “I don’t need it. I don’t need you.”
I would have preferred the slap I can sense her holding back from the way her hand twitches on the couch to what happens—which is that my mother’s eyes fill with tears.
Jesus. Oh my God. My mother doesn’t cry. Not once. Never. Not when I failed with Ms. Kang. Not even when she broke her leg falling on the rocks near the water at dawn and had to claw her way home along the grass until her nails were broken and her fingers bloody.
A riptide of remorse joins the rage and drags me out to the open sea. I can’t do this anymore. “Mom, it’s time for you to go back to Vancouver.”
“Luling, we can work this out.” She’s not pleading—Mom would never do that—but there’s a softer tone. “Three people are nothing. Perhaps you’re right and they only need more time. I believe in you.”
“No,” I say. “You never did.”
