by Aimee Liu
PRAISE FOR AIMEE E. LIU’S DEBUT NOVEL
FACE
“Authentic in every detail, this novel should attract not only readers with Asian interests, but everyone concerned with the changing qualities of American life today.”
—John Espey, author of Minor Heresies, Major Departures: A China Mission Boyhood
“A journey through family toward self, exquisitely layered through the lens of memory. An absorbing read.”
—Paul Mantee, author of Bruno of Hollywood
“Impressive… Liu’s lyrical prose is graceful and evocative.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Structured like a mystery, around secrets and unanswered questions.… Liu raises compelling questions about identity, the power of memory, and the cost of forgetting”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Reads like a kind of visual poetry…. Whether Aimee Liu turns to the tumult of Chinatown, the bloody chaos of Chiang’s mainland China or the pain of her central character’s own past, we travel there, too, in a book well worth the price of the ticket.”
—Linda Phillips Ashour, author of Speaking in Tongues and joy Baby
“With clarity and insight, Aimee Liu has given us a glimpse into a world in which the secrets people keep are as potent as the stories they tell.”
—Christina Baker Kline, author of Sweet Water
“A powerful examination of the Asian-American experience”
—Transpacific
“A searing story about the pain of being different and about the inescapable, often destructive hold of the past…. The novel creates a haunting atmosphere?
—New York Times Book Review
“Arresting and well-plotted…. Liu’s characters are deftly delineated, and at times the descriptive lines are so beautifully written that they have the delicacy and quality of that other Oriental art form, haiku.”
“—Rocky Mountain News
“FACE exquisitely depicts Maibelle’s slow coming to terms with the forces that made her, in a story that is part psychological drama, part rite of passage, part literary exploration of being racially divided, and part mystery.”
—Milwaukee Journal
ALSO BY AIMEE E. LIU
Solitaire
Copyright
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1994 by Aimée E. Liu
All rights reserved.
Warner Books, Inc.
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Originally published in hardcover by Warner Books.
First eBook Edition: October 2009
Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com
ISBN: 978-0-446-56557-8
Contents
PRAISE FOR AIMEE E. LIU’S DEBUT NOVEL
ALSO BY AIMEE E. LIU
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part1: The Emperor State Building
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part II: A Kingfisher’s Wings
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part III: Chinatown Chicken
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part IV: The Fairy’s Rescue
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part V: Chinaman’s Whore
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part VI: Dragonflies
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
FACE
For Margaret Blackstone
Acknowledgments
This novel has acquired many godparents during its long journey from impulse to publication. The first, of course, is Martin Fink, whose humor, love, and understanding sustained the author through many stretches when it seemed the story was a goner. Cai Emmons, Arnold Margolin, Hugh Gross, and Eric Edson, too, offered invaluable criticism and encouragement from early on. Willyne Bower, Nancy Fawcett, and especially Susan Bartholomew and Sarah Piel gave the finished manuscript its first of many vital blessings. Lori Andiman and Artie Pine were on hand, as always, with energetic support, while my agent, Richard Pine, provided the honest friendship, faith, and professional excellence that gave his blessing the weight of gold. Finally, Jamie Raab bestowed on this project the enthusiasm, wisdom, and generosity that are the marks of a truly gifted editor—and a true gift to this new novelist. Thank you, one and all.
I would also like to extend a special note of gratitude to my distant teachers, Joanne Hoppe, Jesse Sommer, and particularly Chic Reich, for urging me to write long before I realized I had anything to say.
Should the misted clouds survive,
They will drift to the void and let free the moon.
LIU YÜ-SHENG
Prologue
I was a child in Chinatown.
My earliest memories are filled with strangled ducks and ginseng root, parades of round, worried faces, and babies in pastel colors. Rich light slants between squeezed buildings, and winter shadows soak the streets tugging warmth from fingers and toes. I hear wailing, chattering, a multitude of tones. A language I can’t understand. And the smells—I know them as well as my name—the unearthly blend of fishmongers’ trash, orange peel, garlic, and sandalwood. Joss sticks lit for the dead.
I see myself in these memories as a tall, pale, redheaded girl reflected in a storefront window. A narrow face with a broad off-center nose. Too-wide eyes the color of jade and only a vague Oriental cast. Against the rest of the Mott Street crowd I stand out like a vivid flaw in a bolt of jet-black silk.
But the girls I admired most in the world—the Yellow Butterflies—stood out, too. Just one grade ahead of me and worlds apart, they had the flawless appearance of porcelain dolls. Pale skin. Flying cheekbones. Diminutive noses. Waist-length hair that hung straight, gleaming like dark cellophane, and those classic almond eyes with their smoothed-down lids, as if carved in a single stroke.
