Chapter Fifty-Three
The doctors said Philip had a year, three at best with chemotherapy. The cancer had progressed into his lymph nodes, and though the thoracotomy had been successful in removing the diseased lung tissue, he’d likely need the whole lung removed down the line.
Marigold stayed in the hospital with her family, speaking to the doctors and comforting her mother and sisters. She had initially planned to only stay home through the weekend, but the day Philip regained consciousness, she quietly submitted her request to the dean for a leave of absence.
After the operation, Philip had difficulty speaking, yet his eyes brightened when he saw her in the recovery room. He opened his mouth, straining for each word: “Mei Yoong. You’re back.”
“I’m back,” she whispered. She was still angry with him, and she hadn’t forgiven him.
She doubted she ever would. Yet, seeing him lying in bed, his toes sticking out of the blanket, their ridges blue and old, she wished they hadn’t wasted an entire year being angry at each other.
She wished she’d at least called more, if only to hear the clipped sound of her father’s goodbyes.
“I’m going to stay a while,” she said. She didn’t know if he’d heard. Philip had closed his eyes.
Once his breathing slowed and she was sure he was asleep, Marigold took off her gloves. She pressed her hand atop his.
As always, the shock scalded her fingertips. But by the time she felt the pain, she was already in the past.
It was winter in Philip’s village. The air was acrid with gunpowder, the wind bit into their bones, and every breath stung.
Marigold’s father was a young man, no more than twenty years old. He was carrying a woman in his arms. Blood soaked her collar bright red like the candied hawthorn berries she used to buy them for their birthdays.
“Take cover!” Philip shouted. He and Francis ducked under a truck as a green Japanese fighter jet circled the sky, bullets raining from its three painted suns. Once the plane flew away, Philip crawled out, still holding on to his mother. “Ma, stay with us. We’re almost at the boat.”
“Leave me,” she rasped. “I’ll only slow you down. Go. Live.”
Not far away, a bomb exploded. Flying debris sent Philip rocking forward, and Francis caught their mother as she fell out of Philip’s arms.
Francis looked down at her. Their mother was still, her eyes flat and unblinking, the life quivering from her body gone still, the pain on her face smoothed into a look of peaceful repose.
Philip let out a cry. He punched the ground, gravel biting into his knuckles until they bled.
“We have to go,” said Francis, pulling him up. “Philip, hurry!”
The plane was circling back for another run. Philip touched his forehead to his mother’s. He closed her eyes and found her a flat berth amid the rubble.
Then the brothers ran for the harbor, the smoke behind them rising.
Marigold let go of her father’s hand, gasping as though real smoke had penetrated her nostrils.
She reached for her inhaler, put it to her mouth, and breathed in.
It took a long time before the rolling blasts of bombs faded from her ears.
Hours later, when she was home, she would still taste a lingering hatred that wasn’t hers.
Finally, finally, as she rolled the bitterness of her baba’s hate on her tongue, she understood what her visions were trying to show her.
She needed to speak with her grandmother.
When Yuk Fong had come to live at Three Flowers, the Yuens had repurposed their tiny living room into a bedroom.
A beige floral bedsheet covered the sofa, and her clothes hung on a drying rack behind the TV.
Marigold found her grandmother inside listening to a drama about an emperor and his murderous concubine on the radio.
“Is my father going to die?” Marigold asked.
Yuk Fong switched off the radio and made space for Marigold on the sofa. “Everybody dies,” she replied.
“Will he get better?”
“That, I don’t know,” Yuk Fong admitted. “I haven’t seen.”
Marigold shut the door. “What about my mother?” she asked quietly.
Now Yuk Fong looked at her. It was a grave, unflinching look that confirmed all of Marigold’s fears.
Marigold had told the dean that her father was critically ill and she needed the semester off to be with him—but that wasn’t the whole truth.
She wanted to be with her mother, too. Helen had changed since Marigold had last been home.
Her complexion was watery, her voice hoarse and sapped of strength, and even when she stood in front of the oven, inserting tray after tray of bread to be baked, pale white goosebumps dappled her skin.
Helen had always been zealous about keeping her hair short and curled, but she’d stopped cutting her hair.
She looked like an entirely different person.
“It started after Dad’s diagnosis,” Rosie confided to Marigold. “Sometimes she forgets to eat, or she’ll even leave the bakery unattended.”
Marigold tried to hide her disquiet. “How long is she gone for?”
“Last week it was almost the whole day.” Rosie bit down on her lip. “I found her in the kitchen sitting in front of the oven. She was just staring at the wall.”
“What was on the wall?”
“Nothing. Well, her shadow.”
Her shadow.
Even now, as Marigold sat next to her grandmother, those words echoed relentlessly in her mind.
“I’ve always wondered why only I can see that Mom’s shadow is missing,” Marigold began. “It’s been a mystery I couldn’t solve—until today.”
Yuk Fong gave her an expectant look.
“You called what we have a curse,” said Marigold, starting backward.
“I didn’t believe you. I thought all I saw were memories, glimpses of the past. Nothing dangerous.
The truth is, since I started having these sparks, I’ve been .
. . afraid. I stayed in the attic to avoid having to talk to anyone.
At school I stopped talking to my friends.
” She tugged at her gloves. “I wore armor and locked myself away.”
“What were you afraid of?” Yuk Fong asked. “The pain?”
Marigold stared at her hands. Yes, that was part of it. Not so much from the sparks but more from the heartache she always felt. Kenji had helped her stop fearing the memories. He would hold her hand and make those silly turtle jokes, saying he was helping her out of her shell. But he was gone.
“I was afraid of the truth,” she said finally.
