Winnie’s driver arrived at seven o’clock sharp the next morning to make the two-hour journey to Guangzhou. Gathering my things, I stopped at the dining table, where Henri sat in between my uncle and my aunt, gnawing on cornflakes.
I bent to kiss him on both cheeks. Bye, Cooks, I said. Be a good boy.
He tossed a handful of cornflakes after me, as though they were grains of wedding rice. If I weren’t in such a hurry, I might have been amused.
My aunt leapt up to gather the scattered cereal.
I rushed back to the table and smacked his hand. Cookie, we don’t throw food. I bent down to help my aunt.
Henri giggled and tossed another handful right in my face. I grabbed his arm. No. We don’t do that.
My uncle whisked the bowl away. You don’t get to eat cereal if you throw it.
I’m so sorry, I said.
Neither my aunt nor my uncle responded, but I caught the look that passed between them and guessed they already regretted their offer to watch Henri. My cell phone chimed—the driver making sure I knew he was here. Henri whimpered and tugged his ear.
Now, Cooks, no crying, I warned.
He slapped his high-chair tray, demanding more cereal.
I slowly backed toward the door, still clutching his discarded cornflakes in my fist. Don’t. Cry.
His gaze locked onto mine.
Be. Good.
His eyes filmed over.
Go, said my aunt. Don’t be late.
Have a good time with your friend, my uncle said.
That’s what I’d told them—that I was going to meet an old law school classmate.
Thank you, I said. Really, thank you so much.
As I shut the door behind me, my son’s whimper rose to a screech. I darted into the elevator and jammed the close button. All the way down, I stared up at the security camera, urging it to note the face of the world’s worst mother. In the less than twenty-four hours we’d been in Hong Kong, my aunt and uncle had already endured one tantrum and were well into their second. I half expected them to tail me into the lobby, shouting that they’d changed their minds.
Have you taken him to a specialist? my aunt had asked gently the night before. I can get Karina’s advice? I reminded her that his father happened to be a doctor, too, and she let the subject drop.
In the lobby, I deposited my child’s cereal in the trash. Beyond the glass door stood my driver, a middle-aged man with a small paunch and thinning hair. It wasn’t too late to cancel. I could empty my wallet of the last of my dollars and send him away with a simple apology. I could go upstairs to my crying boy.
And then what? How would I explain why I had no money? How could I reveal what my husband had done without raising alarms? Oh, how the family would pounce on the gossip. If my mother were still around, my aunt would have messaged her right away to make sure she knew, and my cousins, too. In fact, at this very moment, Aunt Lydia was probably calling Karina to report on Henri’s issues, and to ask whether it’d be okay to give him a tiny bit of Benadryl to settle him down.
Later that night, as my aunt and uncle got ready for bed, she’d say, Can you believe that Oli? Jana told Ava to keep her own bank account, but she refused.
American kids, my uncle would say. So stubborn.
Perhaps they’d touch hands, secretly thankful that Karina wasn’t the only one whose husband had proven to be a cad.
No, I could not reveal the truth. Letting down my guard seemed as unthinkable as stripping naked in my aunt and uncle’s living room. And now I’d taken on the additional burden of not wanting to disappoint Winnie.
Maybe all this is difficult for you to understand, Detective, but when you grow up as I did, schooled in the supremacy of “face”—the figurative face, the image, reputation, honor that must be fought for and preserved at all costs—breaking free from constraints to think for oneself becomes a Herculean task.
And so, I went outside, and greeted the driver, and climbed into his minivan.
We wound our way through teeming city streets, flanked by buildings packed so closely together they formed an endless wall of gray. From time to time, the driver tried to make conversation, but my Mandarin was limited to cursory discussions about food and the weather, and my Cantonese was worse. Eventually, he turned up the radio and listened to the news.
I must have nodded off because the next time I checked, we were careening through traffic on the wrong side of the street. In crossing the border, it was as though we’d passed through a mirror: everyone here drove on the right side of the road, and we did, too, except that my driver was still on the wrong end of his van. When he signaled and made a sharp left turn, my stomach lurched. We were misfits, he and I, aliens in this strange, exotic land.
My driver weaved in front of a lorry filled with wooden crates of cawing chickens and pulled up to a peach-colored tower, one of five that spanned an entire city block.
We’re here.
