In deep autumn, Rumei’s oldest maternal aunt calls and tells her that the nanny they hired is pocketing the valuables in her apartment. Rumei has to say through the bile rising in her throat, Yes, Aunt, she’ll handle it. Both of Aunt’s children, Rumei’s cousins, have left for overseas opportunities and have no plans to come back. The old lady’s housekeeper situation is a seller’s market, and Rumei is stuck as her broker.

Rumei’s aunt just turned eighty and this is the fourth nanny they’ve gone through in five years. Old age has become a personal insult. She has been treated well her entire life, and the small, progressive losses of independence and function and even beauty rankle her, such that she yaws the torment onto others too. Even her move to Tangshan, so Rumei can more easily take care of her, is a source of aggravation.

When Rumei suggested a couple months ago that the nanny be allowed to have some eggs, she was hit with a barrage of complaints: the nanny’s dialect is hard to understand; the nanny only knows how to make lamb and beef, meats that aren’t easy to digest; the nanny’s fish dishes are nigh inedible, it’s so bad, and so it goes to waste because neither of them can eat that, why should a woman who is trying to kill her be given eggs?

The nanny is a woman from Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, a fishless city in a fishless province. Rumei would be shocked if the nanny knew how to cook fish.

“One other thing,” Aunt says to Rumei. “Your sister’s little girl is coming. The little mixed-race.”

“I know,” Rumei says. “Ruzhen asked me a week ago if I had space to host.”

“I told her, of course you should tell your older sister. Your older sister has so much space and time, she doesn’t even know what to do with it.”

Rumei smiles thinly at the video of her aunt on her phone.

“How old is the girl?” Aunt asks.

“Nineteen,” Rumei says. “She’s in her second year at UCLA.”

“How is she? Pretty? Smart?”

“Smart, pretty,” Rumei says. The only context Ruzhen gave her is that her daughter was interested in China and wanted to come for winter break. Ruzhen doesn’t post much about her daughter.

“Well, whatever it is,” Aunt says, “Ruzhen isn’t coming herself?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“She’s busy,” Rumei says. When she asked, Ruzhen said something about having a lot of work and pet responsibilities. Ruzhen is only sparsely on WeChat, and thus, willfully selective of the questions she answers.

“If she comes back during winter, we could do an early Lunar New Year family dinner,” Aunt says. “Get the whole family back together.”

Of course, it is then up to Rumei to plan a family gathering. Aunt also suggests taking Heihei to Beijing for a day, driving Heihei to climb the Great Wall, or staying around Tangshan to explore the old Qing tombs. “And feel free to ask me for money if you need any,” she says.

“All right, Aunt,” Rumei says. With guests from far away, Aunt is happy to spend any amount of money.

A week before her daughter is to come, Ruzhen resurfaces on WeChat to send Rumei all of her daughter’s logistical information. The girl’s name is Holly, but Rumei knows her as Heihei. She’s half white: straw brown hair, wide eyes, prominent eyebrows. Her identification is all in Roman letters. Rumei has met her father twice, first at Ruzhen’s doctorate graduation ceremony twenty-two years ago, where Ruzhen had introduced him as her boyfriend, and again sixteen years ago when Rumei and Mother came to America to do sightseeing. He trailed behind them, at the airport, around town, in the home, an affable oaf.

Rumei spends the week dusting down the counters and fixing up the furniture in the spare room beside her and her husband’s bedroom. Outfitted for a child that never came to be, it’s perfect for someone like Heihei. A bookshelf, patterned blankets, a desk with an alcove for clay figurines.

Rumei arrives at the airport an hour and a half early and stands with a sign at baggage claim. She watches guests from Madrid, Paris, Chiang Mai, Nagaoka, and Taipei pick up their suitcases and exit, yammering amongst themselves. All the other baggage claim screens are too far and she can’t read the flights. Then, coming from the far end, she spots Heihei. The girl is wearing a sweatshirt and over-the-ear headphones. It’s not so much Heihei’s appearance (her hair is a confusing jet black) as it is her mannerisms, the way she looks around like a young deer, exactly her demeanor when she came to China twelve years ago.

That was the last time Rumei saw the girl. Mother and daughter had flown from San Francisco for Ruzhen and Rumei’s mother’s funeral, and Heihei had held Ruzhen’s hand. Rumei had been shocked at how much Heihei looked like Ruzhen and shocked at how much she didn’t. Heihei spoke to Ruzhen, and only Ruzhen, at a swift clip in English. Rumei had studied only enough English in school to pass tests. She couldn’t keep up with the pattering, and Ruzhen got irritated if she had to interpret too much.

