30

My aunt—who else could she be—pulls away first. Her eyes sweep the narthex, down the pews inside the sanctuary, and even up at the ceiling. Confused, she asks in lightly accented English, not the clipped British English that Mama speaks, “Where’s your mommy?”

“She didn’t come,” I confess softly.

Please don’t make me admit that Mama would rather go antique-hunting in Hong Kong than attend her own mother’s funeral. While I don’t say the words, I see them in the expression that passes over my aunt’s face, disappointed, but not surprised.

Squeezing my hands in both of hers, she says, “Your grandmother would have been so happy that you came.”

“You think?”

“Of course.”

There’s a point in conversation where it’s too late to ask the person you’re speaking with what her name is. This is it. Besides, another family walks into the church, a stylish young woman and a man with Mama’s eyes. In between them is a toddler in a three-piece suit.

“Syrah,” my aunt announces like I’m a prize, a treasure she’s been looking for all her life.

“Syrah?” says the man, who’s got to be my uncle. He bends down to his son and points at me. “That’s your cousin.”

With a little encouraging push, the boy totters over to me with his arms wide open. Even if my cheeks flame with embarrassment from all the attention, I have to admit I love hugging the boy close. That is, I love it until my gaze falls on a girl who looks my age, except she’s beautiful in the sleek, sophisticated way that Mama is.

Who am I kidding to think she’s going to welcome me with open arms, not when girls like her, The Six-Pack, can’t stand who I am and are jealous of what I have. Their envy seethes within them the way it does me when I see Grace and Wayne together.

Miracle: the girl grins, and as she approaches me, she blurts, “Thank God you’ve come.” My “what?” goes missing in the minuscule space between that first pronouncement and her next: “You don’t know what it’s been like to be the only girl in this family. Finally, someone else to share the torture.” Short breath. “Oh, my God, you have no idea what it’s been like. ‘Your hair is too long.’ ‘Your hair is too short.’ ‘You should wear some makeup.’ ‘What’s that gunk on your eyelids?’ ” A roll of her (makeup-free) eyes. “I mean, it’s been enough for me to want to run away from home.”

I’ve memorized all the names in the obituary and venture a guess, “You’re Jocelyn?”

“Oh, sorry!” Jocelyn’s smile looks anything but sorry. Glee, relief, love, that’s what I read until I notice her swollen eyes, lids so puffy she must have spent the last couple of days crying.

I haven’t.

The million questions that have been ping-ponging in my head since I discovered that my real grandmother lived just one hundred eighty miles from me demand answers now: what was her voice like? What made her laugh? I want to know all about her. All about them. And know why. Why Mama was given away. Why no one ever called me.

But in the continuous white noise of Jocelyn’s enthusiasm, I am mute.

“Did you know that our birthdays are just two weeks apart? You’re older,” she tells me. “Which makes you the second oldest cousin in our family. Did you know that?”

I shake my head. How do I tell her that I don’t know anything at all, not even who this first aunt is? So before Jocelyn can dart off on another conversation, I ask.

“Oh, that’s Marnie, the oldest auntie. Can’t you tell? My dad may be the oldest son, but Auntie Marnie’s the oldest child, and that just bugs both of them like you would not believe. You know, he likes to be all he-man in charge, and she just wants to be all in charge. Boy, you missed a fight when Po-Po was sick.”

I missed more than a fight. I missed an entire family history.

“And then,” says Jocelyn, pausing dramatically, “there are The Boys.” So many boys are streaming around the church, playing hide-and-seek between the pillars and the bulletin boards, they must be multiplying. Laughing because she knows exactly what I’m thinking, Jocelyn places her hand on my arm and lets me in on an important secret: “The key is to establish your dominance upfront and early. They’re like a pack of dogs.” A group of adults descends on us. “Get ready,” she warns.

Auntie Marnie sends her a chastising look. “You need to share Syrah.”

“But I just got her!”

The way they’re talking about me as if I’m the new must-have toy of the season should make me feel mildly offended. After all, it’s how I feel when strangers whip around for a good look at me once they figure out who I am. Or so-called girlfriends ask to “borrow” a sweater only never to return it.

But I’m not offended. Not at all. Not even when The Boys use me as their “base” when hide-and-seek morphs into tag and they nearly knock me unconscious.

And especially not when Auntie Marnie smiles tearily at the chaos of our family. “Po-Po would have been so happy right now.”

