Last Night at the Telegraph Club(102)

Usually Lily looked forward to the New Year dinner, but this year, she wished she could be anywhere else. She knew that as soon as she got home, she’d have to greet her grandmother and uncles and cousins and pretend that everything was normal. She’d have to obey her parents and especially her mother, who had told her, You won’t tell your aunts and uncles about this. You won’t say a word to your grandmother. It felt like a trap from which there was no escape.

A few steps away from the front door she briefly considered running away again—but where would she go? She didn’t really have a choice. She might be able to spend one more night on Lana’s sofa, but then what?

Aunt Judy was already taking out the key to the front door, and then she turned the knob and looked at Lily, gesturing for her to enter first.

The entryway was dim and smelled like ginger and the syrupy scent of the Shanghai-style braised fish her mother made every New Year. She already heard the voices of her brothers and younger cousins upstairs. They didn’t know she was standing there at the bottom, hesitating to go back to them, where she would be absorbed back into the family as if nothing had happened. Everything she had experienced over the past forty-eight hours would be deliberately ignored.

“Lily,” Aunt Judy said.

She climbed up the stairs, her heart sinking.





46





The upstairs landing was empty, but several suitcases and bags were pushed against the wall across from the telephone table.

“Go say hello to your grandmother,” Aunt Judy said. “She’s in the living room.”

Lily took off her shoes and went where her aunt told her to go. Her brothers and cousins—eleven-year-old Jack and nine-year-old Minnie—were sprawled on the floor playing marbles. Uncle Francis and Uncle Sam were smoking by the front window, and A P’oh* was sitting in one corner of the sofa, observing the action. She saw Lily as soon as she entered the room.

“阿麗,”* A P’oh called, gesturing for her to join her on the sofa.

“Lily!” Eddie said. “Did you just get back?”

“Everybody was mad,” Frankie said before Eddie shot him a quelling look.

“I’m sorry,” she said to her brothers—to everyone—and then she sat down beside her grandmother, who took her hand. Her grandmother’s skin was loose over her bones and dry as paper, but her grip was quite firm. “阿婆好,” Lily greeted her. “幾時到咖?”*

“我今早到咖,”* A P’oh said. She gave Lily a canny look that made Lily wonder how much she knew about what had happened. “大家好擔心你哬. 千其无再咁做.”* Her grandmother’s tone was soft, but the warning in it was unmistakable.

Lily flushed. “對唔住, 阿婆,”* she said, lowering her gaze. She told herself she hadn’t done anything wrong, but she still felt guilty.



* * *



—

She changed out of the clothes she had slept in. She washed her face and brushed her teeth; she combed her hair and pinned it away from her face. In the bathroom mirror, she looked like a good Chinese girl.

In the kitchen, Aunt Judy and Aunt May were chopping vegetables at the table while her mother fried nien-kao* on the stove. Her father was making a pot of tea, and he saw her first, his face relaxing into sudden relief.

Her mother turned. Her expression softened, but only briefly. “Come and help your aunts,” she said.

Lily pulled out a chair and sat down beside Aunt May at the table, while Aunt Judy, who was about to start mincing ginger, slid the chopping board over to her along with the knobby root.

Her father placed the teapot on a small round tray along with a stack of teacups, and headed out of the kitchen. Lily thought he might say something to her—he even hesitated next to her chair—but he remained silent. A hot shame rose within her. She didn’t know what her family knew, but their silence told her they knew enough.

She focused on the ginger, mincing it as precisely as she could, and eventually her aunts and her mother picked up their conversation. Each time Lily finished a task, Aunt Judy gave her another one: peel and chop garlic, then the scallions, then the water chestnuts. Every surface in the kitchen was crowded with ingredients for the other dishes that would be served: two kinds of dried mushrooms, dried lily flowers and bean thread, all soaking in separate bowls of liquid; a mound of washed lettuce air-drying in the battered metal colander; bottles of soy sauce and oyster sauce and cooking wine. A pot of lotus root soup was simmering on the back of the stove, and Lily’s mother was turning out the nien-kao onto a platter, while Aunt May took a whole fish out of the refrigerator.

It was exactly like every other New Year, and it was that sameness that made Lily feel as if she wasn’t all there. Her fingers were doing the work, but she could prepare vegetables in her sleep. It left her mind plenty of room to wander, and it returned over and over to those last moments in the Telegraph Club with Kath. The running and jostling through the back hallway; the flashing lights and the women shouting at her to move; Kath’s hand squeezing hers before letting go.

Lily’s eyes grew hot and she willed herself not to cry. She should never have let go of Kath’s hand. She should have held on to her and dragged her out the back door.

Her hands trembled, and the cleaver slipped, and the blade nicked the tip of her left index finger. A droplet of blood welled up instantly, bright red. She stared at her finger in shock as the blood splashed onto the cutting board.