They’re face to face now, and Heihei is a head taller than Rumei. Heihei smiles hesitantly. Rumei steps forward and puts her arms around Heihei, a quick squeeze. The girl is stiff as a board.

Rumei takes her luggage and begins walking her to the parking garage. On the way, she asks the regular questions—are you tired, are you jet-lagged, did you sleep on the flight, are you hungry? Heihei makes valiant efforts to reply. Flattened and nasal against her vowels, the tones of her Mandarin have lost their melody. When Heihei can’t find the right word, she flicks her wrist in a half-moon shape as she tries to fetch the term from her limited vocabulary.

On the drive back home, Rumei comments on Heihei’s hair. Heihei says it’s dyed. She explains, though she doesn’t need to, that her natural hair is “brown like a mouse.” Rumei finds this unexpectedly literary. Heihei, misreading Rumei’s expression, types something into a translator app. She means her natural hair is dull brown.

“I see, I see,” Rumei says.

When Rumei and Heihei finally get back home, the apartment is empty and dark. For appearances, Rumei calls for her husband. The bedroom door creaks and he emerges, slouching in an oil-spotted shirt. The whites of his eyes are yellow. He grunts at Heihei. Nods. Then Rumei gestures that he can leave.

Rumei doesn’t look at Heihei until the door of his room closes. She asks, “Do you remember him at all?”

“Um, the memories are coming back,” Heihei says.

That’s a no. Rumei hopes Heihei won’t take his behavior as a slight. He already did more than she expected, to be honest.

Rumei leads Heihei to her temporary room. In the corner still is a bookshelf filled with picture books Rumei once thought a child might like to read, back when she still had hope for a baby doll to call her own. Heihei’s suitcase slots perfectly in the space under the bed, and the mattress has just the right amount of space for her stature. “If anything doesn’t suit,” Rumei says smilingly, once Heihei is reasonably unpacked, “just let me know. These accommodations are probably not as good as the ones in your home.”

Heihei straightens. “Oh, it’s very good.”

Her mouth is half-open, so Rumei waits, but all she does is flush to her neck.

Rumei adds, “Beijing is only an hour away by high-speed rail. If you want, we can go for a couple of days. There’s not as much to see around here, but in Beijing you can go to the Great Wall, see the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace…”

“That won’t be necessary,” the girl says.

Rumei frowns.

“I don’t want to trouble you,” Heihei adds quickly. “I can do my own research…”

Of course not, Rumei thinks. She has no idea how to even be in this country. “It’s not any trouble,” Rumei says.

She suddenly feels the nauseating urge to turn Heihei’s face up to the light and try to match eyes, nose, lips to the sister who left, the shy and discriminating child she remembers. She never understood before why grandmothers would touch their grandchildren with such rapacity, pulling fingers apart as if each digit were a new discovery. Now she does. She wonders if the knowledge makes her better off. She says good night and retreats back to her room with her husband.

Her husband is lying in bed on his back like a log.

After the pandemic, his work moved remote. Rumei can’t remember the last time he left the flat. He wakes up, works in his study, and orders takeout for lunch and dinner. Even on the weekends, he works. Rumei often thinks that, had they had a child, perhaps he would not have dried out like this, like a pepper in the sun. But that is, painfully, not in her control. Even aligned desires—those of the in-laws, and her own—could burn a person out so completely.

Rumei climbs into bed next to him and taps away at her phone. First she transfers weekly wages to the nanny. Then she turns her mind to the family gathering. She doesn’t want to cook for more than three people, so she reserves a table at a nice place on the top floor of a mall near the center of the city. Finally, she brainstorms the next couple days’ itinerary: a day trip to Beijing, some Qing tombs, a hike up Jingzhong mountain. Heihei probably can’t understand opera, but a shadow play might be fine.

She turns and asks her husband, “Do you want to spend time with me and your niece?”

Does he give her his yellow eyes? He does. His face turns and his eyes roll with it to land on a point beyond her shoulder. The other day, she was in an aquarium, she forgets why, but she thought of him when she walked through the eel exhibition. The glassy gaze.

He shakes his head. Rumei settles back in, continues scrolling. Twenty years of eastern medicine, western medicine, everything—even tarot—and she has nothing to show for her efforts. Something is wrong with her body; something has gone wrong with his mind.

The next day, Rumei’s first order of business is to take Heihei to the temple to pay their respects to her father and uncle, who are, respectively, Heihei’s grandfather and great-uncle. They’re at the iron gates of the park when Heihei asks, “Aunt had a third child, right?”

