My eyes bulged. “Ah Ma sent me here to go to school! I’m not here to attract a husband.”
As soon as the words rushed out, I clamped my lips shut. Too late, Sai Ma was already laughing.
“Oh, you are a darling,” she said, touching my shoulder as I shrank back. “I didn’t mean for you to find a husband, Yut Ying. I only meant that there is opportunity in beauty as well as in books. Look at a woman such as Yeung An Nie. She’s the most popular singer these days and no one cares how learned she is, only that she’s on the arm of the richest man in the city.” Sai Ma twirled the strand of moon-white pearls looping at her throat. “This is Hong Kong, not a village like Tunglam. A beautiful girl can go far.” She acknowledged my furrowed brow. “It’s not quite a mother’s advice, is it?”
“No,” I admitted.
“That’s because your mother is a wise and sensible woman. I heard about the camp she built during the war. It’s thanks to her that Mother Ha even survived.”
Hearing Sai Ma say nice things about Mama made me warm to her. I’d been worried that she might see me as the troubled—and troublesome—daughter of Baba’s first wife. It was hard not to feel relief.
“I was hoping she would have come with you,” Sai Ma went on. “Your father talks about her often. He’s mentioned her steamed sponge cakes more than once and her pork bone soup.”
My ears perked. I was surprised that Baba would talk about the family he’d abandoned, but maybe after all these years, he did miss us. “I know how to make both,” I said eagerly. “She taught me how to make all her dishes.”
“Then you must cook for us.” Sai Ma clapped in delight. “Your father will appreciate having a taste of home. Our cook left recently for a new job, and Susu and Tingting aren’t so good in the kitchen.”
Susu and Tingting.I glanced at the two maids standing by the door. One looked fifty and the other fifteen. Both wore plain cotton shirts and black trousers.
I’d like that,I meant to say, but before I got a chance, Baba called me to the den.
It was the room adjacent to the parlor. My stepmother escorted me inside, the smell of her lavender perfume a buffering presence from the thick eddies of chalk-white smoke. The fumes made me heady, and I barely noticed my brother huffing out the door.
Baba sat in a lamplit corner next to the window, gauzy curtains sweeping over the cabriole legs of his chaise. He was smoking his pipe, probably his second or third of the day given how languid his pupils looked. It’d been six, no, seven years since I’d seen him. His face was sallow and broader than I remembered, and his mustache was gone, exposing a red and puckered mouth.
He was sunk in a reverie when I arrived, his blinks slow and ponderous.This turtle couldn’t be my father,I thought. Then he leaned forward in his chair, one vertebra at a time, and, in the same gentle tenor that once lulled me to sleep, he said, “You’ve grown tall like your mother. How old are you now?”
I could hardly summon a whisper. “Eleven.”
“Speak up.”
I drew a breath. “I’m eleven years old.”
“You’re thinner than I remembered,” Baba said, gaining enough clarity to show that he disapproved. “Your grandmother is well? And your oldest brother?”
“They’re well,” I replied, noting he didn’t ask about Mama.
“Good.” Baba sank back into his chair. “I hear that you do poorly in school.”
I winced. Had Ah Ma told him that? A retort sprang on my tongue, but I held it back. I yearned for Baba to call me his little mooncake mold and beckon me to his side. However, his eyes were flat. The only gesture he made was an inhale through his pipe.
“That’s why I am here,” I responded. “I’d like to do better.”
He swirled the smoke in his mouth. “Out of respect for my mother, I sent an inquiry to Lily’s school, but if you cannot read or write there will be no use for you there.”
“She can’t read?” Sai Ma said.
My stepmother padded across the carpet to light one of the table lamps, and I quickly looked down. I’d wanted so badly to win her approval—I couldn’t bear losing it now.
“I know a few characters,” I said defensively.
Sai Ma rested her hand on Baba’s shoulder. “Perhaps she can go to a local school until she catches up. That way, she can keep me company in the afternoons. Wouldn’t you like that, Yut Ying? We can work on your reading, and if there’s time, I can even give you some music lessons.”
My face grew brighter than the lamp. “Yes, please.”
“Grace,” said Baba, “I don’t want you tiring yourself.”
“I have nothing to do before the baby arrives. It would amuse me to have a pupil, at least until things are settled.”
