by Vanessa Hua
Upon their return to Hong Kong, he’d instructed Viann to tell the family about Scarlett and the baby. No one had mentioned it again. If his wife had shown any resentment toward him, he would have lashed out, asked how long she’d carried on with Uncle Lo, but she remained translucent and fragile as dried wax, overwhelmed by earthly matters, utterly out of touch. Any confession would have been as nonsensical as everything else that came out of her mouth. At least she’d never become one of those wives who flashed their phones finished in gold, who elbowed people aside when they shopped in Europe and screamed at salesclerks to ring up armfuls of designer purses. He wasn’t going to confront her. He needed evidence that Uncle Lo couldn’t deny, proof born of bodily fluids.
Uncle Lo leaned his head back and exhaled a cloud of twilight-blue smoke. Boss Yeung coughed.
“Easy now.” Uncle Lo set his cigar on the edge of the crystal ashtray.
“Don’t let me stop you,” Boss Yeung said.
“You never did.”
Viann was checking out an experimental treatment in Shanghai in case he relapsed. Last week, his wife had summoned the Celestial Goddess, who chanted over him and called upon the stars to heal him. Her portrait hung in their living room, an oversized oil painting with gaseous planets ringing her head. Though her primary residence was in Taipei, the Celestial Goddess frequently traveled to Hong Kong; both places had certain protections that the mainland lacked, but who knew for how much longer? His wife’s spiritual and financial devotion to the Celestial Goddess might someday hurt his prospects over the border in mainland China, but he had never ordered her to give up what had become her reason for existence—not even after he suspected she’d turned him into a cuckold.
Boss Yeung puffed on the cigar and asked if Scarlett, most likely running low on funds, had tried to get in touch with Mama Fang, if she’d been desperate enough to attempt to make a deal.
Uncle Lo frowned. “No.” Despite his wealth, despite his power, he’d been outsmarted by a peasant. “We’ll find her.”
There was a spot waiting for her at a prison in Tibet, he said. His friend at the ministry had arranged it. A sky-high place where you were kept in solitary so long you lost your words, where eye contact with a guard brought a shot to the head. The collapse of Perfume Bay had humiliated Uncle Lo, but it wasn’t all Scarlett’s fault, Boss Yeung had to concede. It was also Mama Fang’s, and to be honest, also his own.
“Don’t waste your favors on her,” Boss Yeung said. “Cost of business.”
He had to choose his words with care. If he sounded too imploring, too concerned about Scarlett, Uncle Lo would disregard his wishes as that of a sick man. “Call it a write-off.”
When his young amah tried to clear the ashtray from the coffee table, Boss Yeung shot out his arm to block her. “We’re not done yet.”
Frightened, she plunked down the ashtray and Uncle Lo’s cigar tumbled off. She was young, dark, and new, and might have spent every day barefoot in rice paddies out in the provinces in the Philippines before getting shipped to Hong Kong. She peeked at the portrait of the Celestial Goddess, as if trying to draw strength and calm. In her short time here, the amah had already been indoctrinated by Boss Yeung’s wife, but he couldn’t tell if she truly believed or if she gave off that impression to remain employed.
As she scurried into the kitchen, Uncle Lo reached for his cigar, his eyes lingering on her shapely bottom. He’d always had a taste for mud, for sturdy women with bodies built for labor.
“We can get more cigars,” Uncle Lo said, and brought up his upcoming visit to the Bay Area. After making a significant donation to Stanford, he’d demand that doctors at the university’s medical center look into Boss Yeung’s case. They would go there together, he insisted.
“It’s too much,” Boss Yeung said.
“It’s nothing. You—Viann—” Uncle Lo cleared his throat, unable to go on.
He understood what Uncle Lo could not say: for Viann’s sake, he would do everything in his power to save Boss Yeung. “After I’m gone—”
Uncle Lo set down his cigar. “You’re not—”
No matter your wealth, you couldn’t outrun mortality. “When I’m gone, look after her. Promise me you’ll look after her.” Boss Yeung’s voice went hoarse. “She’s good, very good.” Gwaai, Cantonese for the concept of good wrapped up in obedience.
