Chapter Six #2
“No need to be so proper.” Sai Ma sat on one end of the settee and beckoned me close. “Your Gu Ma had some business to attend in Macau, otherwise she’d be here to welcome you. I’m sorry I kept you waiting in the meantime, but I see you’ve found the phonograph. Do you know what it is?”
I was shy. “It . . . it plays songs.”
“Songs,” she repeated. “From the way you spoke just now, I can tell you like music.”
“I love music.”
“So do I.” Sai Ma looked young when she smiled. “It’s one of life’s great pleasures. My little Lily’s recently begun piano lessons.”
I perked. So, my sister’s name was Lily. I wanted to ask more about her, but I didn’t dare. Maybe it was Sai Ma’s beauty, or maybe it was because she was my new mother. I only knew I very much wanted her approval.
Eagerly I took the teapot that the maid had set down and poured Sai Ma a brimming cup.
“That’s enough,” said Sai Ma, touching my arm. “In Hong Kong, we pour to three quarters full. Too much, and you’ll burn your guest to death.”
“Oh.” I flushed, feeling like a fool. We had no such rule in Tunglam, but it made sense. My fingers were used to scalding temperatures; for a dainty woman like Sai Ma, she’d burn herself simply picking up the cup. “I’m sorry.”
“You’ll learn,” Sai Ma said warmly. She left the tea alone. “Now tell me, have you learned an instrument?”
“N-No. I sing, though. Only a little, mostly to myself.”
“You sing?” Sai Ma’s expression brightened. “I used to be an opera singer. I was even onstage a few times before the war. That was how I met your father.”
I found it difficult to picture my playboy father attending a Cantonese opera, but what did I know? I smiled politely. “Will you sing again now that the war is over?”
“Hong Kong belongs to the British, and the British have no appreciation for our music.” She released a sigh, her shoulders dropping as she touched her belly. “Besides, I have children now. That life is over for me.
“Now enough about that. Sit with me, I want to look at you properly.”
I took the chair beside her. This close, she smelled of lavender—rich, clean, and sweet. Never had I been more self-conscious of the caterpillar brows I’d inherited from Mama, or the acute whiff of vinegar that emanated off my dress, making me smell like a pickle.
Sai Ma was kind. “You have dimples when you smile, like peaches,” she murmured with approval, “and good teeth, too. No wonder your ah ma sent you here. You’re going to be a beauty one day.”
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.”