Outrun the Moon(9)

His eyes flit around while he thinks, and then he shakes his head. “Too much polishing risks cracking, and then it becomes useless.”

I sit very still in my chair, though anger seeps through my every pore. “This is important. Jack deserves to be more than a launderer.” I know my words will wound, but it is the only way I can make him hear me.

Ba winces. The few remaining hairs on his head quiver, and his face starts to match his hands. “This is not the way to do it!” He pounds his fist down, and his cup of broth falls to the floor with a sickening crack. He pushes away from the table and strides out the door.

“Ay, his hat!” Ma grabs his wool knit cap from the table and rushes out after him.

A bitter taste spreads over my mouth, and my own warm broth does little to soothe my irritation. With a sigh, I grab a rag and clean up the broken glass.

It can’t be easy for Ba to have a headstrong daughter like me. And in some ways, I am lucky. Of the five girls who stayed in school until the eighth grade, three already have auspicious dates chosen for their weddings. But Ba never pushes me to settle down, perhaps because he’s happy to have my help, or because Ma has convinced him there will be time for marriage later. Wives are highly sought after in Chinatown, even one with cheeks like mine. But though he might be unconventional, that does not mean Ba wants me associating with whites. After all, they are the reason we are packed tight as cigars in Chinatown. They are the reason Jack’s lungs didn’t develop.

Ma returns, the cap still in her hands. She hangs it on a hook, then pulls another rag from a drawer to give the floor a second wiping.

“I’m sorry, Ma. I will cancel the meeting.”

She sits heavily on her chair, tsking her tongue. With the blunt end of a chopstick, she pushes at trigger points in her palm. “Your father wants you to go to school. He is just afraid for you.”

“He doesn’t have to be. I can handle myself.” Just this morning, I dangled a hundred feet up in the air and somehow landed on my feet.

I think she’s about to chastise me, but to my surprise, her gaze turns thoughtful. “Yes, I believe you can. I have foreseen that something propitious will happen for you this year. Maybe you will accomplish something great and bring prestige to your ancestors.” Chinese believe that our actions in this life affect the quality of our ancestors’ afterlives. “Maybe it is the school. I will speak to your father.”

“Thank you, Ma,” I murmur gratefully, even though neither Ba nor I take Ma’s fortunes seriously. When I was seven, I dropped my chopsticks on the floor, and Ma told me that doing so disturbed the ancestors buried in the earth. I wasted a whole year walking in zigzag lines to trick them into not following me.

Ma brightens. “Or maybe you will get a job at the Chinese Telephone Exchange.” To her, our lives would be set if I nabbed one of the highly coveted positions. To me, pulling switches sounded as exciting as pulling weeds. “Whatever happens, remember to be strong for your father. He will need the iron in your eyes.” She searches my metal-gray irises for the inner strength she has assured me lies in them.

“Why? Is something going to happen to him?”

I don’t like the slow beat of her clucks, or the uneven way she stirs her beans.

“Not him. Me. I have foreseen my death.” She tosses out those words as if commenting on the price of paddy straw mushrooms.

“Don’t say that!” I may not be superstitious, but if there were ghosts listening, surely they would overhear. “Death is unpredictable. You tell clients that all the time.”

“That is so they don’t do something foolish like Mr. Yip.” Mr. Yip ran through Union Square wrapped in an American flag after Ma told him to prepare for his final rest. He was almost put in the stocks for that, until the Chinese Benevolent Association paid a hefty fee for officials to look the other way. “Anyway, I turned forty-four this year, an inauspicious number.”

“Ma,” I groan. As if I didn’t already view four with suspicion, forty-four in Chinese sounds like the words “I want to die.” “But four plus four equals eight, and eight is the luckiest number,” I attempt to argue.

She shakes her head. “No, Mercy. My vision has told me so.” This time, she speaks with the solemnity of striking a gong with a mallet. Of all the tools a fortune-teller uses to read a person’s fate—the almanac, the beans, and the “Four Pillars” of birth year, month, day, and hour—Ma believes her vision to be the most reliable. Others apparently agree, as she is Chinatown’s most sought-after fortune-teller.

Noticing my grimace, she adds, “It is not something to be feared, death.”

“I don’t fear it. I worked in a graveyard, remember?”

She clucks her tongue in disapproval. Ma had not approved of my job at the cemetery, believing hungry ghosts would follow me home and wreak destruction. Though she stopped complaining after seeing the money I brought in—the fortune-telling business had slowed in recent years.

A bit of the nausea I felt aboard Tom’s Floating Island returns, and I grip the sides of my chair, trying to keep my voice light. “Dr. Gunn says your pulse is sturdy and your energy flows like a river. Besides, you always tell clients they can change their destiny.”

“No, I tell them we can change our perspective on it.”

Jack calls for her. Ma squints toward the bedroom door, then looks back at me. She presses her small but solid finger against the bridge of my nose, smoothing out the wrinkle lodged there. “It is like the moon. We can see it differently by climbing a mountain, but we cannot outrun it. As it should be.”