The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(67)

“Good.” Dr. Shedhorn smiled. “Don’t worry, I haven’t lost anyone yet.”

Residual memories? Dorothy wondered. Her recent dreams had been intense. All kinds of anxiety bubbling to the surface of the placid lake of remembrance. She dreamt about Greta. That was the kind of relationship they had in the end, the kind where you’re on a first-name basis with your own parent. Dorothy had dreamt about Zou yi, the grandmother she’d barely known, who everyone called Zoe. And Zoe’s long-lost mother, someone named Faye. Dorothy dreamt about her own precocious child as well. Dorothy knew that a part of her had wanted a baby so she could try to rewrite her own failed mother-daughter relationship. That it was an opportunity, a second chance. She would do things better. But what just happened with Louis was more than a dream, or a nightmare, it was a booming echo. She later tried to talk to Louis, to apologize, though she wasn’t sure how much he remembered from their altercation.

“I can’t deal with this right now, I’m late for work,” he said the next day, which never made sense to Dorothy since he owned the company.

He guzzled a cup of lukewarm coffee, then checked his phone.

“Can’t you even offer me a little support for what I’m going through?” she said.

He grabbed his raincoat. “Look around you. Look at our finances these days. I’ve been supporting you for years. You can’t even hold down a teaching job.”

Dorothy stared at him. Yes, he was supporting her, after she let him drain her bank account years ago. But I let him. I did that, willingly.

“Look, I don’t know who you are anymore, who you’re involved with, or what else you’ve gotten yourself into. I’m not sure I even want to know. If it weren’t for Annabel…” He shook his head, walked out, and slammed the door.

That was the unspoken truth between them.

Dorothy had gotten pregnant early in their relationship, when they were fluent in each other’s love languages. Back then anything seemed possible.

She should have known better when his first reaction was “Are you sure?”

“That I’m pregnant?”

“No, are you sure that it’s mine.”

He’d been looking for a way out then, and she should have let him go. She should have run far away. Instead she smashed her life into his, a strange mix of hubris and na?veté. Six years later, they functioned more like vaguely intimate roommates. The odd couple, redux. She wasn’t sure if he even remembered the name Sam.

“Are you ready?” Dr. Shedhorn asked.

Dorothy felt as though she were strapped into the front seat of a roller coaster at night, with no lights, the cars inching closer to the precipice before plunging into total darkness. She nodded, but deep down, she wasn’t sure anymore. She closed her eyes and drifted off to the sound of someone crying.





15 Lai King




(1892)

Lai King woke in the middle of the night when she thought she heard sobbing somewhere in her building. She wrapped a threadbare blanket around her shoulders and padded across the cool wooden floor of her family’s tiny apartment. She crept to where her parents’ bed was and peeked behind the curtain. Her mother and father slept so soundly, so quietly, that she grew nervous under quarantine and felt the need to check on them. She appraised their darkened silhouettes in the moonlight, staring intently at the blankets and quilts, watching the covers gently rise and fall with their breathing.

Lai King sighed.

Her fears worsened a week earlier, when she looked out the window at sunrise and saw a creaking wagon roll by with the uncovered bodies of the Chun family—mother, father, and their oldest son. They looked as though they were sleeping, but their skin was gray and mottled with bruises. Lai King didn’t know where the Chuns’ two daughters were. They were about her age. Maybe they weren’t sick. Maybe they’d been given to another family. Lai King chewed her lip as she watched the wagon disappear.

Who would take such sick girls, with so much bad luck?

That’s when Lai King wondered, who would take her if something awful happened to her parents? She went to bed every night, listening to other families in the nearby apartments, some fighting, arguing, a few crying, wailing.

No one laughed anymore. No one sang.

Become a ghost hero.

Lai King thought she heard the wheels of the wagon coming back. Her heart raced and she climbed into her parents’ bed, squeezing between them. Her father barely moved, but her mother stirred, opened her eyes with a drowsy smile. She pulled the covers up just enough so Lai King could slip beneath them.



* * *



When Lai King woke, her mother was in the kitchen, but her father was gone.

“Where’s Ah-ba?” Lai King asked as she looked around.

“He went downstairs.” Her mother placed a bowl of congee in front of Lai King, topped with fried garlic and dried mushrooms. “Now eat.”

Lai King stirred the mushrooms into her porridge to soften them up. As she ate, she couldn’t help but notice the worried look on her mother’s face, the troubling silence as she sipped her tea.

“When can I go back to school?” Lai King asked. “I swear I’ll go this time.”

“You’ll go when it’s safe,” her ah-ma snapped. “Sik fan.”