Ma had called just before we left the house. She wanted to know what time my flight was arriving, when she should pick me up at Connecticut Limousine. I told her I was going straight to my apartment in New York.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, happy birthday. You think I forget?”
“Thanks,” I said.
“With your sister home, maybe we can have double celebration when you get back.”
There were gifts. A package from my mother, fancy stationery, cream-colored with my name embossed: Sarah Collisson Wang, I guess to replace the dozen boxes of Sarah Wang-Acheson stationery she’d ordered for me when I got married. From my aunt and uncle, a set of Chinese calligraphy brushes in a satin box. I fingered the bristle: fox, sheep, goat. The sheep was the softest. Good for ink, of course, or watercolor.
“San zhi mao bi,” I said.
“Three Chinese brush.” Uncle Richard chuckled. “Very good.”
Nothing from my sister, but it had been years since we’d exchanged presents.
After dinner we drove into Tampa to play bingo at the Seminole reservation. Over a thousand people, mostly over the age of sixty, were seated in numbered plastic chairs at long tables with cards and good-luck charms lined up in front of them. They used monster highlighters to daub each number as it was called out. Except for the caller, it was as still as an examination room. When someone won they’d raise their hand or say “bingo” very quietly, and the whole room would go up in a sigh.
Was anyone even having fun?
Bingo at the slot machines was depressing in another way, because you could lose so much hard cash so fast. “Not your game, Niece,” Uncle Richard said finally. “Like basketball not my game. Too bad we never go back see the puppies run.”
“Next time, Uncle Richard, I promise.”
What I couldn’t tell him was that my power wouldn’t work if I tried to do it on purpose. Luck could be chased away if you took it too seriously, like those silent bingo players. The trick was to concentrate without focusing, to let yourself feel without understanding.
When we returned to the house I went out to the patio to smoke. Before lighting up I just sat there, staring into the dark, breathing the now familiar mix of jasmine and honeysuckle. Then I saw the mother armadillo. She came lumbering through the grass to the edge of the pool of kitchen light, a homely plump hunkering shape like one of those old-fashioned rag dolls where limbs, head, and torso are each a separate stuffed piece. Her tiny black elephant eyes caught the light and she squinted. I don’t think she saw me, but she must have sensed something alien because she froze before backing off into the darkness.
When I went back into my room to pack, the tiger kitten appeared out of nowhere like cats do and followed me, jumping up onto the unused bed next to the stuffed white cat. Aunty Mabel knocked at the open door. She was carrying six gemlike jars, sealed with wax and labeled. It was the calamondin made into jam.
“Here, you take. Give some to your ma-ma, too. She like sour thing.” She set the jars in a row on the bed next to the kitten, who matched them in color. I imagined my aunt bent over the stove stewing the fruit on one of those sultry afternoons Mel and I had spent in bed.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been home much lately, Aunty Mabel.”
She waved her hand. “You marry too young,” she said, as if that explained it in some way. She watched in approval as I wrapped each marmalade jar in an article of clothing as carefully as I had packed Lillith’s food sculptures in her socks. “You know, back when your ba-ba died I was so worry about you.”
“I was okay,” I said. “I had friends.”
“Friends not like family. Your ma-ma and I discuss this. What if we were in China? What if you grow up surrounded with relatives, like you’re supposed to? Maybe you both be happier, you and Marty. And your ba-ba is such a sad man. You know how his father die?”
“No.”
“He commit suicide.”
“I didn’t know that.”
My aunt was silent for a moment, and I saw from her face how difficult it was for her to say what she was about to say. “I know about this thing your ba-ba did when you were small. I know what he did, Sal-lee. Terrible.”
For a moment I couldn’t speak and then I said, “Incest.” I said it to hear the word out loud, and to make sure we were talking about the same thing.
“This is rare in China. Chinese adore their children.”
“Ma told you.”
“She call me before you come down.”
“She doesn’t believe me.”
“Don’t be so sure.” My aunt lowered herself onto the unused bed, carefully, as if her joints ached. “If I know then, I would tell your ma-ma send you girls come stay with us.”
“I wish you had.”
“You know I can’t have children,” my aunt said. “In China that’s a big big tragedy, my husband can divorce. Well, you know your uncle, when we find out he says we can get cats. Always joking. And he says I have you and Mar-tee, I shouldn’t be sad.” My aunt began running her fingers over the satin spread, smoothing it out. “I remember when you were born. I was there.”
“I thought you were in New York.”
“No, no. Yes, I was still at Grumman, your uncle and I just start to date. One day at work I get a call from your ba-ba—’Your sister says she wants you. I pay your airfare roundtrip.’ “
“Was she in labor?”
“Not yet. You were two weeks late. He call me the day you were due. I lie to my boss. I tell him my mother is dying. It’s bad luck, I know, but I can’t think of anything else. All the way, on the plane, I worry that I’m too late, she’s going to have baby without me. And then your mother came to meet me at the airport. Can you believe? So big, like this, all by herself she drives the car.”
There were pictures in the album. Ma like a beach ball, dark lipstick, her hair perfect.
“I sleep in the nursery, where they were going to put you, yellow and pink and blue, all the little diapers folded on the bureau. And so many stuffed animals, I guess they already know you liked stuffed animals.”
I buckled my bag shut and sat down on my bed, across from my aunt.
“Your ma-ma and I go to the movies every day. Fifty cents, can you imagine. We both like James Dean, Natalie Wood. You like Natalie Wood too, I remember. Sometimes we see the same movie three times. Always, people stare at your mother. Not many pregnant Oriental women in Monterey. She has only one outfit that fit her, a blue jumper. You remember May in Monterey, how beautiful. We are walking on the beach when the pains come. Your ma-ma is so stubborn, she sits down and doesn’t move. I’m so scared, I leave her on the rocks and run to the house and call your father at school. He comes and takes us to the hospital. The doctor says she’s slow, it’s going to take a long time, he wants to give her this medicine and that medicine.” My aunt’s eyes were shiny. I could see that she would have gladly undergone that kind of pain, and much worse. “Your ma-ma says no, she doesn’t want any drugs, but then she cries and cries and I say Mei you must be brave and she says you don’t know what it’s like, this yang guidoctor is going to let me die. This scares me so much, you know your ma-ma is always the cool one, always knows what to do. She wants Chinese remedy, so I go to grocery store and buy brown sugar and stir it in hot water. At the end, when it’s the worst, she curses your father, calls him disgusting peasant, even worse names. In Chinese, lucky, so the doctor doesn’t understand.
“You were a long baby, twenty-three inches. Your ma-ma has a private room, third floor, overlook the ocean. She has you in the bassinet by the bed. ‘Look, Jie, such a pretty room they gave me!’ She can see the cliffs from her windows, all the flowers. She can hear the seals. And I think, What a lucky mother. What a lucky baby.”