It is so delicious that I want to shove the rest of the dumpling into my mouth, but restrain myself to careful chewing and enthusiastic nodding.
“Good?” Auntie Marnie demands.
The ultimate compliment would be to tell her that these are better than Bao-mu’s, but I’d feel too disloyal to do that. Besides, the potsticker is too hot in my mouth for an answer, a verbal one anyway. So I spear another with my chopsticks, which is all the answer Auntie Marnie needs, and she smiles, satisfied. That is, until she notices at the same time I do that Grace isn’t eating.
“You need to taste,” commands Auntie Marnie, using her chopsticks to nudge the potsticker closest to Grace toward her. “This is good for you.”
“I’m not really hungry, thanks,” says Grace. Her eyes dip to my aunt’s rounded stomach, and I can read her mind: if Marnie thinks she’s the poster child of good-for-you cooking, Grace isn’t buying. “Ample” would be one way to describe Aunt Marnie. “Fat” would be my family’s. It’s not that her seams are bulging, because they aren’t. She’s just curvy like I am, in a way that stick-thin Chengs aren’t supposed to be.
“The other day I was at Children’s Hospital, visiting my friend’s little sister. Cancer,” I say amid the aunties’ sympathetic clicks, sounding like a pod of concerned dolphins. “And none of the kids on her floor could eat. I just felt like it was so, I don’t know, disrespectful not to eat when I can.”
Auntie Marnie nods, understanding me. “To stay healthy, you need to eat. Not too much, not too little. This was one of your po-po’s favorite things to make with us girls growing up,” says Auntie Marnie, looking sadly at the plump potsticker at the end of her chopsticks.
“No, she liked eating them,” corrects Auntie Yvonne.
Auntie Marnie shakes her head and says authoritatively, in what I’ve already identified as her eldest sister, I-know-best-tone, “No, no. It’s the talking part she loved best. She always said that we brought our secrets to the kitchen table.”
“And she devoured them like they were fat potstickers!” says Auntie Yvonne, laughing.
The lure of these fresh potstickers is irresistible, even to Grace, who selects the tiniest one with her chopsticks, nibbling at its end. I don’t say anything, and I keep my eyes off Grace. I know what it’s like to have every bite scrutinized and not feel worthy of the most minute morsel. But I hear her chewing, and take another bite myself.
Auntie Marnie sighs. “I wish Mei-Mei was here right now.”
There are many places I can picture Mama: on the jet, at a fashion show, in her gym. But sitting at a dirty table with dough and raw minced pork on her fingers, I think not. Then again, maybe I’ve dismissed Mama too quickly. Maybe she would be at home here with her hair pulled into a careless ponytail, the way she was at a daycare for homeless kids. And I wonder what Mama is doing now, whether she’s eating anything in Hong Kong, stealing a bite here and there. If she’s thinking about her mother. What she would do if she knew I was here, surrounded by her sisters.
“She should have come yesterday.” Auntie Yvonne’s mouth purses disapprovingly. “You’re supposed to honor your mother. No matter what.”
A little accusation goes a long way. Mama should have come. It’s what I’ve been thinking since Mama left for Hong Kong. She should have come to her own mother’s funeral. She should have come with me.
“Aaah,” Auntie Marnie sighs, a sound loud with guilt that all but says,
what can we do?
“We gave her away.”
Auntie Yvonne sets down her chopsticks, ready to fight. “What could we have done?”
Softly, Grace says, “I don’t think I would have come if I were Betty.”
Just then, The Boys clamber into the kitchen, following the scent of these little pieces of our hearts, dumplings served up as morning dim sum. “We want some, too!”
There are only a half dozen left, and instead of brushing The Boys off, Auntie Yvonne smiles indulgently at them and bustles to get them clean plates and forks, telling them in her actions that they are worthy. The doorbell rings, and Auntie Marnie orders The Boys, as if there’s safety in numbers, “Open the door and then come back to eat.”
Obviously, no one dares to flout one of Auntie Marnie’s orders, and The Boys leave together, one giant mass of noise and dirt.
“Your father’s good to her?” asks Auntie Yvonne, who’s abandoned all pretense of politeness.
“Auntie Yvonne!” cries Jocelyn, rolling her eyes. She leans toward me. “Consider yourself an official part of the family. All questions are fair game now. Just wait.”
“She’s always been part of our family.” Auntie Marnie spins around indignantly to face us. “Syrah is a true Leong.”
