I rub my thigh, thinking about this, then call Kelsey and pray she picks up instead of ignoring my call.
“Lucy?” She sounds dull. “What do you want?”
Before I get anywhere, an apology is in order. Although I still think most of what happened is partly her fault, I’m not going to getanywhere with that attitude. “I’m sorry, Kelsey. I know you’ve been dealing with a lot because of what happened.”
“Thanks to you.”
I don’t remind her that I didn’t want to do the perfume samples in the first place, and although I was the one to spill the beans, Eric was the one who should have pushed Mom to tell her. “I’m sorry,” I repeat.
“Whatever. Tell me what the hell you want so I can get the Huas out of my life.”
“It’s about the samples.”
“The cursed ones?”
She’s hurting, so I let that go. “You said ten of the women wanted wedding and engagement bags. What about the rest?”
“Who knows?”
“Can I get their names? I’m curious.”
This makes her laugh. “Hell no.” She hangs up.
I call back four more times before she answers. “You don’t get the hint, do you?”
She hasn’t blocked me, so she’s at least willing to talk, although she definitely wants me to work for it. “Kelsey, you don’t owe me anything, but I really need your help.”
She sighs. “I don’t know. I don’t care. One of them wanted a store opening bag, and one wanted a baby one, and one wanted a bon-voyage bag. Something to do with going back to school. A new dog, maybe? That’s all I remember. We make luxury gift bags for all the momentous times in people’s lives.”
Then she’s gone before I can thank her. It’s what I wanted to know. There’s a pattern.
The paper with Mom’s translations is in front of me, and I stare at it idly as my finger taps down the characters. Then I stop. Yu. That one was of the few I looked up, and it meant greed. Mom added a few alternative meanings. Desire. Longing.
I went to a gallery in Edmonton once, a small one known for theirboundary-pushing. The exhibit was a single room that forced the viewer to move through a series of digital doors and windows that led to new, bigger doors and landscapes, messing with your perception until some people got dizzy and had to sit down. I stayed for an hour, waiting to see one that repeated but never finding it. I couldn’t help but feel an end was coming, a resolution, but none arrived.
Staring at that sheet, I have the same sense things are moving, but this time, the door is about to open to reveal an answer. I brace my head in my hands. Desire. Ms. Kang’s Holly is her treasure. Henry, a sinking man made buoyant once he decided to become an innkeeper. I check back for his hotel’s name. Sogno del Cuore. Heart’s Dream. Xiaolan, who celebrated leaving her marriage and finding her newfound liberty by literally jumping into a new life.
I can feel my hand twisting the knob on that final door as my skin breaks out in goose bumps. What if we were wrong? What if the fifth daughter’s power isn’t to call true love? What if it’s yourheart’s desire? Not a soulmate, but the thing that completes your soul? It might be a person…but could it also be breathing the fresh air of a cute villa in the Italian countryside? A collaboration with a nonprofit that helps you save the world? Freedom? The child you wanted but never thought you could have alone? A new business or education?
Ridiculous. I shake my head.
Maybe?
I scramble the book open with shaking hands, wanting to reread exactly what Aiai said about the Peony Goddess.
She wrote:My gift was to make hearts become whole.
I chew on this for a minute. This isn’t the same as true love, is it? We’ve been interpreting it as romantic love and assuming that’s the only thing that can make one’s heart whole. But why? And why did we believe it for a millennium? It’s possible I’m the only person this has happened to, and all the other fifth daughters really could call true love.
I keep reading and pull together the pieces. The first clue is from Aiai herself, and the maid they tested the moli on after Aiai’s dream of the Peony Goddess. When the maid and manservant fell in love, Aiai’s mother declared that to be Aiai’s power. What if love was simply what that specific maid wanted? Another maid could have wanted something else, such as wealth or health or anything.
I go to the next fifth daughter’s chapter, and the next, reading through all the stories. It looked like enough people truly wished for love to reinforce the assumption of the fifth daughter’s power. There are other comments sprinkled through I didn’t notice. One Qing dynasty woman took Xinyue’s moli and thanked her “because with a husband who loved her, she could be safe.”
She didn’t want true love but the safety she thought it could bring her.
Of those clients who wanted true love, how many of them considered it a conduit to what they desired most? Children, or power, or wealth. For the women of the past, how much of that could have been possible without a man? Many would have been sure they needed a husband as an intermediary to achieve the things they truly wanted, and a loving husband was better than a cruel one. While I wanted my ancestors to all have been proto-modern feminists, with hidden classes to teach literacy to their girls, and earning their own money from their moli, it would be ridiculous to ignore that the environment in which they lived was one that discounted, devalued, and disrespected them. Their clients lived in the same world.
The three obediences instructed women to obey their fathers, then husbands, and for widows, their sons. Did all women follow those, or believe them? Of course not. Did enough of them? I’m sure of it. The same went for the men who went to my grandmothers for help. Many of them would also have been trapped, unable to envision their dreams outside of what had been presented to them as the life they were expected to lead. Some may have wanted love. Some mayhave wanted the stability that came with marriage, or children, or companionship.
