Chapter Twenty-Seven
A sickness fell upon me. For days, I burned with fever and vomited every time I ate or drank. My body was full of disagreements—I was hot yet cold, my head light as water while the rest of me was weighed down like an anchor. I sank into the bed, certain that I might never rise again.
Gu Ma sent for Dr. Wong. One niece’s ghost haunting the house was perilous enough. Two would be a catastrophe.
I became sure that I was carrying Tommy’s child, and in my delirium, I took Dr. Wong for a demon, the very one who’d visited my mother twenty years ago and had murdered her unborn twins. I thrashed at him. I clawed and punched until Gu Ma had to send for help. I wouldn’t let anyone touch me.
At night when I was asleep, in the dark, someone spooned soup into my mouth, so bitter that I tried to spit it out.
They pinched my nose and forced it down, patting my cheek like a baby when I swallowed.
Then came my reward: a chunk of candied persimmon, sweet enough to erase the herbal, nettle-like tang on my tongue.
Night after night this routine continued.
On the eighth day, my fever broke. As I sat up in bed, a sticky gush released into my underpants, delayed a few days by my sickness.
I was always hungry during this time of the month, and I stumbled down to the kitchen.
Inside, Susu was boiling soup in a clay pot.
She didn’t see me lurking by the door, but I saw her.
I saw the plate of dried persimmon slices, the opened pouch of angelica root, half empty.
Dong quai, we called it—Sai Ma had been mulish about not having any of it in the house while she was pregnant for it was known to induce miscarriages.
The festering hole in my stomach vanished, replaced by a dizzying wave of revelation.
I ran upstairs and flew back into bed before anyone saw me.
A few days later, Sai Ma entered my room without knocking.
Her breath was sour with alcohol, mingled with her lavender perfume.
Richard trailed her, toting a newspaper.
At six years old, he was already reading Chinese and English, and his mother had intentionally turned to the wedding announcements page. He set it on my lap.
“Your older sister can’t read English,” said Sai Ma smugly. “Tell her what it says.”
“Tycoon’s grandson weds in lav—” Richard paused. “What’s this word, Ma?”
“Lavish. It means very grand, very rich.”
“Lavish,” repeated my little brother. “Tycoon’s grandson weds in lavish—”
“Peninsula Hotel ceremony,” Sai Ma finished for him. She regarded me and purposefully raised her voice. “Look, Richard. Tell Yut Ying, what car are they riding in?”
I couldn’t blame Richard, who was innocent of Sai Ma’s schemes and simply liked cars. He cried, “A Rolls-Royce!”
I spared the paper a dispassionate glance.
In front of a black Rolls-Royce stood Tommy with Priscilla-Mae, who was preening her neck for the camera, showing off the diamonds on her throat.
They wore Western dress—a black tuxedo, a boat-necked white dress—arms interlinked to feed each other Peaksoy straight from the bottles.
Bottles with my face visible in grainy gray ink.
I looked away, unable to bear it.
“Turns out you were part of the wedding after all, Yut Ying,” said Sai Ma, clearly reveling in my reaction.
“Are you done?”
“Now I know why your grandmother gave you your name,” she drawled. “You’re a shadow. My shadow.”
“I’m nothing like you.”
“You scoff, but it’s true. We’re both full of sunken dreams, you and I. Destined to be second wives.” She lifted her head, pearl earrings dangling. “I suppose I should congratulate you.”
“What for? I said I’m not marrying him.”
“You’ll change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
Sai Ma sat on my bed, the silver hairpin in her chignon catching the sunlight. “Poor Yut Ying, so simple in the head.” She crossed her legs. “Let me put it clearly: You’re soiled goods. No one else will marry you now.”
I observed my stepbrother folding airplanes out of the newspapers, then my attention turned to the teapot that Susu had brought this morning. For the third day, I’d poured its contents out the window. Finally, the roiling in my stomach was starting to ease.
“Is that why you poisoned me?” I asked quietly.
Sai Ma’s face darkened. She sent Richard outside, closing the door before she whirled on me. “How dare you spew such drivel in front of my son!”
“I saw the dong quai in the kitchen.”
