Diamond Head (22 page)

It was on a Monday, during the last days of summer, that everything changed. My body had nearly healed and I was at the front counter again, when a young man came into the restaurant for lunch. He wore a Western-style suit made from a material that moved like water. It caused me to stare. He ordered salted chicken and sat on a stool near the only window, eating neatly while the other men looked on. He paid too much for his meal. He gave me a bill worth more than twice the amount he owed, and when I tried to give him change, he shook his head. He told me to keep it.

I took the bill immediately to the back kitchen. I gave it to my mother, who rubbed it between her fingers and held it above her head, checking for authenticity. We knew almost everyone we served. It was a small restaurant in a small village; even the
vagrants we knew by name. It was usual for our customers to bargain down the price of their meal, to ask to put it on credit, or to trade for whatever they hauled in their suitcase. But to overpay—that had never happened before.

“Is it real?” my father asked. My mother nodded and handed him the bill, which he folded into the pocket of his trousers. “Stay in the back,” he ordered.

My father was gone for a long time after that. An entire hour passed without a single order for food. The door to the dining room remained closed, and the noise on the other side seemed to fade. My mother and I picked through the day’s vegetables, cutting out the brown spots and saving them in a pile for us to eat for dinner. We cleaned the bucket of fish, peeled the bag of shrimp. I had almost forgotten about the suited man when we heard my father’s voice through the door.

“Lin!” he called, his large voice filling the kitchen.

My mother looked at me and then to the door, sitting perfectly still on her wooden crate.

“Go,” she said. It was her virtue as a wife and her failure as a mother, always doing as my father ordered. Afterward, she tended to our wounds, always mine before hers, but never did she defend herself against my father, no matter what violence awaited us.

I wiped my hands on my apron and pushed open the dividing door. On the opposite side, it was absolutely silent. Every table was empty, dirty plates and used cups left abandoned, as if the customers had left in a hurry. The front door was closed, and when I looked closer, I realized it was also locked. My father sat at the only clean table, a thick stack of yuan in front of him, more than I had ever seen. Across the table sat the suited man.

“Come closer,” my father called from his chair. He was smiling.

My legs refused to move; my mouth became dry. I couldn’t pull my eyes from the money. A terrible, sinking feeling grew inside of me.

“What is this?” I whispered, my body trembling. My eyes would not move from that stack of yuan. “Who is this man?”

My father slapped his hand on the table and I quieted; my body stiffened. My father looked at the suited man. He bowed his head in humility and I understood that the money on the table was for me. He had finally done it. I had been sold.

“This man is Leong Fu,” my father began. “He is in need of a wife. You will be his wife.”

I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t move. I felt too much fear to look at the man, too much weakness to face my father, who I knew was still smiling.

Heat rose through my chest and into my neck. It filled my head and burned the back of my eyes. I had pushed too far; I had caused too much trouble. My father had done exactly what I had challenged him to do; he had sold me, and by the appearance of the suited man, this would not be my last stop. I would certainly be sold again.

“No!” I screamed, falling to my knees in the middle of the dining room. “No, please, Father. I can change. I’ll be different. You deserve a better daughter than me, please give me another—”

“Get up!” my father demanded. “You stupid girl.”

“Lin.” A second voice spoke. My knees shook against the hard floor. It was the suited man, and he knew my name.

“As my wife, you will be cared for. You will be happy.”

I looked up from my spot on the ground, the man’s words twisting wretchedly in my ears. Is that what he had told my father? That as his wife, I would be happy? Of course not; it was all a disgusting game. I wanted to spit on them both. I wanted them to trample me right there, to spare me the humiliation that would follow. My father looked into my terrified eyes and smiled his same cruel smile and I knew there was nothing more to say. That stack of money was worth more than a lifetime of farm wages. My father had gotten lucky and he knew it. He was so pleased with himself.

“Bow to your husband,” he demanded.

I am a slave, I remember thinking. My fate was not my own; I had known this for my entire life. I closed my eyes and let my body take back its tears. Slowly, I rose, and I bowed to the suited man.