Even though Winnie had given me a shop number, #04-21, I’d somehow still expected an outdoor, sprawling mass of stalls, like the night markets of Mong Kok and Temple Street. But there was nothing temporary, nothing illicit about this shopping center where the world’s best replica designer handbags were displayed and sold. Steps away from the entrance stood a makeshift police kiosk housed inside a trailer, further contributing to the surreal nature of this place, and of my impending assignment. How could I be about to commit a crime when the entire city seemed, blatantly and nonchalantly, to be doing the same?
A woman sidled up and snapped a flyer at me, Vegas-strip style. Handbags for a beauty like yourself? Designer handbags?
A young man in uniform emerged from the trailer and lit a cigarette.
No, thanks, I said.
Inside the mall, I peered into shop after tiny shop, ogling the handbags crammed onto shelves like grocery cans. These lower-tier stores stocked a hodgepodge of brands, a compilation of the luxury handbag industry’s greatest hits: the Gucci Dionysus next to the Fendi Baguette next to the Louis Vuitton Speedy. The more upscale, higher-priced stores focused on single brands: Celine or Goyard or Issey Miyake’s Bao Bao line in every style and color ever dreamed up.
The stores in the highest tier held prime locations right by the escalators. They were spacious and decorated with intention and had actual business names like Cherished Dreams Handbags and Revive the Nation Leather Goods. Taking their cues from real designer boutiques, they displayed each bag like a sculpture beneath a single spotlight. Even their sales staff was super-A quality. When I asked to take a closer look at a Chanel clutch on a high shelf, a lithe young woman, clad in a classic tweed jacket, thigh-high cap-toed boots, and a little newsboy cap adorned with interlocking C’s, walked me through the replica’s many virtues, from the buttery calfskin (imported from France) to the glistening gold-toned hardware.
Across the way, a gargantuan chartreuse Birkin the size of a bassinet lured me into an immaculate store that sold only Hermès. With its opulent Instagram-ready windows, featuring random accessories for the haute-bourgeois life of leisure—a backgammon set crafted entirely from untreated cowhide, a glossy horse saddle and matching riding crop—this store would not have been out of place on Madison Avenue or Rue Saint-Honoré. In addition to the sizable handbag section, a corner of the store was devoted to those iconic silk scarves, another to candy-colored enamel jewelry, a third to riotously patterned dishware. I lifted a Kelly bag in a vivid amethyst shade off the shelf and turned it this way and that, as though I knew what to look for.
A sales associate dressed all in black except for an emerald-and-magenta silk triangle draped from her neck told me it was a brand-new fall color.
It’s lovely, I admitted. How much?
I converted yuan to dollars in my head and was sure I’d done the math wrong, so I sheepishly tapped the numbers into my phone: fourteen hundred dollars.
How much did you say? I asked.
She repeated the number. It’s a good deal.
Right, I said. I see. Winnie had said the real thing went for twelve grand, so, in a sense, the associate was right. I gingerly returned the bag to the shelf and left, still firmly under the belief that no handbag, real or fake, could possibly be worth that much.
No longer in the mood to explore, I went straight to the fourth floor to complete what I’d come to do. It was late morning and the mall bustled with wholesale shoppers wheeling oversized suitcases that would soon bulge with merchandise to be fanned out across shelves in Manila and Buenos Aires and Moscow.
Tucked away in the very back of the complex, #04-21 was modestly decorated and badly lit and had no sign above the entrance. (Winnie would later assure me that their workshop produced some of the most authentic-looking bags she’d ever come across, but they kept the good stuff hidden away whenever they were tipped off about a police raid.) I told the attendant, a model-thin young man with hollow cheeks, that I worked for Fang Wenyi, and he offered me a stool and a glass of hot tea before calling to check on my order.
It’s ready, he announced, and then went back to tapping on his phone.
I looked around, wondering what I was supposed to do next—pick the bags right off the shelves? Was that the Gabrielle right there in the corner? Could I pull out my phone to discreetly compare it to the picture I’d saved earlier that morning?
An older man burst into the store. He was short and muscular, sporting fashionably ripped jeans and pristine white high-tops.
Nice to meet you, nice to meet you, come with me, he said without bothering to introduce himself.
I was confused. Where?
Now he was confused. Where? To get your bags.
Oh, I said. Good. Let’s go.
He led me down a back staircase that reeked of cigarette smoke.
You’re American? he asked, scanning me from head to toe.
Yes. That’s why my Chinese is so bad.
He laughed. It’s decent.
So where are we going? I asked.
He pointed into the indeterminate distance. Down the road.
He walked briskly, dodging motorcycles, ignoring traffic lights, and I fought to keep up, raising the palm of my hand to drivers in both a gesture of apology and a plea for them to brake before they hit me.
