Searching for Sylvie Lee

by Jean Kwok

  Instead I said, “Try find out. If treasure still there, Grandma give to Sylvie. Will be okay. Not worry.”

  After we hung up the phone, I thought about the gold. Of course Helena wanted the jewelry more than anything. We were distant cousins who had never met until she returned from Holland with her wealthy parents. Some who would put the tall hat of flattery on my head had called me the beauty of our village, but Helena had something more valuable to offer: a foreign road. Any man who married her would be able to leave the Central Kingdom and all of his family could follow, one by one. She was a lifeline. She had no trouble finding a husband there.

  Helena did not want the gold for the value of it. She had enough wealth of her own. She desired it to spite me, to take something of mine from my mother. She had already had Grandma to care for her boy all these years—must she steal my inheritance as well? That jewelry had been passed down in our family from mother to daughter, hidden away through wars and revolutions, accumulated through pain and death.

  I had seen it long ago and remembered it: the finest jade, which grew greener and more vibrant against the skin of the deserving owner; twenty-four-carat gold, untainted, unlike silver, considered undesirable because it tarnished. That gold was too soft, helpless in its purity, too yielding to be of this world. Like my mother and me, it belonged to an age gone by. Its strength was in its ability to bend, but how much could it withstand before it broke for good?

  Chapter 13

  Sylvie

  Wednesday, April 6

  After excluding me from their meal last Saturday, Helena had tried to make up for it in her own way.

  The next morning, she had spoken to me at breakfast. “I got you a few things. Here is an OV-chipcard. Do you know what that is?”

  I shook my head.

  “You can use it to check in and out on any type of public transportation. It is loaded with enough money for you to travel for a while. I also bought you some toiletries.”

  I opened my mouth to say I had plenty of my own, but recognized this as a peace offering and thanked her instead. “That is very kind of you.”

  Helena handed me the OV-chipcard and a wicker basket filled with shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, and hair gloss.

  I pulled the familiar large green bottle of shower gel from the basket, flipped open the lid, and sniffed it. Mmm, green tea and cucumbers. “I used to love this. You remembered.”

  “Of course, I took care of you for all those years,” she said briskly. She held her head high and cleared her throat. “I apologize for the confusion yesterday. There is plenty of food for you in the refrigerator when Willem and I are working. Please help yourself, Sylvie.”

  Since then, we had all coexisted in peace, but as was always the case with Helena and me, our tranquility was short-lived. I spent much of my time helping Isa with Grandma, her labored breathing acting as a constant backdrop. I escorted her to the toilet and bath, exposing pale skin untouched by the sun, arms and legs grown so spindly and frail, an intimacy she had never shared with me before. Grandma’s chin had trembled the first time, but I said, “When you love someone, there is no shame. When I see you, I only know that you are my grandma and you are beautiful. You did this for me when I was young. Now it is my turn. You always said, the old become children once again.”

  The first time I tried to make rice congee, I set off the smoke alarm (Grandma: “Lukas! Can you get to the batteries? Quick! What will the neighbors think?” Lukas, balancing on a stool to reset the shrill alarm. Grandma, muttering, “How can a person burn congee? It is all water.”)—and so I was no longer allowed near the stove. Instead, I cut her steamed chicken and vegetables with rice and fed her bites on the bad days, the ones when she barely moved, her thin hands picking listlessly at the coverlet.

  Mostly, Lukas, Isa, and I took Grandma outside for walks. After carrying her wheelchair downstairs, Lukas would guide her down, walking backward, one slow step at a time, a sturdy buttress should she fall (Grandma, giving Lukas’s biceps a good squeeze: “So strong and handsome like his father. A tiger father does not beget a dog son.”), Grandma gripping the banister with her left hand as I held tight to her upper arm, Isa behind us with the oxygen tank and other equipment. We would pause often so Grandma could take a few shallow breaths, trading alarmed looks if she seemed to overexert herself. Once outside, her faded eyes would brighten as she smelled the wind, delighting in the green blades of grass that had survived the winter and the ever-changing swirl of clouds across the sky.

