Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune(59)

Mother.

Why did you die and leave me?

Mother!

Darkness came for me. Swirling, tugging, drowning me with the thickness of sesame oil. Captive by paralysis of grief. Spending days in the tub submerged by the weight of my tears. The pain nullified every other sensation.

Mother.

There was so much I wanted to say.

Mother.

Come back. Awaken me from this nightmare.

But you can’t.

At least you didn’t leave me alone.

He pulled me out of the deep.

He reminded me of after, that there was an after: children, our family, a future.

He wants to have a child.

I want it too.

I want to have a daughter, nourished with joy and youtiao. She will be like you, Mother: strong, confident, capable. No demons will haunt her steps. My curse will not befall her. She’ll smile because she wants to. Succored on kindness and wonder, her imagination will be boundless, and her lightness of being will outweigh the darkness of mine.

She will not be me.

She will be like you, her grandmother.

She will be like her father.

Him.

The one who saved me from myself. He who accepted the darkness and instead of banishing it, acted as a beacon so I could find my way back. My love. My match. My other.

Oh, I wish you could be alive to meet your future grandchild, Mother.



The wrinkled page crinkled under my fingertips, undulating like a wave. Even now, the paper had marks on the places where my mother’s tears had fallen.

I cried now, too, for my grandmother, for my mother, and for me. Drop by drop, my tears joined Ma-ma’s, changing the stains into brushstrokes as my sadness mixed with hers. The pattern of miniature puddles resembled the Chinese word for sorrow: bei-ai.

I wept for the grandmother I had never known, the woman whose recipes I cooked and whose words I cherished, whose face I had the fortune of seeing before the photograph was lost in flames, the one who traveled across the ocean to raise her daughter alone and help those in need.

I cried for Ma-ma, whom I missed more than anything in this world, the person whose words reached me from beyond the grave.

I cried for myself, who was alone, uncertain, and yearning for those who had been taken from me.

I had lost them both.

Ma-ma’s voice spoke through the page. Her thoughts and hopes reached across time to me. It was as though we were still together drinking an afternoon tea. This piece had been torn from a notebook of some sort. A diary, perhaps? Had my mother kept a journal?

The tangible possibility that I could reconnect with Ma-ma eased my sorrow.

If I could find other pages, who knew what else she might have written. Maybe there was something in them that would help me figure out why Laolao’s recipe book wasn’t working. I needed to find the rest. My mother was meticulous, and odds were that if she had kept these books, they were in immaculate shape.

I called the cat. “Come on, Meimei! Let’s go looking for treasure.”





Chapter Twenty-two





Ma-ma’s room was the only place in the apartment I had not been in since I returned. I hadn’t opened the door, for I’d been too afraid that the painful memories of her would overwhelm me. Since the apartment had two bedrooms, I had avoided this for as long as I could. But if Ma-ma had kept journals, she would have hidden them in her room. I needed to face my fears and enter. The doorknob was cold to the touch. It rattled as I tried in vain to twist it open with my hand, sweaty from nerves.

Opening a door shouldn’t be difficult, but this simple act had become complicated. It was the admission that my mother was truly gone, that she could no longer pop out of her bedroom in time to watch her Korean soap operas or share in a long, languid conversation over cups of tea. Even now I craved a cup of oolong, but only if Ma-ma were here to share it with me.

I twisted the knob again and pulled the door open.

A lingering miasma of pungent, traditional Chinese ointments assaulted my nostrils. My mother had used a heady mix of creams and liquids to treat anything from headaches to menstrual cramps. She had applied medicated bandages smelling of menthol and eucalyptus for any muscle aches. Odd stripes of white across her shoulders or neck had been a common sight.

Small circular mirrors nailed all over the walls reflected my face back at me. My mahogany dark eyes, wide forehead, and small nose were replicated over and over as a hundred versions of myself stared back. These mirrors were not a product of vanity, but of superstition. According to Ma-ma, they warded off the demons and ill spirits. If each mirror represented an individual demon, my mother must have feared legions of them.

The queen-size bed dominated the modest bedroom with its mismatched sheets, ancient because of my mother’s frugal nature. Their cotton was pilled and thin from far too many washings, but they were the most comfortable bedding I had ever known. A bad dream always guaranteed me admission into Ma-ma’s sanctuary. She would drive the ghosts and bad demons away by humming arias from La bohème in my ear until I fell back asleep.

I sat on the lumpy mattress. Meimei squirmed out of my arms and settled herself on the bed. Nothing much had changed in the years I was gone.

No. The birds . . .

The birds had multiplied. She’d installed rows upon rows of floating melamine shelves above shoulder height to accommodate the expansion of her once humble collection. Though she’d had bird figurines all over the apartment, the bulk of her prized collection was confined to her bedroom because it had given her joy to wake up to them every morning. Before I’d left, I had a tradition of gifting her with bird figurines. It began with a storm petrel, a Wakamba carving of ebony wood from Kenya I had picked up at the museum gift shop from a sixth-grade school field trip. She’d adored the unexpected birthday present, and I had hunted for them since.