The service is long, and anything but boring. It’s a crash course in my family history. Po-Po’s sons and daughters share stories, like how her driver’s license was revoked (for speeding, of course), and how afterward, she resorted to biking and was riding around up until three months ago. Not bad for an old woman.

Before I know it, I’m tearing up just as though I’ve known and loved her my whole life. Auntie Marnie hands me a tissue.

Po-Po’s drawing teacher, a young woman in a peasant dress, shares this story: “When Evie walked into our first drawing class, all the students assumed that she was the teacher. She smiled like a little girl and said, ‘Only if you want to learn how to erase.’ ”

How can I laugh when I’m crying because I lost out on knowing this woman? I concentrate on the poster-sized photograph of Po-Po and a man I’m assuming is my grandfather, he looks so much like Mama, as thin as my grandmother is round.

Right at two thirty, the door behind the congregation opens quietly, and I know before I turn around that Grace has crept into the church. From where I’m nestled between the Chus and Leongs, I look over my shoulder to smile at her. And when I face the front again, Uncle Patrick pats my arm like I belong right here, in the front pews with the family.

Auntie Marnie is the last to speak. How she toys with her gold necklace, pulling at the pendant, reminds me of Mama. “Life wasn’t always easy for my mother, but she always said that you must live with your eyes looking forward, never backward. But now that she’s gone, I think we have to look backward to understand the woman she was, the family we are now.” Marnie pauses to compose herself, riffling her notes on the podium. “When the Communists took over China and killed my father because he was a man of many words, Mama knew she was going to be removed from us and taken to the country to work in the labor camps with all the other intellectuals. Her first thought wasn’t about her welfare, but ours, her children’s.”

My focus pinpoints on to Auntie Marnie’s mouth, so I won’t miss a single word. Next to me, Uncle Patrick shifts uncomfortably in the pew, as if this is history he doesn’t want to revisit.

“I will always remember the night before the Red Guard came to take her away. She sat down on the bed that all the girls had to share now that we were reduced to living in one room, with strangers in the rest of our home,” says Auntie Marnie. “She said that my job was to ensure that our family survives. And to do this.…”

Jocelyn slips her hand on top of mine. A warning? A comfort? It doesn’t matter; I prepare for the blow.

Auntie Marnie swallows. “Mama’s one regret in life was that she asked her best friend to take her baby, just a few months old, to Hong Kong.” Unerringly, Marnie finds me in the church and looks deeply into my eyes. She could be talking to me alone. “Mama thought that I couldn’t take care of so many children on my own. But as soon as that baby was gone, she knew she made a mistake. Her tears. I will always remember her tears. But it was too late. Mei-Mei was gone, to a better place.”

A better place. Only when Jocelyn hands me a fresh tissue do I realize I’m crying harder than before, and she keeps her arm around me. I don’t know who I’m mourning for. Marnie because her guilt has coiled around her as tightly as wire forcing a bonsai to bend. Po-Po because she never overcame her losses, no matter how many amusing stories all these people are sharing about her. Mama because she was given away. I know how all three women have felt—guilty, bereft, and abandoned.

The light streaking into the church reflects all the colors of the stained glass window, Jesus ascending to Heaven. A better place. That’s how Marnie described Mama’s adoption. Her relocation might be a more accurate way to describe it, since I can still hear Bao-mu’s voice sharpen with dislike when she had spoken about Mama’s adoptive parents, her useless uncle and his vindictive wife. It makes me wonder if that “better place” in Hong Kong damaged Mama in ways no one but she could see. In ways no one better than I could understand.

After the service I’m surrounded by so much noisy family, whose Syrah, you need to meet so and so and whose Syrah, how is your mommy doing and why isn’t she here and what is your daddy doing now that he’s retired questions, and their Syrah, you need to hear about how your grandmother loved to go hiking stories begin to blur.

More words are heaped on me with everyone maximizing this moment to make up for years of silence. I start to shut down, overwhelmed, wishing that I was alone with my thoughts. Or alone with Age. Or just alone.

But I smile and nod, smile and nod, smile and nod.

I feel a touch on my arm, look up, and see Grace. With her tall, ultra-lean body, she stands out in this crowd, an elegant skyscraper in a Chinese village.

A good hostess even at this memorial, I introduce Grace, “This is my half-sister.”

“You’re Syrah’s sister?” asks Marnie, delighted to find another niece to dote upon.

Half-sister, I’m expecting Grace to correct. Instead, she says, “Yes, I am. And you are…?”

