“Good Lord,” I say when they leave.
Ana has her hand pressed against her forehead. “At least they bought them instead of taking a photo in the store and leaving.”
“What if they return them after taking photos at home?”
Ana sighs. “I made it clear returns were only for store credit. That might stop them. My returns are increasing each month.”
She looks defeated, which is such an unusual look on her I don’t know what to do. Mom came in at the end of the conversation, and although I think she’s going to jump in with advice, she doesn’t.
Ana glances at her watch, a vintage Rolex she found for a song that is one of her prized possessions. “I have to go out for an hour,” she says. “Can I leave the store with you?”
After waving goodbye to Ana, Mom walks through the displays, twitching a glove here and a hat there.
“I went through and added some more definitions to your list of characters you don’t know,” she says as she takes out a duster. “Also, you need something that traps dust. This only spreads it around.” She gives a demonstration swipe, then points to the air where little motes drift through the sunbeams. “Zhengyi would be horrified.”
That makes me laugh. “Ana likes the retro look of the feathers.”
“Then keep one for show and get something that works to hide in the back. No one wants to buy dusty stock. Makes them think they have poor taste because no one else wanted it.”
A man comes in to find a gift for his daughter’s birthday. With a few simple questions, Mom directs him to the tiaras and then suggests a few accessories. After I cash him out, I think back to the register and the characters Mom is helping with.
“It’s so ridiculous, anyway, how this works,” I say.
“What is?” Mom adjusts the tiara display.
“That the fifth daughter isn’t supposed to start transcribing the register until everyone else is dead,” I say. “It makes no sense. How can she ask questions? Get clarification or bounce ideas off the other women if no one is left?”
Mom straightens up. “What on earth do you mean?”
“I mean, she has to transcribe all alone. All the people who could have helped her are gone.” It’s easier to think of the transcriber as some distant fifth daughter and not myself.
“You’re thinking of it the wrong way.”
“How? Is there a necromancy component I didn’t know about?”
“Don’t be glib.” She moves the tiaras again. “Zhengyi didn’t work in a vacuum, Luling. She lived with her grandmother and mother and even her great-grandmother.”
“So?”
“They talked,” she says, irritated she needs to spell it out. “Zhengyi would have been talking and listening to them all the time, hearing their stories as they worked. Asking questions. Telling jokes. By the time she started transcribing, she had those memories to rely on. She would have been reading and rereading the register for years while her elders were still alive, checking in with them if there was something she didn’t understand.”
I think about this as she goes to the back. For generations, the Hua women lived in the same compound, sharing their whole lives. I learned a lot on my own, but what wisdom could I have learned if I had stayed? What stories will die because of me? Mom didn’t blame me, but I feel the family responsibility. I didn’t appreciate what I was missing.
The door jangles again and I look up. “Hiii,” says one of the influencers from earlier. “I need to, like, return this?”
Before I can answer, Mom steps into the room. “Ah,” she says. “What’s the issue?”
“It’s not, like, for me?”
Mom clucks. “It certainly is. Let me show you how to style it.”
I never thought I’d see my mother demonstrating how to wear rainbow suspenders, but here we are. By the time Mom has shown her how to wear them with a tube top—thankfully, not on herself—the influencer is almost dancing up and down. “I’m obsessed, my pretty baby,” she says as she leaves. “Obsessed.”
Mom waits until she’s out the door before she turns to me, mouth twitching. “Pretty baby?” she asks.
I roll my eyes. “Don’t ask. And please never call me that.”
This makes her laugh and I smile. I forgot how much I loved it when she laughed.
