I’M ON MY way to Z.G.’s house, as I usually am at the end of the day. It’s February 15 in the Western calendar and three days before Chinese New Year. I’m a Christian, a one-Goder, but I could only carry the spirit of Christmas in my heart. On Valentine’s Day, I could only think of Joy and the cards she used to make for her classmates when she was in elementary school. Now all around me people are busy with their New Year’s preparations: buying clothes, sweeping their front steps, shopping for special ingredients. I see Joy everywhere. The first time I stumbled on Z.G.’s New Year’s poster with Joy I was overwhelmed. Now it’s pasted on walls in cafés, shops, doctors’ offices, and schools. I’ve heard that close to 10 million copies have been sold. Every piece of paper I collect and turn in I hope will be milled and recycled into another poster of my daughter, because her smiling face lets me know that she’s all right.
Then I actually see her.
Joy!
She’s walking purposefully toward me, unafraid of the dark, as though she’s stepped down out of a poster, as though she knows the city. She’s wearing May’s coat, the one my sister supposedly lost. Z.G. must have had it all these years. My stomach roils with that knowledge, but I ignore it because my daughter has returned to Shanghai! She looks right at me, our eyes meet for a fraction of a second, and then she keeps walking. She doesn’t recognize me. Have I changed that much? Did she refuse to see what was right in front of her because she couldn’t imagine I’d be here? Or maybe she couldn’t recognize me dressed in layers of padded clothes with a knit hat pulled down over my hair and ears and a scarf tied around my neck and up to my nose.
I turn and follow a safe distance behind her. A part of me wants to run up to her and take her into my arms. But I don’t do that. I just worked all day, and I look like the paper collector I am. I can’t let her see me like this. I can’t let Z.G. see me like this either. That’s right. I’ve come all this way to find my daughter, and when I see her I’m filled with vanity. How will Z.G. look at me after all this time? For years, I’ve known he existed somewhere in China. I’d never believed I’d encounter him again, but seeing Joy means that I’m about to see Z.G. again too. I have an urge to hide behind the bush across from his house, watch them through the windows as they move in the rooms, and wait until I can get my thoughts and emotions together before knocking on the door, but I can’t do that either. Z.G.’s servants know about me. I don’t want Joy to hear about me from them. But it’s more than that. I suddenly don’t know what to say to her.
We reach Huaihai Road. She turns right, walking toward the Whangpoo River. I know what I want to say—you’re coming home with me right now—but I also know that would be absolutely wrong. I’ve been a mother for nineteen years, and I know a few things about motherhood, and my daughter. I’m disappointed in her for being so rash and stupid as to come here, but as she passed me she didn’t look sad or disheartened. Far from it. So, what tactic do we, as mothers, use with our children when we know they’re going to make, or have already made, a terrible mistake? We accept blame. In my case, I can legitimately accept some blame for having lied to her all those years. I’ll tell her about the regret I feel for having failed her. And then, and then … Please come home! That method isn’t going to work either.
I stop walking, watch my daughter disappear into the crowd, and then make my way to a bus stop. When I get home, I bathe, pin my hair into a bun at the nape of my neck, put on some makeup, and go to the closet. I stare at my clothes, all of which are mementos of the past. I see a fox stole. I see my fur-lined black brocade coat, the twin to the one Joy was wearing, the one I wanted so badly, the one Baba tried to make me give May. I pull out a dress Madame Garnett made for me—dark green wool crepe cut on the bias with jet buttons sewn at the hips as decoration. Twenty years ago, Mama said it was too sophisticated for me; now I think it will be just right—modest, a little old-fashioned, and the color will accentuate my black hair. Z.G. might like to see me in the brocade coat, but I can’t go that far. I tell myself I don’t care how I look after twenty years, but I do, of course. I tell myself that no woman should allow a man to see the scars on her breast or in her heart.
I want to do something to remind Joy of home and that she’s been loved and missed. I’ll bring a present. (What kind of mother would I be if I forgot her at Christmas?) I take an old perfume bottle off the vanity and wrap it in one of my silk scarves. I bundle back up in my padded jacket and put the gift in my pocket. I pull on my work gloves, but I throw a red scarf made from baby cashmere from my old life around my neck. It’s the first time I’ve worn something this nice on the street, but most of it is hidden under the jacket.
I take a bus back to Z.G.’s neighborhood, walk to his house, and ring the bell. One of the servants answers the door. She nods, as though she’s been expecting me, and shows me into the salon. I take off my jacket and gloves. Z.G. enters a few minutes later. I think he’s still an extraordinarily handsome man, and I’m hoping he’ll have a similar reaction to me, but the first thing he does is look over my shoulder to see if May is with me. In an effort to keep myself composed and not betray a hint of disappointment, I adjust my jade bracelet on my wrist.
“My servants said you were here in the city,” he says, and his voice cascades over me like water over rocks. A Rabbit is always gracious and soft-spoken.
“I’ve come to get my daughter.” I blurt it out.
“Your daughter?”
His question tells me Joy hasn’t been honest with him.
“Joy,” I say. “She’s mine. I raised her. May gave her to me.”
“May wouldn’t have done that, and Joy hasn’t said anything—”
“You’d be surprised what May would do.” My words sound harsher than I want them to be. I twist my mouth into a smile to show I’m not the bad person here. “Joy believed I was her mother and my husband her father her whole life. When she found out the truth, she ran away and came here to look for you and … I don’t know what.”
“Joy has been lying to me—her own father?”
It’s disconcerting to hear the disbelief in his voice. He doesn’t know Joy at all.
“Sam Louie, my husband, was her father. He’s dead now.”
Z.G. takes that in, considers, and says, “I’m still her father.”
“You lost that honor a long time ago.” I hear sarcasm creeping into my voice, but I can’t stop myself. Too many years of heartache have passed for him to claim fatherhood. Still, he looks at me without comprehension. “When I came to you that night to say that May and I were going into arranged marriages to men we didn’t know, you didn’t try to stop me, stop us. Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you say something?”
Twenty years of anger and disappointment bubble up in me, but he still doesn’t seem to understand. The worst part is I can’t stop staring at him. My old passions—despite everything I now know about him and my sister—make my breath shallow and fast. My heart beats so hard it feels like it’s going to break right through my chest. And lower down—even though I’m a widow, even though I loved Sam—there’s a warm sensation I never felt for my husband. I always thought it was because of the rape, but now I see it’s not. I’m ashamed, guilty, and still angry.
“May knew you had feelings for me,” he says at last. “She asked me not to tell you about us. She didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t want to hurt you either. I just wanted to take care of May.”
“She was a Sheep,” I say bitterly. “Everyone wanted to take care of her.”
During our last fight, May said that she and Z.G. used to laugh at the way I acted around him. Which story do I believe? I’ve come all this way to find Joy, but what’s flickering through my mind is whether or not I might still find love with this man who’s been in my heart all these years. It’s been only six months since Sam’s death, but is it possible I deserve a second chance?
Wait a minute!
“What do you mean you wanted to take care of May? You got her pregnant and then you didn’t do a thing, not one single thing, to help her. You let her go into an arranged marriage. You left the city. You—”
“She never told me she was pregnant.”
That gives me pause, because how could it be?
“When you were painting her and she was”—I close my eyes against the memory of it—“naked, couldn’t you tell?”