We passed another massive shopping center that specialized in the metal hardware that festooned bags and belts and shoes. I didn’t dare ask my companion how these stores, all of which sold the same few items, could possibly survive side by side. That’s how little I knew. It would take me a few more months to grasp the size and complexity of the counterfeit accessories trade.
The man turned down a narrow street and stopped in front of a shabby-looking apartment building.
Here? I asked. I’d expected a warehouse with security, maybe a receptionist.
He shot me a sidelong look. Yep. He pulled out a ring of keys and unlocked the front door.
I followed him down a darkened hallway, listening for any signs of life beyond the walls, sniffing the air for cooking smells. The building was eerily still. If, for some reason, I had to scream, would anyone come to my aid?
He stopped before the last door at the end, and I sized him up. He was only a couple of inches taller than me, but when he pushed open the door, his forearm flexed, displaying ropy muscles, bulging veins. He flicked on a light. A slim length of neon yellow glinted in his back pocket—a box cutter. I took a step back.
Hold on, I said, pulling out my phone and studying the blank screen. Sorry, I have to take this call.
He left the door ajar. I typed a message to Winnie: This man, older, short, muscular, wants me to go inside his apartment to get the bags. This can’t be right? I stared at the screen, willing a response to appear. Who knew who else was inside that apartment, waiting for a naive American to stroll right through? I removed the money from my wallet—two measly twenties—and jammed them into my bra. I laced my house keys between my fingers and wondered if, when push came to shove, I’d really dare gouge out an eye. I checked my phone. No response.
The man’s head popped out around the side of the door, startling me.
Ready?
What choice did I have? I stuffed my phone in my purse and went inside.
Bulging jumbo-size garbage bags filled the floor of the main room, which was unfurnished except for two plastic chairs and a plastic table with an overfilled ashtray, all pushed up against one wall. The door clicked shut, and I heard the man turn the lock. Sweat surged beneath my arms but my mouth went dry. Behind my back I clenched my fingers around my keys.
Want something to drink?
I stammered, No, thanks.
He picked his way to the kitchen and emerged with two green bottles of beer, one of which he held out to me. I shook my head, and he shrugged and deposited the spare on the plastic table. He pulled the box cutter from his pocket, extended the blade, and deftly popped off the bottle cap before taking a long swig.
I don’t want to take up too much of your time, I said, speaking loudly to drown out my thrashing heartbeat.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and pointed the blade in my direction. I sucked in a breath.
You and Fang Wenyi—how long have you been working together?
What was the right answer? I said, Only a short while, but we’ve known each other for twenty years.
She’s very capable, he said, but it sounded like a question.
Yes, she seems to be good at her job.
He wagged the box cutter like a finger. Yes, too good.
I could not parse where this was going.
She got me in trouble with the big boss. He doesn’t like the price she bargained me down to. Make sure she knows it’s a onetime thing.
I’ll pass on your message, I said. I don’t make decisions, I follow instructions. I’m supposed to inspect the shipment now?
He stuck the box cutter in his back pocket, took another swig of beer, and belched softly.
So where are the bags? I asked. My keys tumbled onto the floor, and I bent to retrieve them.
He narrowed his eyes. Why so antsy? You’re in a rush?
The lie gushed out of me. Yes, actually. My family is here in Guangzhou. I’m meeting them for lunch, my husband and son.
Your husband, he’s American?
I knew what he meant. Yes.
What does he do?
He’s a surgeon.
How old is your son?
Twelve, I said, and then wondered why I’d bothered. I pictured Oli and my imaginary twelve-year-old crashing through the door to rescue me.
The man closed the distance between us, and like one giant muscle my entire body tensed. When his hand went for his back pocket, a cry rose in my throat.
He pulled out his phone. My son’s ten, he said. Almost as big as yours. He thumbed the screen and offered an image of a chubby boy spinning a basketball on one finger.
I could have collapsed onto the heap of garbage bags in relief. Very handsome, I said.
Show me yours.
I told him I didn’t have any pictures, and he looked incredulous.
It’s a new phone, I lied.
All right, all right, you’re in a hurry. He checked the notecards stapled to a trio of garbage bags in one corner. Here they are.
I knelt down and opened the first bag. The new-car smell hit me in the face. I inspected the tricolored chain straps, tested the zippers on the interior pockets, took pictures of each colorway from multiple angles.
The man watched, amused. Fang Wenyi must not trust you much if she makes you take all those pictures.
She has high standards, I said.
He drained the last of his beer and started on the second bottle. He said, My son wants to study in America when he’s big.
