Chapter 20
Hua Jing
Yuan dynasty. Jing moved the family to Nanjing, away from the frontier capital of Beijing.
Heart note // Block insecurity
Base note // Juniper
Mom and I take the SkyTrain to the airport, since Mom, despite saying we can save money by sharing a cab, decides to save more by skipping the convenience altogether.
Ana sends me more photos of her jewelry, interrupting Mom’s disapproving commentary about the shoddy nature of goods in the airport stores and women wearing leggings as pants. Despite lifting my shoulder to block her line of sight, she looks at my message.
“What’s that?”
“My shopmate, Ana, is a silversmith and decided to start designing again.” I scroll to the next photo, which is similar to the daisy chain she showed me, but with pineapples.
“Very nice,” my mother says. This is high praise. “The central pendant could hold a scent to make it stand out.”
“I thought so too.” I’m a little surprised we had the same idea; I thought it would be too cutesy for her. “She had cherry earrings that would be nice with a touch of rum and vanilla. Sweet, like maraschino.”
“Or go further with chocolate and ginger.”
I like to talk perfumes with Mom, and we swap a few more ideas before she says, “Enough of this. You need to focus on your moli. No time for little side projects.”
She opens her bag and unpacks the sandwiches, granola bars, and cut fruit she brought from home, citing the exorbitant cost of airport food.
We eat in silence before boarding the plane.
To my relief, we’re not sitting next to each other, and I settle in for a few hours of peace.
This time I don’t sleep but spend the time worrying about the logistics of Mom’s visit.
By the time we’re flying somewhere possibly near Medicine Hat, I’ve worried about, in no particular order:
Whether we’ll have to share all our meals. Corollary: Who will cook? Probably Mom. It honestly feels weird to cook for her, like an inversion of our roles.
Work. Will she want to go with me?
If she doesn’t come to work with me, what will she do all day?
If she does come to work with me, what will she do all day?
What will Ana think?
What about Rafe and our postponed date? Can I do that with Mom there?
How long is this visit going to last?
On the plus side, all these concerns have sidelined the reason why she’s coming, which is to test my moli.
That’s a whole other list of problems that would take a flight to Auckland to resolve and that I currently do not have the capacity to deal with.
It’s easier to agonize over how many towels I have and why I didn’t wash them before I left.
The plane lands, and everyone too cheap to buy in-flight Wi-Fi immediately turns to their phones to see what they’ve missed over the last four and a half hours.
I’m no exception, and see a few texts from Ana wanting to know if things were okay.
I tell her my mom is staying over and they’ll probably meet at the store.
Ana: I’ll be on my best behavior.
Me: She’ll love you.
This is true, because despite my mother’s many failings and what I view as her painful traditionalism, she’ll respect Ana in the same way she’s able to enjoy all people who aren’t me. Ana can be admired for what she currently has, not her potential. Her is-now rather than her could-be.
There’s also a text from Mom, directing me to wait for her when I get off the plane and designating an exact location (to the left at the first corner out of the sky bridge).
I push aside my juvenile desire to wait about ten meters away, and watch as she comes up the ramp.
Have her shoulders narrowed? Are they more slumped?
She might be tired from the flight. She already has on huge sunglasses that cover half her face, and I wonder how long it will be until she succumbs to the inevitable visor I also see in my future. Suncare is self-care, after all.
“Did you pop your ears?” she says as she comes up. “You’ll get a headache otherwise. Did you bring gum?”
“I’m fine, Mom.” Her voice is muffled, but I don’t want to tell her that.
“It’s so easy to do, Luling. I taught you when we went to Shanghai. Do you remember all those flights? I think it took us a full day.” She laughs. “You and Eric fell asleep in the customs line and nearly fell over. You were both holding those big Toblerones your father bought you.”
That had been one of our only family trips, taken when I was ten and Eric twelve, so Dad could see his family. I remember asking Mom if we were going to see the old Hua compound or the Nanjing store, but she said we couldn’t manage it.
“I remember,” I say, tugging my ear.
