Chapter Thirteen

Justine

TWELVE YEARS AGO, my mother broke her hip going down the stairs into the subway.

It was entirely an accident, rush hour crowds and rainfall providing the ideal equation for oil-slick concrete. The damage forced her to have a hip replacement, which was a frustration on two fronts; she insisted she was too young for such a surgery—which, fair—but it also put her Friday night ritual at the Art Theatre in jeopardy for months. She refuses to take taxis on principle, irritated by the traffic and pollution as much as the expense.

So my father did the unthinkable. On the days she was either at the hospital or in physical therapy, he took a long lunch to come home and empty out his craft room. What started as a small space was made smaller by dozens of shelves bulging with an incongruous collection of art supplies, each one a testament to something he’d chased to the apprentice level before setting aside. My paternal grandfather thought art was a frivolous distraction at best, banning his son from even picking up a brush, costing him decades to learn and explore.

Yet that didn’t stop my father from putting his carpentry and upholstering skills to the test, stripping the room down to bare wood before replacing everything inside. In place of his old work bench went a pair of plush seats, the walls lined with soundproofing fabric to keep noise coming in from the rest of the house. He set up a full projector and screen, having me check no less than half a dozen times that the model he ordered would work for my mother’s favorite reels. By the time she was fully recovered, he had built her an entire private theater.

She still goes to the Art Theatre on Fridays, but my father knew she would. He just wanted to make sure if she was ever hurt, or tired, or the rain started coming down hard again, his wife would have a place to sit and enjoy the things she loves the most.

He even put a little Showing in Progress sign outside on the door. It’s facing outward when I approach, but there’s nowhere else in the house my mother could be. I turn the knob with care and slip into a room full of cool darkness, holding breakfast tight against my stomach.

My mother sits in the right seat as always but turns to give me a faint smile, her face backlit by the projector.

I hold up the pink box in my hands and ask, “Hungry?”

“Only a little,” she says, laughing softly. “But bring it here.”

I settle in the other chair, sinking into a cushion of maroon velvet backed by a sturdy frame of ebony. “The egg yolk ones were freshest.”

“And your favorite,” my mother notes, taking a bun from where it’s nestled in the corner. “I woke up in a mood to watch Ruan Lingyu.”

Lingyu was a blazing star in the Chinese silent film era, capturing millions of fans on screen before she purposefully overdosed on barbiturates. Whether it was suicide or pressure from her rich husband is still unclear, but one of her last roles was playing Ai Xia, another actress who killed herself that same year. Decades gone and their work continues to enthrall cinephiles from around the world, a conflux of tragedy that’s never quite lost its appeal.

I remember my mother spending an inordinate amount of money to attend a screening of Love and Duty, one of Lingyu’s films believed lost until someone discovered a complete print sixty years later in Uruguay, of all places. Considering it was based on a story by a Polish author with a title in French, perhaps nothing is more fitting.

“Which movie?” I ask.

She tucks away the last of her bun before answering. “The Goddess. Do you mind?”

Even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t say so. This is my mother’s sanctuary, designed for a singular purpose. “Of course not. It’s been years since I’ve seen it.”

My mother steps away to start the film, which clicks to life in a shaky wash of gray before the image sharpens, showing the title overlaid on a bowed and naked statue—a woman trying to feed her child while bound. It’s an old reference to sex workers in Shanghai, which the director hoped to show in a sympathetic light. Forward-thinking of him, but troublesome in an era where governments all over the world were censored films under the assumption they were bound to corrupting the public.

A trill of flutes accompanies the low and sorrowful pull of a violin as the intertitles play. The music isn’t original to the film, but it would be hard to fit an orchestra pit in a room this size and mimic the live accompaniment of the 1930s. Lingyu walks furtively onto the screen, holding a young boy—her character’s school-age son. Neither of them is ever named, although that was arguably the point; she represents thousands of women in the same circumstances, fighting to survive in a world that abjures their very existence.

