SINGAPORE
Peik Lin sequestered Rachel and her mother in the library, shutting the boiserie doors behind her firmly. She then padded out to the terrace bar overlooking the pool and began mixing margaritas for herself and Nick. “I think we both deserve about a dozen of these, don’t we?” she said, handing him a tall frosty glass.
Surrounded by bookshelves filled with gold-tooled leather volumes, Rachel perched on the cushioned bay-window seat and stared out at the rose garden angrily. All she wanted to do was get on that plane to China, but once again Nick had screwed things up. Kerry grabbed one of the dark green leather chairs by the reading desk and turned it around so she could sit facing her daughter. Even though Rachel wouldn’t look at her, she took a deep breath and began the story she had flown halfway around the world to tell.
“Daughter, I have never told this story to anyone, and it is something I always intended to spare you from. I hope you will not judge me, and that you will listen with an open mind, an open heart.
“When I was seventeen, I fell in love with a man who was six years older. Yes, it was Zhou Fang Min. His family was from Xiamen, in Fujian Province. He was one of those ‘Red Princelings’ and he came from a rich family—at least, for that time period, they were considered rich. His father was the general manager of a state-owned construction company. He was well placed in the Communist Party, and one of his older brothers was a high-level party chief in Guangdong Province. So the Zhous received the concession to build the new school in our village, and Fang Min was sent to oversee the construction. It was his summer job. Back then, I was in my final year of secondary school and working nights as a waitress in the only bar in our village, so that is how I met him. Now, up till this time I had spent my entire life in this small village outside of Zhuhai. I had never even left our province, so you can only imagine what it was like when this twenty-three-year-old man with slick black hair came into the bar, dressed in Western-style clothes—I remember his shirts were all Sergio Tacchini or Fred Perry, and he wore a gold Rolex. What’s more, Fang Min had an expensive motorbike and chain-smoked Kent cigarettes smuggled into the country by one of his cousins, and he would brag to me about his family’s big house and big Japanese car, and tell me tales of his holidays in Shanghai, Beijing, and Xi’an. I had never met a more handsome or sophisticated man, and I fell head over heels in love. Of course, back then, I had very long hair and fair skin, so Fang Min took an interest in me.
“Now, when my parents heard that this rich man was coming to the bar every night, taking an interest in me, they tried to put a stop to it. My parents were not like other parents—they did not care that he came from a rich family; they wanted me to concentrate on my studies so I could qualify for university. It was so hard to get into university in those days, especially if you were a girl, and that was my parents’ sole dream—to have a child that got into university. But after so many years of being the perfect daughter and doing nothing but studying, I rebelled. Fang Min started taking me on his motorcycle in secret to Guangzhou, the biggest city in the province, and there I discovered a whole other world. I had no idea there was an entire class of people like Fang Min—the children of other high-ranking Communist Party members, who got to dine in special restaurants and shop in special stores. Fang Min treated me to expensive meals and expensive clothes. I became intoxicated by this world, and my parents noticed that, bit by bit, I was changing. When they found out he had taken me to Guangzhou, they forbid me to see him, which of course made me want to be with him even more. It was like Romeo and Juliet. I would sneak out of our flat late at night to meet him, get caught and punished, but a few days later I would do it again.
“Then, a few months later, when the construction project was finished and Fang Min was heading back to Xiamen, we made plans for me to run away with him. That’s why I never finished my studies. I ran away to Xiamen, and we quickly got married. My parents were devastated, but I thought all my dreams had come true. Here I was living in a big house with his rich and important parents, getting to ride in a big Nissan sedan that had white curtains on the back windows. See, Rachel, you are not the only one who has experience dating a rich boy. But my dream quickly turned sour. I soon found out how awful his family was. His mother was one of these extremely traditional women, and she was a northerner, from Henan. So she was very snobbish, and she never let me forget that I was just a village girl who got very, very lucky because of my looks. At the same time, I was expected to perform a million and one daughter-in-law duties, like preparing tea for her every morning, reading the newspapers to her, and rubbing her shoulders and feet after dinner every night. I had gone from being a student to being a servant. Then the pressure started for me to get pregnant, but I was having trouble conceiving. So it made my mother-in-law very upset—she wanted a grandchild desperately. What use was a daughter-in-law if you didn’t have a grandchild? Fang Min’s parents became very displeased that I wasn’t getting pregnant, and we started having big fights.