  “The water wind is good here. Better than people mountain, people sea,” Grandma had said one morning—she had always hated crowds—and suddenly her eyes were awash with unshed tears. “But it is still not the Central Kingdom.”

  My heart ached, understanding how she must long for the land of her youth as she neared the end of her life.

  Lukas stepped closer to her and laid his arm across her frail shoulders. He dipped his dark head to rest his cheek gently on top of her dandelion hair. His Chinese had never been as good as mine, but it was far better than Amy’s. He said, “But your granddaughter with her limpid eyes of autumn water is not in the Central Kingdom.”

  I flushed as Grandma smiled through her tears. “This is true. You both accompany me with the grace of floating clouds and flowing water, and open the heart of this old woman with joy.”

  This morning, I had a special treat for her. I could not wait to show her the photos and videos of Ma, Pa, and Amy that I had brought on my phone. But after a few minutes, Lukas placed his broad hand on my shoulder and gestured with his chin toward Grandma. I had been so absorbed in my presentation that I had not noticed she was weeping silently, her mouth gaping in mute anguish.

  “Oh, Grandma,” I said, folding her in my arms. “I did not mean to throw stones down a well at you.”

  “I will never see my daughter again,” she wailed, gasping for air. “I shall never meet your sister, Beautiful Jasmine.”

  Lukas patted her back as I said, “You shall gaze upon us all after you pass the red dust of the mortal world. You will shed your body and exchange your bones.”

  Slowly, Grandma quieted. “I should like to rise to our ancestors.” She raised her small face and blinked at us with her swollen eyes. “You will burn offerings for me after I am gone? So I have gold to spend and silk to wear in the afterlife.”

  “Of course,” I said, my heart full to overflowing. “They now make Mercedes and flat-screen televisions in paper for people to incinerate for their loved ones.”

  She cocked her head to one side. “No Mercedes. I want a Jaguar.”

  Lukas emitted a choked sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

  I said, “Why don’t I sing to you now? I still remember some of the old songs you crooned to us:

  Little sparrow

  So young and new

  Your mother sought for worms

  So that you might grow strong.”

  And with Lukas listening intently, I sang to her until she fell asleep again.

  That afternoon, I asked nurse Isa for permission to buy some makeup and tinted hair gloss from the pharmacy. I wanted light, natural shades for Grandma. When I was younger, I had practiced my makeup in front of that mottled bathroom mirror in our New York apartment for hours, trying to adjust for its yellow cast as I applied my colors for a professional look. I loved doing Amy’s makeup too, but she never cared about the end result, nor could she ever remember how to replicate it. Then she would insist on reciprocating and paint me up like a clown. But Amy did not need cosmetics. Her beauty glowed from within, whereas I was all about the surface.

  The shop woman watched me with suspicion, an immigrant and stranger in this small town. She thought I was a pocket-roller and subtly followed me as I brushed past another customer. Did she really think I would pick that elderly man’s pocket right in front of her? She stared at me as I selected some hair clips for Amy, probably because they were small and she was afraid I would slip them into my
bag. I held up a set studded in rhinestones. Amy would look pretty in these. They would add some sparkle to her thick, unruly hair when she pinned it back from her heart-shaped face.

  The saleswoman was starting to annoy me now. This close to Amsterdam, and she acted like she had never seen a person of color before. I knew we Chinese only made up one-third of one percent in the Netherlands as a whole, but this was ridiculous. I turned to her and said in perfect Dutch, “Do you think you could help me choose a hair color for my grandma?”

  She jumped in surprise. Her shoulders relaxed and a slow smile spread across her face. If I spoke Dutch that well, I could not possibly be a criminal. “Of course, ma’am. This way.”

  When I brought the supplies to Grandma’s room, I could smell the disease eating at her heart and lungs underneath the sharp cool scent of the tiger balm we’d rubbed across her chest earlier. She had mostly recovered from the emotion of the morning but pain still filmed her eyes, clouding their original golden brown. It went straight through my soul to see her like this. I pulled my hair into a sloppy ponytail so it would not get in my way as I worked. As Isa and I shampooed Grandma’s hair, her breathing grew so shallow I was afraid I had made a terrible mistake, overexerting her like this.

