Tommy gave me an amused look. “You’re not really a maid, are you?”
“Why?”
“Most maids don’t have opinions like you do, or wave their cleavers at a guest.”
Heat bloomed in my cheeks. “Maybe I’m just a bad maid.”
“You’re also good at evading questions.”
“Only silly ones.”
“I’ve been nursing a curious notion,” he said, “that you’re related to Madam Chan.”
I flinched. “What makes you think that? Do you see a resemblance?”
He picked up one of my orange slices. “I’m not fool enough to fall into that trap. You don’t look like her, thank God, but you do look like her brother.”
“Who’s her brother?” I asked, pretending not to know.
“The one with two wives: the opera singer and the opium pipe.”
He said it deadpan, yet there was a twinkle in his eye, and I couldn’t help laughing.
“Finally, I made you laugh. Now we’re friends.”
I cut my laugh short. “Will you go? I’m working.”
“Why are you in the kitchen and not attending your family’s party?”
He spoke like someone who’d been raised only around adults. I couldn’t help enjoying his company.
I like to cook,I thought about replying, for it was true. I’d planted spring onions in a pot by the window, and my lotus seeds were finally germinating. I was also pickling radishes and brining salted eggs in a jug of vinegar and rice wine.
“One of the helpers couldn’t come,” I replied. “I offered to help.”
“I see.” He looked relieved. “I was worried that they treated you like Yeh Shen.”
“Who?”
“It’s a fairy tale we read in primary school. It’s a good story—and Yeh Shen reminds me of you. She was the daughter of a local magistrate with two wives, but after her parents died—”
“My parents aren’t dead,” I interrupted.
“Let me finish. After her parents died, she was forced into becoming a servant for her stepmother. Horribly unfair, yet Yeh Shen never complained. She was kind and pretty. Like you.”
I cast Tommy a sidelong glance. Had he just called me pretty?
“One day, when she went to the river to wash the clothes, she met a fish with real gold scales. He was a guardian spirit that her mother had sent from heaven.”
He paused, and I hated that I was curious. “What happens next?”
“She befriended him and went to the river every day to feed him. Weeks passed, then months. Soon it was time for the Spring Festival. Yeh Shen wished that she could go. But her stepmother wouldn’t allow it.”
Frowning, I placed the last of the strawberries onto the cake. “Are you making this up?”
“I’m not smart enough to come up with a story like this,” he protested. “There’s even a western version called Cinderella.”
“Cinderella?”
