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“That’s not love,” I said. “She didn’t get mad because she doesn’t care about those things. If she truly loved me, she would prove it.”
“How?” Golden Dove asked. “What is there to prove?”
I was thrown into mute confusion. I did not know what love was. All I knew was a gnawing need for her attention and assurances. I wanted to feel without worry that I was more important than anyone else in her life. When I thought about it further, I realized she had given more attention to the beauties than to me. She had spent more time with Golden Dove. She had risen before noon to have lunch with her friends, the bosomy opera singer, the traveling widow, and the French lady spy. She had devoted much more attention to her customers than to anybody else. What love had they received that she had not given me?
That night I overheard a maid in the corridor telling another that she was worried sick because her three-year-old daughter had a high fever. The next night, she announced happily that her daughter had recovered. In the afternoon of the next day, the woman’s screams reverberated in the courtyard. A relative had come to say her child had died. She wailed, “How can that be? I held her this morning. I combed her hair.” In between her sobs, she described her daughter’s big eyes, the way she always turned her head to listen to her, how musical her laughter was. She babbled that she was saving money to buy her a jacket, that she had bought a turnip for a healthy soup. Later she moaned that she wanted to die to be with her daughter. Who else did she have to live for? I cried secretly as I listened to her grief. If I died, would Mother feel the same about me? I cried harder, knowing she would not.
A week after Mother had tricked me, she came into the room where I was studying with my tutor. It was only eleven, an hour before she usually rose from bed. I gave her my sullen face. She asked if I would like to have lunch with her at the new French restaurant on Great Western Road. I was wary. I asked her who else would be there.
”Just the two of us,” she replied. “It’s your birthday.”
I had forgotten. No one celebrated birthdays in the house. It was not a Chinese custom, and Mother had not made it hers. My birthday usually occurred near the Chinese New Year, and that was what we celebrated, with everyone. I tried to not be too excited, but a surge of joy went through me. I went to my room to put on a nice day dress, one that had not been snagged by Carlotta’s claws. I selected a blue coat and a hat of a similar color. I put on a grown-up pair of walking shoes of shiny leather that laced up to my ankles. I saw myself in the long oval mirror. I looked different, nervous, and worried. I was now eight, no longer the innocent little girl who trusted her feelings. I had once expected happiness and lately had received only disappointments, one after the other. I now expected disappointment and prayed to be proven wrong.
When I went to Mother’s study, I found that Golden Dove and she were laying out the tasks for the day. She was walking back and forth in her wrapper, her hair unbound.
“The old tax collector is coming tonight,” Mother was saying. “He promises that some extra attention may make him inattentive to my tax bill. We’ll see if the old dog fart is telling the truth this time.”
“I’ll send a call chit to Crimson,” Golden Dove said, “the courtesan at the Hall of Verdant Peace. She’ll take any kind of business these days. I’ll advise her to wear dark colors, dark blue. Pink is unflattering on someone well past youth. She should know better. I’ll also tell the cook to make the fish you like, but not with the American flavors. I know he wants to please you, but it never comes out right, and we all suffer.”
“Do you have the list for tonight’s guests?” Mother said. “I don’t want the importer from Smythe and Dixon to come anymore. None of his information has been reliable. He’s been sniffing around to get something for nothing. We’ll give his name to Cracked Egg so he does not get past the gate …”
By the time she and Golden Dove finished, it was nearly one. She left me in the office and went to her room to change into a dress. I wandered around her office, and Carlotta followed me, rubbing against my legs wherever I stood. A round table was cluttered with knickknacks, the sorts of gifts some of her admirers gave her, not knowing she preferred money. Golden Dove sold the knickknacks she did not want. I picked up each object, and Carlotta jumped up and sniffed. An amber egg with a bug inside—that one would certainly go. An amethyst-and-jade bird—she might keep that. A glass display case of butterflies from different lands—she must hate that one. A painting of a green parrot—I liked it, but the only paintings Mother put on the walls were nude Greek gods and goddesses. I turned the pages of an illustrated book called The World of the Sea and saw illustrations of hideous creatures. I used a nearby magnifying glass to enlarge the titles of books in the bookcase: The Religions of India, Travels to Japan and China, China in Convulsion. I came across a red-covered book embossed with the black silhouette of a boy in uniform shooting a rifle. Under the Allied Flags: A Boxer Story. A note was stuck in the middle of the pages. It was written in the careful script of a schoolboy.