“I don’t know how I managed it, but I convinced Fang Min to move us to our own apartment. And that’s when things turned into a living nightmare. Without his parents under the same roof to check on him, my husband suddenly lost interest in me. He went out drinking and gambling every night and started seeing other women. It was as if he were still single, and he would come home late at night, completely drunk, and sometimes he wanted to have sex, but other times he just wanted to beat me up. It excited him. Then he would bring home other women to have sex in our bed, and he forced me to be with them. It was terrible.”
Rachel shook her head in dismay, making eye contact with her mother for the first time. “I don’t understand how you put up with that.”
“Hiyah, I was only eighteen! I was so naïve and afraid of my worldly husband, and most of all I was too humiliated to tell my parents what a mistake I’d made. After all, I had run away and abandoned them in order to marry this rich boy, so I had to make the best of it. Now, right underneath our apartment lived this family with one son. His name was Kao Wei, and he was a year younger than me. My bedroom happened to be right over his, so he could hear everything that was happening every night. One night, Fang Min came home in a rage. I’m not sure what made him so angry on this night—maybe he lost some money gambling, maybe one of his girlfriends got mad at him. Anyway, he decided to take it out on me. He began to break all the furniture in the apartment, and when he broke a chair and started coming after me with the jagged chair leg, I fled the apartment. I was so afraid that in his drunken rage he would accidentally kill me. Kao Wei heard me leaving, so as I ran down the stairs, he opened his door and pulled me into his flat, while Fang Min ran outside of the building and began screaming in the street. That is how Kao Wei and I met.
“For the next few months, Kao Wei would comfort me after every bad fight and even help me devise tactics to avoid my husband. I would buy sleeping pills, crush them up, and put them into his wine so that he would fall asleep before he could get violent. I would invite his friends over for dinner and make them stay as late as possible, until he passed out drunk. Kao Wei even put a stronger lock on the toilet door so that it would be harder for Fang Min to break through. Slowly but surely, Kao Wei and I fell in love. He was my only friend in the building, in the whole city, actually. And yes, we started to have an affair. But then one day we were almost caught, and I forced myself to end it, for Kao Wei’s sake, because I feared Fang Min would kill him if he ever found out. A few weeks later, I realized I was pregnant with you, and I knew Kao Wei was the father.”
“Wait a minute. How did you know for sure he was the father?” Rachel asked, uncrossing her arms and leaning back against the window.
“Trust me, Rachel, I just knew.”
“But how? This was back before DNA testing.”
Kerry shifted in her chair awkwardly, searching for the right words to explain. “One of the reasons I had such a hard time getting pregnant was because Fang Min had peculiar habits, Rachel. Because of his drinking he had trouble getting erect, and when he was excited, he only liked to have a certain type of sex, and I knew I could not get pregnant that way.”
“Oh … oooh,” Rachel said, turning crimson when she realized what her mother meant.
“Anyway, you look so much like Kao Wei, there is no mistaking that he is your father. Kao Wei had beautiful, angular features like you do. And you have his refined lips.”
“So if you were in love with Kao Wei, why didn’t you just divorce Fang Min and marry Kao Wei? Why did you have to resort to kidnapping?” Rachel was leaning forward now with her chin in her hands, completely transfixed by her mother’s harrowing tale.
“Let me finish the story, Rachel, and then you will understand. So here I was, eighteen years old, married to this violent drunkard, and pregnant with another man’s child. I was so frightened that Fang Min would somehow realize the baby wasn’t his, and he would kill Kao Wei and me, so I tried to hide my pregnancy for as long as possible. But my old-fashioned mother-in-law recognized all the telltale signs, and it was she who declared to me a few weeks later that she thought I looked pregnant. At first, I was terrified, but you know what? The most unexpected thing happened. My in-laws were overjoyed that at last they were having their first grandchild. My evil mother-in-law suddenly transformed into the most caring person you could possibly imagine. She insisted that I move back into the big house so that the servants could look after me properly. I felt so relieved, like I had been rescued from hell. Even though I didn’t really need to, she forced me to stay in bed most of the time and made me drink these traditional brews all day long to boost the health of the baby. I had to take three types of ginseng every day, and eat young chicken in broth. I’m convinced this is why you were such a healthy baby, Rachel—you never got sick like other babies. No ear infections, no high fevers, nothing. At that time, there wasn’t a sonogram machine in Xiamen yet, so my mother-in-law invited a famous fortune-teller over, who divined that I was going to have a boy, and that the boy was going to grow up to become a great politician. This made my in-laws even more excited. They hired a special nursemaid to take care of me, a girl who had natural double eyelids and big eyes, because my mother-in-law believed that if I stared at this girl all day, my child would come out with double eyelids and big eyes. That’s what all the mothers in China wanted then—children with big, Western-style eyes. They painted a room bright blue and filled it up with baby furniture and all these boy clothes and toys. There were airplanes and train sets and toy soldiers—I had never seen so many toys in all my life.