“No, she’s not,” says a voice, sharp with an accent that sounds a world apart from this little home in Richmond. Standing in the doorway, faces grim, are Mama and Baba.
How many times have I imagined them so hell-bent on being with me—to catch my soccer games, dance recitals, spelling bees, snowboarding competitions—that they’d cancel meetings, reschedule appointments, turn down lucrative speaking engagements, and surprise me with their appearance? Only now that they’re ready to take me away (why else would they be here?), I don’t want to go.
“Mama?” I say at the same time that Auntie Marnie steps uncertainly away from the stovetop and toward her. She breathes in disbelief, “Mei-Mei?”
Words waiting to be said for nearly forty years come rushing out of Auntie Marnie in a spate of hot and sour Mandarin: how they made a mistake and sent Mama away, how their mother would have been happy that the family is finally reunited. But Auntie Marnie has no idea that Mama doesn’t speak Mandarin. That with her every word, she’s widening the unbreachable emotional gap between them, the one that yawns with so much more distance than the scant four feet that separates them here in this kitchen.
Arms crossed, Mama answers in Cantonese, her words burning like the forgotten oil on the stovetop: I. Am. Not. Your. Little. Sister.
Her older sisters look bewildered first at her, then me. Baba, ever in control, commands, “Syrah, get your things.”
Even with everything going on, I notice that our father doesn’t spare a single glance at Grace, who’s standing so straight and immobile, she could be a longtime military cadet.
“Now?” I ask. “Wait, what are you doing here?”
“My business in Hong Kong finished early. So I’m able to make it to the meetings in Whistler after all,” says Baba. “But when we went home to pick you up, you weren’t there.”
Mama folds her arms over her chest and stares at me as if I’ve betrayed her. “Bao-mu told us where you were.”
Bao-mu,
Mama said, not Pi-Lan, her given name. Mama called her “substitute mother,”
Bao-mu,
the way I do. Hearing that nickname on Mama’s tongue makes me wonder whether Bao-mu was Mama’s surrogate mother, too? Is that why Bao-mu continued to take care of me long after she should have been enjoying her retirement?
“I couldn’t believe it when Bao-mu said she was sure that you were here,” Mama continues. Accusingly, she says, “Marnie told her.”
Of course, Bao-mu knew I’d find a way to Po-Po’s funeral. Instead of being mad at her, I can understand what she was trying to do: mastermind a reconciliation of sorts.
However brilliant Bao-mu is, she doesn’t account for Auntie Yvonne undermining the peace process. In English, my aunt demands, “How come you’re so mad? You were the lucky one who got to live with the rich uncle. We visited your house after you got sent to the best boarding school in England. It was a mansion. You had servants. A cook. A driver. We barely had enough to eat one meal a day.”
Auntie Marnie puts a warning hand on Yvonne’s arm. If I’m expecting Mama to stop this the way she does any heated argument or political debate at her parties—with a gentle well-placed, self-deprecating comment—I’m wrong. Dead wrong.
Mama’s tone is seething. “Lucky?”
“Stop, stop, this is all a misunderstanding,” says Auntie Marnie, tears welling up in her eyes.
I’m expecting Baba to run the same interference with Mama, because, after all, Chengs do not show public demonstrations of emotions. Instead, he stands behind her, the way Mama stood behind Weipou in that family portrait. One big difference: Baba has her back in this battle. Mama looks lethal in her wealth, armed in her expensive tailored slacks, handmade sweater, and sunglasses swept on top of her glossy hair.
“How can you deny it?” asks Yvonne hotly. “Marnie was sent to the country for five years. Me, I worked like a peasant for two years.” She lifts up her left hand and wiggles her ring finger, the one missing its tip. “I lost this threshing rice while you were enjoying Hong Kong.” Her hand with the decapitated finger gestures at Mama. “And look at you now.”
“Bu yao qiao le,”
I plead for them to stop. Glancing over my shoulder, I’m startled to see The Boys clustered behind my parents, transfixed by the sight of adults fighting.
“Hai zi men zheng zai ting.”
The children are listening.
