Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune(75)

I knelt before the shrine.

“If you were afraid that I wouldn’t love you after I read your words, Ma-ma, you were wrong. I didn’t think it was possible, but I love you even more. You were strong. I wish I was even half as strong as you.

“You fought your demons and won. How else could I be standing here? Your wish came true. I turned out exactly as you hoped, and all because of everything you taught me: to love, to be kind, to be strong. Your strength inspires me, pushes me to be better, and to seek out my dreams.

“I want to thank you for your journals. I now know who my father is. I love him, Ma-ma. I wish he could have come home safely that day. Our lives would have been so different.

“You and Baba convince me to open myself to the possibility of love, that I am deserving of love. I think it could have worked with Daniel if I had been brave enough to try. I think you would like him, Ma-ma.

“I miss you. I will always miss you.”

I rose to my feet and placed a hand over my heart.

My parents, Celia, my neighbors, and even Daniel, even though I had pushed him away. I was so fortunate to be loved. Everything I had done to this point had been to fulfill my mother’s last request. Now, I had one desire of my own, one I wanted so desperately.

I wished I could speak to my father again.

He came and went without warning—or did he? He seemed to appear when I needed him the most, and I needed him now. I closed my eyes and walked to the windows, sending out my heart’s wishes to my ghost father. I envisioned invisible homing pigeons carrying my request in tiny scrolls attached to their legs.

Baba.

I need you.

Please come and see me.

My fingers pressed against the windowsill. My face soaked up the warm sunlight streaming in from the glass of the windows. Wishes were powerful, and I needed that power now. Again and again, I called to my father. If a mother’s love could transcend space and time, surely a daughter calling to her father could do the same.

Baba.





Chapter Twenty-eight





Baba.

I opened my eyes. He was here!

Through the windows, my father, with erhu in hand, strolled past the tea shop and was looking both ways before he crossed the street. This made me smile. He was a ghost: a speeding car or the 38AX Geary A Express bus could not have harmed him.

He was here!

Ghosts are strange creatures in that they live in the limbo plane, and while they abide by a main set of rules, they also can create their own. None of the neighbors had ever mentioned him, so it didn’t surprise me that he had chosen to appear only to those he wanted to see him—me.

I don’t think he knew I was his daughter. He’d died before he even knew of my existence.

I had to tell him. This could be what he needed to hear the most.

As I ran down the staircase, my feet made no sound: I floated down, cushioned by the lightness of my being. My father was waiting for me. Baba.

I had a father. He hadn’t abandoned me. He had returned and visited often, enough for me to consider him a dear friend before I’d discovered his true identity.

While Ma-ma and I had shared a love of opera, my father and I worshipped music in all of its notes, chords, arrangements, instruments, and science. I imagined that in a different life, my father and I would be found draped over sofas listening to records, eyes closed, intoxicated by the melodies or tapping on surfaces, dancing to the swing of the up-tempo beat.

If he’d lived, the sound of the erhu would have been a constant presence in our apartment, as natural as the bells of the streetcars, the air brakes of the tour buses, and the vinyl on the Victrola. Even if he’d accepted the job at the traveling symphony, he would have been home in between his journeys, and the three of us would have been a family.

He stood, waiting before the closed glass door, dark cap in one hand and erhu case in the other. The two tattooed dragons on his forearms constricted, undulated, always moving in concert with each other. Dust and errant loose threads adorned his usual gray attire.

I let him inside.

“Xiao Niao,” he said with a smile. “I came back as soon as I could.”

Tiny bird. My heart clenched as if it were being squeezed by an invisible hand.

He walked to the counter and ran his hand across it. He leaned his erhu case against one of the stools as he took a seat. “My wife told me to tell you that everything will be all right,” he said. “Hard times always pass. She and I both know you’re strong.”

I couldn’t help but smile. I knew now that he and Ma-ma were together, and I had helped with that.

Returning to my place behind the counter, I busied myself by arranging and rearranging the stack of dishes and cutlery. “You speak of her a lot now. It’s only until recently you said she started speaking to you again. Why is that?”

He squinted and stroked the rough, graying stubble on his chin. “For years, she ignored me. It was like I didn’t exist. I suppose it’s my fault for not coming back sooner from an audition. It was too easy for her to jump to the worst conclusions.”

“What’s her name? I realize you never told me.” I couldn’t resist. I needed to hear him say Ma-ma’s name, to acknowledge what I already knew.

“Miranda,” he replied with a sheepish smile. “The same name as Prospero’s daughter in The Tempest. It’s a beautiful name, isn’t it? I’m embarrassed that I didn’t say it earlier.”