  Isa exchanged a glance with me. “No worries, it is going good.”

  I had picked a simple odorless hair glaze with a honey-brown tint. After I applied it onto Grandma’s white locks, her hair held a light coating of color. I then gently penciled in subtle eyebrows over her prominent skull bones, dabbed her dry lips with a natural peach gloss, and brushed a bit of blush over her fading cheeks. I had her close her eyes and finished her off with a pale pink powder that offset the pallor of her skin.

  When I held the mirror in front of her, she smiled, as if recognizing an old friend. “Take this oxygen thing off my face and get that good-looking boy in here so he can see me. Tell him to bring his camera too.”

  After Lukas had admired and photographed her to her satisfaction, we tiptoed from her room so she could rest. Outside her closed door, Lukas looked at me, then raised his hand and pulled my ponytail loose. My hair tumbled down around my face. He brushed a strand back, then bent down and whispered, “Thank you.”

  That evening, as I often did, I went to bed before Helena and Willem returned from the restaurant for their late dinner.

  There was a knock on my attic door. When I opened it, I could see Helena had shot out of her slipper with fury. Her nostrils flared and her legs were planted wide. She raised a finger, visibly shaking, and the thick gold-and-jade dragon bracelet on her wrist trembled in the hallway light.

  Where I once used to cower, I decided to confront instead. “Is there something, Cousin Helena?”

  She gritted out her words through a tight jaw. “What have you done to the hair and face of Grandma?”

  Was that it? I should have known. I kept my voice calm. “It made her happy.”

  She pointed her finger at me, two centimeters from my nose. “It exhausted her. You could have hurt her. She is in the last stage of her life. From a beautiful plate, you cannot eat. No need for her to be made up like pussycat. For whom?”

  I knocked her stupid hand away from my face. “For herself.”

  Helena reared and for a moment, I thought she would slap me. I almost wanted her to do it. I would hit her back so hard her head would spin for a week. She finally hissed, “Do not think you are so clever. I know why you came back, even though no one invited you.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “You want her favor again. Now that she is old and ready to pass on her inheritance, after you left for so many years. While I was the one who was always here for her. Me and my family.” She emphasized every phrase with a bob of her head.

  My anger rose up in me. I had to voice my words before they exploded into the humiliating tears I refused to shed. I clenched my hands into tight fists. “And why did I not return to this house for so long? Where I had been treated so well? Was it because of Grandma that I stayed away?”

  Helena puffed up like an envious dog tied to a short rope. She was not used to this version of me, the one that spoke. She sputtered, strangled by rage and shame, “Grandma always loved you best, like everyone else. You and your mother.”

  I could not keep my voice from breaking. “Why did you stop caring about me?” I half lifted my hand toward her: this woman who should have been everything to me, who had instead taught me to beware of love.

  Caught up in her hatred, Helena went on, ignoring my words. “That gold of hers belongs to us. We housed and clothed her all these years. I am more her daughter than your mother ever was.”

  My arm dropped back to my side. “You never paid her for all those years she worked here for you as babysitter, cook, and maid. You only gave her pocket money to spend. The least you could do was to provide her with food and a place to live. Now you want the rest of her jewelry too?”

  “We are family. Who pays family? Should I get money for all the diapers of yours I changed? Anything she asked for, we gave her. I deserve her legacy.” Helena’s eyes glittered with naked intensity. I could not tell if they were filled with greed or a desperate need to be loved. I was not even sure if it made a difference: it came down to hunger. Perhaps those desires all stemmed from the same place in our broken, burdened hearts.

  “Grandma has but one child and that is my mother.” I saw I had hit a sensitive string in Helena. She paled and I was ashamed. I tried to gentle myself. “Grandma loves you and I know she has already given you some valuable pieces, like that dragon bracelet you are wearing now. She wants to pass something on to Ma too, that’s all. Is that so wrong?”