Good, I said. Will he play basketball?
The man frowned. Of course not. That’s just for fun. He’s not tall enough to compete with Americans.
Oh, I said.
He wants to study computers.
That’s great!
Your San Francisco is the place for that.
Sure, Silicon Valley. Google. Facebook. Steve Jobs.
Abruptly he stood, as though he’d had enough of my inane chatter. All right, then, he said. Are we done here?
My phone chimed and I checked the screen. Bags look good! Don’t mind Ah Seng. He talks too much, but he’s harmless.
This man, this Ah Seng, handed me an invoice, which I skimmed before signing my name. Once I’d paid for the bags from Winnie’s account, I shook his hand, and ran for the door.
Outside on the street, I replied to Winnie’s message. Her response was instantaneous. Good work! Went ahead and deposited your first installment.
I traced my way back to the peach-colored shopping center and checked the time. Fifteen minutes until my driver was due. I stepped into the building to escape the smog-filled air and found myself riding the escalator up to the Hermès boutique.
The same associate who’d helped me earlier was half-heartedly running a feather duster across the shelves. You’re back, she said in a bored voice.
The amethyst Kelly was right where I’d left it. I slid my hand through its handle and turned to my reflection in the mirror on the wall. The bag dangled from my wrist like a graceful appendage; it transformed my basic cardigan and jeans into minimalist masterpieces; it made my heart race, like really good drugs.
It suits you, the girl said in her trademark deadpan.
You think so?
Our workmanship is one of a kind.
Two of a kind, really. You and Hermès.
She didn’t crack a smile.
Eight thousand yuan is too much. I’ll give you five.
The girl sprang to life. Five? No way I can do five.
I put the bag back on the shelf. I felt invincible. Forget it, I said. I have to meet my driver anyway.
Six-thousand-five, said the girl.
Six.
Done.
Every cell in my body thrummed in triumph. I paid the girl with my phone, and she swaddled my handbag as carefully as if it were a newborn and sent me on my way.
By the time I got back to my aunt and uncle’s flat it was midafternoon. The curtains had been drawn shut against the harsh sun. On the sofa my aunt and uncle sat shell-shocked, my softly snoring son curled up like a puppy at their feet. He finally exhausted himself, they whispered, and they hadn’t dared to move him.
I had to beg my aunt and uncle to let me take them out to dinner that night to thank them for all they’d done. I chose a fancy seafood restaurant in Central that all the food blogs raved about and ordered the most costly items on the menu—wild clams, abalone, flower crabs—confident I could foot the bill this time around.
When my aunt asked what kind of tea I wanted, I said, Let’s get wine.
At the end of the meal, I discovered three missed calls from Oli, and then, right before I went to bed, a long email detailing how sorry he was.
I overreacted, I behaved horrendously. I hope you can forgive me.
He signed off with our inside joke: Ava, je t’aime beaucoup.
In the early days of our courtship, Oli had loved to poke fun at my textbook French—my perfect conjugations and musty vocabulary coupled with my complete inability to grasp the nuances of colloquial speech. A pair of expressions I found particularly infuriating: je t’aime and je t’aime beaucoup. It struck me as a somewhat barbed joke (on the part of the French) that contrary to the phrases’ literal translations, “je t’aime” meant “I love you,” while “je t’aime beaucoup” meant “I quite like you in a purely platonic way.” After an impassioned debate on whether French or Chinese was the more xenophobic language (which, we agreed, ended in a draw), Oli had leaned in and kissed the tip of my nose and said, Je t’aime beaucoup. It’s been our secret password ever since.
This message, right here, I saw as clear validation of my decision to go to Guangzhou. I was proud of my resourcefulness. I’d stood up to Oli, he’d backed down, and the seesaw of our love had once again swung into balance.
Home on Thursday at 11. I wrote back. Je t’aime beaucoup.
For the rest of the vacation, my family and I spent lazy afternoons with my grandmother by the koi pond in the courtyard of her nursing home, watching Henri gleefully toss hunks of stale bread at the fish. We had scrumptious dim sum lunches followed by long strolls through cool shopping malls. We visited the aviary in Hong Kong Park, and afterward, whenever Henri spotted a city sparrow, he’d point to the sky and squawk.
One particular morning my aunt and I snuck away to Pacific Place to do some shopping. On my own, without Henri to corral, I marveled at how I didn’t have to strain to reach the subway handles, at how the jeans I tried on fell to right above my anklebone, no hemming required, at how every pair of shoes that caught my eye accommodated my wide yet bony feet. For once in my life, my body wasn’t a problem to be solved. How different a person would I be, I wondered, if I’d grown up in a place like this? Like my aunt and my mom. Like Winnie.
