by Vanessa Hua
She’d read somewhere that amputees feel pain in their lost limbs, how their brains retain a memory of it, how nerve endings send signals that trick them. She understood how their pain never left them, like the ache she carried for her son she’d given up, whose weight remained heavy in her empty arms.
At Perfume Bay, she’d been surrounded by newborns who mewled and slept, abstract and unformed, and had never felt much for them or their pampered mothers who didn’t appreciate their good fortune. However, among these children at Little Genius, who’d developed into people, with their own desires and habits, she yearned for her lost son—for a family—as she hadn’t yearned in years.
* * *
—
When Young Master had asked questions about her life, Mama Fang exaggerated and invented. She wanted to impress and entertain him, and telling lies was easier than recounting the lonely squalor of their flat, of her father slumped in a chair. She claimed she was the eldest of five children, with a blind sister who memorized hundreds of songs, another talented at sewing and the youngest at making dumplings, and a clever brother who strummed a pipa he’d made from tin cans.
Young Master was a head shorter, with cheeks smooth of stubble, and at least ten kilos lighter, a sapling to her sturdy trunk of a body. He had yet to grow into his hawk’s nose, into his oversized hands and feet and caterpillar eyebrows, the imposing features he would possess as Uncle Lo.
On her afternoon off, she answered the door and discovered he’d followed her home. He glanced around the stuffy flat in search of her stories: her hunched granny who told fortunes and her father who raised fierce fighting crickets. The crowded, colorful life Mama Fang had longed for, which Young Master had wanted, too. She wasn’t family to him—she’d known at every moment that he could get her fired—but she’d wanted him to trust her. To look up to her as the children she’d cared for once did.
He turned and ran. The next week, he crumbled biscuits in his bed, swished his shoes through the gutter and tracked prints across the living room. He hid a spring roll under the cabinet, which stank like the dead and attracted swarms of ants. She shouldn’t have deceived him. She wanted to tell him she’d never known someone like him to be so interested in someone like her. She was sorry, she needed his mercy, and she needed this job.
When his parents went out to dinner, she heard a crash and discovered a stinking mess of soy sauce, ink, fermented black beans, and shards of glass on the floor of his room. He sat on the bed, his expression defiant. She suspected his revenge would turn elaborate, blame heaped upon her, unless she stopped him now. She pinned him to his bed. His mouth parted, his breath held, and hers caught in her throat. Oh—his eyes. She’d never seen the flecks of black. His body, not scrawny but sinewy. His scent carried traces of his day: the sun on his skin, smoky mischief with his friends, and milk custard on his breath. She slid off him, their crotches grinding against each other.
Over the next few weeks, they occupied themselves with straining and stroking, above and then under their clothes. Their bodies fit together as if designed for no other purpose, his hands cupping her breasts, her nose nestled in the curve of his neck. His eyelids fluttered, pale as moth’s wings. Their shirts came off, revealing a spilled chili sauce of a birthmark high on his chest. She’d never seen it. She touched it, thick and rough as a scab, and he flinched. He guided her fingers under his waistband. It was smoother and hotter there than she expected, like a feverish forehead.
He slid into her, and his helpless gasp embarrassed them both. She shuddered against her will, releasing all that had been tightly held within her. A moan slipped out that she couldn’t swallow back and everything scattered like newspapers in the wind.
* * *
—
Their time alone disappeared after Mrs. Lo broke her leg, slipping on the slick marble floor of the bank. For months, she never left the flat, asking Mama Fang to fetch this, fix that, to massage her bony shoulders and rub her calloused feet. Every time Young Master tried to touch her again, she found a task that brought her to Mrs. Lo. She’d come to her senses and wouldn’t risk her job again.