Rumei stops walking. “Where did you hear that?”

“Mom said,” Heihei says.

“What did she say?”

“Just that after his death, my great-uncle was never the same.”

Rumei unlatches the gates. “That’s up to interpretation. He smoked like a steam train.”

The temple is in the center of the park, with arches in all four directions. Rumei leads Heihei through the southern entrance. The scent from the burners is strong and medicinal. Rumei is reminded why she doesn’t usually come to the temple. The cloud of incense can be overwhelming: with enough time a person starts hearing things, pressure in the mind building to a roar. By the time they purchase the paper money and incense sticks, she’s already a little woozy.

“What made you come to China?” Rumei asks Heihei, directing her to the brazier.

“To see you,” Heihei says.

“It’s okay,” Rumei says, “you’ve only seen me once before. China is far away. Just tell me the truth.”

“I really did want to see you,” Heihei insists. Then, with the help of her translator app, she explains that last spring she took a course on the Cultural Revolution and now wants to learn more about contemporary China.

Cultural voyeurism, then. Well, that Rumei can give her. Rumei shows Heihei how to light the incense sticks in the burner.

“In Chinese culture,” Rumei says, “the dead are never far. Did your mother teach you this?”

“Not my mother, but Chinese school,” Heihei says.

“I imagine you haven’t even seen a cemetery,” Rumei says. Heihei doesn’t answer. Rumei hands Heihei three sticks and guides her to the main courtyard facing the hall with the idols. She explains how to bow and how to pray to the deities in order. What thoughts to project to the ancestors.

“After this, we’ll burn paper money in another part of the temple,” she says.

She can feel Heihei’s gaze on her cheek, hot and curious. She grits her teeth and stiffly bows three times. For Heihei’s cultural experience, she tells herself. There’s nothing Rumei personally needs to ask of the gods. There’s nothing for her to say to her uncle, who’s dead, and knows everything.

After the rituals, Heihei seems to want to look around. Rumei does not want to look around. She suggests that while Heihei explores the temple grounds, Rumei might take a walk. Heihei agrees, so Rumei gratefully exits.

Rumei’s lived here in Tangshan nearly her whole life, this city on the Bohai Sea. They’re close to the residential neighborhood where Rumei’s mother’s mahjong café once stood, and she resolves not to pull out her phone to see if she can find the path to it by heart. Her family—her mother, father, and sister—relocated from the Hebei countryside when Ruzhen was two and Rumei was seven, because their father got a job at a shipbuilding plant here. The month they moved in an earthquake nearly leveled the entire city, including their apartment, and with it went their dad. Whether he died in the earthquake or simply left Rumei was unclear. She later discovered the family consensus on his disappearance was in great part relief. His unreliable family background had been the source of gossip, and now that he was gone, the family could control the narrative better.

At her mother’s old mahjong café, guests could rent a table and play for a couple of coins, and for a couple more they could order refreshments like roasted chestnuts and twisted fried dough sticks and beer. In name, it was just a snack café; all the gameplay happened in a crowded backroom that was only accessible by an ever-changing code. The guests were primarily men seeking refuge from their wives. Rumei and Ruzhen both spent their teenage years here bussing tables. Rumei didn’t care to entertain the guests, but Ruzhen sometimes would. It was truly a miracle that they hadn’t gotten caught all those years, the game being outlawed—then again, even the police came to let loose. She could tell plenty of stories about that.

The men who came to the mahjong café were not bad men, but Rumei knew that if Ruzhen mixed too closely with them, they could never hold their heads up high around Aunt again. It was Rumei who fended off advances for Ruzhen from a young man from the mahjong parlor; Rumei who made sure Ruzhen studied until she was comfortably at the top of her class; Rumei who set Ruzhen up with two boyfriends in college, though Ruzhen shucked both off to study in the States; Rumei who doggedly pushed Ruzhen to show Aunt, again and again, what Mother’s two daughters were made of. Rumei doesn’t know when exactly she and Ruzhen drifted, yet Heihei is indelible proof of their distance.

Rumei finds the mahjong café. It’s now boarded up, but the building above it is the same—the phone lines, a knotted bird’s nest. A breakfast seller hawks flatbreads right at the street corner. This street has undergone tremendous change in the past couple of decades. Around the crossing there are two malls and three hotels. In these buildings, so many places are for children: children’s playpens, children’s animal cafés, children’s movie theaters. Rumei’s coworkers who are parents complain about how easy of a mark children are for slick businessmen looking to make a quick buck, since these days everyone has few children and money enough to spend on them several lifetimes over. Rumei originally planned to take Heihei around here so she could see the places that bore witness to her and Ruzhen’s girlhood, but now, standing at the street corner, she decides not to.

