I have Grace.
Another sign announces an open-casket viewing running from one until two. Not for me, no thanks. Rearing away from the door to the sanctuary, I decide a tactical retreat to a bench in the corner is in order. Right when everyone else arrives, I’ll slip inside the chapel. But just for the record, when I die, I want to burn, burn, burn until I’m microscopic ash. Age will know what to do from there, even if he’s still not talking to me then. He’ll sprinkle me from atop Alpental, our home mountain, so I’ll have one last wonderful run.
A woman’s light footsteps patter from the entrance, sounding so much like Mama that I whip around and gasp. Coming toward me is Mama, aged fifteen years and softened with twenty pounds of added weight, wearing her grief in the bend of her head. I gird myself for the inevitable rude questions when this woman finally notices me, questions I don’t want to answer:
Who are you? What are you doing here? Don’t you know this is a family affair?
By this time, the woman is so close to me, retreat is impossible. If I needed proof that she may look like Mama and sound like Mama but isn’t Mama, I get it. Her hair is speckled, more gray than black, in a way Mama would never permit. The woman’s head lifts, revealing a face clean of makeup other than poorly applied mauve lipstick. Her gaze climbs up from my shoes to my face. Suddenly, she raises her hand to me, in surprise or supplication, I can’t tell. As though she’s speaking in a foreign language and doesn’t want to make a mistake, she asks me tentatively, “Syrah?”
I nod once and whisper, “How do you know?”
She points. Like a divining rod, her finger leads me to Evie Leong’s board. And there, near the heart of the poster, is a photograph of me and Bao-mu after I won the school spelling bee. I was there all the time, even if I didn’t see it at first.
As I stare, confused, at my photograph, I feel the woman’s hand on my shoulder, and I wonder briefly if, like Grace would do before our détente, she’s going to say something cutting to make sure I know that I’m not part of the Real Family. Or like Wayne does, tell me that I’m not good enough, not pretty enough, and certainly not smart enough. Or like Mama, brush me off because she doesn’t have time to deal with me. Or like Baba, say nothing at all.
But this woman, this perfect stranger, pulls me into her arms like I’m her long-lost beloved, and imprints me onto her body as if she wants to know me by heart.
M
y aunt—who else
could she be—pulls away first. Her eyes sweep the narthex, down the pews inside the sanctuary, and even up at the ceiling. Confused, she asks in lightly accented English, not the clipped British English that Mama speaks, “Where’s your mommy?”
“She didn’t come,” I confess softly.
Please don’t make me admit that Mama would rather go antique-hunting in Hong Kong than attend her own mother’s funeral. While I don’t say the words, I see them in the expression that passes over my aunt’s face, disappointed, but not surprised.
Squeezing my hands in both of hers, she says, “Your grandmother would have been so happy that you came.”
“You think?”
“Of course.”
There’s a point in conversation where it’s too late to ask the person you’re speaking with what her name is. This is it. Besides, another family walks into the church, a stylish young woman and a man with Mama’s eyes. In between them is a toddler in a three-piece suit.
“Syrah,” my aunt announces like I’m a prize, a treasure she’s been looking for all her life.
“Syrah?” says the man, who’s got to be my uncle. He bends down to his son and points at me. “That’s your cousin.”
With a little encouraging push, the boy totters over to me with his arms wide open. Even if my cheeks flame with embarrassment from all the attention, I have to admit I love hugging the boy close. That is, I love it until my gaze falls on a girl who looks my age, except she’s beautiful in the sleek, sophisticated way that Mama is.
Who am I kidding to think she’s going to welcome me with open arms, not when girls like her, The Six-Pack, can’t stand who I am and are jealous of what I have. Their envy seethes within them the way it does me when I see Grace and Wayne together.
Miracle: the girl grins, and as she approaches me, she blurts, “Thank God you’ve come.” My “what?” goes missing in the minuscule space between that first pronouncement and her next: “You don’t know what it’s been like to be the only girl in this family. Finally, someone else to share the torture.” Short breath. “Oh, my God, you have no idea what it’s been like. ‘Your hair is too long.’ ‘Your hair is too short.’ ‘You should wear some makeup.’ ‘What’s that gunk on your eyelids?’ ” A roll of her (makeup-free) eyes. “I mean, it’s been enough for me to want to run away from home.”
