In the silence, Lily heard the ticking of a clock somewhere in the apartment. She saw the pack of Lucky Strikes and thought, wildly, that perhaps if she smoked one, her aunt would be so shocked she would forget what Lily had just said.
The door to the bedroom came unstuck with its familiar peeling sound, and Lily shot to her feet. A few moments later Lana appeared in the doorway to the living room, tying her silky flowered robe around herself, barefoot and looking like a woman who had just tumbled out of bed. “Hello,” she said, looking from Lily to her aunt. “I thought I heard some voices out here.”
Aunt Judy rose and went across the room, hand extended. “I’m Judy Fong, Lily’s aunt.”
Lana shook her hand, blinking. “Oh. I’m Lana Jackson.”
“Thank you for letting Lily stay with you.”
Aunt Judy was shorter than Lana, but she held herself as if she were taller. Seeing them together made Lily realize that Lana was closer to her own age than to Aunt Judy’s. Lily had thought Lana was so sophisticated, but now in comparison to Aunt Judy, she seemed young and even a little na?ve.
“I’ve been happy to have her,” Lana said, but it sounded wrong—too prim. She shifted uncomfortably and looked at Lily. “It sounds like you’re leaving?”
“I don’t—”
“Yes,” Aunt Judy interrupted. “I’ve come to take her home.”
Lily balked. “But I told you—”
“We’ll go home and discuss it with your father.”
Lily paled. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Lana watched the exchange, her eyebrows rising. “Perhaps I’d better leave you to talk it over,” she said, and began to back away into the dining room.
“No, we’re leaving,” Aunt Judy said. “We don’t want to overstay our welcome. Thank you again, Miss Jackson. Lily, are you ready? Do you have a coat?”
There was an edge to her tone, as if she were hurrying Lily out of an unsavory situation, and Lily suddenly realized how Lana must look to her aunt: dressed in that clinging robe, her cleavage showing in a way that it shouldn’t at this time of day, her blond hair mussed from bed and her lipstick half worn off, as if she had been kissing someone. Lily felt a rush of protectiveness toward Lana, who had taken her in despite barely knowing her, and she felt an uncharitable prickling of judgment against her aunt.
“You’re not listening to me,” Lily said, frustrated.
Aunt Judy’s expression softened. “We were very worried, Lily. It’s the New Year. Your mother has been working all day to prepare the dinner for everyone. Come home. Please.”
* * *
—
Lily and Aunt Judy walked back to Chinatown. It was still chilly, and Lily still only had her thin cardigan to wear. When they stopped at an intersection a few blocks from Lana’s apartment, Aunt Judy took off her coat and handed it to Lily, and Lily put it on, feeling like a child.
The streets of Chinatown were littered with firecracker wrappers. The shops were mostly closed to the public today, but a few tourists wandered through anyway, gawking at the calligraphy scrolls they couldn’t read and peering in shop windows at mounds of dried herbs or gaudy souvenirs. Many Chinese were out on the sidewalks in their finest clothes, visiting family and friends or heading to New Year banquets at their clan or district associations.
During the war, Lily’s mother had taken them to her family association on New Year, but after Lily’s father returned, they stopped going. He wanted to eat Shanghainese food, and the associations were for the Cantonese from Kwangtung. “They don’t cook the right food,” he had complained. So Lily’s mother had taught herself how to prepare his favorite dishes for the New Year dinner, and when Aunt Judy arrived in 1947, she started helping, too.
Usually Lily looked forward to the New Year dinner, but this year, she wished she could be anywhere else. She knew that as soon as she got home, she’d have to greet her grandmother and uncles and cousins and pretend that everything was normal. She’d have to obey her parents and especially her mother, who had told her, You won’t tell your aunts and uncles about this. You won’t say a word to your grandmother. It felt like a trap from which there was no escape.
A few steps away from the front door she briefly considered running away again—but where would she go? She didn’t really have a choice. She might be able to spend one more night on Lana’s sofa, but then what?
Aunt Judy was already taking out the key to the front door, and then she turned the knob and looked at Lily, gesturing for her to enter first.
The entryway was dim and smelled like ginger and the syrupy scent of the Shanghai-style braised fish her mother made every New Year. She already heard the voices of her brothers and younger cousins upstairs. They didn’t know she was standing there at the bottom, hesitating to go back to them, where she would be absorbed back into the family as if nothing had happened. Everything she had experienced over the past forty-eight hours would be deliberately ignored.
“Lily,” Aunt Judy said.
She climbed up the stairs, her heart sinking.
46
The upstairs landing was empty, but several suitcases and bags were pushed against the wall across from the telephone table.
“Go say hello to your grandmother,” Aunt Judy said. “She’s in the living room.”
Lily took off her shoes and went where her aunt told her to go. Her brothers and cousins—eleven-year-old Jack and nine-year-old Minnie—were sprawled on the floor playing marbles. Uncle Francis and Uncle Sam were smoking by the front window, and A P’oh* was sitting in one corner of the sofa, observing the action. She saw Lily as soon as she entered the room.
“阿麗,”* A P’oh called, gesturing for her to join her on the sofa.
“Lily!” Eddie said. “Did you just get back?”
“Everybody was mad,” Frankie said before Eddie shot him a quelling look.