He was close to weeping, his natural reserve dissolving. Uncle Lo put a hand on his shoulder, the weight heavy and reassuring. They would have slipped apart, gone back to their smoldering cigars if he hadn’t also patted Boss Yeung’s back—hard. They weren’t hugging—men of their generation didn’t hug their wives or their children, much less their friends—and because they couldn’t hug, any form of physical contact had to involve pushing and shoving. When he tried to pull away, Boss Yeung wouldn’t let him.
A game they’d played for years: Boss Yeung holding back Uncle Lo trying to get past him in the hallway; Uncle Lo blocking him from getting to the dinner table. A playful show of force that would explode into aggression, arm wrestling and flinging each other into walls. To push and to struggle with all their might as they never could at their desks. Boss Yeung punched Uncle Lo’s kidney, a blow against the possible betrayal, a blow against the illness brewing within him.
Their bodies strained against each other, their elbows and hips knocking cushions off the couch. Uncle Lo bumped into a wooden sculpture perched on the end table, which clattered against the marble floor. They pulled apart, flushed, panting, set free. They could have been thirty-five again, taking on the world. Decades away from sickness, decades away from doubt.
At the front door, they parted with an ease Boss Yeung knew they might never share again. The next time they met, he would know if Uncle Lo had deceived him. In the living room, he discovered the ashtray had been emptied by the overzealous young amah. No—no. He lurched into the kitchen and dumped the trash onto the floor, on his knees and pawing through eggshells, soggy vegetable peelings, and bloody meat scraps. Blood seeping onto the cigars would contaminate the DNA samples. His hands were slimy, and he heaved at the smell of garbage. His insides felt eviscerated, carved out. The cigars weren’t there. He dropped onto all fours, the world at a tilt. Did the cigars go down the sink, get flushed down the toilet? He heard footsteps, and the amah sniffling. He slowly climbed to his feet, pulled himself up by the counter. His hands shook under the strain.
“The ashtray?” he asked.
From behind her back, the amah brought forward a plastic baggie of the cigars, extinguished and preserved like lab specimens. He washed his hands and opened the bag. He inhaled tobacco, the scent of ash and burning leaves, as if the odor alone might prove Viann’s paternity.
Looking at her shoes, the amah admitted she’d saved them for her father. She thought he’d like to try them. Filial daughter, her shoulders hunched in misery. Homesick, did she flock to Victoria Park on Sundays, joining hundreds of other amahs who picnicked, flirted, and daydreamed after sending home most of their earnings? Her family must have saved for years to send her to Hong Kong. How much tuition for her siblings, how much medicine for her grandparents had been staked on her salary?
Under her breath, she was chanting a prayer that his wife must have taught her: “Make peace, you are love, you are beautiful.” Stealing was one of the gravest crimes an amah could commit against her master. She sniffled, hiccupping. She must know Boss Yeung would fire her.
He sent her away, not forever, only to the post office, with instructions to ship the remaining cigars home to her father, a cedar box brimming with Cuba’s finest, festooned with red bands, with a scent dark and smoky as a midnight bonfire. Her family would sell off the cigars one by one to pay for emergencies—a miracle the amah would forever credit to the Celestial Goddess.
Chapter 15
The Churro Lady stared Scarlett down, and Scarlett stared back.
After getting chased out by the pizzeria owner last night, Scarlett tried a new neighborhood. In between deliveries, the Pearl Pavilion’s van had dropped her off on Mission Street, outside of a row of fancy bars and restaurants with chic interiors: concrete floors, exposed brick walls, and steel beams across their ceilings. She hadn’t expected the broad boulevard, the orange and red murals, and the stubby palm trees, nothing like the narrow alleys of Chinatown. The neighborhoods could have been in different hemispheres, though the crowds were as young as in North Beach. Here they rode up on bikes sleek as greyhounds, the men in plaid and hooded sweatshirts and candy-colored suede sneakers, right pant legs rolled up; the women in cardigans over print dresses over leggings, their shoulders topped with bright elaborate scarves. They seemed especially intent on indulging after the rains had kept them inside yesterday. More than enough customers on a Saturday night for every cart and food truck pumping out the smell of grease and salt, of excess and indulgence.