“Here.” She hands me some gum and I take it. “Now, yawn.”
“Mom, I am fine. Let’s go.” When she turns away, I stretch open my jaw and feel the pressure lift.
We wait for her luggage—although I went carry-on, Mom has a large rollie—and head home. This time we take a cab, because I’m paying and it’s already past six in the evening.
“It’s been a long time since I was here,” Mom says as we drive along the highway, the city shadowed in the distance as we come around the swooping curve of the overpass. “At least twenty years.”
“I wonder if it’s changed much.”
“All places change and are the same.”
When I was younger, these kinds of gnomic pronouncements would leave me puzzling for days. Now they’ve started to make more sense as long as I don’t think about them too deeply. Perhaps this is one of the benefits of age.
She’s quiet as we edge our way to my neighborhood, the cab swerving around the parked cars and oblivious pedestrians on their phones.
I look out my window, preparing myself for the upcoming barrage of criticism about my living arrangements.
When we arrive, I’m happy the setting sun gives the street a honeyed glow that’s usually reserved for a late-summer afternoon.
The yellow brick of my building looks like a design choice instead of merely being dingy, and when I open the door, the light glints off brown tile floors that would be right at home in a 1970s shopping mall to reflect pretty patterns on the wall.
I hope Mom doesn’t comment on the elevators.
On a good day, they make a worrying creaking noise that gives the impression they’re being hand-cranked by a pod of gnomes in the basement who could get tuckered out and let go at any moment.
I consider it atmosphere but accept she might see it as a health hazard.
We make it upstairs without incident, and I drag Mom’s suitcase to my apartment. Mom walks in, her nose twitching, but even unburned, my candles have negated the stale smells that could have accumulated in the dead space while I was away.
She takes off her shoes and explores, mumbling the room names to herself as if marking them off a mental tally sheet. “Bedroom, good size. Luling, you have socks on the floor. Bathroom, fine. How often do you wash your towels? Use bleach. Kitchen. Gas or electric? Gas.”
Meanwhile, I stand in the middle of the living room, wondering if there’s food for dinner.
Thank God I changed my sheets in a fit of nervous energy while waiting for my flight to leave.
I pull in Mom’s suitcase while she’s checking the refrigerator and take the opportunity to discreetly spray some lavender scent on the pillows.
A knock on the door brings us out like curious mice. I check the peephole before unlocking the door. “Rafe?”
Rafe stands in the hall, but before he can greet me, Mom comes up. “Rafe Jin.” She says it with a satisfaction I don’t think I’ve ever heard her use with my name.
“I came over to see if you wanted to join me for dinner,” he says. “I thought you’d be tired after the flight.”
“You cooked?” I ask. This is unexpected. What’s he up to?
“Over at my place, so you don’t need to clean up or anything,” he says. “If you already ate, no problem. I love leftovers.”
“A good boy,” Mom approves. “Let me wash my hands. Luling, you too.”
Rafe’s navy T-shirt carries the faint smell of cooking, those homey scents of garlic and onion and oil, and I lock up behind Mom.
The two of them chat casually about the flight and how Missy and Eddie Jin are doing.
I relax. Rafe and Mom have known each other since he was a teenager, and between them is a mellow ease.
He lets us in. I’m not sure if it’s my neighbor’s natural style or what she thought would work best for a place that’s rented out half the time to strangers, but the decor is very old Hollywood.
Framed posters from movie classics line the far wall in a tidy grid of mirrored frames, and there’s what I hope is a fake zebra-skin rug on the floor.
The furniture is gilt and red velvet, but with knitted throws made of an ivory yarn so thick the needles must have been the size of a wrist. They also look like they would snag at a touch.
Rafe follows my glance. “I’m too scared to use them in case I wreck them,” he says.
Dinner is already on the black-lacquered table, family-style with covered dishes. “Wine?” he asks, already pulling out the water because he knows Mom never drinks.
“Thank you, yes,” she says.