“One night, my water broke and I went into labor. They rushed me to the hospital, and you were born a few hours later. It was an easy labor—I’ve always told you that—and at first I was worried they would see that you looked nothing like their son, but that turned out to be the least of my worries. You were a girl, and my in-laws were extremely shocked. They were outraged at the fortune-teller, but they were more outraged at me. I had failed them. I had failed to do my duty. Fang Min was also terribly upset, and if I hadn’t been living with my in-laws, I’m sure he would have beaten me half to death. Now, because of China’s one-child policy, all couples were banned from having a second child. By law, I could not have another, but my in-laws were desperate for a boy, a male heir who could carry on the family name. If we had lived in the countryside, they might have just abandoned or drowned the baby girl—don’t look so shocked, Rachel, it happened all the time—but we were living in Xiamen and the Zhous were an important local family. People already knew that a baby girl had been born, and it would have been disgraceful for them to reject you. However, there was one loophole to the one-child rule: if your baby had a handicap, you were allowed to have another.
“I didn’t know this, but even before I had come home from the hospital, my evil in-laws were already hatching a plan. My mother-in-law decided that the best thing to do was to pour acid in your eye—”
“WHAAAT?” Rachel shrieked.
Kerry swallowed hard, before continuing. “Yes, they wanted to blind you in one eye, and if they did this while you were a newborn, the cause of the blinding could look like it was just a birth defect.”
“My God!” Rachel clasped her hand to her mouth in horror.
“So she began to devise a scheme with some of the older servants, who were very loyal to her, but the special maid they had hired to take care of me while I was pregnant did not share the same unwavering loyalty. We had become friends, and when she found out about their plan, she told me about it on the very day I arrived home from the hospital with you. I was so shocked—I could not believe anyone could think of harming you in this way, much less your own grandparents! I was beside myself with rage and still weak from childbirth, but I was determined that nobody was going to blind you, nobody was going to hurt you. You were my beautiful baby girl, the baby from the man who rescued me. The man I truly loved.
“So a couple of days later, in the middle of lunch, I excused myself to go to the toilet. I walked down the hallway toward the downstairs toilet, which was across from the servants’ quarters, where you were being kept in a cot while the family ate. The servants were all having their lunch in the kitchen, so I went into their room, scooped you into my arms, and walked straight out the back door. I kept walking until I came to the bus stop, and I got on the next bus. I didn’t know any of the bus routes or anything—I just wanted to get as far away from the Zhou house as possible. When I thought I was far enough, I got off the bus and found a phone to call Kao Wei. I told him I had just had a baby and was running away from my husband, and he came to the rescue immediately. He hired a taxi—in those days it was very expensive to hire one, but somehow he managed—and came to pick me up.
“All that time, he was already devising a plan to get me out of Xiamen. He knew that my in-laws would have alerted the police as soon as they discovered that the baby was missing, and police would be searching for a woman and her baby. So he insisted on coming with me so that we could pretend to be a couple. We bought two tickets on the six o’clock train, which was the busiest train, and we sat in the most crowded car, trying to blend in with all the other families. Thank goodness no police ever came on board the train. Kao Wei took me all the way to my home village in Guangdong Province, and made sure I was safely with my parents before he left. That was the kind of man he was. I will always be glad that your real father was the one who rescued us, and that he at least had the chance to spend a few days with you.”
“But didn’t he mind leaving me?” Rachel asked, her eyes welling up with tears.
“He didn’t know you were his, Rachel.”
Rachel looked at her mother in shock. “Why didn’t you tell him?”
Kerry sighed. “Kao Wei was already far too mixed up in my problems—the problems of another man’s wife. I didn’t want to burden him with the knowledge that you were his child. I knew he was the type of man who would have wanted to do the honorable thing, that he would have wanted to take care of us somehow. But he had a bright future ahead of him. He was very smart and was doing well at school in science. I knew he would get into university, and I didn’t want to ruin his future.”
“You don’t think he suspected he was my father?”
