“Well, now, that is pos-i-tute-ly the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. I am compelled as a gentleman to insist that you come to lunch with my friends and me this week. We’ll make it a party.”
Ling imagined the faces of Henry and his fashionable set as she hobbled toward them in her cumbersome braces. The way their mouths would open in surprise, their discomfort peeking out beneath the sympathetic smiles they’d paste on too quickly. That was never going to happen.
“Pos-i-tute-ly isn’t a real word,” she said.
“Why, it pos-i-tute-ly is! It’s in the dictionary, just before prob-a-lute-ly.”
“You’re doing that simply to annoy me.”
“Abso-tive-ly not.” Henry’s smile was pure innocence.
“Keep listening for your friend’s fiddle,” Ling said and marched on.
The first time Ling had been visited by the dead, she’d been dream walking down a rainy street among people who were no more than dull splotches against the gray day. Ling was drawn to a pair of beautiful doors painted with the fearsome faces of evil spirit–banishing gods. The doors opened rather suddenly, and standing there beneath a paper parasol was her great-aunt Hui-ying, whom Ling had only known through photographs sent from China. The rain flew upward around her aunt, leaving her untouched. The outlines of her soft body carried a faint shimmer, which Ling would come to know marked the dead from the living. “Daughter: Tell them to break my favorite comb, the ivory one, and bury me with half,” her aunt said. “It’s in the painted chest, the second drawer down, in a hiding spot at the back behind a false partition.”
A day later, her parents received the telegram informing them that Auntie Hui-ying had died on the very night Ling had seen her. The family was frantically searching for Auntie Hui-ying’s comb, which they knew was her favorite, but they’d been unable to find it. “It’s in the painted chest, the second drawer, behind a false back,” Ling had said, parroting her aunt’s words.
Later, Ling’s father had taken her with him to the farm on Long Island. Under the warm sun, they worked side by side, gathering long beans. Ling’s father was a quiet man who tended to keep his thoughts to himself. They were alike in that way. “Ling,” he’d said, stopping to smoke a cigarette while Ling ate a peach, savoring the sweetness on her tongue. “How did you know about Auntie’s comb?”
Ling had been afraid at first to tell him the truth, in case it was some sort of bad luck she’d brought to their house. There’d been a baby before Ling, a precious son dead at birth, the cord wrapped around his neck. Two years later, Ling had come along. There’d been no other children after her, and both parents doted on Ling. She was their everything, and Ling often felt the burden of carrying her parents’ hopes and dreams, of being enough for all that love, of shouldering the obligation alone.
“Whatever it is, you can tell me,” her father had promised.
Ling had told him everything. He had listened, smoking his cigarette down to nothing. “Do you think I’m cursed, Baba?” Ling had asked. “Have I done something wrong?”
There had been tenderness in her father’s smile. “You’ve been given a gift. A link between old and new, between the living and the dead. But like all gifts, you must accept this with humility, Ling.”
Ling understood what he meant: Don’t draw bad luck to you with pride. Outwardly, Ling remained humble, but secretly, she loved walking in dreams and talking to the dead. It made her feel special and powerful. Nearly invincible.