Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [162]
“I’m having trouble washing rice in the rice washer,” he said.
I’ll say he was. He was washing rice in the toilet! I could hear them all laughing like crazy. When my mom returned to the salon, leaving the men to clean up the toilet, I told her about Swap Child, Make Food. Mom had the baby, Ta-ming, and me out of Z.G.’s house and in her childhood room within an hour.
“Let Z.G. deal with Tao!” she fumed.
“But tomorrow, I’ll—”
It was all I could do to keep her from reporting him to the police. That’s when I told her what I really wanted.
“Forget about him,” I said. “Let’s go home.”
That night, in the room my mother once shared with my aunt, we began to plot. Obviously, the first thing to do was contact Auntie May.
“I’ve waited a long time to write this letter,” Mom said as she put pen to paper. “Joy and the baby have returned to Shanghai,” she read to me as she wrote. “How wonderful it would be if we could have a family reunification visit at our old home in Hong Kong.” She looked up and explained. “She’ll know I’m talking about the hotel we stayed in twenty-three years ago.”
I had to trust my mother’s judgment on this, because it didn’t seem all that clear to me, but then my mother and aunt have always communicated in a way I’ve never fully understood.
“From our Hong Kong home, please send an official invitation for family reunification,” Mom continued. “Ask for a twenty-four-hour visit. As soon as I receive it, I’ll take it to the police station and Foreign Affairs Bureau to request travel permits. And one more thing …”
My mother put down her pen, put her hands together, and laid them in her lap in such a prim and decorous way I was tempted to laugh.
“I’m going to ask my sister to include Dun in her invitation. He’s asked me to marry him, and I’ve accepted.”
“Mom!” I was totally surprised.
“I don’t want to leave here without him.”
I could have been upset—why wasn’t she more loyal to my father?—but her face radiated happiness in a way I’d never seen before, which in turn gave me the purest feeling of joy. So one of the first things that would need to be done as part of our escape plan would be for my mother and Dun, whom I’d met only a few times, to start filing the papers for permission to get married—a process far more difficult in the city than in the countryside.
“What about Z.G.?” I asked. “Won’t he want to come too?”
Here’s how much my mom loves Dun: she didn’t even flinch at the idea that May and Z.G. might be reunited.
“Let’s ask him,” she responded. “But I don’t think he’ll want to come, do you?”
I didn’t think so either, not when he’s so famous here. In America, he’d have to start at the bottom. Maybe my mom would give him a job as a dishwasher in the café. I didn’t see that at all. And even though he clearly still loves May, a Rabbit is not born to fight for what he wants. He’ll choose what’s easy, comfortable, and familiar every time. Which is exactly what Z.G. did.
“It’s better if I help you with your plan,” he said.
In fact, he’d be playing a pivotal role, but we didn’t know that at the time, and my mom, who was writing the letter, said, “Let’s not bring it up to May just yet. I don’t want her to be disappointed.”
Later, after she finished her letter, my mother tucked the baby and me into Auntie May’s bed. Never could I have imagined how she would look at us right then. She glowed with love and happiness. Nor could I have imagined the way she allowed Ta-ming to snuggle close to her in her own twin bed. I saw that my mother—somehow, and at last—had found solace and comfort in physical affection, whether hugging me, comforting the baby, protecting Ta-ming