“I did,” Lily said. Her eyes grew hot.
“You’re a good Chinese girl, Lily. I don’t understand. What would make you go somewhere like this?” Her mother looked so confused.
Lily took a trembling breath. “I—I think I’m like them.”
Her mother’s eyes widened. “You think— No. You’re not. You’ve never even had a boyfriend! You’ll grow up and marry and realize that this was all a mistake, a temporary—”
“It’s not a mistake,” she protested.
“Lily. 胡麗麗！”* her mother cried, saying her full name in Mandarin the way her father did. “What has gotten into you? If only one person saw you outside this club—we can deal with it. You’re young. You’ll find a boyfriend in college. You won’t go to that place again, and you’ll forget about it right away. Do you hear me?”
“You’re not listening to me!” Lily cried. “I’m like them.”
It wasn’t Lily who was the figurine in a diorama; it was her mother. Her mother was going round and round on that track, hearing only what she wanted to hear.
Her mother stood up, snatching the newspaper off the table and crumpling it in her hands. She threw it into the trash again. “There are no homosexuals in this family,” she said, the words thick with disgust.
Her mother’s chest heaved, and Lily saw that her hand was now stained with newsprint just like Lily’s. In the trash can, the newspaper itself was slowly coming uncrumpled; it was unfurling as if it were a living thing, the words sex deviate screaming across the room.
“You are young,” her mother said harshly. “You aren’t even eighteen years old yet. Sometimes girls have these ideas when they’re younger—before they meet their husbands. Girls love their friends and mistake that for the love they’ll have for their husbands. It only becomes an illness when you won’t let go of the idea. We’ll tell your father. He’ll be able to help you. You won’t tell your aunts and uncles about this. You won’t say a word to your grandmother. Do you hear me? Everyone knows you’re a good Chinese girl. This is just a mistake.”
The more her mother insisted it was a mistake, the more certain Lily was that it wasn’t. Perhaps that was the most perverse part of this: the inside-outness of everything, as if denial would make it go away, when it only made the pain in her chest tighten, when it only made her emotions clearer.
“It’s not a mistake,” Lily said miserably.
Her mother strode across the kitchen and slapped her.
Lily jerked backward, shocked. Her mother hadn’t hit her in years—since she was eight or nine—and she instantly felt like that child again, cowering in fear of another strike. With the terror came a crippling guilt and the belief that she must have done something awful, that she deserved this punishment.
She raised a hand to her stinging face; tears sprang into her eyes. Her mother looked both horrified and horrifying, her pale face suddenly blotchy with red, her brown eyes bright with anger.
“There are no homosexuals in this family,” her mother spit out again. “Are you my daughter?”
The tears spilled hotly from Lily’s eyes. She turned away from her mother and fled from the kitchen. In the hallway she saw Eddie and Frankie standing uncertainly outside the living room.
“Lily?” Eddie said.
She didn’t answer him. She put on her shoes, but her fingers couldn’t work the laces properly. She clutched the railing as she stumbled down the stairs. She heard her mother calling her—no, she was calling for Eddie, telling him to stop—and then she was at the front door. She wrenched it open; she stepped outside and down onto the sidewalk. She was crying freely now. The air was misty and wet. She didn’t know where she was going; she only knew she had to go away.
41
There are no homosexuals in this family.
Grant Avenue’s red-and-gold banners celebrating the Year of the Sheep sagged damply overhead, dripping on Lily as she crossed the street. A group of boys pushed past her with their arms full of unlit firecrackers, shouting and laughing.
There are no homosexuals in this family.
Portsmouth Square was ahead. She wished she had put on a coat, and her canvas shoes were getting wetter with each step, but she couldn’t go back.
Kath had been arrested. Lily’s stomach clenched.
There are no homosexuals in this family.
She kept walking. Past the International Hotel, past the gaudy lights of the International Settlement. The neon sign for the Barbary Coast nightclub, built in the shape of a woman’s naked leg, glowed through the dusk, advertising DANCING GIRLS.