by Vanessa Hua
Old Wu had turned her away. Later that day, trying to raise Daisy’s low spirits, Scarlett had insisted they visit the exhibition hall a few hilly blocks east of Chinatown and redeem the free tickets from the church donation sack. Daisy’s interest in science had begun in her father’s engineering lab, a vast playground where she’d roamed. After one of his promotions, he put an end to the visits. It set a bad example to his employees to bring her, he told her. A distraction could lead to accidents, to loss of face.
Daisy studied the display’s thick web of blood vessels crossing a woman’s face.
Scarlett pointed at the sign. “What’s it say?”
“The human body has almost ninety-seven thousand kilometers of blood vessels,” Daisy said.
Scarlett flushed, blood tingling, circulating and circulating in her veins. She wasn’t squeamish, but she’d seen enough of the exhibit to know that she preferred her insides to remain a mystery. She pushed up the shade on the stroller to shield Liberty, who cooed and batted at the rubbery giraffe dangling from the handle. Her liveliness made the preserved corpses all around them more horrendous.
Daisy might have inherited her father’s scientific mind, or maybe he’d bred it into her. Without looking at Scarlett, she recounted how he’d questioned her aptitude and appetite for research, and told her to pursue a practical degree like accounting, a job without long hours on nights and weekends.
No, Daisy told him. She’d narrowed her major down to chemistry or physics.
“Marry a smart man,” he’d said. “You’ll have smart children.”
“He thought he was complimenting me,” she said bitterly. Soon after, she’d met William, who doubted her in nothing.
Scarlett had never known her own father, had never suffered his rejection. Daisy’s heart must have broken, and was breaking still. Scarlett sniffed but detected neither the whiff of rotting flesh nor chemical preservatives, only the industrial scent of the freshly shampooed carpets. On a pedestal under a spotlight, a corpse played a saxophone. He had the stocky build of a peasant and Scarlett doubted if in life he’d come close to playing jazz.
Daisy rushed down the aisle ahead of her, ignoring the exhibit, which may have upset her. Or maybe the science she’d memorized in middle school bored her now. A trip here wouldn’t rouse her out of her depression. How then? Scarlett could give her money to sign up for college entrance exams, even if she then had to defer her admission for a year or two. The uncertainty that mired Daisy mired her, too. Scarlett didn’t know how long it would take to establish the hanbaobao business, if and when she could fix her papers, if Boss Yeung would find her before then.
Something compelled Daisy enough to halt a security guard and question him. He offered the official explanation to her questions: the bodies had been donated.
“From China?” Scarlett asked.
“He didn’t know,” Daisy said.
Impossible, they agreed. In China, no one donated their bodies to science. If you were rich you had a grand funeral, were laid out in a copper casket, all accompanied by chanting monks, clouds of incense, three layers of silk funeral garb, new shoes never worn, and a pearl in your fist to light your way into the next world. Even if you were cremated, your descendants burned paper houses, luxury cars, mobile phones, and stacks of hell money to ensure your enjoyment in the afterlife.
“But their faces. Anyone can see they’re Chinese,” Scarlett said.
“I asked, ‘Did the hospital get permission from the families?’ ” Daisy said. “He said, ‘Maybe the hospital didn’t know how to find their families.’ ”
“Everyone’s?” Scarlett asked. Scores of bodies were on display.
“They must be prisoners,” Daisy said. “I asked, ‘Are these bodies from prison? For what kind of crimes?’ ”
The guard was looking around uneasily, as if searching for the exit.
“He told me, ‘Maybe they deserved it.’ ”
Deserved it? Their offenses could have been fabricated. In China, if you crossed the powerful, you met your doom.
And Scarlett had crossed Boss Yeung. She shuddered, hit by a sudden vision of herself flayed and on display, forever lost to Liberty. On their way in, they’d ignored a clump of demonstrators, followers of the Celestial Goddess. They’d carried signs that complained of body snatching and persecution.
