“It’s not my blood.”
“What’s going on?” Sinmay went to sit behind a cedar desk covered with scrolls.
“You won’t believe it. Aiyi went to see the pianist and almost got herself killed.” Cheng let me stand like a criminal. The gears of his fiery temper yanked into motion, each tooth sharpened, rolling on twenty-one years of practice.
“The foreigner on the magazine?”
“You should hear what she said in the car! Never mind, older brother. May I have your permission to have her live with me? It’s for her safety.”
I was shocked. “I can’t live in your home, Cheng. Actually, I’ve long waited to tell you this: I would like to call off our wedding.”
The soft cooing of the nanny rocking the baby ceased; the footfalls of Cheng’s pacing vanished.
“Call off the wedding? But we already sent the invitations!” Peiyu’s voice was incredulous.
Sinmay shot to his feet, sending the rosewood chair flying across the room. “Are you out of your mind?”
I cringed. His disapproval was to be expected, but I had not imagined this spectacle.
“You are engaged. Everyone in Shanghai knows.”
“I want to rethink my future.”
“Your family makes decisions for your future.”
I turned to Cheng. “Would you talk to me, in private?”
Cheng struck the desk with his fist. “You want to leave me for a foreigner? Is that it? Did you fuck him? Did you?”
“Do not talk to me like this—”
Sinmay yanked me. “You slept with a foreigner?”
Cheng grabbed me to face him. “I knew you lied to me. I knew. You lied to me.”
Sinmay yanked me again. “You better explain this, or I’ll never forgive you.”
Dizzy, I backed away from them, my back hitting a swinging door. Cheng’s face was the face of a bully and Sinmay’s was that of a furious superior. I, a woman of twenty-one, was a person of no importance, a trifle.
Cheng laughed. A terrible sound. “Have you thought of me? How does this make me look? People will laugh at me! You can’t do this to me!”
“We won’t face this shame. We will not mention this to your mother. The wedding will go on as scheduled,” Sinmay said, his face pink with rage. “It’s not up to you, Aiyi. You’ll marry him. As the oldest brother, I order you. Oldest brother acts like Father,” he said, quoting a proverb.
I hugged my chest, but I wouldn’t look away.
“If you won’t listen to me, you should leave. And never come back,” Sinmay blustered, pointing at the courtyard.
Outside, the courtyard was cloaked in a pale gloom, the sunlight banished, the ground laid in shapes of diamonds and circles wet with yesterday’s rain. If I left, I would never be allowed to step inside again, and my place in the family would be erased. I might as well never have existed. This was what happened to my disgraced sister who became a concubine to a tycoon in Hong Kong.
I refused to be banished. “Emily was right to leave you. She’s better off without you.”
His arm swung; my head was thrown back. The slap, crisp and loud, tore at my ear.
I had never been slapped before, not even pinched by a rough hand. I held my face, the door of childhood memory flung open like a storm. All those years I watched and shivered as my addict father grew mad, throwing tantrums, cursing, and beating Mother when she hid money from him. I never thought I would be a victim of violence, hit by my own brother.
“Sinmay!” Peiyu’s voice.
“She disobeys me!”
Somehow Cheng stood in front of me. His black eyes furious, he looked wild as a raging feline. “You don’t deserve this. I would never hurt you. But I hate you. I hate you so much. I’ll never forgive you.”
He walked out. In the courtyard, the engine roared, let out a loud wail, and then faded.
Sinmay was raging. “Go to your room!”
In a daze, I went obediently; my head ached and my eyes burned. There was a voice in my head telling me this was the right thing to do, but the other voice, calm and aloof, said I had made a terrible mistake and thrown my life away. Both voices agreed that my life was now like a decorated paper lantern adrift in the wind.
“Do you need a handkerchief? Or some cream for the swelling, little sister? Here, take my handkerchief.” Peiyu’s voice was sympathetic. She meant well. She had watched, unable to help.
“I want to lie down,” I said.
And I slept. For the first time since the loss of my business, I saw no shadows, heard no ghost murmurs. I dreamed of Mother, a vivid vision behind the incense smoke. I saw myself, too, a seventeen-year-old wearing a mourning hemp cloak beside her coffin. So young I was; the depth of her death hadn’t hit me yet, and I only felt the unaccustomed emptiness, like a precious jade bangle that I had worn for years but had slipped off.