Even though she must have seen it twenty or thirty times by now, my mother watches in silent rapture, equal parts analyst and audience. I’ve been tempted more than once to buy her a camera and see what she would record with it, but the one time I brought it up near Christmas, she joked she’d rather have a critic’s column in the New York Times. She would be incredible if given the chance, even more so because she knows the difference between producing media and receiving it into the world; both are art forms in their own respect.

I bite my lip as Lingyu runs into a dingy room fleeing the police, only to end up trapped with a brutal man, soon to be her pimp. When he forces her into his bed, it isn’t particularly graphic or explicit—an accidental mercy of the era—but Lingyu’s acting sells the pain and humiliation in a single, searing look that suddenly severs me from the character entirely.

There was a struggle in the house before the actress died, and rumors the man she loved forged the suicide note found beside her.

If I hadn’t called Campbell on my own, that might have been me.

“Justine?” My mother asks. “Are you all right?”

The pink cardboard box in my lap has a twisted gouge deep in one side; I must have crushed it without thinking. I didn’t even hear the noise.

Can I lie to her again?

“No. Richard…” Summoning any volume to my voice is impossible, but the truth is there, clawing to get out. “Richard hurt me. For years. For our entire marriage. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry I didn’t come home.”

The last words catch on a sob as tears blur my vision. I hate to lose my composure in front of her, but the guilt is too raw to be touched, to be contained. Campbell told me in France that a few months of peace doesn’t undo a decade of pain, and they were right. Goddamn it, they were right.

“Justine.” She says again and puts her hand over mine, where my fingers are buried in the wound of the cardboard. “Look at me.”

Obeying is like shoving my body against a riptide. I’m pulled every which way, the cold tug of fear in my gut thrashing against the dark spark of defiance that’s kept me alive. After so many very real threats to my life, her disapproval might be the thing that actually kills me.

I look anyway. She’s half blurred in silver from the light bouncing off the screen, stalwart as a statue, expression just as unreadable. “During the funeral, I saw. The moment he was lowered into the ground, you were suddenly so still. At peace.”

If she asks me why, I’m not sure I’ll be able to hide the truth. “Because I was free.”

Her hand squeezes mine, stronger than I expect. “Has Campbell ever hurt you?”

“No. God.” The answer lunges from my throat, breaking the fetters of sorrow holding me in place. “No, Mama. Never.”

A strange thing to say when they’ve had their hands around my neck, when they could kill me without any way to fight back—and planned to, once upon a time. Yet there’s never any true pain, only pressure and the shadow play we compose together, danger reflecting desire. Campbell and I know violence like an old friend, a dance partner that requires utmost caution whenever it takes the lead.

My mother holds her silence, but her eyes stay on me, the film casting her face in chiaroscuro. I manage to unstick the words in my throat and ask, “Are you going to tell Baba?”

She shakes her head. “He’s spent all these years convincing himself you stayed away because you were happy. Because you had your husband and your art, and perhaps you didn’t need us anymore. If he knew that was why, he would be torn apart. His heart is too kind for it.”

That much is true. My father was always generous with me growing up, especially when I showed an early interest in painting. He saw my talent as a gift, proof his artist’s heart was passed on, and wanted to nurture it in a way his own father never did. I could have been bound to the family business like Danny, or crushed under the expectation of grandchildren; instead, he spent his money sending me to one of the best liberal arts colleges in the country.

What surprises me is my mother’s tacit acceptance about Richard. The response speaks of experience—not from her husband, I know, but perhaps someone else.

For the first time, I wonder how her younger sister died. My mother only ever said that it was sudden. I can’t find the words to ask; after wasting a decade of opportunities, it feels presumptive.

“He’s under enough stress right now anyway,” my mother continues, her eyes breaking away from mine.

I frown. “Has he been working too many hours again?”

When her hand starts to slip away from mine, I link my fingers over hers, trying to draw her back. “Mama. Is he sick?”

“No.” Even with the worst-case scenario closed off, I can’t come up with a reason she would look so hesitant. “Men have been coming to the warehouse late at night. They’re threatening the dockworkers, and your father.”

For a second, I don’t register what I’ve heard. It sinks in like a cold blade, starting at the pinnacle of my neck and pushing to the spine. “What? What do they want?”

