A River of Stars

by Vanessa Hua

  The smell of roasting meat fogged the building; if Scarlett had dragged her fingernail along the smudged walls, years of grease might have peeled off like wax. Trudging upstairs, she found an open door to a studio apartment, where a soap opera blasted on the television. When the granny inside looked up from the screen, she seemed unperturbed by a surprise visitor. Scarlett asked if she knew Fatty Pan.

  “I’ve lived here fifteen years,” the granny said. “Never heard of him.”

  “Who’s the landlord? How could I find him?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The granny turned back to the television.

  Scarlett knocked on the other doors. No one answered. In a month, her visa would expire. She was the only non-citizen in their household, the only one to blame if authorities split them up: she’d get deported and Liberty sent to Boss Yeung, because he’d surely find her after Scarlett had been detained. Daisy, a minor, would get shipped back to her parents, who’d declare her an unfit mother and keep her from Didi.

  Scarlett had never sought Daisy’s advice on how to fix her papers. And yet, she depended on Daisy for much else, just as Daisy depended on her, together on the run, together in hiding. She should have brought Daisy along to Lawyer Loo’s offices. She told herself she didn’t want Daisy and her son mixed up in such matters, but she’d also been too proud to ask for help. She wanted to bang her forehead against the door. She never should have trusted Lawyer Loo and his easy promises. Huogai, her fault.

  Turning to leave, she discovered Fatty Pan in the hallway, a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair slicked back, returning from the communal shower. He froze and ran to his room, fumbling with the key on a strap around his neck. He tried to slam the door on her. With Liberty in the sling, Scarlett was top-heavy, clumsy and slow. She managed to yank his towel with the tips of her fingers. He held on to it. Clinging to his towel, she forced her way into his apartment. It was sparsely furnished, a monk’s cell in contrast to the mess of Lawyer Loo’s office: a neatly made twin bed, a single bowl, cup, and pair of chopsticks, and three identical shirts and pants hanging on a metal rod jammed across the window.

  “Can…can you…can you look away?” he stammered. “I have to get dressed.”

  “So you can hit me from behind?” she asked.

  He was about as imposing as a mouse, but she didn’t know what he would do if cornered. She stroked Liberty’s head. If she’d had time, if she’d thought it through, she wouldn’t have confronted him with the baby. Fatty Pan turned his back to her, pulling up his pants underneath his towel and buttoning his shirt.

  “Why are you still here?” Scarlett said.

  He sighed. “My mother.” She lived next door.

  The granny who’d denied his existence. She suffered dementia, he said. Last year, he’d tried to move her into his apartment building, but she’d run back, drawn to the memory of her room, these stairs, the movement embedded in her muscles, the familiarity keeping her upright. As soon as he could, he’d moved in here. This morning, he’d taken her to a doctor’s appointment, and that had saved him.

  “But now—” she said.

  “I don’t know.” His mother’s government check was coming in the mail today or tomorrow, he said. They’d cash it, and then he’d decide if they should stay or go.

  Though Lawyer Loo charged exorbitant rates, Scarlett guessed that only a fraction went to his assistant.

  He and his mother didn’t have enough to travel very far or for very long, he said. He’d have to barricade the door wherever they stayed to keep her from running away.

  “Should I go?” Scarlett said.

  “You? Why would the police want anything to do with you?”

  “The paperwork Lawyer Loo filed—won’t I get in trouble?”

  “If they go after anyone, it will be clients with cases in progress. But he didn’t file a thing for you—not for most people who came through in the last year.”

  Lawyer Loo had committed a double crime: defrauding the government and defrauding his customers.

  The stink of the grease intensified, and Scarlett’s head swam. “Everyone said he was the best in Chinatown.” She retched, and might have fallen if Fatty Pan hadn’t sat her on his bed. The sling was tight, choking her, and she had to get it off. She tore at the straps and Liberty tumbled on the bed, elated to be free.