My dear Miss Minturn,
If ever you need an American lad who knows how to obey orders, will you consider using me as volunteer aide? I’d like to make myself as useful as you desire.
Your faithful servant,
Ned Peaver
Had Mother accepted his offer to be her faithful servant? I read the page where the note had been inserted. It was about a soldier named Ned Peaver—aha!—during the Boxer Rebellion. After a quick glance at the page, I concluded Ned was a dull, prissy boy, who always followed orders. I had always disliked anything to do with the Boxer Rebellion. I was two years old in 1900 when the worst of the rebellion took place, and I believed I could have died in the violence. I had read a book about young men who swore themselves into the brotherhood of Boxers when millions of peasants in the middle of China were starving due to a flood one year, and a drought the next. When they heard rumors that foreigners were going to be given their land, they killed about two hundred white missionaries and their children. By one account, a brave little girl sang sweetly as her parents watched her being sent by the whack of a sword to heaven. Whenever I pictured it, I touched my soft throat and swallowed hard.
I looked at the clock. Its newly repaired hands said it was now two o’clock. I had been waiting nearly three hours since she announced we would have lunch. All at once, my head and heart exploded. I ripped up Ned Peaver’s letter. I went to the table with my mother’s plunder and hurled the case of butterflies onto the floor. Carlotta ran off. I threw down the amethyst bird, the magnifying glass, the amber egg. I tore off the cover of The World of the Sea. Golden Dove ran in and looked at the mess, horrified. “Why do you hurt her?” she said mournfully. “Why is your temper so bad?”
“It’s two o’clock. She said she was taking me to a restaurant for my birthday. Now she’s not coming. She didn’t remember. She always forgets I’m even here.” My eyes were blurry with tears. “She doesn’t love me. She loves all those men.”
Golden Dove picked up the amber egg and magnifying glass. “These were your gifts.”
“Those are things that men gave her and she doesn’t want.”
“How can you think that? She chose them just for you.”
“Why didn’t she come back to take me to lunch?”
“Ai-ya! You did this because you’re hungry? All you had to do was ask the maid to bring you something to eat.”
I did not know how to explain what the outing to the restaurant had meant to me. I blurted a jumble of wounds: “She tells the men that they are the ones she wants to see. She told me the same, but it was a trick. She doesn’t worry anymore when I’m sad or lonely …”
Golden Dove frowned. “Your mother spoils you, and this is the result. You have no gratitude, only a temper when you do not get your way.”
“She didn’t keep her promise and she didn’t say she was sorry.”
“She was upset. She got a letter—”
“She gets many letters.” I kicked at the confetti of Ned’s note.
“This letter was different.” She stared at me in an odd way. “It was about your father. He’s dead.”
I did not understand what she had said at first. My father. What did that mean? I was five when I first asked Mother where my father was. Everyone had one, I learned, even the courtesans whose fathers had sold them. Mother told me that I had no father. When I pressed her, she said that he had died before I was born. Over the next three years, I pressed Mother from time to time to tell me who my father was.
“What does it matter?” she always said. “He’s dead, and it was so very long ago I’ve even forgotten his name and what he looked like.”
How could she have forgotten his name? Would she forget mine if I died? I pestered her for answers. When she grew quiet and frowned, I sensed it was dangerous to continue.
But now the truth was out. He was alive! Or he had been. My confusion gave way to a shaky anger. Mother had been lying all this time when he was alive. He may have loved me, and by not telling me that he was alive, she had stolen him from me. Now he was truly dead and it was too late.
I ran into my mother’s office, shrieking, “He was never dead. You kept him from me.” I blubbered every accusation that went through my head. She did not tell me the truth about anything that mattered to me. She lied when she told me I was just the one she hoped to see. She lied about lunch … Mother was speechless.