Mama Fang missed the signs, when she heaved into the sink, nauseated by the tang of fermented tofu. When her midsection thickened, she blamed the rich meals she cooked for the Lo family. She let out the waistband of her pants and the seams on the tunic of her uniform. Smells turned intense, as if she’d developed a bloodhound’s tracking skills, and the metallic scent of shrimp made her gag. Sometimes she suffered indigestion, and felt bubbles of gas gurgling through her guts. She wasn’t keeping track of her periods, which had always been light and spotty.
If only her mother had been alive. Her mother would have known the cause, and could have told her. Young Master didn’t notice, either. Just when she thought he had forgotten, forgiven her, her panties went missing. She had to wash her only pair every night, and it never dried completely, damp and clinging like a popped blister.
When the cramps arrived, her back aching as if squeezed by iron pinchers, she denied the pain until it drove her to her knees. Mrs. Lo rushed her to the hospital, where—to everyone’s great shock—Mama Fang gave birth to a son. The nurse had pressed him to her breast, and she pushed him away, this creature her body had violently expelled, the waxy tadpole splotched with a red birthmark. Like the one on Young Master’s chest.
Upon waking, she discovered Mrs. Lo intent on the newborn in the bassinet, her face lit with wonder. Mrs. Lo wanted to touch him, hold him, with a surging need that Mama Fang lacked. If she hadn’t been delirious, if her disgust toward the baby weren’t so overwhelming, she might have held back the confession that would end her employment. She had no maternal instinct, but was dimly aware of how much Mrs. Lo hungered for this child.
She blurted, “He’s yours. Your grandson.”
What Mama Fang had done to Young Master—what he’d done to her—now seemed impossible, strange and faraway as a half-remembered dream. Anger roiled across Mrs. Lo’s face. The threat every amah brought into a home: she might seduce, might steal, might stab you in the night. Liar, Mrs. Lo said, and left.
The ceiling pressed in like the lid of a coffin, and from far away, a baby wailed. Whose? Sometime later, Mrs. Lo returned with her husband. Though they couldn’t be sure this baby was Young Master’s, they would raise him as their own and in return, they’d give Mama Fang a year’s salary.
Months after giving birth, Mama Fang understood that some new mothers felt nothing at first, that fierce adoration developed over days and weeks. She might have come to love her son. At that moment, she had only wanted him gone. She took the money and dragged her ruined body back home. Her father must have known she’d suffered, but he didn’t question her or the money.
Sometimes she would forget about her son, for a few minutes or a few hours, and then all at once she would remember. She’d spot a newborn, or she’d meet someone else with the surname Lo. She avoided the neighborhood where they lived, but as his first birthday approached, she could resist no longer. She stood across the street, searching the balcony for a glimpse of her son, when the doorman called out to her. “You’re too late.”
Too late? Her son? She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. She might shatter at the slightest vibration.
The Lo family had left Hong Kong, he told her. For where, he didn’t know.
Probably, they wanted to conceal the baby’s origins, she understood. Around the corner, out of sight from the doorman, she wept. The pain and regret of losing her son would never leave her.
* * *
—
She had discovered Uncle Lo on a list of richest men in Asia. In their decades apart, Young Master had been building his empire as Uncle Lo, a public honorific befitting his age and stature. His title’s sense of familiarity and authority were also menacing, as if he ruled over your affairs without your consent or knowledge.
He’
d embroidered his biography with details drawn from the stories she used to tell him long ago. He wanted to be known as a self-made man, not one who grew up with a servant and meat at meals every other day. Anyone who suspected the truth stayed silent. He had a fearsome reputation, a man you didn’t cross if you wanted your business, your family, and your name to survive. His retaliation was calculating and caustic: an enemy’s socialite wife was cropped out of photos of all the charity events published in his magazines. An investigative report exposed the toxic practices of a dishonest supplier, landing him in jail.
Uncle Lo had twelve acknowledged children among his mistresses and wives, each son and daughter reflecting his enduring strength and virility. Mama Fang had been his first lover, the first among the beautiful, the rich, the powerful women, the first to bear him a child, and the one he would never forget. She wrote to him about Perfume Bay, a plan she couldn’t pull off without additional capital, without introductions to wealthy Chinese.
