“I am going to go through every step to make sure when you do it later, you know exactly what to do.”
“I know what to do,” I remind her. “I did it already. That’s why I came to Vancouver. It worked for Kelsey’s samples. I just don’t know why, or if these do.”
“We also don’t know if it works all the time. Let’s start at the beginning and make sure it’s not an issue with your process.”
I wait for her to mention giving them to a client to test again, but all she does is say, “Watch, Luling.”
I do. The first thing I notice is Mom’s calm. She writes her huo with bold strokes, the characters so familiar that she would probably hesitate more if forced to think of each movement individually rather than letting them flow. Unlike me, who held the bottle with hands shaking with dread, Mom exudes casual confidence.
She doesn’t look at me before she closes her eyes.
Then nothing.
Mom droops and nearly drops the bottle. “There,” she says with satisfaction before she sips from the tea she gave me.
“It looks the same as when I do it.” I frown. “What did it feel like? Walk me through it.”
She looks exasperated. “I told you to watch.”
I keep my temper. “I can’t see your thoughts.”
Mom puts the bottle down, and I go to the sink to get her some water. “I thought of the world around me and put the energy in. It’s best not to think too much, Luling. You need to feel it.”
I bring her the water and sit down again. “That’s fine for you to say now, but when you were starting out, I bet you thought about it. Every step.”
“No,” she said, looking at the bottle. “I believed. That’s the difference.”
My brain feels like it’s going to explode. “That’s not the difference! I believed. You don’t think I believed?”
“You were distracted.” She points at her huo. “I remember when you chose your huo,” she says. “I chose mine by instinct. So did your grandmother. You kept saying yours had to be perfect, it had to be right. You never understood the huo is only a conduit. It could be a sketch of a squid and work, as long as you believed it would. You lacked confidence in your ability to get it right.”
“I wasn’t distracted.”
“No? That summer was hard for you, when you were so sad about Rafe. You looked through every book in the house searching for the right huo. I have the notebook where you tried different ones.”
I stay silent. She noticed I was miserable. She knew it was about Rafe. Yet in my memories of that summer, she didn’t say a word about it or once mention his name. Odd—at the time, I took her not talking about Rafe as another rejection, that she was so caught up in my first moli she saw me only as the continuation of the Hua line instead of as a person. Was I wrong? Perhaps she was giving me space, waiting for me to come to her. Not mentioning Rafe was a kindness she tried to extend me.
She rubs her hands together to stop the shaking. Making a moli fragrance takes a lot out of someone.
“I’ll call a cab,” I say. “Let’s get you home.”
“I want you to—”
“It can wait,” I say.
Then she nods, giving in to me for the first time in her life. It doesn’t feel like a victory, because I’m not thinking of winners and losers. Perhaps one day we can simply be us, and it can start here.
24
Hua Changchang
Ming dynasty. Changchang collected porcelain from the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen, and for years sought a gold-gilded cup said to be the only one ever made. She never found it.
Heart note //Boost hope
Base note //Agarwood
The next day is rainy, and Mom decides to stay with me instead of going for a walk. “I have some ideas I want to work on,” she says as we share coffee with Ana. “I’ll stay out of the way.”