Golden Dove rushed in. “I told her that you had received a letter announcing her father had just died.”
Mother stared hard at her. Was she angry? Would she dismiss us both, as she did those who displeased her? She put down the terrible letter. She led me to the sofa and sat me next to her. And then she did what she had not done in a long time: She petted my head and whispered soothing words, which made me cry even harder. “Violet, dearest, I truly thought he was dead all these years. I found it too painful to think about him, to say anything about him. And now, to receive this letter …” The rims of her eyes were shiny, but the dam of her emotions held.
When I could breathe again, I asked her question after question, and to each she nodded and said yes. Was he nice? Was he rich? Did everyone like him? Was he older than she was? Did he ever love me? Did he ever play with me? Did he say my name? Mother continued to stroke my hair and rub my shoulders. I felt so sad and did not want her to stop comforting me. I continued to ask questions until my mind was exhausted. By then, I was weak from hunger. Golden Dove called for a servant to bring my lunch to Boulevard. “Your mother needs to be by herself now.” Mother gave me a kiss and went to her bedroom.
As I ate, Golden Dove told me how hard my mother had to struggle without a husband. “All her work has been for you, Little Violet,” she said. “Be grateful, be nice to your mother.” Before she left, she suggested I study and become smart to show my mother how much I appreciated her. Instead of studying, however, I lay on the bed in Boulevard to think about my newly deceased father. I began to put together a picture of him: His hair was brown; his eyes were green, just like mine. I soon fell asleep.
I was still drowsy and thickheaded when I heard someone arguing. I realized I was not in my own room but still in Boulevard. I went to the window and looked out onto the hallway to see the cause of the commotion. The sky was dark gray, at that suspended time between night and morning. The hallways were empty. The windows across the courtyard were black. I turned around and saw a warm sliver of light coming through a small opening of the curtains over the glass French doors. The angry voice was my mother’s. I looked through the curtain opening and saw the back of her head. She had loosened her hair and was seated on the sofa. She had come back from the party. Was anyone else in the room? I put my ear to the glass. She was cursing in a strange low voice that sounded like Carlotta’s deep-throated growl. “You’re spineless … a dancing monkey … as much character as a filthy thief …” She threw down a folded piece of paper. It landed near the unlit fireplace. Was it the letter she had received? She went to her desk and sat down, seized a sheet of stationery, then slashed at it with her dripping pen. She crumpled the half-written page and threw it onto the floor. “I wish you really were dead!” she shouted.
My father was alive! She had lied again! I was about to rush in and demand to know where my father was. But then she looked up and I nearly cried out in fright. Her eyes had changed. The green irises had turned inside out, and the backs of them were as dull as sand. She had the eyes of dead beggars I had seen lying in gutters. She abruptly stood up, turned down the lamps, and went to her bedroom. I had to see the letter. I opened the French doors carefully. It was dark and I had to move forward blindly, sweeping my hands to avoid bumping into the furniture. I went to my knees. Suddenly I felt someone touch me, and I gasped. It was Carlotta. She pushed her head against me, purring. I could now feel the tiles of the fireplace. I patted the hearth. Nothing. I found the legs of the desk, and raised myself slowly. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, but I saw no sign of anything that resembled a letter. I crept out of the room, bitterly disappointed.
The next day, Mother acted as she always had—brisk and clearheaded as she laid out the tasks. She was charming and talkative in the evening, smiling as always at her guests. While she and Golden Dove were busy during the party, I sneaked into Boulevard, opened the French doors just wide enough to push through the curtains and into my mother’s office. I turned on one gas lamp. I opened desk drawers, and one was filled with letters whose envelopes had embossed names of companies. I looked under her pillow, in the little cabinet next to her bed. I lifted the lid of her trunk at the foot of her bed. The smell of turpentine flew out. The source was two rolled-up paintings. I unfurled one and was astonished to see a portrait of Mother as a young girl. I placed it on the floor and smoothed it out. She was staring straight ahead, as if she were looking at me. Over her chest, she held a maroon cloth. Her pale back glowed like the cold warmth of the moon. Who painted this? Why had she been so scantily dressed?
