This hits me like a slap to my face. May’s right. If Joy and I were in the same situation…

“You think you’ve been brave and given up so much,” May continues. I don’t hear condemnation or taunting in her voice, just relentless anguish, as though she’s the one who’s suffered. “But really you’ve been a coward: afraid, weak, and uncertain all these years. Never once have you asked what else happened in the shack that night. Never once have you thought to ask me what it was like to hold Mama in my arms as she died. Did you ever once think to ask where, how, or if she was buried? Who do you think took care of that? Who do you think got us away from that shack when the sensible thing would have been to leave you behind to die?”

I don’t like her questions. I like the answers that run through my mind even less.

“I was only eighteen years old,” May goes on. “I was pregnant and terrified. But I pushed you in the wheelbarrow. I got you to the hospital. I saved your life, Pearl, but you’re still carrying resentment and fear and blame after all these years. You believe you’ve sacrificed so much to take care of me, but your sacrifices have only been excuses. I’m the one who sacrificed to take care of you.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Is it?” She pauses briefly and then says: “Have you ever once thought what life has been like for me here? To see my daughter every day but always be kept at a distance? Or do the husband-wife thing with Vern? Think about that, Pearl. He could never be a real husband.”

“What are you saying?”

“That we never would have ended up here in this place that seems to have caused you so much misery if it hadn’t been for you.” As the fight falls from her voice, her words dig deep into me, unsettling my blood and bones. “You let one night, one terrible, tragic night, make you run and run and run. And I, as your moy moy, followed. Because I love you, and I knew you were forever damaged and would never be able to see the beauty and fortune in your life.”

I close my eyes, trying to steady myself I never want to hear her voice again. I never want to see her again. “Won’t you please just leave?” I beg.

But she comes right back at me. “Just answer me honestly. Would we be here in America if it hadn’t been for you?”

Her question thrusts into me sharp as a knife, because so much of what she’s been saying is true. But I’m still so angry and hurt that she turned Sam in that I respond with the one thing that will be most spiteful. “Absolutely not. We wouldn’t be here in America if you hadn’t done the husband-wife thing with some nameless boy! If you hadn’t made me take your baby-”

“He wasn’t nameless,” May says, her voice as soft as clouds. “It was Z.G.”

I thought I’d been hurt as much as I could and still survive. I was wrong.

“How could you? How could you hurt me that way? You know I loved Z.G.”

“Yes, I know,” she admits. “Z.G. thought it was funny-the way you stared at him during our sittings, the way you went begging to him-but I felt terrible about it.”

I stagger back. Betrayal upon betrayal upon betrayal.

“This is another of your lies.”

“Really? Joy saw it: Who had the red face of a peasant on the covers of China Reconstructs and whose face was painted with love?”

As she speaks, images from the past tumble through my mind: May resting her head against Z.G.’s heart as they danced, Z.G. painting every last strand of her hair, Z.G. placing peonies around her naked body…

“I’m sorry,” she says. “That was cruel. I know you’ve held him in your heart all these years, but that was a girlish crush from long ago. Can’t you see that? Z.G. and I…” Her voice catches. “You had a lifetime with Sam. Z.G. and I had a few weeks.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I knew you had feelings for him. That’s why I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

And like that I understand what’s been before me for the last twenty years. “Z.G. is Joy’s father.”

“Who is Z.G.?”

It’s the one voice that neither my sister nor I want to hear. I turn and there’s Joy, standing in the kitchen doorway, her eyes like black pebbles at the bottom of a bowl of narcissus. Her look-cold, expressionless, and unforgiving-tells me she’s been listening far too long. I’m devastated by Sam’s death and my sister’s version of our lives, but I feel absolute horror that my daughter has heard any of this. I take two steps toward Joy but she edges away from me.

“Who is Z.G.?” she asks again.

“He is your real father,” May answers, her voice gentle and filled with love. “And I am your real mother.”

The three of us stand in the living room like statues. I see May and me through Joy’s eyes: a mother-who has tried to teach her daughter to be filial in the Chinese way and brilliant in the American way-wearing an old nightgown, with a face red from tears, sorrow, and anger; and another mother-who has indulged her daughter with treats and exposed her to the glamour and money of Haolaiwu-looking radiant and elegant. Freed from two decades of secrets, May seems at peace, despite everything that’s happened tonight. My sister and I have fought over shoes, over who’s had the better life, and over who’s smarter and prettier, but this time I don’t have a chance. I know who will win. For so long I’ve wondered about my destiny. It wasn’t enough for me to lose my baby son and my husband. Now the tears of the greatest loss of my life roll down my cheeks.

When Our Hair Is White

I LIE ON my bed, a huge hole in my chest where my heart used to be. Destroyed, that’s how I feel. I listen to May and Joy murmur together. Later, I hear raised voices and doors slam, but I don’t go back out there and fight for my daughter. I don’t have any fight left in me. But then maybe I never did. Maybe May was right about me. I am weak. Maybe I’ve always been afraid, a victim, a fu yen. May and I grew up in the same home with the same parents, and yet my sister has always been able to look out for herself She grabbed at opportunities: my willingness to take Joy, Tom Gubbins’s offer of a job and what that turned into, her constant striving to go out and have fun, while I accepted the bad as merely my unlucky fate.

Later still, I hear water running in the bathroom and the toilet flush. I hear Joy opening and shutting her drawers in the linen closet. As silence finally settles over the house, my mind goes to deeper and darker places. My sister has made me think about things in a whole new way, but none of that changes what happened to Sam. I’ll never forgive her for that! Except… except… maybe she was right about seeking amnesty. Maybe not voluntarily stepping forward was a dreadful mistake on Sam’s and my parts, which resulted in terrible tragedy for Sam. But why hadn’t May told us she was going to report us, even if it was for our own good? I know the answer too well: Sam and I were always afraid of anything new. We were afraid to leave the family and go out on our own, afraid to leave Chinatown, afraid to let our daughter become what we said we wanted her to be: American. If May had tried to tell us, we wouldn’t have been able to hear her.

I know that, in the worst of my Dragon aspects, I can be stubborn and proud. Cross a female Dragon and the sky will fall. Indeed, tonight the sky has fallen, but I need to tell Joy that she is and will always be my daughter and that no matter what she feels about me or Sam or her auntie, I will love her forever and ever. I will make her understand how much she’s been loved and protected and how much pride I have in her as she begins her life. I have ten thousand hopes that she’ll forgive me. As for May, I don’t know if I can find a way to absolve her or even if I want to. I don’t know if I want to have a relationship with her at all, but I’m willing to give her a chance to explain everything to me again.