ROSE APPEARED TO MAY IN A DREAM, CALLING her not Mother and not May but Chao-tsing.
My fourth birthday approaches, the child said, speaking formally as she never had in life. The occasion must be one that we will remember with joy and satisfaction. For, you know, it is to be my last.
May nodded. She looked at her daughter and saw with shock that Rose was not a blending of Chinese and European but an awkward juxtaposing of differences. She had one round blue eye, one narrow black one.
Noticing how her mother stared, Rose smiled. Her expression was strangely melancholy and sophisticated for a little girl. Yes, she said, nodding, and she picked up her skirt to reveal one bound foot, one natural.
But how do you get about? May said, understanding the question to be useless, even stupid, and yet unable not to ask it. How do you play? she asked.
Rose laughed, a high peal, so mirthful, so blithe that May smiled even though she didn’t find the sight of her daughter funny. Oh, I manage, Rose said. Her expression became serious.
Now, here is who must attend the party. She counted off names on her small fingers. Your mother and your father and your father’s mother, Yu-ying. My father and my cousins Alice, Cecily, and David. And, she said, you must write the invitations yourself. In your own hand.
May nodded. Of course I will, she promised.
Rose listed the foods she wanted served. Sticky dumplings filled with red bean paste, hot soup dumplings with bamboo straws through which to drink the broth, quail eggs, and sweet yellow pickles. Weren’t these all the foods May had herself preferred as a child?
Rose told her mother what games she wanted to play: Charades. Hide and seek. And that funny one, you know, where we build cities with mah-jongg tiles.
But that—that was I, Rose, May argued. Not you. That was a game I played with my mother.
Rose stamped her foot in anger. No!
What presents shall you have? May said, to placate her.
Side-button white kid shoes, Rose said. As soft as gloves. And both the same size, the size that fits the unbound one, so that in them I can hide my mismatched feet.
And toys?
Yes, but I’m not going to tell you everything. I want you to surprise me.
Once more she reminded May that as this was to be her last birthday, all must be perfect. You know you have just two days, she warned, and she looked over her mother’s shoulder as May wrote down lists of all she needed to accomplish.
When May looked up from the paper, Rose was gone.
In the markets, May went from stall to stall. On her own feet, without her cane or an amah, she searched the market for lanterns of the style Rose had requested—tall blue ones decorated with characters for luck and happiness—but she couldn’t find one. When she pleaded with a vendor to allow her to order them—she promised to buy however many he asked, a dozen, two dozen, three—he refused, he said there wasn’t enough time. And besides, didn’t she know where she was? This was Nice. This was France, not China. If she wanted Chinese lanterns, she wouldn’t find them here.
It was the same with the dumplings. She found soufflés and tarts and sausages, pots of caviar, trays of whelks and mussels, heaps of pastries, mountains of canapés, but there was not one sweet red bean dumpling to be had. There were no quail eggs or yellow pickles. And where was it that one could buy such things, the boulanger wanted to know. Surely not in the south of France.
No blue firecrackers. No red. No pink.
And not one pair of side-button white kid shoes in which Rose could hide her mismatched feet.
Then light was pouring through the open curtains, Suzanne was shaking May’s shoulder. She was awake and sobbing in frustration.