Night Angels(13)

Fengshan always said Monto was enough for him, but Monto wasn’t enough for me. I would like to have a child of my own. If I had conceived and given birth to a child—our child—would he spend more time with me?

I cleaned myself in the bathroom and took out a pair of underwear from the dresser drawer to change. In the Baroque mirror, I studied myself, my father’s eyes and my mother’s complexion. The last time I saw her was four years ago. I had told her I was leaving for China with Fengshan. She said I was making a mistake, slammed the door in my face, and swore she’d have nothing more to do with me. I supposed she had had her wish now.

I missed her, even though I didn’t want to; I missed Boston, too, my hometown, and even those lonely days in childhood. My Chinese father, a martial artist, had died while I was four, leaving me to my Irish mother, who ordered me to stay outside by the road while she worked in someone’s house as a maid, slapped me if I tried to hold her hand in public, and instructed me to address her as Miss O’Connor in front of other people.

Those years, a time of flames and wind, how lonely I was—always a few steps behind my mother—burning with the desire to be with her but chilled with the fear of being near her; those years, a time of ice and thunder, how confused I was—longing for somewhere but belonging nowhere—sitting by the road, daydreaming, holding Dickinson, the book she gave me to keep me company—I’m Nobody! Who are you? I was my father’s daughter, my mother’s child, but I was a nobody.

Mother had her reasons. None of the Americans around her liked Asian faces or Asian children. If the woman of the house saw me and realized she had a half-Chinese child, Mother would lose her job; if she acknowledged me in front of her newly made friends, she would lose her lodging. Then how would she shelter me and feed me? Hadn’t she gotten excommunicated because of Father?

I took the can of Tiger Balm from the medicine cabinet and dabbed some on my neck. A soothing sensation seeped into my skin, and I inhaled the comforting scent of menthol. Mother had mentioned this was Father’s favorite choice to treat ailments. So when I found cans of Tiger Balm on a shelf in Chinatown in Chicago, I bought a few. The traditional Chinese pain reliever made of menthol and camphor was the only token that linked me to my father. I had kept it in my handbag, like a piece of advice from a father I couldn’t remember.

I put the can back in the cabinet. I should get dressed, check on Monto, eat breakfast, and look up my schedule as a diplomat’s wife, but I didn’t feel like it. The nightgown was loose on me, my collarbones protruding. A pitiful, fragile thing I had turned into. How had it happened? In Chicago, before I met Fengshan, I had been content working in the noodle shop, relieved to escape from Mother, and I had read Dickinson and dreamed of poetry. But now, after four years of here and there, playing the role of a diplomat’s wife and a stepmother, I had even forgotten how to dream.



Monto was not in his bedroom, so I went to the dining room, where the scents of sweet cream and fried dough wafted. For my breakfast, the manservant had brought in some fresh Austrian pastries that I couldn’t name, some strudels with cabbage filling, some fried fritters shaped like dumplings. I ate alone—I was always alone.

On the table sat a stack of German newspapers left by Fengshan. I peered at it with no desire to touch it. Now I really wished to speak to Lola. She could tell me about the pastries and the news in English. And I still wanted to know—had she returned home safely?

“You can’t read German!” Monto came in. He was eleven years old, a skinny boy with intelligent eyes like Fengshan’s, his young face plump with baby fat. He wore the black trousers and blue plaid shirt with suspenders I had folded on his nightstand. His short hair stuck up on the side. It needed a good brush, but he wouldn’t let me touch it.

I glanced away. My mother was right, after all: I was weak. I was twenty-five, but when Monto talked to me like this, full of justification and indignation, I couldn’t defend myself. Really, I didn’t know what to do with this little person. He had mocked me repeatedly about my German, which had finally prompted me to reach out to Lola.

“Where have you been? I was looking for you. Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“You’ll never know how to speak German, Grace.” He reached for a stack of cards with people’s signatures on the table and stuffed them into his school bag.

Lately, he had been walking around asking the staff in the consulate for signatures. He claimed that he could foretell people’s futures by studying their handwriting. When the Austrian prime minister resigned and the German soldiers poured into the city, Monto had studied the signatures of Schuschnigg and Hitler and made a bold prediction that Schuschnigg would live a long life and Hitler would commit suicide.

“Monto, are you asking for people’s signatures at school? I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“None of your business.”

Fengshan would have warned Monto to be respectful, had he seen his son behave in this petulant manner, but Monto only acted this way in front of me.

“How’s school, Monto?” He had started third grade, or fourth. I couldn’t remember. He loved school, and unlike me, he had no trouble adapting to his new life in Vienna.

“Fine.” He opened the refrigerator.

Monto never called me Mother, for a good reason. “Did you make any friends yet?”