I’ve memorized all the names in the obituary and venture a guess, “You’re Jocelyn?”
“Oh, sorry!” Jocelyn’s smile looks anything but sorry. Glee, relief, love, that’s what I read until I notice her swollen eyes, lids so puffy she must have spent the last couple of days crying.
I haven’t.
The million questions that have been ping-ponging in my head since I discovered that my real grandmother lived just one hundred eighty miles from me demand answers now: what was her voice like? What made her laugh? I want to know all about her. All about them. And know why. Why Mama was given away. Why no one ever called me.
But in the continuous white noise of Jocelyn’s enthusiasm, I am mute.
“Did you know that our birthdays are just two weeks apart? You’re older,” she tells me. “Which makes you the second oldest cousin in our family. Did you know that?”
I shake my head. How do I tell her that I don’t know anything at all, not even who this first aunt is? So before Jocelyn can dart off on another conversation, I ask.
“Oh, that’s Marnie, the oldest auntie. Can’t you tell? My dad may be the oldest son, but Auntie Marnie’s the oldest child, and that just bugs both of them like you would not believe. You know, he likes to be all he-man in charge, and she just wants to be all in charge. Boy, you missed a fight when Po-Po was sick.”
I missed more than a fight. I missed an entire family history.
“And then,” says Jocelyn, pausing dramatically, “there are The Boys.” So many boys are streaming around the church, playing hide-and-seek between the pillars and the bulletin boards, they must be multiplying. Laughing because she knows exactly what I’m thinking, Jocelyn places her hand on my arm and lets me in on an important secret: “The key is to establish your dominance upfront and early. They’re like a pack of dogs.” A group of adults descends on us. “Get ready,” she warns.
Auntie Marnie sends her a chastising look. “You need to share Syrah.”
“But I just got her!”
The way they’re talking about me as if I’m the new must-have toy of the season should make me feel mildly offended. After all, it’s how I feel when strangers whip around for a good look at me once they figure out who I am. Or so-called girlfriends ask to “borrow” a sweater only never to return it.
But I’m not offended. Not at all. Not even when The Boys use me as their “base” when hide-and-seek morphs into tag and they nearly knock me unconscious.
And especially not when Auntie Marnie smiles tearily at the chaos of our family. “Po-Po would have been so happy right now.”
The service is long,
and anything but boring. It’s a crash course in my family history. Po-Po’s sons and daughters share stories, like how her driver’s license was revoked (for speeding, of course), and how afterward, she resorted to biking and was riding around up until three months ago. Not bad for an old woman.
Before I know it, I’m tearing up just as though I’ve known and loved her my whole life. Auntie Marnie hands me a tissue.
Po-Po’s drawing teacher, a young woman in a peasant dress, shares this story: “When Evie walked into our first drawing class, all the students assumed that she was the teacher. She smiled like a little girl and said, ‘Only if you want to learn how to erase.’ ”
How can I laugh when I’m crying because I lost out on knowing this woman? I concentrate on the poster-sized photograph of Po-Po and a man I’m assuming is my grandfather, he looks so much like Mama, as thin as my grandmother is round.
Right at two thirty, the door behind the congregation opens quietly, and I know before I turn around that Grace has crept into the church. From where I’m nestled between the Chus and Leongs, I look over my shoulder to smile at her. And when I face the front again, Uncle Patrick pats my arm like I belong right here, in the front pews with the family.
Auntie Marnie is the last to speak. How she toys with her gold necklace, pulling at the pendant, reminds me of Mama. “Life wasn’t always easy for my mother, but she always said that you must live with your eyes looking forward, never backward. But now that she’s gone, I think we have to look backward to understand the woman she was, the family we are now.” Marnie pauses to compose herself, riffling her notes on the podium. “When the Communists took over China and killed my father because he was a man of many words, Mama knew she was going to be removed from us and taken to the country to work in the labor camps with all the other intellectuals. Her first thought wasn’t about her welfare, but ours, her children’s.”