“Space in the warehouse. Room in containers coming off the docks.” My mother’s face hardens. “He’s refused, of course. We have enough saved that their money doesn’t matter, but Mr. Baek took their deal a month ago. His son has cancer.”

Nausea douses my breakfast with acid. I haven’t seen Mr. Baek in years, but I went to kindergarten with Min-jun, near where Flushing meshes with Koreatown. “How much are they paying him?”

“Nothing, now.” Anger wraps around every word; I’ve never heard her voice possessed by such potent rage. “The police raided his warehouse and found drugs hidden in fertilizer bags. They arrested Mr. Baek, and he won’t say who put that garbage there because he knows what they’ll do.”

I’m no expert, but I can’t imagine some dealer on the corner would be moving enough product to need a whole shipping container, much less entire warehouses. That takes an entire organization. Something like the Mafia.

“Was it heroin?” I ask quietly.

Surprise creases my mother’s brow. “I…I have no idea. But with Mr. Baek in prison, they’re pushing your father even harder. They’re stopping dock workers on the way from their overnight shifts, following them home.”

Most of the people working under my father aren’t unionized. Past tensions with the other longshoremen groups—along the lines of race, more often than not—have kept them apart, but everyone at the warehouse is from our neighborhood. We’ve shared food, money, and holidays for decades, and it’s reliable work for those who have no interest or income for higher education. English isn’t required either, which helps considerably.

Except it also means the biggest arm of dock protection on the East Coast isn’t on their side. The longshoremen associations spent decades shoving out corrupt officials who hopped on the take, and no one wants to piss off seventy thousand carriers and sailors holding up the backbone of the American shipping economy.

So, of course, they went for the smaller fish.

A hot rush of fury bolsters me. “Do you know anything about what these men look like? What their names are?”

“Your father hasn’t said,” my mother admits. “I was hoping you might be able to talk to him. He’ll tell you anything. But if—”

I don’t want my mother to think telling her the truth about Richard means I need to be coddled. Her knowing is a massive weight off my shoulders, not a burden. “I’ll do it. I’ll find out what’s going on.”

My father is nearly sixty, and has worked six days a week since before I was born. He speaks three languages, each one with care, and has never had so much as a parking ticket. There’s no reason he should have to be perfect when most people are far from it, but even a spotless record won’t save him from the police. I don’t blame Mr. Baek for taking the deal; if he reported the extortion, they'd have laughed him out of the station. NYPD would never assign a vice unit to what they see as a hopeless cause.

But when you can’t turn to the cops, who else is there to stop a shakedown? Only people like Campbell, who can promise greater violence without getting caught. Unless I could convince everyone at the warehouse to drop whoever threatened them in the river and never let the bodies come up.

In a terrible way, I want to. Both men who have dared to hurt me are dead now, buried by people who were glad to see them gone. Is it wrong to want to protect my family in the same way, to defend the people I left behind for far too long? Who else will, if I don’t?

Campbell taught me how to use a gun. I stabbed Victor, who was twice my size, so deep he couldn’t defend himself when they came to collect. The possibility is inside me, a hard and bitter seed waiting to flower. If blood stops making me flinch, if death is commonplace as coffee with breakfast, how does that change the rest of my life?

Could it be for the better? Would I kill to protect my parents?

And if not, is letting the person I love do the deed truly any different?

I shudder, closing my eyes. Guilt should be chaining me down right now, but the only feeling that lingers is that ember of anger, of defiance, daring anyone to come near those I care about. Basking in its brazen light isn’t just easy, it’s seductive, promising everything I could ever want and more.

Forcing a smile to my lips, I look back at my mother. “Let’s finish the movie.”

She nods, and our hands disentangle, a signal to move on and fall back into silence. I watch as Lingyu struggles and fails, having her money torn away over and over again, until she strikes her pimp over the head with a bottle and kills him. When she’s convicted of murder, her son’s principal promises to adopt the boy, offering a better life for him than she ever could. Lingyu agrees because there’s no forgiveness for a woman like her. Not then, not now.

And not for me either, I imagine, but I don’t want forgiveness.

I want to triumph over everything in my way.