And just like that, Grace spearheads a conversation so I’m free to “mmm hmmm, wow, uh-huh” tune out.

Later, our car joins the caravan driving to Auntie Marnie’s home for the wake. Aside from Grace asking me once if I’m doing okay, comfortable silence is our official language.

If Mama were in charge of this wake, she’d have designated Auntie Marnie’s kitchen as the sub-par command central and berated the poor event coordinator for not providing enough table rounds for all the guests, not utilizing a unified color scheme, not using china and silver but paper plates and disposable chopsticks. She would never have permitted something as low-class as a potluck, and worse, would have been horrified that people are leaving their hodgepodge platters wherever there’s free counter space rather than displaying the food like untouchable art.

But she’s not in charge of this wake.

There is no event coordinator.

And Betty Cheng is a no-show.

The difference between The House of Cheng and The Home of Leong?

Let me count the ways.

The only antiques in this home are ones that have been well-used over time, not pristine museum-quality pieces. The knickknacks in the display case are misshapen clay animals made by little hands, not priceless porcelain formed and glazed by master ceramicists from centuries past. The people milling around and pushing homemade food on me talk of family, not family fortunes.

The Boys want to know what I do for fun in Seattle. As I tell them about snowboarding, I feel myself thawing. The trick is to focus on their eyes and their questions, and I can almost forget I’m at a wake for a grandmother I desperately wish I knew, surrounded by people I don’t know.

“Tell us about your scariest jump,” says one of The Boys, which one, I couldn’t say.

The scariest jump was the one I took to get away from Jared. But that’s not a story for innocent ears. So I tell them about the different tricks the pro snowboarders can do, the ones I used to do, the ones I want to do. I tell them about how being on top of the mountain makes everything else seem less important. And I tell them about how it feels to move faster than the wind, aimless but powerful and, above all, free.

When I finish my story, I catch Grace watching me wistfully, like she wishes she could feel aimless but powerful and, above all, free, too.

How long I talk, I don’t know. What I talk about, I don’t remember. At last, after what feels like the five hundredth conversation with yet another relative, my brain freezes, unable to make one more mindless comment, and my cheeks rebel from smiling a moment longer. I make my way through pods of people. Not until I’m halfway to the front door does it occur to me that I’m escaping.

Looking from one side of the hall to the other, I swear, I could be back at Children’s Hospital. Instead of acrylic signs that broadcast to the world who’s made major gifts, these photographs—black and white, color, sepia—are a mosaic of family memories that I have no part of. And I realize why all this talking has been so taxing.

What strangers want from me is access to Ethan Cheng and a free pass to mine our Gold Mountain. What this family wants is access to the real Syrah, the girl who’s been wandering aimless and lost on that same mountain.

A wave of fresh air rolls over me as soon as I open the front door, surprised that it’s still light outside. I check my watch. How can it be only five when I feel like I’ve been talking for an eternity?

“Syrah?”

I turn around to face The Boys. Beyond them, what looks like the entire Leong family has gathered to stop my flight.

One of my boy cousins says, “If you’re going snowboarding, we’re coming with you.”

“Snowboarding? Who’s going snowboarding?” asks Auntie Marnie, jostling her way to the front of her pack. I swear, this woman’s hearing is as keen as Bao-mu’s.

I don’t get a chance to answer, No, of course I’m not going snowboarding. Just outside to sit by myself for a while. As if my pause were the last morsel on the dining room table, The Boys pounce on it. Now I know why Jocelyn lumps her cousins together into one big noun. They talk over each other and answer as one.

“She’s got tickets to Wicked in Whistler—”

“A snowboarding competition…”

“The biggest one in Whistler…”

“Duh—of course it’s in Whistler. Wicked in Whistler…”

“Can we go?”

“It started yesterday.”

Auntie Marnie claps her hands together. “Quiet! I can’t think! All you boys do is make noise.”

I second that notion.

“No one is leaving,” announces Auntie Marnie. No wonder Jocelyn says our eldest aunt has the leadership gene, which is the polite way of saying she’s Bossy with a capital B. “You,” she says, pointing to the rest of the family, “have food to eat, and you”—she points at me—“have something to see.” She takes my arm and orders, “Come.”

A closed door down the hall could be any other in this house, but I know it’s Po-Po’s room. Auntie Marnie opens the door gently, as if she doesn’t want to wake the sleeping person inside. “Come in, come in,” she says brusquely when I hang outside the door, feeling like an intruder.