I was about to look at the other painting when I was startled by the approaching laughter of Puffy Cloud. The door to Boulevard opened. I jumped to the side of the office, where she would not be able to see me. She cooed to a client to make himself comfortable. Of all nights for her to be overly popular! Puffy Cloud pulled the French doors closed. I hurriedly put the paintings back in the trunk and was about to turn down the lamp and leave when Golden Dove came into the room.
We both gasped at the same time. Before she could speak, I asked if she had seen Carlotta. As if she had heard me, Carlotta let out a loud wail behind the doors of Boulevard. Puffy Cloud cursed, “I thought that damn cat was a headless ghost!” I went to the French doors and opened them slightly, and Carlotta darted in.
With Carlotta in my arms, I quickly went downstairs to the party, thinking I might spot my father lurking among the guests. But then I realized my father would not have dared show his face there. My mother would have scratched his eyes out. I looked at the guests and played a game of pretend—imagining one man after another was my father. I picked out the traits I liked—the ones who laughed easily, who wore the best clothes, who received the most respect, who winked at me. And then my eye landed on a man with a pinched and unfriendly expression, and another whose face was so pink he looked like he was about to explode.
In bed, before falling asleep each night, I imagined different versions of my father: handsome or ugly, well respected or loathed by all. I imagined he had loved me very much. I imagined he never had.
A MONTH AFTER my eighth birthday, I entered the common room to have breakfast with the Cloud Beauties and their attendants. I went to sit in my usual spot at the table. But I found that the newest courtesan, Misty Cloud, had placed her bottom on my chair. I glowered, and she returned a glance of indifference. She had miniature features set in a plump, round face, which men found attractive for some reason. To me, she had the ugly face of a baby pasted onto the yellow moon.
“This is my chair,” I said.
“Oyo! Your chair? Is it carved with your name? Is there an official decree?” She pretended to inspect the arms and legs. “I don’t see your name seal. All the chairs are the same.”
My temples were beating hard. “It’s my chair.”
“Anh? What makes you think you’re the only one who can sit here?”
“Lulu Mimi is my mother,” I added, “and I’m an American like her.”
“Since when do half-breed American bastards have the same rights?”
I was shocked. Rage was rising from my throat. Two of the beauties put their palms to their mouths. Snowy Cloud, whom I had liked more than the others, told us to calm down. She suggested we take turns sitting in the chair. I had hoped she would have taken my side.
I sputtered to Misty Cloud, “You’re a worm in a dead fish ass.” The maids burst into laughter.
“Wah! The half-breed has such a foul mouth,” Misty Cloud said. She looked around the table to the others. “If she’s not a half-breed, how is it that she looks Chinese?”
“How dare you say that!” I cried. “I’m American. There’s nothing Chinese about me.”
“Then why are you speaking Chinese?”
I could not answer at first, because if I did, I would be speaking in Chinese again and give her the upper hand. Misty Cloud picked up a small oily peanut with her thin pointed chopsticks. “Do any of you know who her Chinese father is?” She popped the peanut into her mouth.
My hands were shaking with anger, and I was incensed to see how calmly she was eating. “My mother will punish you for saying that.”
She repeated what I said in a mocking tone, then popped a pickled radish in her mouth and crunched it, without bothering to cover her mouth. “If you are pure white, then all of us must be, too. Isn’t that right, my sisters?” The other beauties and their attendants tried halfheartedly to silence her.
“You’re a dirty hole!” I said.
She frowned. “What’s the matter, little brat? Are you so ashamed to be Chinese that you can’t recognize your face in a mirror?”
The others looked down. Two made sideways glances to each other. Billowy Cloud put her hand on Misty Cloud’s arm and beseeched her to stop. “She’s too young for you to speak of this.”