“I used to think of my . . . condition as something I could diagnose and treat. I figured, so long as I kept a barrier between me and everything else, I could repress my symptoms.” She shook her head.
“That was a mistake. That’s why I didn’t understand.
“It’s not just the past that I see. I see the truths we try to hide, the threads that have frayed and left us broken.” At last she could accept it: “My curse,” she uttered, the word tumbling out like a stone, “is to see what hurts us most.”
Yuk Fong leaned back, sinking into the cushion. “You’ve seen what hurts your mother most?”
“It was years ago, but when she touched me I got the sharpest spark I’ve ever felt. It took me to a cold and empty place where nothing else existed. It was terrifying being so alone. I was feeling what Mom felt. She was hurt, as if a part of her were missing.”
“Her shadow,” Yuk Fong murmured.
“She lost it somewhere,” agreed Marigold. She leaned forward. “I think her shadow doesn’t disappear like the rest of her does. It anchors her to this world. Without it, she vanishes into that void and just keeps drifting.” Marigold suppressed a shudder. “One day, she might not find her way out.”
“That is your mother’s curse, to become nothing.”
“But it’ll kill her.”
“Yes.” Yuk Fong’s eyes, ever luminous and profound, turned dark. “It will.”
Marigold clenched her fists. She should’ve come back sooner. It was some consolation to know that Philip was getting the best care possible, with her sisters and a team of doctors and nurses at his side. But Helen . . . Helen had no one.
“You’ve seen the future,” she said urgently. “You could tell her what’s going to happen. You can save her.”
Yuk Fong shook her head. “I’ve known for years your mother would have a hard life,” she admitted. “Some of it I saw before she left me, some I saw after she was already gone. Would things have been better if I’d told her? I torture myself with that question every day.
“What I do know is that everything I see will come to pass. There’s nothing I can do to change it. I’ve tried.” Her shoulders sank. “All my life I’ve tried.”
“Then let me try.” Marigold touched her grandmother’s sleeve. “Please.”
Yuk Fong hesitated. She was considering, twisting her gnarled and swollen fingers until they turned pink. “My mother slept to escape living. I keep awake to escape my dreams. Now your mother . . . your mother can disappear. It is a cycle we cannot end.”
After a lifetime of being misunderstood, of being trapped by tradition and expectation, after enduring two wars and suffering unbearable losses, Yuk Fong had accepted the fate she’d been dealt. She had accepted her curse.
Helen had accepted hers.
Now it was Marigold’s turn. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be a curse,” she began. “You see the pain that lies ahead, I see what haunts us from the past. Maybe . . . it’s meant to bring us together. Mom, too.”
Yuk Fong’s look bore an uncanny resemblance to Rosie’s Are you nuts? face. She parted her fingers and exhaled. “I haven’t seen much,” she said at last, “but I know it’ll end at 12 Harbourage. The house where your mother grew up.”
Marigold’s eyebrows flew up in surprise. Hong Kong? Helen would never go back to Hong Kong. “Tell me everything.”
Yuk Fong held out her hands to Marigold. “Take off those gloves, I’ll show you.”
A week later, the Yuens were closing up Three Flowers for the day. Rosie was wiping the kitchen counter, Peony was looking for her car keys to drive home, and Yuk Fong was stuffing cabbage buns.
Helen came into the kitchen with a tray of unsold pastries and abruptly asked, “How do I send a wedding gift to Hong Kong?”
Hong Kong? Marigold’s ears perked. She tried to catch her grandmother’s eye, but Yuk Fong gave nothing away.
“Who’s getting married?” asked Peony.
“Sui Chan’s eldest son.”
“You mean Aunt Winnie?” said Rosie. “Your best friend who you haven’t seen in what, thirty years? When’s the wedding?”
“End of the month.”
“Two weeks from now,” Marigold stated. She took the tray from Helen. “Are you going?”
“Why should I?” Helen started packing the pastries into a box. “She didn’t come for Peony’s wedding.”
“You didn’t invite her,” Peony reminded their mother.
“Tickets are expensive—I didn’t want her to feel she had to come.”
“Well, she invited you,” Marigold dared. “You should go.”
Rosie darted her the Are you nuts? look. There was diddly-squat of a chance their mother would do something as impulsive as jet off to Hong Kong.
Yes, Marigold was aware. But thanks to their grandmother, she also happened to know that if Helen didn’t go, she’d never find her missing shadow. She’d disappear for good.
Their grandmother spoke up, “You ought to go, Yut Ying. One of your girls can come with you.”
Helen frowned at Yuk Fong in disbelief. Her mother never meddled.
“I’m sure the city’s changed a lot since you were there,” Rosie chimed in. “I’d die to come with you! I’m only working three days next week, hmm, I could call in sick and—”
“No!” Helen was indignant. “Even if I were going—which I’m not—I grew up in Hong Kong. I don’t need a chaperone. Besides, there’s too much to do here. Who’d help Peony run the bakery if I left? Not Paul. Certainly not Marigold. And who will look after your father?”
“I can run the bakery,” said Yuk Fong. “And Rosie can look after Philip.”
“And I can go with you,” Marigold said.
Her mother looked displeased by the choice of daughter. “Don’t you have school?”
“I took time off.” Marigold didn’t explain.
“Let her go,” said Yuk Fong, who was the one person with authority over Helen. “It’ll be good for both of you.”
Marigold didn’t give her mother a chance to hesitate. She’d been waiting for this moment. You’re not going to be alone, Mom, she thought. I’m coming, too.
“What airlines fly to Hong Kong?” she asked aloud. “Pan Am? I’ll call the travel agent right now.”