As they exited, the protestors pressed around them, shouting that the Chinese government sold organs from executed prisoners, and now their bodies, too. Scarlett shuddered and steadied herself on the stroller, gripping so hard that her fingernails dug into her palms.
That would be the worst punishment, to be posed like a naked mannequin in a traveling exhibit.
* * *
—
Although Scarlett had only stepped away for a moment to check on Liberty, the common kitchen filled with smoke and would have set off the fire alarm if Evergreen Gardens had possessed such amenities. She grabbed the handle of the pot and immediately let go, the hot metal branding her palm. She was trying to make plum sauce for the sliders. The pot clanged against the stove and tumbled onto the buckling linoleum. Her hand throbbed and she ran it under cold water in the sink. Palm sugar burned fast, hot and sticky until it charred. She was trying to reconstruct Old Wu’s recipe for plum sauce. She cursed herself for not watching him more closely when he’d helped her prepare sliders. It was now the day before Thanksgiving, and so far he had refused to give up his secrets. Ma wasn’t much of a cook, and neither was Scarlett, having long survived on meals from the factory canteen or street vendors and noodle shops.
While Liberty napped, Daisy was out with her son, likely at the library. The exhibit had stirred her, and she’d been reading whatever she could find about the bodies. In one city, protestors threw blankets over them and hurled paint at the signs. In another, the health department had shut down the exhibit after the bodies started oozing a clear liquid. Daisy had spoken in such detail, such excitement about the chemical process of preserving the bodies that Scarlett expected to find the girl pickling a luckless frog purchased from the wet market. Ghoulish, but at least her new obsession kept Daisy’s mind off her boyfriend. She seemed on her way to finding herself again, or at least on her way to trying.
Scarlett used the hem of her shirt to lift the pot and douse it in the sink, sending up clouds of noxious, foul-smelling steam. Auntie Ng arrived, carrying pink shopping bags bulging with bitter melon and dried goji berries. She had an upcoming blood test and was cramming as she might for a final exam, determined to live to 120. “It stinks in here!” She looked into the sink. “What’s this?”
“It’s soaking,” Scarlett said.
“It’s your kitchen?” Auntie Ng snapped. Living here led to daily competition. The moment you heard the communal toilet flush or the shower turn off, the moment your neighbor left the kitchen, you raced to take your turn. You had to hurry, and when you finished, you packed up every bit of your presence. If you treated public spaces as your own, you faced the wrath of your neighbors. Auntie Ng coughed and rushed to the window, which was stuck closed.
“I’ll—I’ll get a fan.” Scarlett flexed her burned hand, pain stabbing through her palm.
Auntie Ng stomped away, her footsteps pounding on the stairs to the kitchen on the next floor. After she’d traded away her son’s motorcycle, his girlfriend had left him. Auntie Ng should have been grateful, but still she scowled at Scarlett. She suspected that the woman had a more than neighborly interest in Old Wu. His friendship with Scarlett annoyed the women in Evergreen Gardens who considered him a community asset.
With the heel of her burned hand, she braced the pot against the side of the sink and used a butter knife to scrape off the char, which clung like a space-age epoxy. She was about to tap the mess scented like a crematorium into the garbage can when she realized how she could persuade Old Wu to help her. She removed the f
oil she’d tented on top of a roasting pan on the counter. She hacked off the leathery end of the pork roast she’d overcooked that morning, jammed it into a crumbly stale bun that smelled like wet newspaper, and heaped on the char. She rummaged through the fridge and pulled out old jars of strawberry jam and red chilies that she smeared onto the bun. She knocked on Old Wu’s door and presented the hanbaobao to him.
He wrinkled his nose at the stench while she explained that she’d perfected the recipe. He studied her, as if waiting for her to admit that she was playing a joke, but she thrust the plate at him again, keeping her expression eager and proud.
He didn’t want to hurt her feelings. The bun crumbled in his hand, but he couldn’t bring himself to take a bite. “I’m full.”
“I’ll save it for you,” Scarlett said. “It tastes better on the second day, after you reheat it and the flavors combine.”
Old Wu winced, likely picturing the stale, soggy mess that would reappear the following day, but he did not—as she hoped he would—volunteer to help her.