Why was Billowy Cloud acting so charitably toward me? Did that mean she believed what Misty Cloud had said? I fell into a cauldron of rage and I pushed Misty Cloud out of the chair. She was too dumbfounded to move for a moment, then grabbed my ankles and pulled me down. I pounded my fists on her shoulders. She grabbed my hair and flung me away from her.
“Half-breed crazy little bastard girl. You’re no better than any of us!”
I hurled myself at her and banged the heel of my hand on her nose. Blood gushed from one of her nostrils, and when she wiped at it and she saw her crimson fingers, she threw herself on top of me again and smeared blood across my face. I was screaming epithets and bit her hand. She screamed, and her eyes looked as if they were going to pop out of her sockets. She grabbed me by the neck and was choking me. I struggled to breathe, and in my panic to escape, I punched her in the eye. She jumped up and cried out in horror. I had delivered one of the worst things that could happen to a girl: a black eye. She would not be able to appear at parties for as long as the bruise was visible. Misty Cloud shrieked and lunged at me and slapped my face, vowing she would kill me. The other girls and attendants screamed for us to stop. The menservants rushed in and pulled us apart.
All at once, everyone fell silent, and the only sounds were Misty Cloud’s curses. It was my mother and Golden Dove. I thought Mother had come to rescue me. But a moment later, I noticed her eyes had gone as gray as knives.
Misty Cloud cried in a fake way: “She damaged my eye—”
I put my hand to my neck, as if it hurt. “She almost choked me to death!”
“I want money for my eye!” Misty Cloud shouted. “I was making more money for you than the others, and if I can’t work until my eye is better, I want the money I would have earned.”
My mother stared at her. “If I do not give it to you, then what will you do?”
“I’ll leave and tell everyone that this brat is a half-breed.”
“Well, we can’t have you going around telling lies simply because you’re angry. Violet, tell her you’re sorry.”
Misty Cloud gave me a sneer of victory. “What about my money?” she said to my mother.
Mother turned and left the room without answering her. I followed, puzzled that she had not stood up for me. When we reached her room, I cried, “She called me a half-breed bastard.”
Mother cursed under her breath. Usually she laughed at people’s insults. But this time, her silence frightened me. I wanted her to quell my fears.
“Is it true? Am I half-Chinese? Do I have a Chinese father?”
She turned around and said in a dangerous voice: “Your father is dead. I told you that. Do not talk about this again, not to anyone.”
I was terrified by the deadness in her voice, by the many fears it put in my heart. What was true? Which was worse?
The next day, Misty Cloud was gone. She was kicked out, the others said. I felt no victory now, only queasiness that I had inflicted greater harm than I had intended. I knew the reason she was gone. She had spilled the truth. Would she now spread it wherever she went?
I asked the gatekeeper if he knew where Misty Cloud had gone.
Cracked Egg was scraping a rusty bolt. “She was too busy spitting insults at your mother to stop on her way out and give me the address of her new house. With that black eye, she might not have anywhere to go for a while.”
“Did you hear what she called me?” I was anxious for the answer that would tell me how far the lie had spread.
“Ai-ya. Don’t listen to her. She’s the one who has mixed blood,” he said. “She thinks the white part of her makes her as good as you.”
White? Misty Cloud had dark eyes and dark hair. No one would mistake her for being anything but pure Chinese.
“Do you think I look half-Chinese?” I asked him quietly.
He looked at me and laughed. “You look nothing like her.” He went back to scraping the bolt.
I was relieved.
And then he said, “Certainly not half. Maybe just a few drops.”
A cold fear ran from scalp to toes.
“Eh, I was only joking.” He said it in a soft tone, one that was too comforting.
“Her mother was half-Swedish,” I later heard Cracked Egg tell an attendant, “married to a Shanghainese, who soon died and left her all alone with a baby. Her husband’s family refused to recognize her as his widow, and since she had no family of her own, she had no choice but to turn tricks on the streets. And then, when she saw men asking for Misty Cloud when she was only eleven, she sold her to a first-class courtesan house, where she would at least have some chance at a better life than hers. That’s what I heard from the gatekeeper at the House of Li where Misty Cloud worked before she came here. If she had not thrown a fit at the madam there, she might have been able to come back.”