“I don’t think so. He was eighteen, remember, and I think at that age, fatherhood is the last thing on a boy’s mind. And besides, I was now a criminal, a kidnapper. So Kao Wei was worrying about us getting caught more than anything else. My awful husband and my in-laws used the situation to blame me for everything and plaster my name in all the newspapers. I don’t think they really cared about you—they were glad the baby girl was out of their lives—but they wanted to punish me. Usually the police didn’t get involved in family matters like this, but that politician uncle of Fang Min’s put pressure on the police, and they came looking for me in my parents’ village.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, they put my poor mother and father under house arrest and subjected them to weeks of interrogation. Meanwhile, I was already in hiding. Your grandparents sent me to a distant cousin of theirs in Shenzhen, a Chu, and through her, the opportunity came up for me to bring you to America. A Chu cousin in California had heard about my situation—your uncle Walt—and he offered to fund our way to America. He was the one who sponsored us, and that is how I came to change your name and my name to Chu.”
“What happened to your parents? My real grandparents? Are they still in Guangdong?” Rachel asked nervously, not sure she wanted to know the answer.
“No, they both died rather young—in their early sixties. The Zhou family used their influence to destroy your grandfather’s career, and it destroyed his health, from what I know. I was never able to see them, because I never dared to return to China or to try to make contact with them. If you had flown to China this morning to meet Zhou Fang Min, I would not have dared to follow you. That’s why when Nick found out about your China plans and told me, I flew straight to Singapore.”
“And what happened to Kao Wei?”
Kerry’s face clouded over. “I have no idea what happened to Kao Wei. For the first few years, I would send him letters and postcards from America as often as possible, from every town and city we lived in. I always used a secret name we had devised together, but I never got a single response. I don’t know if my letters ever got to him.”
“Aren’t you curious to find him?” Rachel asked, her voice cracking with emotion.
“I’ve tried my hardest not to look back, daughter. When I got on that plane with you to come to America, I knew I had to leave my past behind.”
Rachel turned to face the window, her chest heaving involuntarily. Kerry got up from her chair and walked toward Rachel slowly. She reached out to put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder, but before she could, Rachel leaped up and embraced her mother. “Oh Mom,” Rachel cried, “I’m so sorry. So sorry for everything … for all the terrible things I said to you on the phone.”
“I know, Rachel.”
“I never knew … I never could have imagined what you were forced to go through.”
Kerry looked at her daughter affectionately, tears running down her cheeks. “I’m sorry I never told you the truth. I wanted so much never to burden you with my mistakes.”
“Oh Mom,” Rachel sobbed, clinging to her mother ever more tightly.
The sun was setting over Bukit Timah by the time Rachel walked out into the garden, arm in arm with her mother. Heading slowly toward the poolside bar, they made a detour the long way around the pool so that Kerry could admire all of the golden statues.
“It looks like mother and daughter have reconciled, don’t you think?” Peik Lin said to Nick.
“Sure looks like it. I don’t see any blood or torn clothing.”
“There better not be. That’s Lanvin Rachel’s wearing. Cost me about seven K.”
“Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s guilty of being extravagant with her. She can’t blame it all on me anymore,” Nick said.
“Let me share a secret with you, Nick. As much as a girl might protest, you can never go wrong buying her a designer dress or a killer pair of shoes.”
“I’ll try to remember that.” Nick smiled. “Well, I think I’d better be off.”
“Oh stop it, Nick. I’m sure Rachel would want to see you. And aren’t you dying to know what they’ve been talking about all this time?”
Rachel and her mother approached the bar. “Peik Lin, you look so cute standing there behind the bar! Can you make me a Singapore Sling?” Kerry asked.
Peik Lin gave a slightly embarrassed smile. “Um, I don’t know how to make that—I’ve never actually had one.”
“What? Isn’t it the most popular drink here?” Kerry said in surprise.
“Well, I guess if you’re a tourist.”
“I am a tourist!”
“Well, then, Mrs. Chu, why don’t you let me take you out for a Singapore Sling?”
“Okay, why not?” Kerry said excitedly. She placed a hand on Nick’s shoulder. “Are you coming, Nick?”
“Um, I don’t know, Mrs. Chu …” Nick began, glancing nervously at Rachel.
Rachel hesitated for a moment before responding. “Come on, let’s all go.”
Nick’s face lit up. “Really? I do know a good place we could go.”
Soon the four of them were in Nick’s car, approaching the island’s most distinctive architectural landmark. “Wah, what an amazing building!” Kerry Chu said, gazing up in awe at the three soaring towers joined at the top by what appeared to be a huge park.