Without waiting to see if I’m obeying—proof that she’s used to everyone jumping at her every command—Auntie Marnie removes three enormous scrapbooks from the corner bookshelf. “This is what I wanted to show you.” She points me to a reading chair, switches on the lamp, and places one of the albums on my lap. Heavy and substantial, it weighs me down so I don’t float away the way I’ve felt I was going to all afternoon.

Underneath the first photograph of a chubby baby is Chinese writing that I can’t read. I look up at Marnie, knowing the answer before I can form the question.

“Your mother’s name.”

“Betty?”

“No, her Chinese name.” Auntie Marnie squats down in front of me.

I shake my head. “She doesn’t use that name.” Nor do I since mine, Zhen Zhu, meaning pearl, makes me feel more asset than beloved daughter.

“Oh.” Marnie smiles at me sadly. “It’s Yu.”

That one-syllable name sounds emphatic rather than harsh. My hand automatically touches my throat, to where Mama’s pendant always rests on her neck, and I translate, “Jade?”

Auntie Marnie nods. “Our mother wanted her to know that she was treasured. Jade is so precious in our culture, almost magical in its powers. We never forgot your mother.”

The problem is, my mother must have wanted to forget that name. Auntie Marnie cocks her head at me. “Can you read Chinese?”

I shake my head. “I can only understand it.”

Nodding, she points to the single Chinese character that makes up Mama’s name. “See,” she says and covers the tiny dot that lies like a pearl at the corner of the character. “That means ‘wong.’ You know wong?”

“King?” I ask.

“Not king. More like the family clan leader. Jade is that, the chief, plus this dot.” Auntie Marnie gets heavily to her feet as though the weight of the past is almost too much to bear. With one finger, she circles Mama’s name, a tender caress before leaving me alone with Po-Po’s memories. “Maybe one day, you can give these scrapbooks to your mommy.”

Aside from the one baby picture, there are very few photographs of Mama’s childhood, three or four of her as a toddler and no more until she’s six, maybe seven. I recognize Weipou’s stern face that matches her upright posture in a hardback chair, Weigong standing at her side, looking more servant than partner. Two plump boys are positioned in front of them, and standing to the back by herself is Mama, so tiny she’s just two eyes peering uneasily over Weipou’s shoulder, an interloper in this family portrait. In another picture of just Mama and her two brothers, her expression is more browbeaten than any homeless child in the Evergreen Fund slideshow.

“Oh, Mama,” I murmur, running my finger across her pinched face, wishing I could smudge the not-good-enough expression away.

The next page skips forward a few years to Mama at boarding school, standing next to other girls who are all white. Even without the cheongsam, Mama looks every bit the outsider, with her arms hanging awkwardly at her side. But there’s a luminosity in her eyes that wasn’t there in her Hong Kong pictures and relief in her smile, as if she knows she’s in control. And free. By the time she enters Cambridge, she looks almost like the Mama I know: gorgeous, confident, perfectly put together, not a wrinkle on her skirt, nor a blemish on her blouse.

As I skim through this first scrapbook, I could be watching one of those time-stop documentaries where plants burst from seed to full bloom on the count of three. The next scrapbook begins with Mama’s wedding announcement in the New York Times, articles about Baba’s company, photographs of my parents at various functions, and then there’s me, me, and more me. I recognize every photograph: they’re copies of pictures that Bao-mu took. I always thought it was so weird how she was never without a camera. My first successful foray on the potty: CLICK! My first dance recital with all of three shuffle-steps: CLICK!

I may not have been known, but I was loved. And so was Mama. Without having to study every page, I know it. And I know it because the third book, more empty than full, is waiting for Mama’s life and mine to fill it.

If Mama had any inkling of how much she was cherished, would that change anything? Randomly, I flip from page to page, picture after picture of bone-thin Mama. Then as now, she’s emaciated, like she’s not worthy of food.

Suddenly, I’m so tired, my eyes go out-of-focus. It’s as if hands lead me to the bed where Po-Po had slept since she moved to Vancouver. Considering that I normally sleep in a bed used by four hundred years’ worth of people—doing who knows what and please don’t tell me—I have no problem lying down and closing my eyes. I keep one hand on the scrapbook I’ve carried to bed, as if I could soak up the love that went into clipping every one of those articles and gluing each picture down in this ultimate brag book about two little treasures, one Jade and the other Pearl.