  “People hear what they want to hear,” Fatty Pan said. “And he figured they’d be too scared to complain. He’d always say there was a backlog, that the papers were coming.”

  “Why?” Scarlett asked. “Why did you let him trick me?”

  “He—we—didn’t start off that way,” Fatty Pan said. “We offered people hope. More hope than anyone else. So many were coming for help, he got behind and he never caught up. Then he realized he didn’t have to do anything but take their money.”

  “Why take my stories?”

  Fatty Pan looked away. “He’s trying to bring over a friend.”

  “Can I get back my money?” She picked up Liberty, who thrashed in her arms with the might of a salmon swimming upstream, and shoved her back into the sling. He gave Scarlett such a look of pity that she wanted to slap him. When he offered her a twenty-dollar bill, she took his wallet. With resignation and remorse, he let it go. She emptied it and left.

  Chapter 18

  The drip of dozens of IV bags sounded like the patter of rain, a steady beat over the scratch of pencils at Little Genius. The teenagers bent over their worksheets didn’t gossip, didn’t text, and didn’t fidget while hooked to the silvery lines with the ghostly look of jellyfish trailing their tentacles.

  The motion detector chimed over the front door, and as Mama Fang rushed from the classroom and into the reception area, she found a woman impatiently tapping her credit card against the counter. Classes were full, Mama Fang announced. “But I can add you to the wait list.” She knew what the mother would ask next: how long? “One year.” One year in which her child would fall further behind, one year in which rivals would vault ahead with the miracle study aid that Mama Fang had introduced to Silicon Valley almost three months ago. One single year that would determine the entire fate of her child: which university, which profession, which spouse, and thus which grandchildren. One year without the amino acids, vitamins, and minerals supplied through the IV that enabled the students at Little Genius to study longer and harder, to ward off and recover from colds, to sharpen their eyes and to brighten their skin.

  “Call me if there’s a cancellation,” the mother said. A command, not a question, not the plea that other prospective clients made on behalf of their children.

  “I’ll add your name.” Mama Fang ran her finger down the long wait list.

  The mother studied the length of the list, the mock letters of acceptance to Yale, Stanford, Harvard, and MIT on the wall, and the flattering lighting and glossy dark-wood trim that marked Little Genius as a place of high standards. “I’ll pay the deposit now.”

  Mama Fang closed her book. “No need.” She handed the mother a business card, using both hands, as if she were passing a delicate cup of oolong tea. Polite, but a send-off all the same.

  The mother drew herself up. “Xiao Jie”—Little Miss—“when will your boss be in?”

  Xiao Jie, as if Mama Fang were pushing a cart at a dim sum restaurant, as if she weren’t at least twenty years older than this woman, as if she were still the household help sleeping in a room off the kitchen in Hong Kong. Mama Fang nodded, her expression proud and disdainful, to indicate that she was in fact the owner. The customer’s imperious reserve crumpled after realizing she’d treated the proprietor so dismissively.

  “I can pay the full amount now,” she said, thrusting forward her credit card while extolling her son, his obedience and his brilliance.

  Mama Fang did not move, did not say a word, and the mother offered
twice, then three times the class fee to move her son higher on the wait list—as Mama Fang had known she would. Like every parent who’d signed up their hapless child for Little Genius, with the desperation of refugees fighting to get out of the country.

  For an additional fee, you could move the world.

  “There’s an opening this afternoon only,” Mama Fang said. “Maybe next week.” If she crammed the desks together, she could squeeze in another row of students. “We offer priority enrollment, if you pay six months in advance. And unlimited access to green antioxidant boosts.”

  “Is it organic? What discount for two kids?” Even affluent clients haggled to feel as if they’d come out ahead. As VIPs, they’d boast to their friends and family and bring in more customers.

  Leaning over the counter, Mama Fang lowered her voice. “There’s a special cash price.”

  By the time the mother left—left and returned from a trip to the bank to withdraw funds—Mama Fang had pocketed four thousand dollars, and it wasn’t yet noon.