At this pace, she’d sell out within two hours. She could have peddled double or triple the hanbaobao she’d brought. She’d outgrown the communal kitchens at Evergreen Gardens and had cut a deal with the manager of the Pearl Pavilion for use of the kitchen and rides with her cart hitched to the van. Manager Kwok hadn’t charged her anything for tonight’s trip and wouldn’t much in the future, she suspected. After all their dealings, she’d entered his trusted circle of associates whom he could count on for underground forms of commerce.
A group of men with oversized beards and aggressive sideburns challenged one another to buy from every cart and food truck in the vicinity. They snapped photos of the hanbaobao and of themselves, grinning and gobbling, the joy of showing off on social media greater than the eating itself. They licked the grease off their fingers, swiped their screens, and uploaded the images before heading into a bar with a neon martini in the window. The clack of the pool balls spilled onto the street, where the sticky sweet scent of marijuana smoke drifted by.
A pair of leathery women who looked like they could scale a cliff with their bare hands placed their order. They snuggled against each other in the chill. In China, such women were known as lala, and in the cities, underground bars and nightclubs catered to their kind.
Just before Scarlett left China, same-sex marriages had been in the news after getting legalized in the United States. She’d seen pictures of men kissing men, women kissing women, waving rainbow flags outside the Supreme Court. A close-up of two pale, hairy hands with two gold bands. Another American curiosity like gun violence or the morbidly obese.
Though both carts were busy, the Churro Lady seemed affronted that Scarlett had breached her territory. When Scarlett’s line waxed while hers waned, she pushed her cart within a few meters, and via hand gestures and English as broken as Scarlett’s, she ordered her to leave.
“Do you have a permit?” Scarlett asked coolly.
The Churro Lady scowled. She was built like a teakettle and though the cinnamon and sugar wafting from her stand were delectable, she looked as bitter as her churros were sweet. Her eyes were beady and suspicious, her feet flat and wide, stuffed into dirty pink house slippers. A large family descended upon her, buying some of the churros that curled in the glass case under a heat lamp.
As soon as the rush dissipated, she returned to glaring at Scarlett, whose line never flagged. The Churro Lady fired up her burners and fried squirts of pale dough that hissed and bubbled in the golden oil, her hands nimble. To sweeten the Churro Lady’s temper, Scarlett would buy a batch to share with Daisy. Churros had spread to China, popping up throughout the night market. Boss Yeung called churros an overpriced version of you tiao, those greasy sticks of fried dough dipped into soymilk at breakfast.
Scarlett recognized the redhead approaching her cart—Casey. San Francisco was a teacup of a city, and she’d served Casey a couple of times in North Beach. She spoke a few phrases in Mandarin, with a surprisingly clear accent. Maybe she’d backpacked around China, seeing more tourist attractions and natural wonders than Scarlett ever would. She handed her the hanbaobao.
“Xie xie,” Casey said. Thank you.
“Bu ke qi,” Scarlett replied. Casey spooned a heavy dollop of chili sauce, and she sighed with contentment at her first bite even though her eyes started to water. A man behind her blurted his order and Casey headed down the street.
The hanbaobao cart faced a photo studio, the shop window crowded with portraits in golden frames: dusky women in ball gowns and feather boas, a toddler in a white tuxedo, a Chinese beauty queen in a gold qi pao with a sash and tiara, a student with a mortarboard tilted on his Afro, and a baby girl in a cloud of pink tulle fluffy as cotton candy. To Scarlett, the portraits seemed not only an act of celebration, but of defiance, too. Although their circumstances may have been humble, those portrayed deserved the finery and posterity worthy of royalty. A yearning most of her hanbaobao customers, with their abundant selfies, would never understand.
A man with a mop of dark curls paused at the Churro Lady’s cart before getting in line at Scarlett’s. The Churro Lady stomped toward Scarlett and knocked over a stack of her paper napkins, which tumbled into the wind. Scarlett chased after the napkins and when she returned, the Churro Lady was squirting plum sauce into the gutter, the bottle wheezing, sauce splatting against the concrete.