He rang her a month later, his voice deeper than she remembered, probably scorched by cigarettes. “What’s your plan to grow? When will I get a return on my investment?”
She had groped for the light on her nightstand, stumbling in her answers until he asked, “What makes your business different from your competitors’? Not only the ones today, but the ones you’ve never heard of, the ones that don’t yet exist?”
“The difference is me,” she’d said. “No one knows what people want like I do.”
He came to rely on her for advice other people couldn’t offer him: crude, centered between the legs, and aimed at the knees. During a newspaper war in Hong Kong, Mama Fang had told him that girls in tight shirts should hawk his tabloids to commuters. “No one will pass up a smile from a pretty girl.”
He never mentioned their son, who was in charge of his satellite television operations and was identified in the press as his younger brother. The closest Uncle Lo got to the subject was complaining about the equestrian expenses for his niece—in reality, the granddaughter descended from him and Mama Fang.
His niece and her brother were both too soft, Uncle Lo said. Hadn’t learned to struggle and fight back from an early age. “Not like you,” he said. In all his years, he might never have found another woman he respected as much. In all her years, she’d never found another man who listened to her as closely.
Rarely sick, with the iron constitution of a child who’s survived every communicable disease, she had decades ahead of her—even if lately, she’d been feeling run-down. She’d become obsessed with her final days, like the women from the ancient tales who spent their savings to build their coffins. She’d die old and alone, no one to bury her, to remember her, to honor her. Alone again at the upcoming Spring Festival, when even the humblest visited their families and honored their elders.
Had her grandchildren inherited any of her features or her habits? As long as she was alive, she might have a chance to see for herself. In about a month, he was headed to Stanford to make a major donation, a bid for posterity that would also guarantee admissions for his grandchildren. She’d read an announcement about the gift in his newspaper. Uncle Lo could allow her to watch them from afar.
The front door chimed. She hurried to the reception counter, added the customer to the wait list, and promised to contact him when Little Genius expanded its hours. Her body ached. As soon as the last student left, she’d treat herself with an infusion. As the sole instructor, as the sole owner, Mama Fang didn’t have to share her profits, no longer had to nag a staff—her gossiping nurses at Perfume Bay, her crotchety cook, her fender-bender-prone driver. But some days—on a day like today—she wished for help. For Scarlett, who wasn’t the typical mistress.
She’d spotted a business opportunity when Countess Tien boasted about the classes in pinyin, English, music, and brain training for her three-year-old daughter back in Shanghai.
“Are the classes full?” Scarlett had asked.
“Everyone from her preschool,” Countess Tien said.
“If everyone’s taking the same classes, no one gets ahead.”
Countess Tien had opened her mouth but nothing came out, her expression bovine, struck by the unpleasant truth.
“Start earlier,” Scarlett said. “Start now, with your baby. Mama Fang must know someone.”
Together, she and Mama Fang could have prospered at Perfume Bay. She should have given up her baby, accepted her reward, and become not only a business partner, but the daughter Mama Fang never had. But they were not alike in the end. Scarlett lacked Mama Fang’s courage. Her stony heart.
A girl in pigtails raised her hand. Done! Mama Fang brought her another worksheet. When she noticed a boy dozing, she clapped her hands by his ear. “Lan dan!” she spat. Lazy. Coddling American parents would call Little Genius a form of child abuse, and then clamor to learn the techniques. Her own education had been sporadic, but many Chinese schooled their children as if for the imperial examination. For more than a millennium, a young man in China might turn the fortunes of his family by passing the exam and becoming a bureaucrat, ensuring his parents, his wife, his children, dogs, cats, and even his chickens flew to heaven. The exam system had been abolished, but the pressure to perform in China was no less great. Greater, in fact, since most families had only one child.