In Tangshan, summers are heavy and oppressively hot, but winters are bitingly cold and dry. Days in dead winter could be so cold that each heartbeat ached. Some such days in Rumei and Ruzhen’s childhood Uncle might appear on their doorstep with a truck full of lumber and coal, and despite Mother’s insistence that she could manage, he’d stamp the snow from his boots, let me in already, and once he entered the warmth of the house he’d produce a bag of pine nuts for snacking from his great big snow-frosted black coat. Sometimes in addition to pine nuts he came in with two crisp, shining skewers of candied hawthorn, one for Rumei and one for Ruzhen.

Uncle was a professor at a university in Shijiazhuang, and his archeological work took him often to the Qing tombs around Tangshan, which meant they saw him often. The oldest of their family, he was eleven years older than their mother, the youngest. He looked more like a worker than a professor. He had a mouth too wide for his teeth, and when he laughed, he looked like a sailor returned from a long journey at sea.

Rumei, Ruzhen, and their mother returned his visits every Lunar New Year. A couple days before the big day their mother would fight for the train tickets to Shijiazhuang, where uncle and aunt lived. Their mother was hard-nosed, and was usually successful at getting tickets at least a couple days before New Year’s Day. From Shijiazhuang they’d all pile into uncle’s truck, which he’d purchased to have an easier time with archaeological digs, and drive two hours into the Hebei countryside, to their grandfather’s old village, to have dinner.

Rumei dreaded dinner. She didn’t need any adult to know what her aunt thought of her mother—a spoilt child, run off with a good-for-nothing factory worker who left them out to dry—and she probably did know about the mahjong too, which was just there for extra income. It wasn’t like Aunt came from stature—she didn’t have any family to speak of until uncle spotted her buying vegetables one day and fell in love instantly. But the family revered him, the oldest son, so he had his way. Even though the family’s respect for her was borrowed from their respect for him, she became the matriarch, and as a result the dinner table endured the spade of her voice.

Even early in girlhood Rumei understood the way Aunt caught the eye of people on the street. She saw the way they desired her easy youth, the beguiling, girl-like innocence of her voice and body. Her figure was small and slim like a green sapling, rare amongst the stout women of northern China. It must have been easy for her to move Uncle’s heart. He was quick to assume the best of everyone, but this made him very oblivious.

One dinner when Rumei was twelve, Aunt remarked, how nice it was that this family still took care of their maidens even after they were left with no face to show the world. Rumei had looked at Ruzhen, who was eight, and was relieved to see she was happily playing with her food. Their mother, who had a wildfire temper to rival their uncle’s, sat meekly in her seat.

“I’m just paying the price for my foolishness,” mother said to Rumei later.

But over the years, Aunt made these comments again and again—the liability, the imposition, the quiet obligation—and Mother sat quietly without biting back, and Rumei saw Ruzhen begin to respond in little ways—a darting glance, a flush of the neck. At the time Rumei did not know how to stop the corrosion by the realization that their mother was no special person. Her own journey into adolescence had been colored the same way.

When Rumei was fifteen Aunt unexpectedly became pregnant with her third child. When they visited the following holidays she was quite large and kept taking time to rest. The child was born right after twenty-six hours of labor on the Lichun holiday, which that year landed a couple days after New Year’s Day. Rumei, Ruzhen, and their mother hadn’t left Shijiazhuang yet. In fact Rumei was supposed to prepare bean sprouts to wrap in flour pancakes to celebrate the beginning of spring. She did not do that. Everyone was too busy that morning with Aunt. The meal, when it was finally taken, felt especially auspicious: celebrating both spring and a newborn boy. Chunchun, they nicknamed the child, for spring, for new beginnings.

If Uncle was sweet to Rumei and Ruzhen, it was nothing compared to the way he took care of that child: rocking him to sleep, taking him out to play, even cleaning his diapers. He spoke of him constantly on his trips to Rumei’s home. A year later, the toddler died in his crib. Nobody really knew what happened. Uncle stopped taking on as many archaeological projects, and his visits to Tangshan became less frequent. Five years later, he died.