We sat in his wagon together, on straw cushions that smelled nothing of straw. It had a closed top and a door with a window that let in a small rectangle of light. As the wheels began to move I kept my eyes down and counted the knots along the panels of wood.

“I want to show you something,” Frank said, his voice steady and firm. Beside me, I felt him moving. He shifted on the straw; I was almost certain he removed the jacket of his suit. Carefully, I stole a sideways glance. With one hand, he began to unbutton his collar. His fingers ran along the front of his shirt, undressing himself, and my body went cold. I prepared myself for a struggle. I pressed my fingernails into the
pads of my thumbs and knew that, given enough force, they were long enough to draw blood. I looked up to face him; his shirt was halfway undone, a triangle of his chest exposed. I dug my fingers into the cushions, piercing the fabric that contained them. If I screamed loud enough, I told myself, the driver would have to stop. He would have to come back and check.

Frank loosened the last button and pulled the shirt from his shoulders. I opened my mouth to cry out and shifted my weight to my feet—when I was met with a sight that silenced me outright. As if a heavy boot, held by its laces, had struck my stomach, I felt the air rush from my body. My mouth remained open but nothing came out. Frank was still. He didn’t come closer.

“My own father,” he said softly, his stomach rising with his speech, “he gave me these.” He pointed to the longest scar that marked his body, one of half a dozen that marred him. It stretched from the right side of his rib cage to his belly button, stained deep purple along flesh that protruded faintly from his body. On the left side of his chest, below the muscle, broken blood vessels created a terrifying splattering. I recognized the patterns, the way the color faded along the edges, the deep, shiny pockets at the core, but I’d never seen it like this, on a body attached to a face. My parents didn’t own a mirror and my mother was always covered.

“My father was a man with a temper as well,” Frank said. “And I hated him.” He reached for his shirt and pulled his arms through. He buttoned it from the bottom. “As you must hate yours.”

I had shrunk into the corner of the compartment, my shoulders hunched in embarrassment. I felt that at any moment my father would jump from behind the wagon door and laugh at my stupidity. This day, this man, this story—it couldn’t be real, he had to be testing me. How else could this man know all that he did?

“Long sleeves on a day as hot as this,” Frank said, as if reading the words from my thoughts. “The bruise on your neck when you turned. The way you walk like your hip is healing from a break. I just—I couldn’t leave you there, do you understand?”

Frank looked out the small window of the wagon. His eyes narrowed and I recognized something cruel in the way he stared, in the forceful, bitter way he swallowed. He was thinking of his father.

“You don’t have to trust me, not yet,” he said, eyes still focused beyond the window. “But I’m a decent man and I meant what I said in the restaurant.” He paused, but
I knew what he referred to, because no man, no person had ever said those words to me before.

“I would like it if you were happy,” he said. “From now on, I’m going to take care of you.”

For the rest of the trip we said nothing. I could think of nothing worthy of saying. But the farther we traveled without stopping, without my father jumping from behind the wagon door, the more I believed that this man might understand something about me. That perhaps there was decency in this world.

I opened my eyes. It was warm in the alcove; the fabric of my shirt clung to my skin. I peeked through the open door of the study and exhaled in relief. Bohai and Amy were still there, sitting together behind his desk. They were laughing; their shoulders touched. The bottle of champagne was empty. I watched them, so full of excitement, and was reminded of the wonder I had felt as I realized my life with Frank would be nothing like the way I had imagined it.

Within a month we were married. He bought me a dress and my first pair of shoes. Because he knew who I was and where I came from, and knew that I could offer him nothing in exchange, our courtship was honest. Frank led me slowly through the transition, through the strange process of having nothing to having everything: a two-story home, a household staff, a garden, an indoor bathroom. Those first years with Frank, before the children and the war, for me they were nothing short of magic.