“I followed your recipe,” she said.
“Mine?” he asked.
“Watching you was like going to cooking school,” Scarlett said. “I’ve been calling you my Sifu. And people have been calling me your student.”
Old Wu looked aghast. He didn’t want her ruining his reputation with inedible, possibly toxic food. After Liberty began wailing next door, he announced the three of them would go on a walk.
* * *
—
Their first stop was a wet market with bubbling vats of fish, customers elbow-to-elbow at the meat counter, and overflowing produce bins rolled onto the sidewalk. “You’ll find vegetables you can’t get anywhere else,” Old Wu said. He inspected a pile of bitter greens, checking for wilted leaves and held up jade-green scallions to her nose. “Avoid anything that’s yellowing and wilted, or soggy.”
She repeated after him, her eyes closed, taking in the sharp green scent, and added the bundle to her shopping cart. Old Wu peered into the meat case. “No good.”
“The bones are good for soup,” the butcher said.
“Not even dogs would want these!” Old Wu exclaimed.
The butcher scowled. She and Old Wu set off in search of spices. He was teaching her how to prepare tantalizing sauces with the bite of ginger, the tang of vinegar, and the sparkle of star anise that made bottled ones taste like American ketchup in comparison, fit only for children.
The aisles were so narrow that they had to turn sideways. He put an arm around her waist to guide her past a towering stack of cartons. His hand lingered. His introductions to Manager Kwok, his offer to buy the bartered suit, and his invitations to meals could have been expressions of friendship, or reflected his hopes for more. Was he restraining himself because he sensed she wasn’t interested? Whatever the exact nature of his feelings, he didn’t hide his pleasure in her company.
When a woman swept by in heels and a gray pantsuit, her hair a helmet of permed curls, he placed a protective hand on Liberty’s back. Madame Tom, he told Scarlett. She’d worked in Chinatown for decades, with the elderly, for the arts, in affordable housing, before becoming the assistant to the dean at the community college’s Chinatown campus. She was married to the president of the neighborhood’s second-most-important association, the kind that newcomers joined to find a lead on a job or an apartment to rent. When you settled down and started a family, you applied for a scholarship for your children and, later, made arrangements to be buried in their cemeteries.
Madame Tom pursed her lips, and seemed annoyed to be running a lunchtime errand that she found far beneath her. Old Wu said hello, and she nodded curtly and turned away. He explained to Scarlett she’d tried to recruit him to teach a cooking class, and he’d refused. He’d made an exception only for Scarlett.
Someone brushed against her, a man with hunched shoulders, his hair gray and close-cropped, his scent metallic and earthy. Boss Yeung—he’d found her. Her knees buckled. He’d grip her wrists and demand his heir. He must have detectives with him, who’d push down Old Wu and frog-march her into a waiting sedan. Then she realized this man was too short, with a large mole in his eyebrow, and a gopher’s receding chin. Old Wu glared at the man—“Watch yourself!”—steadied her and led her away.
Chapter 13
Scarlett diced scallions into strands uniform as toothpicks. After a couple of weeks of strong sales, she’d expanded from premade sandwiches sold from a chafing dish to a steam cart she’d started renting. Now she could make hanbaobao to order, though the drunkest customers weren’t choosy. She could have served them stale buns and overcooked meat to sop up the alcohol pulsing through their veins. But some demanded their own specials: buns stuffed with scallions, sauce, and no meat for vegetarians; double meat at double the price for carnivores; romaine lettuce leaves for those who ate no bread.
She used to fear her customers would go elsewhere if they had to wait too long. Wasn’t this city populated by impatient tech millionaires on paper and in the making? Instead she discovered that lines prompted passersby to ask what they could get. Let in on the secret, people were eager to join a line that made them feel like an insider.
