Chapter Forty-Six
Over the next months, Marigold and Kenji spent every possible moment together—debating whether you could actually hear the lasers in Star Wars if there was no air in space, sharing banana splits at Fenton’s, feeling sorry for the lobsters in the Orchid Lounge’s fish tanks.
Her sisters teased that Kenji knew the route from Palo Alto to Berkeley well enough to draw a map upside down—which he did, including shortcuts that were best for different times of the day. Marigold kept it in her backpack.
The only hitch in their love story was keeping it secret from Marigold’s parents—no easy feat since she still lived with them.
“You don’t think I’ll charm them?” Kenji asked one Saturday as they drove to San Francisco. “I charmed your uncle.”
“Uncle Francis likes anyone who’s a member of the clean plates club. Plus you get along with Eugene and greet them in Cantonese. That’s major brownie points right there.”
Kenji made no secret that he was serious about her, about them. Marigold was, too. But when it came to introducing him to Helen and Philip, she kept holding back.
For once it wasn’t Helen she was worried about; it was Philip.
Her father had always been in her corner, mitigating fights and cold wars with Helen, baking extra almond cookies for her to snack on while she studied, and sneaking away the bits of fish from her plate when Helen wasn’t looking so she wouldn’t have to eat them.
“Teach me how to make them like me,” said Kenji. “I promise, I’m a good student.”
She lowered her gaze to their hands, resting atop each other on the gear shift.
Marigold no longer wore her gloves when they were alone together.
She liked touching Kenji. He’d grown familiar to her, and the sparks he raised rarely hurt.
She’d even told him about them. Kenji used them as an excuse not to let her go.
“If your sparks come at first contact,” he’d reasoned, “then we’ll stay touching.”
And so he held her hand as they circled the Legion of Honor in search of a place to park.
“First of all, no green hats.” Marigold took off his green Oakland A’s cap.
“It means your girlfriend’s cheating on you.
There’s a legend of a merchant whose wife asked him to wear a green hat whenever he went away on business.
She said it was for good luck, but it was really to signal to her lover—who’d see him strolling about town—that it was safe to meet. ”
“So Stanford hats are okay?” He laughed when she glared. “Just kidding. What else?”
“Always compliment my mom’s cooking.”
“That’s a given.”
“Bring a gift. Nothing in fours.”
“We have that rule, too,” he said. “Our teacups come in sets of five. You see, Japan and China aren’t so different. Look at us, we’ve both got black hair, brown eyes, and dry ear wax—”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Parts of China and Japan even got colonized by the same country.”
Marigold frowned. “Britain?”
“Portugal,” replied Kenji, who had consistently topped her in history by an impressive three percentiles. “Egg tarts are from Portugal. So is tempura. We both bow, we use chopsticks and eat rice—”
“Different kinds of rice.”
“—we respect our elders and take off our shoes before going in the house.”
Marigold patted his arm. “Good job, you get an A plus in cultural appreciation.”
“We’re more same than different,” Kenji insisted.
“Kenji Yamamoto, always looking on the bright side of things.” She stroked his cheek, thumbing a spot of stubble he’d missed while shaving this morning. “Maybe I want to keep you to myself for a while.”
As soon as he parked, he kissed her long and deep.
Marigold would never cease to marvel at the miracle of kissing Kenji. For someone who hadn’t touched another human being in years, the simple act of holding his hand—of feeling her skin against his—was a revelation that still sent tingles shooting up and down her spine like multiballs.
“All right, all right.” She exaggerated a sigh. “I’ll start hinting to my parents that I’ve got a boyfriend. Don’t look so smug, it’s not going to be pretty.”
“How bad can it be? I won you over, didn’t I?”
“After six years,” she reminded him.
“Every day was worth it. I love you, Mari.”
Marigold’s thoughts were restless. Countless times Kenji had told her he loved her. Not once had she said it back. It wasn’t because she didn’t feel the same way. She knew with the strength of an ionic bond that she loved him.
“Every family has its demons, but ours are a little more wicked than most,” her grandmother had said.
Marigold reminded herself that she didn’t believe in demons. Or curses.
What she did believe was that there’d be hell to pay once her parents found out about Kenji.
Marigold wore her gloves and got out of the car. Hell could wait another day.
The Legion of Honor was a neoclassical French palace in San Francisco, set in a park that overlooked the Golden Gate Bridge. Marigold was always happy to spend a day picnicking on the grounds. Today, however, Kenji had gotten them tickets for a photography exhibit.
“Have you heard of Gary Stein?” he asked as they entered the exhibition hall.