  * * *

  —

  In China, patients demanded IV drips of antibiotics and fluids, not willing to wait to heal on their own from colds or the flu. If they felt run-down, they stopped by clinics for instant health and vitality, an idea that was spreading in the United States. First in Chinese neighborhoods, and now among Americans, Hollywood stars and the rich who wanted hangover cures.

  Mama Fang’s inspired new idea had been to offer services to students worn out by the competitive grind they’d faced since their parents began comparing their first steps and their first words to those of their peers. Parents who spent without restraint so their proxies, their children, could get ahead.

  After putting away the cashier’s check from the pleading mother, Mama Fang washed her hands under a cloud of antibacterial soap harsh enough to wear enamel off a pan. Her skin had chapped, cracked as if she were once again scrubbing household laundry. A necessary precaution, to prevent her students from developing sepsis, the bacterial infection from IV lines; it started off like the flu—fever, aches, chills, fatigue, malaise—but soon shut down the body.

  In her pocket, her mobile phone buzzed. She dried off her hands and strode to her office, hoping Uncle Lo was calling her back. For weeks, he’d been ignoring her calls. With the Spring Festival approaching, maybe he was giving her a chance to clear old debts.

  A click, and then a chipper woman asked, “How would you like to lower your mortgage rates?” Mama Fang hung up on the telemarketer. She rolled her shoulders, sore as if she’d been beaten by hammers. She was fifty-six, and had never felt her age as keenly. She must be coming down with something; the children here were like sewer rats carrying diseases. She began every day with a treatment, many nights, too, if she needed a burst of glucose.

  Forty years ago, before he became Uncle Lo, he’d been Young Master and she was the amah. The Lo family hadn’t been rich, but rich enough to keep a cook-maid, and rich compared to the Fangs, refugees from China. In the early 1970s, cheap maids from Indonesia and the Philippines were starting to arrive in Hong Kong, like a great twittering flock swept off-course in a typhoon. Mrs. Lo, who believed Chinese were more hardworking, devoted, and virtuous, continued to hire local amahs like Mama Fang.

  Mama Fang had a heavy hand with the soy sauce, was sloppy with the wash, and left streaks on the window glass, but Mrs. Lo marveled at the market bill—half of what she used to pay! Mama Fang had known that saving her mistress money would redeem her failings in the household arts.

  The Los’ amahs in the past must have been cozy with certain meat and vegetable stalls, getting a kickback, but Mama Fang passed the savings on to her employer. After Mrs. Lo bragged about her thrifty maid to her friends, Mama Fang told her about bargains offered by other vendors—those in partnership with the stalls where she shopped. By driving additional sales, Mama Fang negotiated deeper discounts.

  She gathered information through gossip and observation, and made connections others did not. By providing favors, she put everyone in debt to her—the market vendors, the shop owners, Mrs. Lo and her friends—and she enjoyed that, too. Mama Fang became greater than the toil of her hands alone.

  No one had expected much from a girl like her. Her mother had died in childbirth, and from early on, Mama Fang had taken care of herself and her father. Even then, she’d been known as Mama Fang because of the children she minded while their parents toiled. She hitched them onto her back, knotted rags into dolls, and braided strings around their wrists. Each time, they grew up and left her.

  Soon after she started working for the Lo family, Young Master set off firecrackers underneath the stools of a noodle shop because he’d spied the owner using cooking oil skimmed out of the gutter. He had fancied himself a bandit-hero, defending the people. The downtrodden remained exotic to Young Master, who hadn’t yet learned to ignore the lives of servants outside of their duties. To probe too deeply meant uncovering circumstances that might disrupt smooth household operations.

  At fourteen, he was two years younger than Mama Fang, and like her, he was an only child. Although Mrs. Lo might have wanted more children, giving birth must have hollowed her out. In the laundry, which revealed the household’s every bodily secret, Mama Fang found no evidence Mrs. Lo bled each month. At least she had survived delivery, unlike Mama Fang’s mother. The yearning for her mother never left Mama Fang, though the shape of that want changed over the years. As a child, she longed for hands to plait her hair and for arms to wrap around her in the dark. As a teenager, she wished for her mother’s advice on her new curves and the attentions they drew from men. Her body felt like a stranger’s—was it becoming like her mother’s?