I studied the Butterflies’ movements, their fashions, their games. True to their name, they dressed in yellow, light and bright, with shoes of silver or gold and hair ornaments shaped like blossoms. Their voices, alternating between Cantonese and English, made me think of the sparrows that nested in my Wisconsin grandfather’s barn. Grampa said if I got too close, the sparrows would peck my eyes out, but as long as I kept my distance I could play in the barn and they’d let me be. I thought the same rule should apply to the Butterflies.
One day I followed them out of the schoolyard and heard them tittering about my height, my green eyes. They said my hair was like cock feathers. They turned and called to me in Chinese, broke into giggles when I stopped and pretended to read a nearby wall poster.
Still, I imagined them waving me forward, taking my hand. We’d stop to buy plum candies, walk to one of their homes to play. Their mothers would have a mah-jongg game going and the gentle swish-click of the tiles would sound in the background as I tried on the Butterflies’ colors…
I fastened my eyes to that poster. A Ringling Brothers clown leered back. The Butterflies yelled in English.
“Who’s your grandpa? Jolly Green Giant?”
“Who does your hair? Chicken Little?”
I bolted across the street, house key clenched in my fist. If I just held onto that key, the Butterflies would stay where they were, lau
ghing and linking arms. They would leave me alone. But if I let go, they would come pull my hair out strand by strand, they would suck the color from my eyes. They would beat me with their wings until I melted into the pavement.
The key gave me safe passage.
From my father’s window I watched grocer Hu scold the Butterflies over a box of lychees they had upset in the chase. They scrambled on their knees to retrieve them, and then Old Hu softened and gave each of them a nut to crack and nibble at as they moved on. I imagined the cool pink flesh between their teeth, the juice like sweet perfume. I could almost feel the brittle shell breaking and, inside, the hard, smooth pit, dark as the finest rosewood.
Much later, between years of college, I ran into one of the Yellow Butterflies selling panty hose at Bloomingdale’s. She’d had her eyes done. Had the lids lifted, folded, and cut until the almond shape was gone and with it her exotic, imperious beauty. Now she looked innocent. Cute. She could pass for American.
“Donna and Bidi had their eyes done, too,” she told me, “and Lily had her nose built up. None of us live in Chinatown anymore.”
I didn’t remember this woman’s name, much less those of the other Butterflies, but I felt as though I’d come face-to-face with myself turned inside out.
Secretly, she was saying, the Butterflies used to envy me because I was real American. “If you’d stayed around, we might have been friends.”
I mouthed the conventional wisdom, said those differences never should have mattered.
“No,” she agreed, “but if they didn’t, there would be no Chinatown.”
Part I
The Emperor State Building
1
Maibelle Chung
75 Sunridge Street
Playa del Rey, California
Sept. 26
Dear Maibelle—Miss Chung?
I’m not sure how to address you after all this time, especially since you may never read these words. Your mother gave me this address but said she hadn’t heard from you in some years and wasn’t sure if it was correct. I can only hope to reach you.
Some of your photographs appeared in a small art magazine two years ago, and I was most impressed by them. Now I am planning to write a book that would be greatly enhanced by photos. I thought of you not just because you are clearly talented but because the book will document the lives of Chinatown residents, both newcomers and some old-timers whom you might remember. Grocer Hu, whose shop was across the street from us. Friends of Uncle Li. I haven’t selected all the subjects yet, as I plan to conduct the interviews over the next year or so, but my hope is that the human stories might form a bridge from Chinatown back to China. To this end I think it is important to include the faces as well as the words of those interviewed. I am not a photographer. That’s why I am writing you.
I realize this comes out of the blue. But Uncle Li always said you would want to come back. I think you must return to New York sometime, as your family remains here. This might be a project for your next visit.
I look forward to hearing from you, Maibelle. We can discuss in greater detail then.
Sincerely,
T. Tommy Wah
I was two years and several addresses away from Sunridge Street when Tommy’s letter arrived, not at my apartment, but in my box at work. My former landlord must have redirected the envelope, though he had never done this with any others before.
Maybe I should have recognized the note’s circuitous route as a sign, but I was too unnerved by its contents: flattering, unexpected, and nothing I could even consider accepting. I hadn’t touched a camera in over four years, and Tommy, Li—they were names from another lifetime. Chinatown was ancient history. I couldn’t think where I’d even begin if I were to answer with any grace.
So I didn’t. I tossed the letter in the trash and tried not to give it any further thought. For a while that was the end of that.
A few weeks later a near miss caused me to reconsider. I was working a charter to Pensacola. Stretch DC-8, the plane shaped like a mile-long cigar. We bounced at least six feet on impact, with all the noise of a crash. The lights flashed out. The straps of my jump seat flew off. I fell forward, slamming my head on the metal partition in front of me, and began to cry. I was shaking so hard my flying partners had to drag me into the rear closet area to get me away from the passengers, who were plenty hysterical themselves. We, as professionals, were supposed to smile and pretend this was normal. It turned out we’d missed the end of the runway, a rock jetty into the ocean, by just three and a half inches. When the copilot delivered this news, he said we were lucky sons of bitches. He called it a sign. The next week I heard he was taking early retirement.