Some customers backed away, while others were too engrossed in conversation or playing with their phones to notice. Scarlett shouted at her to stop. The Churro Lady’s wild eyes didn’t seem malicious so much as deranged. She tossed the bottle aside and grabbed the jar of chili sauce, as if to hurl it, when Daisy caught her wrist. She hadn’t nagged Scarlett again about coming out tonight, but she must have followed her from Chinatown.
Daisy forced the Churro Lady’s arm down and retrieved the jar. She was yelling something in Spanish, the trilingual benefits of an education at an international private school in Taipei. The Churro Lady retreated to her cart, glowering, and angrily stirred her wire basket into the bubbling oil, flicking drops that hissed and steamed in the chill. The crowd scattered out of the cross fire.
The children. “Where are they?” Scarlett shouted.
With Little Fox and her fiancé, Daisy said. She had defended the cart, backed Scarlett as no one else ever had, but she shouldn’t have left Didi and Liberty in the care of their neighbor, who wouldn’t notice if the babies were choking—unless it was on her phone that never left her hand. Sagua, a silly, melon-headed fool. And her fiancé was so lazy he would starve to death if food wasn’t regularly placed within his reach.
“Old Wu could do better,” Scarlett said. His cough had grown steadily worse, violent enough to crack a rib. Though he slathered Tiger Balm onto his chest, his eyes had sunk into deep pits, and his jokes had turned into labored squawks. “Widow Mok. Auntie Ng. Anyone else at Evergreen Gardens.”
“They wanted practice.”
Scarlett straightened the lids on the cart. “They can practice on their own children.”
“The babies are asleep.”
“If they wake up, they don’t know Little Fox. She doesn’t know them.”
“They see Little Fox every day,” Daisy said. “They see her more than you.”
That stung—Daisy always returned to how Scarlett was failing her daughter. “At least I see them more than William does.”
Daisy gasped. They’d both gone too far, though neither would apologize, not for telling the truth. If the argument continued, it might have been the end of them, but the Churro Lady had called in reinforcements: one reedy man with a pompadour and heavy-framed glasses like a secret superhero, the other burly with a shaved head and a thick gold chain. Her sons? Despite the differences in size and style, they shared a resemblance in the set of their eyes and nose, pinched too closely together. They were arguing with her, the pompadour trying to push the cart away from Scarlett’s, only to have the Churro La
dy slap his hands to stop him. She rubbed the arm that Daisy had grabbed, her face twisted in pain, perhaps feigned, one of many complaints she’d made over the years that her sons never could learn to ignore.
The men approached and seized Scarlett’s cart, rocking it back and forth, so it wobbled on its wheels. Their expressions were oddly apologetic, not menacing. They might be trying to scare her, get her to leave on her own so that they could persuade their mother to go home. Scarlett clutched the handle, struggling to keep the cart upright. If the cart crashed a second time, it might have to be scrapped. The sons weren’t throwing punches or kicks at Scarlett, but what if they turned violent? Daisy grabbed the steam tray covers, clanging them together like cymbals. A call for help, a call to action, turning heads across the street and the length of the block. Scarlett shouted at her. She didn’t want to draw more attention, or worse, for the police to show up. She could get detained, arrested for the stolen van, for kidnapping. Who knew what Mama Fang had reported to authorities?
Daisy whipped out her phone to snap photos, and bystanders did the same. Casey, the redheaded customer, had returned and stood at the front of the pack. The flashes firing from the phones dazed the sons. Everyone’s footage was no doubt blurry and confusing, but recording felt urgent and necessary. The sons covered their faces with their hands, vampires warding off light until the bald one took out his own phone and sheepishly started snapping pictures of the crowd. Soon he and his brother slunk away from the hanbaobao cart, the fight gone out of them.
“I’ll call the driver,” Scarlett said.
Daisy pointed her chin at the Churro Lady. “If we leave now, we’ll never be able to come back here. She’ll think she chased you out of this corner—out of this entire neighborhood.”
They could work together, Scarlett said. They could promote each other’s snacks, savory and sweet, dinner and dessert. “Tell her.”