My focus pinpoints on to Auntie Marnie’s mouth, so I won’t miss a single word. Next to me, Uncle Patrick shifts uncomfortably in the pew, as if this is history he doesn’t want to revisit.
“I will always remember the night before the Red Guard came to take her away. She sat down on the bed that all the girls had to share now that we were reduced to living in one room, with strangers in the rest of our home,” says Auntie Marnie. “She said that my job was to ensure that our family survives. And to do this.…”
Jocelyn slips her hand on top of mine. A warning? A comfort? It doesn’t matter; I prepare for the blow.
Auntie Marnie swallows. “Mama’s one regret in life was that she asked her best friend to take her baby, just a few months old, to Hong Kong.” Unerringly, Marnie finds me in the church and looks deeply into my eyes. She could be talking to me alone. “Mama thought that I couldn’t take care of so many children on my own. But as soon as that baby was gone, she knew she made a mistake. Her tears. I will always remember her tears. But it was too late. Mei-Mei was gone, to a better place.”
A better place. Only when Jocelyn hands me a fresh tissue do I realize I’m crying harder than before, and she keeps her arm around me. I don’t know who I’m mourning for. Marnie because her guilt has coiled around her as tightly as wire forcing a bonsai to bend. Po-Po because she never overcame her losses, no matter how many amusing stories all these people are sharing about her. Mama because she was given away. I know how all three women have felt—guilty, bereft, and abandoned.
The light streaking into the church reflects all the colors of the stained glass window, Jesus ascending to Heaven. A better place. That’s how Marnie described Mama’s adoption. Her relocation might be a more accurate way to describe it, since I can still hear Bao-mu’s voice sharpen with dislike when she had spoken about Mama’s adoptive parents, her useless uncle and his vindictive wife. It makes me wonder if that “better place” in Hong Kong damaged Mama in ways no one but she could see. In ways no one better than I could understand.
After the service I’m
surrounded by so much noisy family, whose
Syrah, you need to meet so and so
and whose
Syrah, how is your mommy doing
and
why isn’t she here
and
what is your daddy doing now that he’s retired
questions, and their
Syrah, you need to hear about how your grandmother loved to go hiking
stories begin to blur.
More words are heaped on me with everyone maximizing this moment to make up for years of silence. I start to shut down, overwhelmed, wishing that I was alone with my thoughts. Or alone with Age. Or just alone.
But I smile and nod, smile and nod, smile and nod.
I feel a touch
on my arm, look up, and see Grace. With her tall, ultra-lean body, she stands out in this crowd, an elegant skyscraper in a Chinese village.
A good hostess even at this memorial, I introduce Grace, “This is my half-sister.”
“You’re Syrah’s sister?” asks Marnie, delighted to find another niece to dote upon.
Half-sister,
I’m expecting Grace to correct. Instead, she says, “Yes, I am. And you are…?”
And just like that, Grace spearheads a conversation so I’m free to “mmm hmmm, wow, uh-huh” tune out.
Later, our car joins
the caravan driving to Auntie Marnie’s home for the wake. Aside from Grace asking me once if I’m doing okay, comfortable silence is our official language.
If Mama were in
charge of this wake, she’d have designated Auntie Marnie’s kitchen as the sub-par command central and berated the poor event coordinator for not providing enough table rounds for all the guests, not utilizing a unified color scheme, not using china and silver but paper plates and disposable chopsticks. She would never have permitted something as low-class as a potluck, and worse, would have been horrified that people are leaving their hodgepodge platters wherever there’s free counter space rather than displaying the food like untouchable art.
But she’s not in charge of this wake.
There is no event coordinator.
And Betty Cheng is a no-show.
The difference between The
House of Cheng and The Home of Leong?
Let me count the ways.
The only antiques in this home are ones that have been well-used over time, not pristine museum-quality pieces. The knickknacks in the display case are misshapen clay animals made by little hands, not priceless porcelain formed and glazed by master ceramicists from centuries past. The people milling around and pushing homemade food on me talk of family, not family fortunes.
The Boys want to know what I do for fun in Seattle. As I tell them about snowboarding, I feel myself thawing. The trick is to focus on their eyes and their questions, and I can almost forget I’m at a wake for a grandmother I desperately wish I knew, surrounded by people I don’t know.