Overriding Heihei’s weak protests, Rumei takes a couple days off work to take Heihei around to play. Rumei doesn’t quite trust Heihei to successfully navigate by herself. They go to Beijing for a day, eat a traditional breakfast in front of the Temple of Heaven, cart off to Beihai Park, have a late lunch, and lose their way wandering the narrow maze-like alleyways of old Beijing. So much history, Heihei expresses, and Rumei has to tell her it’s not even the tip of it, these structures were built quite recently relative to the thousands of years of Chinese civilization. They spend another day around the old Qing tombs, marveling at fine replicas of funeral offerings. Heihei doesn’t have much interest in street food, but Rumei buys Heihei milk tea from a different brand every day.

Rumei finds that the language barrier between them accommodates her curiosity well: she can ask forthright questions as if for Heihei’s sake. Do Ruzhen and her husband love each other? Is Ruzhen as a mother warm and open, or is she cold and dispassionate the way she can be?

Whatever Heihei says about her life, Rumei laps up like a pig at a water trough. Every weekend Ruzhen goes to the Taiwanese dessert place and picks up grass jelly soup and taro balls, does she? And the husband likes it? And Ruzhen has been cooking more food that fuses Chinese flavors with Western dishes, and it’s good? And Heihei and Ruzhen spend time together on the weekends? And Heihei never had a rebellious phase? Yes, but she’s making up with her mom now that she’s in college, sometimes she really misses her mom. Every time she’s back now her mom cooks up a storm.

The family dinner arrives. As they get in the car, Heihei finally starts asking questions. Things like, how many people are coming; who has met me already; what do I call whom. Rumei doesn’t answer in great detail; she’s not entirely certain if Heihei would remember the names and titles. Better for each family member to come up and introduce themselves. In their minds, Heihei might still be a child—she is still a child to Rumei. Children get free passes to be a little oblivious. Many of the attendees tonight would not have met Heihei at all. After some back and forth Rumei summarizes Heihei’s duty is to be the best diplomat she can possibly be for Rumei and Ruzhen’s side of the family. “Like a theme park mascot,” Rumei says. “Just smile and wave and say one or two things in character. No one will expect too much, so don’t worry.”

“Is Uncle not coming?” Heihei asks hesitantly.

Uncle? Rumei realizes she’s talking about her husband. She has a vision of him lying like a day-old catch on a supermarket ice bed. “Better not bring him.”

They stop by Aunt’s building. Rumei leaves Heihei in the idling car and dashes up the stairs to the fifth floor, where Aunt lives. The old woman totters out her door. The past couple years have been hard on Aunt’s looks. Now that mirthful wide mouth is an unsightly gash on her sagging skin, and coupled with her wall-eyedness from sight loss, she looks like an aunt-sized fish. Rumei gives Aunt her elbow for the walk to the elevator.

“Is your husband not coming?” Aunt asks Rumei, after they get on.

“He’s not feeling well,” Rumei says.

“He’s always not feeling well,” Aunt grumbles. The elevator doors open and they’re outside. Rumei helps Aunt into the passenger seat.

“Hi, Great-Aunt!” Heihei chirps.

“Rumei, did you speak to the nanny about my things?” Aunt asks.

Rumei comes around the back and situates herself in the driver’s seat before answering. “She really doesn’t know where it is, Aunt,” Rumei says, buckling her seatbelt.

“That woman, can’t find anything…”

Rumei turns into the main road.

“Where are your children now?” Heihei asks Aunt.

Good going, Heihei, Rumei thinks, and good luck.

“Well, the older one, Qiyi, she’s in London for her art practice… and the younger one, Qiren, he’s in Hong Kong for his job. Let me show you pictures.” Aunt fumbles for her wallet and eventually produces it. For the rest of the thirty-minute ride, Aunt goes on about Zhuo Qiyi, who graduated from Oxford and recently exhibited her artwork at a bigshot festival in Venice, and Zhuo Qiren, who didn’t do as well with college admissions but was so smart in other ways that now, as a director at a Hong Kong bank, he can count politicians across Southeast Asia among his close friends.

Happy, carefree, Rumei thought. Irresponsible. What cosmic patterns in the world determined who was allowed such lives?

“Did you take her to see her great-uncle?” Aunt asks Rumei suddenly.

“I took her to the temple,” Rumei says.

“Oh good,” Aunt says, nodding. She heaves a sigh. “No one in this family is long-lived.”

Rumei doesn’t answer.

