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.”

“I’m sorry, Aunty Mabel.”

“Sorry? Why be sorry? True, she’s not like my baby sister anymore. Doesn’t need me now. Your Nai-nai comes up from San Diego on the bus. A lot of hair, she says. It’s a good sign. But I am so stupid, I almost lost my job. I got back to the house and remember I must call New York, my boss. So I do. My boss asks me, How is your mother? and I say everything is all right, my mother is going to live, we are all very happy.”

Uncle Richard came to the airport to see me off, sitting by himself in the backseat like the wooden laughing Buddha my parents had brought back from Taiwan, making comments on the roads, how all the repair work they’d been doing hadn’t helped the traffic any. We were barely in time, and as we rushed toward the boarding gate, my uncle pressed something folded into my palm. “For good luck, eh? No, no, don’t open now.” I tucked it into the pocket of my jeans, having already caught a glimpse of Ben Franklin.

“G’bye, Slim,” my uncle said, laughing at his own joke. “I think I start calling your aunt that too.”

All of a sudden I couldn’t think of anything to say, and there was no more time. “Xie xie,” I said. “Zai jen.” Not adieu, but au revoir, see you again. All languages make that distinction.

“You hear,” Uncle Richard said to my aunt. “She has northern accent, just like her ba-ba.”

Part Four

23

At La Guardia I decided to treat myself to a cab, although I had hardly any luggage, just the black bag. I contemplated what I was returning to: clustering traffic, glowering skyline, the nervy discontented hum of the city and its denizens. How had my Aunty Mabel felt, landing here alone for the first time, the phone number of a friend of Nai-nai’s tucked into the flap of her purse, on her way to Penn Station to take the train to Long Island for her job interview? I could feel my own adrenaline as we pulled onto the FDR Drive.

My street was deserted and creepy, I’d forgotten the cracked sidewalks, the stairwell of my building shabbier than I’d remembered, with its worn marble steps and peeling black-and-white honeycomb wallpaper. I could smell acrylic fumes from the loft of the other artist, a sculptor, who lived on the first floor. When I’d undone all three of my locks, including the police one, and swung open the heavy steel door, I saw a space that was plain, even homely, smaller than I’d remembered, but in some ineffable way soothing to my soul. I’d painted the walls of my studio stark white and hung them with only Japanese prints and a blotchy green and violet painting I’d been working on before I left. Somewhere in the still, stale air, beyond the first whiff, I could smell that blend of turpentine and linseed oil that used to intoxicate me.

I walked over to the north bank of windows, lifted away the dusty sheet, and looped it around the nail I’d fixed to the wall for that purpose. Across the street two men were in a huddle in front of the candy store. A young Hispanic woman strolled by in heels and purple spandex, walking an old English sheepdog, and they both turned to look. I shoved one of the windows up as far as it would go and New York blew in. Exhaust, warm pavement, and weeds from Tompkins Square Park.

There were three phone messages. The first one was from my old boss—“Sally, please call me as soon as possible, I have an offer I think you’d be interested in.” The second was from my sister. “Sa, are you there? Call me, I’m at home.” The tinny girl voice on the last message I didn’t recognize right away. “Hey there. Thought I’d give you a try. I’m out in the real world, sort of, at the place I was last winter. Things are going okay, though I wouldn’t wish my last stay at State on my worst enemy. Although I’m the first to admit that I might be my own worst enemy. Okay, guess you’re not there. I’ll try you again sometime.” She didn’t leave a number. I wonder if Mel had beat me up north, as he’d boasted he would, whether he had dropped by to see her on his way home. On the tape Lillith sounded almost normal, as she had on her best days in the hospital.