  Mama Fang couldn’t imagine her mother at sixteen, one year from meeting the man she would marry and three years from dying in childbirth. Even if she could have traveled back in time, for a chance to pass her mother in the street, she wouldn’t have warned her. She wouldn’t have stopped her death, because it led to Mama Fang’s life. It might seem heartless, but she valued her own existence more, and she would never lose herself to any person, to any man or child. She had to watch out for herself. No one else had, or ever would. She did not know then that this vow would harden her. If you only looked out for cheats and con artists, you only found cheats and con artists. You became one yourself.

  * * *

  —

  That afternoon, the mother who’d struck a deal with Mama Fang returned with her eight-year-old son. He twitched in his mother’s lap, ignoring the educational cartoon playing on a computer tablet. He couldn’t take his eyes off the IV needle.

  “You want to see it?” When Mama Fang showed him the coiled tubing, the boy stared as if it were a cobra about to strike. Inserting the IV properly was akin to making an entrance onstage, demonstrating that Mama Fang was a skilled professional. As he stroked the plastic with his finger, his shoulders relaxed, and in his eyes, the tubing turned harmless and silly. “See how it’s hooked to Big Brother and Big Sister?” she asked, pointing out the other students. He nodded with hesitation, and then pride, to be counted among them.

  She took the boy’s arm, gently massaging the flesh to make the veins stand out. A little darling, with the vitality of a tadpole.

  Her hands felt weaker than usual. She hooked the IV fluid onto the rack, careful not to puncture the bag hanging above the boy; flushed the line, driving the bubbles out; and tied on the tourniquet. She told the boy to flex, pumping her own arm to demonstrate. She grunted with a bodybuilder’s might, which often made first-time students laugh. Not this one. The boy shivered under the swipe of alcohol, the chill raising goose pimples, and whined from the swipe of numbing cream.

  “This will hurt, just a little. A tiny pinch.” Mama Fang tugged at the thin skin on the boy’s forearm, taut with tendons and blue veins. Children wanted honesty, in appearance, if not actuality. Her heart was racing. When she
tried to take a deep breath, she realized she was panting. She’d had too many cups of tea this morning. Her hands trembled so much she almost dropped the needle. Steady—steady.

  Here—no there—twice she stuck the boy with the needle. His mother protested.

  “Keep him still,” Mama Fang ordered sharply. She poked through a vein, blood pooling under the skin into a thundercloud of a bruise.

  “The toxins are getting flushed out.” Mama Fang removed the needle. The boy thrashed and his mother whispered into his ear—a threat or an endearment, or both, Mama Fang couldn’t tell, but he was in danger of hurling himself to the floor. Maybe she shouldn’t accept students his age.

  “Count backward from one hundred,” Mama Fang said, kind but firm, and the boy went still long enough for her to insert the needle. She applied light pressure to the incision and screwed the tubing into place. She reached for the transparent dressing on the tray. As she pulled it out of the wrapper, it folded in on itself, sticking together. Aiya! In the supply closet, she found an unopened dressing that had dropped to the floor. She squatted, wincing. Her joints had gone stiff during the latest cold snap. After securing the line, she popped off the tourniquet. “Good boy.”

  Now that she’d figured out how to deal with kids this young, she’d recalculate her financial projections, shaving off the months and years it would take to earn back the trust of Uncle Lo. She’d first learned how to an insert an IV on her ex-husband, for his medications, and with practice, it was coming back to her now. Mama Fang set a sesame candy and a worksheet before him. The boy tugged on his ear with his free hand. He smelled like chewing gum and rubber erasers, and she had to stop herself from stroking his soft ears, which stuck out like a fox’s.