The parents who migrated to America struggled in a language and culture not their own, and even the most prosperous had to endure snubs, slurs, and worse. Yet they persisted for their children, who would have every opportunity denied their struggling parents. For the poor, children doubled as their only retirement fund. For the well-off, their children were still a kind of currency, in the rivalry among one’s friends and colleagues, and in the lifetime tally of success.
What pressure on these narrow shoulders! The most miserable students must wish the solution in the IV bags could send them off to sleep forever. Though their schools were closed for winter break, these children still had to report here. Some would be holding out for the reprieve of the Spring Festival, when Little Genius would be shuttered for the day, though they’d remain trapped with their extended families and their questions about grades, college applications, majors, and internships. There were as many daughters as sons enrolled at Little Genius, which seemed more a measure of pragmatism than progress. In this new era, girls would also have to support themselves and their parents one day.
* * *
—
She locked the front door to keep people from coming in while she finished the day’s paperwork. As she turned off the lights in reception, her stomach roiled, and she rushed to the bathroom and retched into the sink. Her mouth tasted bitter as a rotten lemon, and her eyes were bloodshot, the skin beneath puffy and dark. Stumbling back out, she tapped her forearm, a hollow yet decisive sound, searching for a vein. The infusions offered her calm, forcing her to sit still and close her eyes. She bypassed her stomach, just as she cut out all intermediaries in business and in life. But she couldn’t find a place to insert a line. She’d opened herself up too many times, and the veins had collapsed, like a heroin addict’s.
She’d try again in a few minutes, prospect the back of her hand, which resembled a mountain range crossed by rivers of blue veins. When had her hands become so old? Though the IV drips hadn’t staved off this irritating new illness, Mama Fang felt certain that the treatment would speed her recovery. Her body burned with a fever she could no longer ignore.
While waiting, she logged into her bank account to take another look at the monthly deduction she’d noticed last night, a charge that had slipped her attention. Fifteen dollars, for the emergency mobile phone stored in the glove box of the van Scarlett had stolen from Perfume Bay.
She rubbed her eyes, her vision hazy. She wanted to check the phone statement, but she couldn’t remember the provider. The logo was blue, or had it been orange? GoNo—GoKnow—GoNow. Online, she noticed a single repeated
area code in the long list of charges: 415. San Francisco, about an hour north. She dialed the number that appeared the most, and when the call picked up, she heard a whoosh of motion and a rattling engine she’d know anywhere. Her van. “On my way back,” the voice on the other end said. It sounded like he hadn’t looked at who was calling and had assumed someone—his employer? his girlfriend?—was checking on him.
“Where to?” The words clogged in her throat, hard to speak, hard to think.
“The Pearl Pavilion. Back in five minutes.”
The name sounded like a restaurant. Scarlett may have sold the phone off or tossed it in the trash on her way out of town, but it was still a clue no one else had. If Mama Fang found her, she could persuade Scarlett to come back and turn over the baby. Only then would Uncle Lo forgive Mama Fang. Too late for Mama Fang to know her son, but she might see her grandchildren.
Twilight had fallen, her office at Little Genius suddenly so dim she couldn’t make out her hands. Her computer screen turned into a faint, distant blur. She gasped for breath. Where were her keys? Mama Fang didn’t like driving in the dark, not on the freeway, the lights dazzling and distracting, and the curves abrupt and lethal. She doubled over, panting, her stomach cramping. She was going to soil herself. She couldn’t rise from her chair. How long had she been feeling sick? She’d been off-kilter for days, but had attributed it to age, to work, to weather. She’d been so busy, but now she forced herself to go over her symptoms one by one. A fever…fast, shallow breath…a rapid pulse…abdominal pain. Any single malady she could ignore, but together they signaled something that might kill her. She’d been careful, washing her hands again and again to protect her students from developing septic shock. But she must have slipped up one of the many times she’d started a line on herself.