“That’s where we’re going. At the top is the world’s highest man-made park—fifty-seven stories above ground,” Nick said.
“You’re not seriously taking us to the SkyBar at Marina Bay Sands?” Peik Lin grimaced.
“Why not?” Nick asked.
“I thought we’d be going to Raffles Hotel, where the Singapore Sling was invented.”
“Raffles is too touristy.”
“And this isn’t? You’ll see, it’s going to be all Mainlanders and European tourists up there.”
“Trust me, the bartender is brilliant,” Nick declared authoritatively.
Ten minutes later, the four of them were sitting in a sleek white cabana in the middle of the two-and-a-half-acre terrace perched in the clouds. Samba music filled the air, and several feet away, an immense infinity pool spanned the length of the park.
“Cheers to Nick!” Rachel’s mother declared. “Thank you for bringing us here.”
“I’m so glad you like it, Mrs. Chu,” Nick said, peering around at the ladies.
“Well, I have to admit, this Singapore Sling is better than I imagined,” Peik Lin said, taking another sip of her frothy crimson drink.
“So you’re not going to cringe the next time some tourist sitting next to you orders one?” Nick said with a wink.
“Depends on how they’re dressed,” Peik Lin retorted.
For a few moments, they sat savoring the view. Across the bay, the blue hour was settling in, and the crowd of skyscrapers lining the marina seemed to glisten in the balmy air. Nick turned toward Rachel, his eyes searching out hers. She hadn’t spoken once since they left Peik Lin’s house. Their eyes met for a flash of a moment, before Rachel turned away.
Nick jumped off his bar stool and walked down a few steps toward the infinity pool. As he strolled along the water’s edge, a bold silhouette against the darkening sky, the women studied him in silence.
“He’s a good man, that Nick,” Kerry finally said to her daughter.
“I know,” Rachel said quietly.
“I’m so glad he came to see me,” Kerry said.
“Came to see you?” Rachel was confused.
“Of course. He showed up on my doorstep in Cupertino two days ago.”
Rachel stared at her mother, her eyes widening in amazement. Then she jumped off her bar stool and made a beeline toward Nick. He turned to face her just as she approached. Rachel slowed her pace, turning to look at a couple of swimmers doing disciplined laps around the pool.
“Those swimmers look like they might fall right off the horizon,” she said.
“They do, don’t they?”
Rachel took a slight breath. “Thank you for bringing my mom here.”
“No worries—she needed a good drink.”
“To Singapore, I mean.”
“Oh, it was the least I could do.”
Rachel looked at Nick tenderly. “I can’t believe you did this. I can’t believe you went halfway around the world and back for me in two days. What ever possessed you to do such a crazy thing?”
Nick flashed his trademark grin. “Well, you can thank a little bird for that.”
“A little bird?”
“Yes, a little blue jay that hates Damien Hirst.”
At the bar, Kerry was nibbling the pineapple wedge from her third cocktail when Peik Lin whispered excitedly, “Mrs. Chu, don’t turn around now, but I spy Nick giving Rachel a long, slow kiss!”
Kerry swiveled around joyously and sighed. “Aiyah, soooo romantic!”
“Alamak, don’t look! I told you not to look!” Peik Lin scolded.
When Nick and Rachel came back, Kerry scrutinized Nick up and down for a moment and yanked at his rumpled linen shirt. “Aiyah, you’ve lost too much weight. Your cheeks are so sallow. Let me fatten you up a bit. Can we go to one of those outdoor food bazaars that Singapore is so famous for? I want to eat a hundred sticks of satay while I am here.”
“Okay, let’s all go to the Chinatown food market on Smith Street,” Nick beamed.
“Alamak, Nick, Smith Street gets so crowded on Friday nights, and there’s never any place to sit,” Peik Lin complained. “Why don’t we go to Gluttons Bay?”
“I knew you were going to suggest that. All you princesses love to go there!”
“No, no, I just happen to think they have the best satay,” Peik Lin said defensively.
“Rubbish! Satay is the same wherever you go. I think Rachel’s mum would find Smith Street to be more colorful and authentic,” Nick argued.
“Authentic my foot, lah! If you really want authentic …” Peik Lin began.
Rachel glanced at her mother. “They can do all the arguing, we’ll just sit back and eat.”
“But why are they arguing so much over this?” Kerry asked, amazed.
Rachel rolled her eyes and smiled. “Let them be, Mom. Let them be. This is just how they all are.”