This isn’t the Hua Meilin I know. Rafe and I share glances, but he fills both their glasses. Not mine, because I know myself. It’s better to not drink at all than risk having the first glass that leads to another three or four because of tension and stress.
Rafe serves a simple meal of rice, braised chicken thighs and tofu, and green beans. “The shops are finally getting fresh spring vegetables in,” he says, handing Mom a plate.
That starts a conversation about produce seasonality that lasts a good ten minutes.
Which is convenient, because although Vancouver only has a three-hour time difference, the strain of the last few days, plus the jet lag, is catching up to me.
I listen in a half doze as they chat, only occasionally adding something. Mostly I observe.
Although Rafe and Mom are familiar with each other, it’s clear they’re both skilled at drawing out the other person’s opinions to keep a conversation going.
From vegetables, they turn to Rafe’s work and then Toronto and Vancouver real estate prices.
She quizzes him about costs per square foot for the different neighborhoods here.
I bite into a green bean, which Rafe has cooked so it keeps the snap, and try not to think about the reason for all the questions.
Mom is here to help with my moli, not expand her empire, which Eric seems to think is almost bankrupt.
How well the store is doing is something I’ll have to bring up with her during her visit as well, and it’s another conversation I’m not looking forward to having.
Luckily, I might not have to. If I have my moli, any problems she’s having will be solved.
I nod to myself. Another reason to get to the bottom of this.
Rafe brings out dessert, with fruit for Mom after she refuses the burnt-toffee ice cream, and then we wish him good night.
“Rafe turned out to be a very good cook,” Mom says as she goes into my room.
“He is.”
“Very handsome too. He looks like his mother.”
“I suppose.” He did look good tonight, with his dark hair a bit messy and the casual outfit that he filled out to perfection. I had to look away when I found myself staring too often.
“I’m glad you two are talking again. Missy and I often wondered what happened.”
She’s in my room, so her voice comes to me like a disembodied judgment. “I guess we grew apart,” I say. I don’t want her in my personal life at all, let alone in my business about Rafe, and talking to my mother about relationships is embarrassing at best.
“You’re prickly to deal with,” says Mom. “I’m sure it was over something that you blew out of proportion.”
“Thanks.”
Mom comes out holding a small toiletry bag. “Are you together?” she asks.
It takes a moment for me to recover from her asking me this. I can’t believe she has the nerve, and right after blaming me for the estrangement.
“We’ve started talking since you managed to get him living down the hall, if that’s what you want to know.”
“It would be easier to have a relationship if you moved back to Vancouver,” she says.
“No need to worry about that.” I grope around for a way to change the topic, because Mom will be in my space for a while and I don’t want to deal with more negativity than I need to.
“We’ll start looking at your moli tomorrow,” she says in answer before she goes into the bathroom and shuts the door.
I sit on the couch, wondering why all conversations with my mother are like this.
Why can’t she accept that I have a life away from her and Yixiang?
I wouldn’t be surprised if she maneuvered Rafe here in another line of her multipronged attack to get me back home.
If guilt failed, she’d rationalize, maybe love would succeed.
I text Rafe to thank him for having us over.
Rafe: I owe you another dinner from the one we missed when you went home. I know your mom’s visit changes things, so tell me when you want to rebook. I can make any day work.
Part of me had wondered if he would let it slide and we’d continue on as we were now, with the occasional text, until he went back to Vancouver, and I hug myself knowing he still wants to go.
I pick a stray thread on the couch. I don’t want to put our dinner off, at least not for long.
I want to see him so I know where his head’s at and perhaps figure out my own.
Mom finishes in the bathroom as I’m tucking the sheets into the couch, not wanting to sleep with my face pressed against fabric that’s been sat on by so many others.
I’ve already put a glass of water on her bedside table and taken out my pajamas, book, and a change of clothes so I don’t have to wake her if I get up early.
“Tomorrow,” she reminds me. It sounds like a threat.
She leaves the door open, and I lie on the couch, listening to the sound of another person and wondering how long it will be until I get my peace back.
Although I guess it’s good to have the company. At least for a while.