Christmas was coming and she couldn’t tell if sales would go up among merrymakers sick of holiday ham and turkey, or if she’d lose business because people stayed home. She slid the scallions into a plastic container and snapped the lid shut. Sometimes she lost herself in tasks, buying the ingredients, preparing the hanbaobao, and packing it for transport, before all at once longing for Liberty—an ache in her chest and a hollowness in her arms. Missing her at this very moment, though she was sleeping close by. Her squeak and giggle. Her fresh warm head. The kitchen bristled with dangers—knives, stove, and oven—but she wished she could have strapped on Liberty to bring with her, as her mother had strapped her on to work in the fields. That had surprised Scarlett, how much she’d been thinking about Ma. Their circumstances couldn’t have been more different: Scarlett in the city, not the countryside, in America, not China. And their circumstances more alike: she and Ma both raising daughters without the fathers of their children.
Scarlett took out the plastic mixing bowl. She’d make the buns next, stir together flour, yeast, and water, and let it rise, swelling like a frog’s throat. Punch it down, roll it into a log, and cut off sections to steam in bundles neat as swaddled babies.
Last night, she seasoned five kilos of pork shoulder with handfuls of salt, sugar, and pepper, and stashed it in the fridge. This morning, she started the first batch in the oven, roasting it on low. She pulled out the pork to spoon the drippings over it. In the next hour, she would shred the pork and start the next batch in the oven. Before the markets closed, she’d pick up more pork to season overnight. Each hour ordered by the checklist of tasks.
Daisy’s days were shapeless, and any routine she might have attempted was subject to the whim of twin tyrants. Later this afternoon, she could take them to the park, although the weather was getting chilly, or the library, though she’d once been kicked out when Didi wouldn’t stop crying. As winter set in, Daisy would be trapped inside Evergreen Gardens.
Just as Scarlett set aside the dough, Liberty began crying. She’d left the door to their apartment cracked open so she could hear her. She wiped her sticky hands on a rag and rushed back to the apartment, but when she tried to nurse her, Liberty turned her head away. Scarlett had been nursing at bedtime, at night, and upon wake-up, attempting to make up for their hours apart during the day. Now it was her daughter’s turn to reject her. Scarlett bounced up and down as if her knees were on springs. It was raining, and Scarlett couldn’t strap her on and go for a walk, not while the pork shoulder roasted in the oven, and not with the kitchen a disaster, spills and splashes and dishes piled in the sink that would enrage their neighbors even more.
The Ngs had been making trouble for Scarlett. Auntie N
g had nagged her son to register at the community center, but classes were full for the semester that would begin in January.
“You shouldn’t have waited!” she’d shouted from inside their apartment.
“You shouldn’t have given away my motorcycle!”
“I was tricked. I’m an old, stupid woman,” Auntie Ng wailed, her words aimed not at her son but at her neighbors at Evergreen Gardens. If it weren’t for Old Wu, they would have run her out.
Scarlett shushed into Liberty’s ear, to no avail. Daisy burst into the apartment. She was drenched, her jacket sopping and zipped over her son. A tuft of his hair poked out above her collar.
Scarlett grabbed a towel, but Daisy waved her off. “Come on. Quickly, before it stops. You have to see this.”
She didn’t move, and Daisy tugged on her elbow. “Hurry. It’s the first rainstorm since they were born. Liberty will love it.”
“You’ll catch cold.”
“It’s warmer than the showers here.”
“Don’t talk nonsense.” She jiggled Liberty.
“It won’t hurt. It’s only water. And the change of scene—it’ll help.”
Liberty’s wailing forced Scarlett into motion and after they’d clattered down the stairs to the door, a humid breeze wafted in, lush and inviting. She joined Daisy on the sidewalk. Daisy unzipped her jacket and her son peeped out his head like a turtle, blinking in wonder. The streets were slick and the air free of car exhaust, the scent wet and fresh as the breeze coming off a river.
Liberty stopped crying, staring at the drops falling from the sky. Her rosebud lips parted, her hands reaching up like Didi’s. Her astonishment became Scarlett’s, too. So much to experience in a universe that was rapidly expanding. Her curiosity—at the blurry whirl of the ceiling fan, at the glitter of a mirror, at the cool drops sprinkling on her face—made the world new.