I looked at my son, at Amy. She was the oldest of ten, she told me the week before. They shared a room; it came out by accident. I had asked about her studies, if she had a quiet place to work, and almost immediately the idea came to me. All this time I had been searching in the wrong place. With the sheer power of money, I had been rescued, removed from my bitter reality and given another life. It could happen again—naturally, it could happen again. What stopped me from doing it myself?

I watched them at Bohai’s desk, the two of them flushed and
delighted. Bohai was looking for something among his papers, his fingers flipping through the documents.
I know it’s here,
he said,
I was just looking at it.
Amy watched him, thoughtfully, not saying a word. And then, turning her body toward him, she placed her hand on his.

Bohai froze. He looked at Amy, his mouth slightly open, unable to speak. Slowly, she leaned into him and their lips met and parted, their hands still connected on the table.

I drew back against the wall, not believing what I had seen. I placed a palm over my heart, pressed it into my chest to steady its beat, and a smile arrived, a secret laugh.

They must be married
, I thought to myself.
It’s the only way.

The morning after the dinner party, I woke up with the sun. I checked the clock and walked to the dining room, expecting to find my son having breakfast alone. But he wasn’t there. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. It had been years, perhaps decades, since Bohai had slept past six. Even as a teenager he would read at the table for hours before school began, before even the roosters knew that the day had begun. I tapped my fingers on the kitchen counter, waiting for an idea to come to me. When nothing did, I walked up the stairs and down the hall to my son’s bedroom door.

I wondered if I should knock; I’d never been in this situation before. Softly, I tapped twice on the door. When there was no answer, I let myself in. Bohai was still asleep.

“Bohai,”
I whispered, sitting and placing my hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes immediately.

“I overslept,” he replied, rubbing his eyes and sitting up to face me.

“Nonsense, I just wanted to talk to you about last night. It looked to me like you and Amy got along very well.” He brought a hand to his forehead and rubbed his thumb slowly into his temple. I considered my son’s face, the same face that had caused me such anxiety mere months before. I considered the position of his body, the way his
shoulders hunched over while he sat. His narrow eyes squinted with sleep; his bare chest was more defined than I remembered. There was something different about him and suddenly, I realized: he seemed masculine. For the first time in my experience as his mother, I was seeing my son as a man.

“Mom,” he said, and then he paused. He shut his eyes to moisten them and opened them wide to meet me. “I think I love her.”

It took me by surprise. I had expected resistance, or at the very least, apprehension. You’re pushing too hard, I imagined him saying, you’re moving things too quickly. I searched for words and found none. In thirty-three years,
love
was a word that Bohai used rarely, and when he did, it was only for family.

“I know,” I managed. “Which is why I think you should—”

“I want to marry her,” he said suddenly. He repeated it, I think for himself, as if it were the first time he had reached this conclusion. The sun was beginning to soak through the white curtains of his room. The two of us sat on his bed, a sliver of bright light between us, as we considered the words that had just been said.

“You have my blessing,” I said simply, taking Bohai’s hand under the sheet. “Of course you have all of our blessing.”

I could feel my heart beating in my ears, my breath growing fast and excited. It was all happening so quickly I could hardly keep up. Finally, Bohai had reached his tipping point and in Amy he’d found his force, his strength, his prize. A new life was poised to begin, a fairy tale beginning to unfold.

I had always had concerns about Bohai. That was no secret. It made me feel foolish now, knowing how simply the solution had come. How easy it had been to set Bohai on the right path and see him finally happy. And I saw it in Amy, too. There was a quiet contentment that I knew almost certainly would turn to real love. Bohai was a good man, just as my own husband had turned out to be. I knew how the story ended. I was a living example.

Now that they were engaged, I began with preparations for the wedding dresses. I thought back to my own fitting in China, a day I remembered more clearly than my ceremony. The enormous mirrors at the tailor’s shop were overwhelming to my seventeen-year-old self. I had never seen the full length of my back, never seen the top of my head and the tips of my toes in a single frame. I had seen a mirror before and I knew there was no magic behind it, but I couldn’t help but wiggle my fingertips and watch the girl across from me do the same, accurate to the point of amazement.