Tell me that I woke up this morning on the set for a new horror movie, The Night of the Living Leongs, because surely zombies have replaced that entire branch of my family. The Boys standing outside The House of Cheng have their mouths shut, hair slicked down, and shirts tucked in, and in no way do they resemble The Boys of Richmond. My aunties and uncles file inside, dumbstruck tourists visiting a five-star haunted hotel, half-expecting that they’ll be picked off one-by-one. Even Mama, she of the perfect quip for every social situation, is uttering monosyllabic replies, like her conversational talents have been vaporized.
So it’s up to me to be the convivial host-slash-translator-slash-tour guide.
“Come in,” I welcome everyone, and lead the Leongs to the living room, where dim sum stations are set up. “You must be starving.”
One of The Boys whispers, “Our whole house fits in this room.”
“Yeah, a kid came in here about a year ago and he was never seen again,” I whisper back, loud enough for the rest of The Boys to hear.
That seems to loosen them up; at least it gets a round of “nuh-uh” going among The Boys.
Kids down, adults to go. They’re standing around, gawking. Not that I blame them. It’s not every day that you step into a house that has more precious Asian art than most museums. Even Jocelyn looks subdued, and I start to worry that maybe she hadn’t been envious of me back in Richmond because she had no benchmark, no conception of what billions look like. But then she intercepts my SOS and says, “Auntie Marnie, the present.”
With that prompt, Auntie Marnie’s natural bossiness asserts itself. “Yu,” she says in an authoritative voice. “Mama wanted you to have this.” From her cavernous purse, zipper broken and marred with a faint blue ink mark, Marnie withdraws a yellow silk envelope, snapped shut. She urges it on Mama, who simply holds it gingerly in her hand as if it’s a small-scale version of Pandora’s box that she’s loath to open. Well, that just irks Auntie Marnie, who commands, “Open it.”
With shaking fingers, Mama pulls out an apple-green jade bracelet. Even to my untrained jewelry-appraising eyes, I can tell that it’s hardly as valuable as the piece Mama wears around her neck. So many conflicting emotions must be running through Mama that I wouldn’t be surprised if she dismissed the gift, but slowly, with everyone watching, Mama works the bracelet, carved out of solid jade, over her left hand. At last, it slips over the birdlike bones of her wrist, and when it does, everyone smiles.
“Perfect,” pronounces Auntie Marnie.
At that moment, Baba walks in, briefcase in hand, unaware that the Leongs, even The Boys, are staring at him with starstruck awe: the great Ethan Cheng, the man whose face has graced sixty-two magazine covers, is standing right here with them. His eyes are only for Mama. When he reaches her side, she looks up at him and smiles tremulously, holding up her tiny wrist. “Look, Ethan, look at what my mother left me.”
“It’s beautiful,” Baba tells her, and then greets the Leongs as if they were his family, too.
In the middle of the introductions, from across the room, comes a loud crash followed by an equally loud chorus of “Oh, no!” The Boys are standing amid a fallen bonsai and its shattered pot, mouths agape with horror at what they’ve done.
“Aiya!” cries Auntie Marnie, rushing to them as she simultaneously launches into a tirade of Mandarin, scolding The Boys for being so clumsy.
“It’s okay,” I tell Auntie Marnie, even though I’m panicking inside: Oh, no, they destroyed one of Mama’s perfect, precious bonsai. Mama is staring, staring, staring at the tiny pine tree, lying like roadkill, thrown feet away from the broken porcelain.
Auntie Marnie first tells the boys to stand back and then continues her chastising in Mandarin, “Didn’t I tell you to be careful here? Aaaah, you boys are like ants on a hill, running up and down all day long. Now look what you’ve done.”
“It was an accident,” says Mama, interpreting Auntie Marnie’s Mandarin correctly. “Just an accident. It can be replaced. Really,” she says slowly, “nothing important was broken.”
As relieved as The Boys look at that, Auntie Marnie is still glaring at them, so I don’t hear a single protesting peep from them when I suggest that they follow me downstairs pronto. After I leave them in the theater, bouncing up and down on the couches as they watch a cartoon with Jocelyn, I return back upstairs to find Auntie Marnie still lamenting over the bonsai.
Just as I’m about to tell her to forget about it, Baba stops me with a gentle hand on my arm. Only then do I see the miracle unfolding within The House of Cheng: this broken vessel is mending our fragmented family.
“What a waste,” sighs Auntie Marnie, her hand full of jagged pieces of pottery that she’s salvaged from the floor.
“The pot was too small anyway,” says Mama, taking the shards from her. “No, no, what’s going to waste is all this food.” And then in halting Mandarin, Mama asks, “Chi bao le ma?”
It’s a greeting, a new start in our family history. “Let’s eat,” I agree, following Mama’s lead, as we urge plates on my relatives, on Baba, and finally on each other.