Then I happened to pick up a New York Times and read that a renowned documentary photographer, a single, childless woman named Marge Gramercy, had died in lower Manhattan. That night was the first in a month I slept through without one of my nightmares.
Tommy Wah’s letter. The landing in Pensacola. Marge Gramercy. Too many signs, I decided. Or warnings.
I returned to Manhattan four months ago—and four months almost to the day after Tommy’s letter—on Chinese New Year. According to my calculations, it was the Year of the Rooster, but no firecrackers rattled the streets, no lion dancers came forth to welcome me. I did not go back to Chinatown, where such celebrations were surely taking place. Where Tommy, according to his return address, still lives. I did not go to the Upper West Side, where my parents now reside. I came to Greenwich Village, a territory in between, which no one in the history of my family has ever considered home.
I had an obituary in one pocket and a check for five hundred dollars from the sale of my 1973 Pinto in the other. Having grown unaccustomed to Manhattan in winter, I wore cotton, not wool, no hat, no gloves. My nose was streaming, my eyes watering. My long hair tumbled with the wind. I’d come three thousand miles to ring the bell of a weather-beaten brownstone I’d selected sight unseen.
At the front door Harriet Ratner, 140 West Eleventh Street’s building manager and ground-floor tenant, looked me up and down. I stood straight and gave her my best professional smile, but Harriet had the demeanor of a career Girl Scout leader whose troops always earn the most merit badges. She warned, “We’re all women here. Your boyfriend moves in, you’re out.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
She held her position and continued to size me up: a redheaded stewardess out of California, single, late twenties, with no visible scars or handicaps. From the perspective of a large middle-aged woman with a double chin and orthopedic shoes I was a perfect stereotype.
“I grew up in New York.”
She dug a fist into her hip and shifted her weight against the door frame.
“Yeah? Where?”
“Stuyvesant,” I lied. “My parents owned a dry goods store. I joined the airlines after they died… I’ve been gone a long time.”
“Stuyvesant, huh?” An invisible fault line began to shift. “Grew up in the Bronx, myself.”
As I followed her inside I slid the clipping out of my pocket and tried to imagine the sweet-faced old lady in the photograph moving through this gloomy puce hallway. The single decoration was a Dutch Masters cigar box print hanging across from the door. The staircase was clean but well scuffed and creaky. The radiator moaned as we started up, and low-wattage bulbs on each landing left the corners in shadow.
Marge Gramercy had lived here for nearly thirty years, the rental agency told me, which was why they could charge only six hundred a month for her apartment. Rent stabilization. My father would be proud of me, coming up with this bargain gem long-distance, but that was only part of the story. According to her obituary, my predecessor had traveled the globe shooting mountains and native children for National Geographie. She’d started at the age of twenty-eight, had won awards for her work. Yet this modest brownstone was her home base. Living in her tracks, I thought, might make her achievement seem real to me. Attainable. It might bring both my life and my
work back into focus.
I trailed Harriet up two flights and into a large square room with a plaster fireplace and twelve-foot ceiling. Two tall windows made the place seem lighter, airier than it really was. They looked out across a schoolyard and a couple of tight city gardens to the shops of Greenwich Avenue. A wall sliced off one edge of the main room to form a sleeping alcove barely wide enough for a double mattress. The kitchen was literally a closet that had been outfitted with a two-burner stove, vintage 1930, and a deep porcelain sink. A pull-up table was hinged to the door. The refrigerator stood in the entryway, opposite the coat closet.
It seemed a decidedly inconvenient setup for a woman of Marge Gramercy’s accomplishment, not to mention her longevity here. Was the arrangement controlled by economy or indifference? Or was it simply that her real life lay elsewhere?
“Me and my mother live downstairs. These bare wood floors, we’ll hear every sneeze unless you put down carpets.”
I assured Harriet I was very quiet. With unemployment staring me in the face, I wasn’t looking for any investments that weren’t absolutely required. For the same reason, I told her not to worry about the houndstooth couch Ms. Gramercy’s heirs had failed to carry away. Harriet visibly shuddered, and told me Marge’s niece had found her lying on that sofa.
“Don’t that bother you?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve never owned anything that belonged to a dead person.” Which technically was true: everything I ever had from dead people was given to me before they died. Besides, I’d lost my faith in ghosts, so there didn’t seem much to fear except the chance that the couch would bring bad luck. And since Ms. Gramercy had made it to eighty-six, working to the end, I figured I had some leeway in that department. It was her luck, for better or worse, that I hoped to inherit.