“He was an ad man who worked on the Coca-Cola campaigns in the forties.” Kenji gestured at the first photograph, showing a young woman in blond victory rolls kneeling in a rose garden, holding a bottle of Coke to her cheek.
“After the war he moved to Hong Kong. Thought you might like it since your parents lived there around the same time.”
“It was just my mom who lived in Hong Kong,” she murmured, more to herself than Kenji. “Dad only visited.”
Marigold surveyed the wall of vintage advertisement posters.
Some of the products she recognized. Johnnie Walker, Tiffany, Marlboro.
Most were for Western brands with Chinese words, only a handful of which she could read.
Interspersed between the ads were black-and-white photographs of daily life in Hong Kong.
Marigold stared at each one, riveted by the energy the photographer had captured.
Every scene was as vivid as one of her own visions.
She could almost hear the squeak of the rickshaw wheels down the crowded streets, the splash of dirty wash water the amahs tossed down the stone steps, the babble of children running their hands through baskets of apples for sale along the roadside.
“Have you been to Hong Kong?”
“Nope. We don’t have family there anymore.”
Kenji read from a placard on the wall. “Stein was known in Asia for the Peaksoy campaigns.”
“Peaksoy, the milk?”
“Yeah. Haven’t you had it?”
“My mom only buys Vitasoy,” Marigold replied.
She stopped in front of a photograph of a girl in a bright yellow dress, walking a bicycle while drinking a bottle of soymilk. In the distance was Hong Kong’s iconic Victoria Peak. Unlike the other photos in the exhibit, this one hung alone on the wall, drawing focus to it.
“This was the first billboard ad Peaksoy ever ran,” she read. “It was so popular they put it on the bottles.”
Marigold could see why. There was something arresting about the girl. She was beautiful, her red lips parted, caught in the height of a smile. Marigold had grown up noticing her on the Peaksoy bottles but had never seen her face close up until now. It was hard to look away.
She peered at the white placard to the side of the photograph.
“Helen of Soy,” Kenji read with a chuckle. “Whoever came up with that deserves a raise.”
Helen of Soy. Helen, Helen.
It was like braking right as the light changed—that screeching flash of revelation that made Marigold gasp. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
She grabbed Kenji’s arm. “I’ve seen that dress in the attic. That’s my mom!”
She towed him closer toward the placard.
Her voice shook as she read aloud: “Little is known about ‘Helen of Soy,’ the fifteen-year-old girl who became the famous face of Peaksoy. Stein recounts that she was a friend of an employee’s who heard that he was looking for a model with a charismatic smile.
‘She had no experience with pictures,’ Stein stated in a 1960 interview.
‘She even sang because she was so nervous. Once I heard her voice, I knew she was the girl we’d been looking for. She was effervescent.’ ”
Marigold swallowed. Effervescent was not a word to describe the mother she knew.
“Stein’s instincts would prove correct,” she read on.
“Soon after the campaign was launched, sales of Peaksoy skyrocketed. Young girls began copying Helen’s hair and her dress, even the shape of her eyebrows.
Many brands made their models study her smile—mysterious yet innocent, completely charismatic. They called her the Chinese Mona Lisa.”
“The Chinese Mona Lisa, eh?” Kenji murmured. “You didn’t tell me you’re Hong Kong royalty.”
Marigold’s chest felt tight. “I have never seen my mother smile like this. Ever.”
She slipped away from Kenji, moving on to the next piece in the exhibit. It was a smaller photograph, of a dozen women wearing yellow polka-dotted dresses.
“The Search for Helen,” June 3, 1955
In celebration of Peaksoy’s tenth anniversary, Chairman T.
Yeung launched a nationwide campaign to locate “Helen,” the iconic face of Peaksoy.
Thousands of women lined up outside the company’s headquarters, claiming to be the eponymous young lady.
The campaign drew widespread attention and boosted Peaksoy’s popularity, after sales had declined due to the rise of competitors such as Vitasoy and Yeo.
However, the real Helen was never found, and accounts vary regarding her true identity.
Feeling lightheaded, Marigold sat on a wooden bench. “They were looking for my mom. My mom! Oh my God, I knew she used to sing. But model! She never told us.”
Kenji wrapped her hand in his. “Maybe she didn’t know.”
“She would’ve been in America then,” Marigold allowed, “but she definitely knew about Peaksoy. She never let us drink it.”
The last piece in the exhibit was untitled. It was a black-and-white candid of her mother standing by a door. She was holding hands with a young man whose profile was obscured by her shadow. She was beaming at him, wearing a look that Marigold had never seen on her mother’s face.
The look of someone in love.