“What do you know about herbs? We gave you dong quai because you weren’t eating.”
“You gave it to me because you thought I was pregnant.”
I hadn’t been certain before, but the way she paused and asked, “Are you?” confirmed all.
Baba’s pesky stomach ailments, Gu Ma’s indigestion, the nights Yi Gor and I had cursed Hong Kong’s rich and oily foods for the explosion in our bellies. Even the poisoned dumplings Prince Cannonball had eaten in the garden. Sai Ma had been behind them all.
Lily used to teach me English through a fairy tale about a jealous queen who poisoned her stepdaughter with an apple. It had been her favorite story, though now I wondered whether Lily had known about her mother’s penchant. Whether she’d been trying to warn me.
Anger gathered under my skin, turning my voice tremulous. “Do you do it because you’re bored,” I asked, “or is it fun for you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You poison people when something doesn’t go your way. When Gu Ma won’t give you money to spend at Bastion’s, when Baba has too much opium and calls you my mother’s name in front of your friends. I bet you even poisoned Lily so she had to stay inside—”
Sai Ma’s hand came striking down, but I wasn’t an eleven-year-old girl anymore. I caught her wrist neatly in my grasp and was startled by how fragile it was. I wished I had the nerve to break it.
“You poisoned me at first because I irritated you,” I continued.
“You sent me to Gu Ma’s factory to keep me out of sight, then when you found out about Tommy, you started to worry that I might go off with him and live a better life.
You were worried that a baby might get Director Fung to change his mind. You nearly killed me.”
“You’ll be wishing I succeeded.” Sai Ma was drunk, and her spittle sprayed my face. “Wake up, Yut Ying. Tommy married someone else.” She paused spitefully. “You’ll never smile again like that girl on the bottle.”
Something in my heart twisted. I hated Sai Ma and hated even more that I knew she was right.
“I’m leaving,” I said.
I made the mistake of dropping her hand. The instant I did, she seized the silver pin from her hair and lunged—aiming the tip at my face.
I’d never know whether she meant to stab me or scar me. I shoved her against the wall, then spun for the door.
“Get back here, you insolent girl!” Sai Ma shouted. “I warn you—so long as I live, I’ll make your life miserable. A hundred thousand people know your face. There’s nowhere you can go where I won’t find you.”
I was racing down the stairs, and my stepmother stumbled to the balcony, her voice pealing down with one final blow: “Your mother’s left Tunglam, did your father tell you?”
I froze.
“If you leave this house, you’ll never know where she’s gone,” she said with a triumphant note. “Do you hear me, Yut Ying? You’ll never see her again.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rose, a feeling of prophetic doom washing over me. But Sai Ma was not my mother. She couldn’t see the future.
“This house is your prison,” I said. “It won’t be mine.”
I rushed out the door.
All day Susu and the guard hunted me, Sai Ma shouting that she’d kill me once I was found. I would have laughed if I weren’t so afraid. Her eyes were wild in a way I’d never seen. I believed her threat.
The truth was, I never went past the gate. I’d ducked into the myrtle, edging along the back of the house to shut myself in the cellar.
There I hid until night fell and everyone was asleep.
I had a suitcase already packed. It wasn’t much: socks and underwear, two days’ worth of food, twenty dollars I stole from under Susu’s mattress. At the last minute I stuffed my polka dot dress into the bag too, then I tiptoed up to Sai Ma’s room.
She was sleeping alone, her arm hanging off the edge of the bed.
In slumber she looked young and harmless, a mimicry of the girl I’d met when I first arrived, who’d fooled me with her warm smiles and hollow promises.
I wanted to wake her and give her the fright of her life, but revenge, while sweet, would hamper a clean escape.
My hands shook as I unclasped my bracelet from her wrist. The peanut was still attached, the forked links catching under my thumbnail as I counted them to make sure each was in place. With my mother’s gift back in my possession, I severed my last tie to Sai Ma. I wanted nothing more to do with her.
All that was left was Lily, whose room had been bolted shut and locked since her death. For most people, there was no way inside.
I had a way.
Turning invisible had become as natural for me as singing. I gathered air into my lungs until they hurt, then, as I held my breath, pressure throbbed in my left ear, drowning out the clamor of the world.