Everything about the trip was perfect, except for the way my uncle repeated, each time Henri made one of his animal sounds, Don’t worry, we’ll get him talking, isn’t that right, little one? Say mom, dad, yes, no, dog, cat.
I tried to remember that Uncle Mark was trying to help, that my dad said the same kinds of things, that I was lucky to have these relatives in my life, and weren’t relatives legally obligated to be a little bit annoying at least some of the time?
Whenever I raced my uncle to pay for a meal with my newly thawed credit card, my thoughts alighted on that bizarre day in the apartment with Ah Seng. Already it felt like something that had happened to someone else, a long time ago.
You see, Detective, in my mind, this thing with Winnie was over. Each of us had gotten what we’d needed; no one had been harmed.
On the last day of our trip, my aunt, Henri, and I returned to the nursing home to say goodbye to my grandmother. She was sitting in her wheelchair by the window, and when I walked into the room with Henri, she got so excited she forgot her legs were prone to giving way without warning and tried to stand.
My aunt hurried over saying, Don’t get up!
As on all the previous afternoons, my son grew bashful and clung to me.
Call your great-grandmother, I urged. Tai-ma. Tai-ma.
He buried his head in my neck and I smiled apologetically at my grandma.
This time, instead of laughing it off, my grandma clucked impatiently. She held out her arms and demanded to hold him.
I felt his small body tense but lowered him to her all the same.
It’s Taima, Cookie, I said, my pulse fluttering. You had so much fun with her yesterday. She gave you bread to feed the fish.
What did my son remember from day to day? What could account for his mercurial moods?
My grandma reached out and lightly pinched Henri’s earlobe. The day before she’d said he had his great-grandfather’s fleshy earlobes, a sign of good luck.
Henri wrenched away from her and began to howl. I wondered if he sensed something different about his great-grandmother, a whiff of acerbity that us adults were too desensitized to notice.
I explained that he hadn’t slept well the previous night, but my grandmother ignored me, crowing, What a crybaby.
Ma, my aunt warned, placing a hand on her shoulder.
Come here, Henri, my grandma said. And then to my aunt, Don’t you think he’s too big to be crying all the time?
I set him on the ground and tried to turn him to her, but he mashed his face against my leg. At least he quieted down.
How old are you? my grandma asked.
He peered up at her sulkily.
Who’s this? She pointed at me. Who’s that? She pointed at Aunt Lydia. Silly boy, why can’t you talk?
Blood pounded in my ears. If I’d been anywhere else, I would have enveloped Henri in my arms and whisked him away.
Too many questions, Ma, Aunt Lydia said. He’s overwhelmed.
Right then, the sweet, chatty nurse I’d gotten to know over the past few days knocked on the door and held out a bag of stale bread to Henri. I seized the opportunity to move us all outside to the koi pond.
I wheeled my grandma to a shady spot beneath a lush tree with bright red leaves interspersed among the green. My aunt and I sat on the stone bench beside her, while Henri prowled the pond, searching for his favorite fish, the largest, with silver and vermillion spots.
Not too close, don’t fall in, I called out from time to time.
My grandma was prodding me about when I planned to go back to work and whether Oli was a supportive husband when I noticed my son crouched low to the ground, gnawing on a heel of old bread.
I flew at him. Henri, no! It’s old! It’s only for fishies. I snatched up the plastic bag, which naturally devastated him. I held out my palm and ordered him to spit into it, and then gave up and cradled his heaving form.
From somewhere behind us, my grandma said to my aunt, What is with that child? Something isn’t quite right in his head.
Suddenly I missed Oli fiercely. He who didn’t hesitate to tell busybodies to save their child-rearing advice for after they’d studied pediatric development and earned medical degrees.
Don’t listen to them, I whispered in my son’s ear, even as I made up my mind to use some of Winnie’s money to take him to a speech therapist in secret.
You wonder, Detective, why it had to be secret? Because Oli would have declared it totally unnecessary and a big waste of money. He knew I was a worrier, you see, who needed constant reassurance that I was raising my kid right.
As usual, Oli would be correct. A month and a half after our return to San Francisco, the city’s premier speech therapist would take one look at me and peg me for the high-achieving, overanxious mother that I was.
Go home, the therapist said. (I’m paraphrasing here.) He’s two. As long as you’re reading to him, he’ll catch up.
I never told Oli about that visit. Why give him more reason to gloat?