  Helena covered the jewelry with her other hand, as if she believed I would wrench it from her wrist. “Did Grandma call and ask you to come?”

  “Yes.”

  The flash of hurt in her eyes was quickly swallowed by fury. Beneath the hallway light, her face was a patchwork of white and red blotches. “That treasure belongs to me and my family. I will do anything to stop you from leaving with it. Do not cross me in this, Sylvie.”

  Without another word, she turned and left.

  When I still lived in the Netherlands, Grandma used to let me play with her jewelry if we were alone in her room. It was the one thing she never shared with Lukas, the only way she let it be marked that I was her direct blood relative. Our family had been rich before the Communist Revolution took over China and much of our wealth had been hidden in the form of jewelry. Some pieces had been in our family for generations. When I was little, I especially loved the articulated carp pendant set with imperial jade. The emerald-green stones were so translucent and vibrant that the fish seemed alive, and I would make it swim across Grandma’s bed.

  “You were made to wear jade, Snow Jasmine. See how it comes to life against your skin,” Grandma said.

  But I never dared. I was a coward, a hero with only socks on, because of the one time I had skipped down the stairs while admiring a marquise-cut gold ring set with diamonds that was much too big for my finger, and Helena had caught me.

  The anger on her face had been as clear to read as parts of a book. “Where did you get that?”

  I had turned and fled back upstairs to Grandma’s room, where the treasure was still spread across the bed. Helena had burst into the room and we all stood there, the three of us, as silent and unmoving as blocks of ice. Grandma gestured with her fingers. I took off the ring and handed it to her. Without a word, Grandma gathered it all up and put it back in her jewelry bag. She waited until Helena had left to hide it again. None of us had ever spoken of the incident.

  Grandma did not like to mention death because it was bad luck, but she had said to me many times before I left for America, “If anything ever happens to me, Snow Jasmine, you must take this. It is for you, your sister, and your mother. This was given to me by my mother and to her by her mother, and so it must remain.”

  It was the morning after I had colore
d Grandma’s hair. Only Lukas and I were in the house with her, and she sat upright in her bed. This was a good day. She said, “Sylvie, show me you still know where it is hidden, get it out.”

  I glanced at Lukas, who looked confused.

  “It is all right. He is a good boy,” Grandma said.

  And so I did. I went downstairs and removed the screwdriver from the toolbox, came back and went to the small closet in Grandma’s room. I unloaded pile after pile of boxes filled with brocade and cotton, coils of old knitting yarn, outdated blouses that smelled of mothballs, and cheap Dutch souvenirs until I found the worn carpeting underneath. I pried open the loose piece I knew was in the back left corner. Then I brushed away the dirt, uncovering what appeared to be nails in the floorboards but were actually screws. I loosened them, lifted the floorboards, and pulled out Grandma’s treasure.

  The embroidered velvet bag was compact and heavy for its size. I set it upon Grandma’s bed and, when she did not move, opened the drawstring to slide out the small, bulging, zipped red silk envelopes. Lukas came to stand behind me and I opened a few to show him their contents as his bushy eyebrows disappeared into his forehead. Was that hurt on his face—because Grandma had shared this with me but not him?

  A jade-and-gold necklace with shimmering diamond accents, each piece dangled on a delicate shiny stream of gold. A ruby-crusted beetle brooch—when I was a child, the beetle and the carp had many adventures together. Heavy necklaces and bracelets of braided pure gold, delicate flowers and sprays of water frozen into precious stones, a small satchel filled only with wedding rings, the twenty-four-carat gold bent and scarred from years of wear, yet still glowing with gentle radiance. I tried to slip one of the rings onto my finger and it was much too small now, as if it had been sized for a child bride.

  Then the two smaller silk bags, one filled with gold coins and the other with fine jade pieces. I had learned a few things since I was a child and now knew that the best jade could command a fortune on the market, especially the types I recognized here: kingfisher, moss-in-snow, and apple jade, but mainly, and the most desirable of all, imperial jade.