Chapter 30 #2
One of my hands has come up to my mouth. There’s a rawness in my mother’s voice I don’t think any child should have to hear. Moms should be calm. Moms should be strong. Moms should never sound so hurt and beaten. So human.
“I knew you never respected what I bring to this family,” Dad says. “You did your best to isolate me from my children.”
“I didn’t have to do anything. The way you locked yourself in your office every night did that.”
“You preferred it that way, so don’t come across all high and mighty now,” Dad says, and he doesn’t sound like my father anymore.
He’s colder. “It gave you time to turn Lucy into a little mini-me. I thought you’d lose your mind when she left.
I know it wasn’t because you were worried; you were angry about the store. That’s all you care about.”
“You liar. I was angry because I wanted my little girl,” Mom says, and this time her voice is tight. “All I wanted was my daughter in my life. I want my baby.”
Tears spring up in my eyes, but I don’t know if she’s saying it because it’s true or because she’s fighting with Dad.
“You lost her because she finally understood what Eric and I have always known. You love the store, not us. Lucy only mattered because of what she could give you.”
I feel sick at hearing my own thoughts, my own words, said with such contempt. Did I sound like that when we fought the other day? Shame fills me.
“That is a disgusting thing to say,” Mom says. “You are a horrible man. Horrible. You twist everything in your head to make yourself a victim.”
“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to come back.”
There’s a long silence. “What are you saying?” Mom asks.
“It’s easy. Come home. Prove you can prioritize your family and not your precious perfumes or your little store.”
“I am prioritizing my family. I’m here with Luling.”
“I regret allowing you to poison Lucy with your stories. I should have put my foot down years ago.”
“You never tried to understand.”
“How could I?” Dad’s voice crackles over the phone. “You never trusted me, right from the beginning.”
“For how long will you punish me over not telling you about my moli right away?”
“It was unfair to me.”
“And I apologized, but you know the moli is the heart of my family.”
“I understood fine. But I’m your husband. I’m your heart and your family. Or I should be. This perfume stuff got out of hand, and I won’t put up with it anymore.”
Then there’s silence. It takes me a second to realize it’s because Mom has hung up on him.
Just…hung up on Dad. I don’t know what to do or how to process what I’ve heard.
I wish for a moment I could talk to Eric, but I know whose side he’ll take.
It feels wrong to tell Rafe or Ana about this, like I would be betraying my parents.
I panic, wondering if I can sneak out without her hearing, but the store is so quiet all I can hear is her heavy breathing from the back. She’s not crying, I don’t think. I don’t know.
Then I hear her walking, so I grab the door and open it noisily. “I’ve got lunch,” I call as cheerily as I can.
“I’m in the back.” I analyze her voice like a CIA agent looking for clues as to the identity of the mole, but she sounds fine. Almost upbeat? That can’t be right.
Mom looks weirdly content as she takes the food from me while I peer at her face. “I got chickpea salad on sourdough and smoked trout on brioche.”
“We can share them.” She adds half of each sandwich to our plates, then checks them over before going to the fridge to get some hot sauce and chili oil. “Just in case,” she says.
We eat our sandwiches in the cool semi-twilight of the store, not speaking much.
I have a kind of mental nausea from the call I overheard that’s fighting with the hunger from gardening all day.
It’s my own fault for listening, and although I don’t want to talk about it or those texts I saw this morning, I also do.
Then she says, “Your brother and his wife are separating.”
“What?” I only have to fake a bit of shock, since I’m taken aback she’s telling me instead of hiding important information the way she usually does. “Because of my perfume?”
“Perhaps, in part.”
I wince. “Mom.”
“Just because it’s not the answer you want doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“You don’t need to say it.”
“Would you rather I lie? Then anytime you asked me a serious question, you’d never know if I was telling you the truth or not. I didn’t say it was your fault, but what happened with the perfumes could have been the catalyst for a marriage that was already cracking.”
Mom opens her sandwich to sprinkle chili oil on it.
“Right, but there’s a middle way between total brutal honesty and hurting my feelings,” I say, voice rising.
“I’m only trying to help, Luling.”
Then it hits me. Her defensiveness isn’t born out of a desire to defend herself or her worldview. She’s scared. How could I have never seen this before?
I look at her across the table as if for the first time, her worn fingers digging divots into the soft bread.
She’s always been scared, like all those Hua women, because along with the confidence, they had fear.
They were scared greedy people would come for them.
They were scared the men in their lives wouldn’t understand or would hurt them.
That they would grow old, or ill, or something would happen to their children.
Those women existed in a state of fear, and what differentiated them was how they dealt with it.
Some, like my mother, would rear up like a cobra at the first sign of dissent, unwilling to let a conflict go in case they lost everything.
Others were more offensive, like Xiaoting, pushing through her life like the Ming dynasty equivalent of a bulldozer, tearing things down in the expectation they would eventually turn out and reacting with shock when they didn’t.
Like Aiai, I run away, dragging the fear behind me and hoping it will never catch up.
Then there was Zhengyi, who faced the future head-on. That woman knew no fear. Or did she?
Then, like a bomb, it occurs to me that this is why Mom is on my case about my moli.
She’s frightened for me. Every Hua woman, including me, has lived in a time when men were in charge.
Unlike them, I’m not property. Like them, my world hasn’t been designed for my comfort or convenience.
It’s the opposite, in fact, and my ancestors knew it as well as I do.
Dependence might have looked like safety, but the women in my family knew true safety came from independence.
It came from being able to read the contracts that involved them.
To make the money that would feed and shelter them, and not worry about being cast out if they were too loud or old, or on a whim.
That’s why Mom wants me to have my moli.
So I’m not dependent on anyone but myself.
I would like to say this helps me understand my mother, but that would be untrue. Instead, I run away again. “This sandwich is good with the oil.”
Weak, Lucy. Weak.
“It is.”
Luckily, Ana texts to see how the garden is going and if we need help. I tell her we’re fine.
“Ana is a good friend to you,” Mom says.
“She is,” I agree.
“You never had many friends growing up,” Mom says, looking intently at her sandwich crust. “I wonder if it was because of your moli. If you felt too different or embarrassed to have them come over.”
This is surprising. I never thought Mom noticed that much about me. “Not at all,” I say.
“Really, Luling?”
I think back to my childhood, but although the answer could be yes, I don’t want to get into it. Even if Mom is feeling introspective. “I had Rafe,” I say.
“You did. He’s good for you.” She leaves it at that, again with a delicacy I don’t remember from my youth.
We finish and go out to the potager patch, where we discover someone has come by and stolen a handful of the plants. Mom shrugs, more resigned than I would have expected. “We’ll get more,” is all she says.
Then we plant.