Chapter Thirty-One
San Francisco
Marigold
“Do I have to drink more soup?”
“It’s good for your asthma,” Helen told her daughter. “Don’t complain, your father had to eat cicada shells and cockroach soup when he was young. Good for the throat.”
Marigold had heard the story plenty of times, and with each new iteration she believed it a little less. “It didn’t work, so why do I still have to drink this?”
“Watch your mouth, what did I tell you about talking back?”
“Sorry.”
“Address your elders. Sorry, who?”
“Sorry, Mom.”
Marigold suppressed a sigh. Six months had passed since her mother had vanished outside Sears, and still every time she worked up the courage to ask Helen what had happened, her throat would get tight and her lungs would pinch—and that little pink scar above her eye would itch.
Maybe she was the one with something wrong.
They’d taken her to the doctor the next day—first to a Chinese one who’d prescribed yet another one of these awful soups, then to a Western one who’d prescribed rest and warmer air. Helen had decided to listen to both of them.
Not long after, the Yuens began house hunting outside of San Francisco.
It was warmer across the Bay Bridge, friends told Philip and Helen.
Real estate was cheaper, too. There was a small Chinatown in Oakland and a growing population of Chinese in Berkeley near the university.
In November, Philip announced that the family would be renting a shophouse with a bakery on the first floor. Everybody cheered except Marigold.
“Living above the bakery means you’ll never stop working,” she pointed out.
“Ba and I work hard so you have food to eat,” said Helen. “What’s so bad about that?”
“No more waiting for us to come home late from work,” Philip added, trying to console her.
What about when you come home late from gambling with your friends? Marigold thought.
She didn’t dare ask. Philip would laugh it off, as he was never harsh with Marigold. But Helen? Marigold was already her least favorite child—best not to sink lower in her graces.
In the spring, they moved into their new home on Channing Way.
Its bricks were like prawn crackers, pink and porous, with two yellow-framed windows above the door that reminded Marigold of Uncle Francis’s glasses.
Its most charming feature was the Victorian-style turret on the left side, which gave the house an air of storybook castle whimsy.
There were two entrances: one through the storefront, and a private side door with stairs leading up to the Yuens’ new home.
Inside were two bedrooms, a cramped afterthought of a living room just big enough for a sofa and a television set, two bathrooms, an attic, and the bakery itself, which was street level, connected by a narrow vestibule to the kitchen.
Peony and Rosie raced inside to explore their new home.
“We’ll call the bakery Three Flowers,” said Philip proudly, “after our three girls.”
Rosie loved it already. She claimed the store’s dusty counter and tapped at the register pretending she had customers.
Peony, always helpful, drifted back into the kitchen, opening the wooden cupboards to let them air, and practical Marigold stood by the window, counting the number of people who walked by.
The neighborhood was almost entirely residential, with little commercial foot traffic, but the elementary school wasn’t far, and there was a pizza parlor nearby on Shattuck Avenue, which was full of shops.
Even still, for every hundred people Marigold counted passing by, maybe five of them were Asian. More were Japanese than Chinese.
A few weeks later, Three Flowers opened.
The menu was simple: They served tea and coffee along with a modest selection of pastries.
Helen stood by the door with a tray of egg tart samples.
Most Americans had never eaten dan tat before, and looked at it askance before heading to the French patisserie on Shattuck.
At night, while the girls folded pink cardboard boxes in cautious hope of better business tomorrow, Philip and Helen argued over whether they ought to offer sandwiches and soda like they had in Kansas City.
The transition was difficult for everyone—even Peony, who was teased for her Chinese accent when she spoke English, and especially Rosie.
American to the core, the youngest Yuen had been a trendsetter at their old school in Chinatown but now came home blubbering about her pin-straight hair and cloth shoes, which were so worn that her pinky toes poked out.
She begged for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Hostess Cupcakes instead of their homemade lunches to eat at school.
Helen refused, of course, though she did patch up Rosie’s shoes.
If anything could be said about Rosie, she was determined.
She became an ace at tetherball and learned to blow double bubbles with one square of Bonanza gum.
Within a few weeks, she was popular again.
Peony adjusted, too. She had their mother’s eyes, as round and brown as chocolate coins, and a galaxy of freckles spangling her cheeks like the stars on the American flag.
Her smile was warm and friendly. Soon everyone liked Peony.
Marigold, however, remained an outsider.
Quiet and shy, she didn’t make friends easily.
She preferred the company of books and didn’t mind sitting alone during lunch, separated by an imaginary barrier that the fifth-grade boys erected—“the Great Wall of Stinky Rice.” She wasn’t athletic, either, and didn’t mind being last pick at PE.
She didn’t even mind that no one seemed to get her name right.
What Marigold missed was the familiarity of their old life.
She missed the market downstairs with the tabby cat guarding two buckets of squirming crabs.
She missed going to Mr. Kwok’s stationery shop for coconut-scented erasers and pencils with stackable lead points, and eating the defective fortune cookies that Mrs. Liu, the factory owner, put aside for the Yuen sisters.
She especially missed Mrs. Kwan, who’d visited Three Flowers on opening day with a pot of orchids, and was one of the few people who could draw her aloof mother into a hug.
“Will we ever move back to Chinatown?” she asked Helen.
“The air is warmer here. Better for your lungs—and your father’s.”
“What if the bakery fails?” Marigold asked, more bold than wise. “Then will we move back?”
Helen’s expression turned hard. “Do you want us to fail? Would that make you happy?”
“No. That’s not what I—”
“God gave you a mouth, know when to keep it shut.” Helen turned away, sweeping vigorously. “To the attic. Don’t come down until dinner.”
Marigold’s heart sank. Why was it that she could never say anything right to her mother? She trudged up the stairs, wishing Helen would be as patient with her as she was with her sisters.
She might as well have wished for the moon.