Only when Mama breathes in do I realize I’ve spoken absentmindedly in Mandarin, the language of the sisters she wants to deny. Not the Cantonese of her lonely childhood in Hong Kong. The funny thing is, no one other than I can speak both languages. Only now do I have an idea why Bao-mu insisted I learn Mandarin even after Mama forbade it. She must have thought I could bridge the Cheng-Leong gap one day. Sure, I can translate word-for-word what’s being said between these two enemy camps, but I don’t want to. The words, their implications, are that ugly. Besides, anger, hurt, and blame are a lingua franca we all understand, that don’t need any translation. All I have to do is look at The Boys, who are staring wide-eyed at the adults fighting worse than any children.
Baba orders me sharply, “Go get your things.” When Grace approaches me, he snaps at her as though she’s a disobedient child, “I want to talk to you.”
The last thing I want to do is leave Grace alone to face the wrath of Baba, but Marnie says, “Syrah, listen to your parents.”
It’s a dismissal I don’t expect. Head down, embarrassed and angry, I hurry to Po-Po’s bedroom and gather my belongings. It doesn’t take long to roll my few clothes into tight cylinders, squeezing out the air the way Mama taught me so I minimize wrinkles, maximize space.
“Are you okay?” asks Jocelyn from the bedroom door.
I nod, glance around Po-Po’s room for any trace that I was here, and don’t find any. But then I see the scrapbooks, too big to fit in my backpack.
“I know it’s a pain, but could you send me these?” I ask.
“Of course,” Jocelyn says without hesitation.
The immediacy of her answer undoes me. I throw myself into her arms, leaving no doubt that whatever our shared history, we are family. Love is a lingua franca, too.
W
hen two funeral marches
are broadcast back-to-back on a classical station, the meaning should be pretty obvious: play dead. Call me a slow learner or a girl with a death wish, but two hours of silence is about all I can take.
So I ask my parents, “How long have you known they were in Vancouver?”
There are no recriminations, no accusations, and definitely no answers. To say it’s silent in the car would be inaccurate. Instead, no one changes what they’re doing: Baba cycles through his voicemail while driving, Mama studies the latest Christie’s auction catalog, and me? I go back to staring out the window at the snowdrifts as if I haven’t spoken up at all.
The music dum-dum-dums its way into my thick skull. What did I expect? Effusive explanations from the King of Control and his Queen of No Comment?
According to the road sign, Whistler-Blackcomb, British Columbia, is just ahead. Five and half hours from Seattle, three from Vancouver, and at the start gate of my imagination ever since my parents bought Chalet Cheng. Now that I’m finally here, why do I want to lunge for the steering wheel and turn us back to Richmond?
The windshield wipers sweep back and forth through the thick falling snow like they can’t decide which side they want to be on: Cheng, Leong? Richmond, Whistler? Mama, Po-Po?
Highway 99 spills into Whistler Village, and instead of winding up the mountain to our chalet, Baba turns into the village and pulls up to the newest boutique hotel. A valet in a faux-fur-lined parka rushes to greet us, his feet leaving potholes in the new snow.
“Why are we here?” My question may as well have been rhetorical, given the likelihood of either parent answering.
Amazingly, Baba says mildly, “A quick meeting,” like there hasn’t been a two-hour stretch of silence in our car, or that he and Mama haven’t SWAT-team extracted me, a prisoner of war, out of the Leong enemy camp. News flash: this prisoner wants to go back.
The urge to brag about Baba has Mama breaking her self-imposed code of silence, too. “Your father has to greet Nokia’s other directors who are here.”
“So bringing me to Whistler really had nothing to do with me, did it?”
My question is ignored, Baba too busy handing over keys to the valet and Mama too busy smiling and thanking the valet, who solicitously holds out his hand for her. The person who needs a helping hand isn’t Mama, or me, but Baba. As he approaches the front doors, he slips on a patch of salt-covered ice that still doesn’t provide enough traction. Immediately, Mama abandons her helpless female act, shakes off the valet as if he’s a cheap Old Navy jacket, and leaps over to Baba. Before I can reach him, Mama catches Baba’s arm so he doesn’t fall. She asks, “Are you okay?”
“Fine, fine,” Baba says, shrugging off her concern. He drapes his arm back over Mama, back to being the one taking care of her. And that is how they walk inside the hotel, two against the world.
The fireplace, the focal point in the lobby, is made of enormous boulders, like the spillage of an avalanche. The runoff point is where the Nokia people are gathered; you can tell, since they’re the only ones dressed in business attire, looking ridiculous in this lobby that could double for a fashion runway of Gore-Tex, there are so many girls in here. With three good hours of riding left in the day, they’re inside? What I would do to grab their gear and go.