Later, in my room, I sat on my bed for an hour, holding a looking glass in my lap, unable to bring it to my face. And when I finally did, I saw my green eyes and brown hair and sighed with relief. I put down the mirror. The worry soon returned. I pulled my hair back and tied it with a ribbon so that I could see my face fully. I held my breath and picked up the mirror. Again, I saw nothing Chinese. I smiled, and as soon as I did, my plump cheeks tilted my eyes at the outer corners, and this instant change sent my heart pounding. I recognized too clearly the signs of my unknown father: my slightly rounded nose, the tipped-up nostrils, the fat below my eyebrows, the smooth roundness of my forehead, the plump cheeks and lips. My mother had none of these features.
What was happening to me? I wanted to run and leave behind this new face. My limbs were heavy. I looked in the mirror again and again, hoping my face would change back to what I used to see. So this was why my mother had no special affection for me anymore. The Chinese part of my Chinese father was spreading across my face like a stain. If she hated him enough to wish he did not exist, she must feel the same about me. I unbundled my hair and shook it so it fell like a dark curtain over my face.
A cool breeze swept over my arms. The Poet Ghost had arrived to tell me that he had known all along I was Chinese.
I USED A spyglass to observe every Chinese man who came to Hidden Jade Path. They were the educated, the wealthy, and the powerful men of the city. Were any of them my father? I watched to see if my mother showed greater affection or anger toward any of them. But, as usual, she appeared to be as interested in one as in another. She gave them her special smile, her intimate laugh, her well-acted sincere and special words meant only for each and every one of them.
I was aware of only one Chinese man whom she treated with genuine honesty and respect: Cracked Egg, the gatekeeper. She saw him every day and even took tea with him downstairs. He knew the latest gossip about the men on the guest list. The gatekeepers of all the houses saw and heard everything and shared it among themselves. My mother often remarked to Golden Dove about Cracked Egg’s loyalty and sharp mind.
How Cracked Egg got his name I could not imagine. He was hardly stupid. Whatever my mother told him about those businesses, he was able to keep in his head. He could neither read nor write more than a few words, but he could read people’s character. He had sharp eyes for recognizing which guest should be welcomed, and what their social standing was. He spotted the faces of their sons who stood awkwardly at the gate, and he made them especially welcome, knowing this visit would be their initiation into the world of male pleasures. He memorized the names of all the wealthy and the powerful who had not yet visited the house. From the particular type of eagerness that a man displayed upon presenting himself at the gate, Cracked Egg could determine what the man intended to do that night—whether to court a Cloud Beauty or a business partner—which he then reported to my mother. He noted the man’s appearance—from the grooming of his hair to the heels of his shoes, the tailored details of his clothes and his comfort in wearing them. He knew the hallmarks of longstanding prestige that might separate the man from those who had more recently acquired it. On his rare days off, Cracked Egg dressed in a fine suit, a castoff left by a client. From years of observation, he could imitate the manners of a gentleman, even in his speech. He always kept himself groomed; his hair was barbered, his fingernails were clean. After Cracked Egg said I had drops of Chinese blood, I considered he might be the one who was my father. Even though I liked him, I would be ashamed if he was. And if he was, perhaps my mother was too ashamed to tell me. But how could she have taken him as a lover? He was not cultivated, nor handsome like her other lovers. His face was long, his nose too fleshy, and his eyes were far apart. He was older than my mother, perhaps forty. Next to my mother, he appeared slight of frame. What’s more, thankfully, I did not resemble him in any way.
But what if he was my father? His character was good, that’s what mattered. He was always kind. To those men on the list who came to the gate and did not meet his standards, he would be apologetic that there was an excessive number of guests who had arrived unexpectedly for a large party. To the young students and foreign sailors, he gave an uncle’s advice: “Cross Beaten Dog Bridge and try the opium flower house called Silver Bells. A great old gal named Plume will let you have a go at her once you’ve bought a few pipefuls.”
