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Suddenly her son and daughter came running. “Come, Mother. The plane’s landed early. She’s here already.” They hurried, folding up their mother’s encampment. She was glad her children were not useless. They must have known what this trip to San Francisco was about then. “It’s a good thing I made you come early,” she said.

Brave Orchid pushed to the front of the crowd. She had to be in front. The passengers were separated from the people waiting for them by glass doors and walls. Immigration Ghosts were stamping papers. The travellers crowded along some conveyor belts to have their luggage searched. Brave Orchid did not see her sister anywhere. She stood watching for four hours. Her children left and came back. “Why don’t you sit down?” they asked.

“The chairs are too far away,” she said.

“Why don’t you sit on the floor then?”

No, she would stand, as her sister was probably standing in a line she could not see from here. Her American children had no feelings and no memory.

To while away time, she and her niece talked about the Chinese passengers. These new immigrants had it easy. On Ellis Island the people were thin after forty days at sea and had no fancy luggage.

“That one looks like her,” Brave Orchid would say.

“No, that’s not her.”

Ellis Island had been made out of wood and iron. Here everything was new plastic, a ghost trick to lure immigrants into feeling safe and spilling their secrets. Then the Alien Office could send them right back. Otherwise, why did they lock her out, not letting her help her sister answer questions and spell her name? At Ellis Island when the ghost asked Brave Orchid what year her husband had cut off his pigtail, a Chinese who was crouching on the floor motioned her not to talk. “I don’t know,” she had said. If it weren’t for that Chinese man, she might not be here today, or her husband either. She hoped some Chinese, a janitor or a clerk, would look out for Moon Orchid. Luggage conveyors fooled immigrants into thinking the Gold Mountain was going to be easy.

Brave Orchid felt her heart jump—Moon Orchid. “There she is,” she shouted. But her niece saw it was not her mother at all. And it shocked her to discover the woman her aunt was pointing out. This was a young woman, younger than herself, no older than Moon Orchid the day the sisters parted. “Moon Orchid will have changed a little, of course,” Brave Orchid was saying. “She will have learned to wear western clothes.” The woman wore a navy blue suit with a bunch of dark cherries at the shoulder.

“No, Aunt,” said the niece. “That’s not my mother.”

“Perhaps not. It’s been so many years. Yes, it is your mother. It must be. Let her come closer, and we can tell. Do you think she’s too far away for me to tell, or is it my eyes getting bad?”

“It’s too many years gone by,” said the niece.

Brave Orchid turned suddenly—another Moon Orchid, this one a neat little woman with a bun. She was laughing at something the person ahead of her in line said. Moon Orchid was just like that, laughing at nothing. “I would be able to tell the difference if one of them would only come closer,” Brave Orchid said with tears, which she did not wipe. Two children met the woman with the cherries, and she shook their hands. The other woman was met by a young man. They looked at each other gladly, then walked away side by side.

Up close neither one of those women looked like Moon Orchid at all. “Don’t worry, Aunt,” said the niece. “I’ll know her.”

“I’ll know her too. I knew her before you did.”

The niece said nothing, although she had seen her mother only five years ago. Her aunt liked having the last word.

Finally Brave Orchid’s children quit wandering and drooped on a railing. Who knew what they were thinking? At last the niece called out, “I see her! I see her! Mother! Mother!” Whenever the doors parted, she shouted, probably embarrassing the American cousins, but she didn’t care. She called out, “Mama! Mama!” until the crack in the sliding doors became too small to let in her voice. “Mama!” What a strange