I became like the smoke that curled out of Gu Ma’s cigarettes—practically nothing—and I passed through Lily’s door with a silent swoosh.
I half expected to find Prince Cannonball on her bed curled up on her pillow, his tail wagging in rebuke that I’d taken so long. But he wasn’t there.
Lily’s books were gone, her clothes and toys, too.
For months I’d been looking through all the photographs in the house, but there were none of my sister.
I opened her drawers and looked into her closet.
My doll wasn’t to be found either. I’d wanted to burn it in offering to Lily’s spirit, except Sai Ma claimed it was lost.
Call me sentimental for wanting something to remember Lily by, but I knew time was the slickest of thieves. Give a year, and it’d steal the sound of her voice. Give five, and the sweet roundness of her face would be gone too, faded into the hollows of my memory.
Heaven take me, I would hold on as long as I could.
Finally I spied a forlorn pair of gloves under her bed. She’d hated those damned gloves, I thought bitterly. Now they were all of her that was left.
I slid them into my pocket.
That was when I heard footsteps from across the hall. Someone was awake.
Again, I became nothing. I slid through the door back into the hall—only to encounter a problem: My shadow wouldn’t come with me.
Why was this happening again? I’d gotten better at vanishing since Gu Ma locked me in the cellar. I yanked and pulled, yet still my shadow clung to Lily’s room, as heavy as an anchor buried in sand.
The footsteps were getting closer.
I panicked and passed back into Lily’s bedroom. I wrestled my shadow, jerking and twisting at my own likeness as it flitted across the walls. You have to come, I commanded. There was no choice, we had to get out. I turned invisible, and with all my strength, I hurled myself through Lily’s door.
It was like bursting through a wall of glass. The world shattered as though I were breaking from inside, and a rain of shards came down upon me, stabbing, as my left ear roared. I reared from shock, only to find the worst was yet to come.
My shadow. I’d thought it would come snapping out the door with me, but somewhere at the threshold it had fragmented from my body, severed in one irrevocable moment, and now it remained trapped in Lily’s room—a dark and bereft little pool with which, only an instant ago, I’d been inseparable.
The agony was what I imagined a cat would feel when it lost its tail, and as I slipped out of my secret invisible world, I fell forward with a high and strangled scream.
Gu Ma whirled. “Who is that?” she whispered, sounding spooked. In her hand was the same gun that had killed Zhou Hin Kong—and click, she cocked the pistol. Pointed it at me.
Shit. Thinking fast, I drew a quick breath, clamped my mouth shut, and disappeared again.
My aunt saw it all, but under the veil of darkness she thought me a ghost. Her spine went stiff, her eyes boggy with fear.
“L-Lily?” she said, lowering the gun. There was a cigarette in her mouth, unlit. “D-Do you need more spirit money? I’ll send you some. There’s n-no need to be angry. We’re family, don’t forget. Family.”
Yes, I remembered. The cold prickled my skin, numbing away my pain but not my anger. Family suffers together and rises together, she had told me. Most of all, family stays together.
I planted myself behind Gu Ma. When I exhaled, I gained only a little color, becoming as translucent as a pond burbling under the moon. “You’re not my family,” I whispered into my aunt’s ear. “You killed me.”
I’d never forget how pale her round face turned, whiter even than the cigarette between her lips. I held my breath and charged down the hallway. Each step toward the door buoyed me; I could hardly feel my feet touching the ground.
Once I was past the gate, I released my air. Usually my body reappeared instantly, but this time the change was sluggish, like coming out of a deep sleep. I started running, but as my heels finally sank into the moist dirt of the hillside, a growl pierced the urgency of my escape.
It was Prince Cannonball perched on a pineapple finial. When he was young, his tail stood high and pert. Now it hung low, curling around an iron bar.
Come with me, I spoke with my arms.
He merely stared, one good long stare, before he turned his back on me and disappeared into the bushes.
It would be the last time I ever saw him, and, heavens willing, the last time I ever saw Gu Ma’s house. Twelve Harbourage, a white mansion with terra-cotta tiles, inhabited by a family of sundered dreams.
I turned for the road.