***

Rumei has sat the table like this: Aunt at the head, her at the side, and the other maternal relatives arranged in various seats around the table. For Heihei, various aunts and uncles—Rumei’s cousins—from her mother’s side of the family are in attendance, as well as second-aunts, second-uncles, great-aunts, great-uncles. In total it’s a group of fifteen people. The moment Heihei walks in, they gush over how beautiful she is—the white genes are strong, the relatives say, but that black hair!—which Heihei bashfully admits again and again is dyed, which makes the relatives then praise the dye job like, Some girls walk around with dyed hair but it’s evident from how frizzed and fried their hair is that they’re trashy, some girls walk around with green or orange hair as if they’re plastic snack packages you might find at the convenience store. They caution Heihei to be careful because dyeing your hair can cause cancer. Are we speaking too fast? they ask Heihei. Tell us if we’re speaking too fast.

As they go on, Rumei orders many fish dishes, almost entirely fish, steamed and minced and fried and braised, on their own and in soup and with noodles.

Somehow Heihei has managed to continue the conversation about Aunt’s children, and Aunt gruffly gives one- or two-word answers to relatives who try to include her in conversation, but then returns to showing Heihei pictures. Heihei’s eyes are beginning to glaze over. A mild panic has surfaced in her eyes. Aunt is telling her a story about how Qiyi got into a serious vehicle accident when she wasn’t so far from Heihei’s age and miraculously recovered with hardly a scar. I call it Heaven’s blessing, Aunt says, or maybe it’s our ancestors looking down over us, we’ve always taken care of our ancestors. Look at all these people who have shown up for you. It’s how a big family is supposed to be. You wouldn’t understand, you grew up in America, and your mother, that girl Ruzhen, she left too, and she doesn’t even send word, does she, Rumei?

Rumei smiles tightly as Aunt goes on about Ruzhen. Because it is true. Ruzhen has not come back. She’s washed her hands clean of them.

Heihei promises valiantly that she’ll send word—she’ll send Aunt regular updates about her and her mother’s life—and Aunt chortles. You’ll send word! All right!

“Ask your great-aunt about her family,” Rumei cuts in.

“This family?” Heihei says.

“No, her maiden family,” Rumei says.

Aunt blinks at Rumei. Then she says, dismissively, “In those days, it was all a mess. In the olden days, in China, when you marry, you marry into your husband’s family.”

Rumei calls the waiter over for the check.

Thank god it’s over, she thinks, when she scans the QR payment code. The waiter bags up the extras. There’s more talk, but Rumei is able to autopilot through it now.

The group waddles out of the restaurant in coagulations of immediate family. Aunt leans on Heihei’s arm on the journey back to the car. Rumei drives back in a blaze of relief. When Rumei drops Aunt off at her apartment, she presses all the packed leftovers into Aunt’s arms.

“An old person can’t eat this much,” Aunt protests.

“The nanny won’t be able to cook you fish,” Rumei insists. “Now there are leftovers, so you might as well enjoy them.”

Once they get back home, Heihei goes to take a shower. Rumei sits on the sofa and texts the nanny that there’s plenty of fish leftovers in the fridge that she can feel free to eat, as long as she also cooks them into dishes for the old lady; the old lady won’t eat the leftovers by themselves. She suggests even adding some cumin, like one would with lamb. Then she closes WeChat and sits in a funk.

Heihei comes out with her hair sopping wet. She can’t possibly sleep with wet hair, so Rumei offers to dry it for her.

“Oh, you don’t need to,” Heihei says quickly.

“I did this every night for your mother when we were girls,” Rumei says, pulling a little stool over. “I’m used to it.”

“But it was—”

“What? Too many years ago?”

Heihei shuts up and sits down.

Rumei snickers to herself. She puts her phone on the coffee table before them and moves to the edge of the sofa cushion so she’s closer.

“You have such nice hair,” Rumei says, running her fingers through Heihei’s skein of hair. “You must take such good care of it.”

Heihei hesitates. “You have nice hair too.”

Rumei plugs in the dryer and turns it on low, so they can still talk. “No, my hair is old,” Rumei says, raising a strip of hair to the mouth of the dryer. “Once you get to a certain age, it really loses its luster.”

“I see,” says Heihei. As Rumei lifts pieces of her hair, she asks, “What was Great-Aunt like as a person?”

“What’s your impression of her?”

“Quite nice,” Heihei says. “A little…” She does the hand thing, whips out her phone, translates a word, says out loud, “Lonely.”

Rumei snorts. “Yeah.”

“But I like her,” Heihei says. “She has …” Cue the hand, and the translator app. “Pep.”

“Pep, is it?” Something must be getting lost in translation.

“She’s very lively. She’s funny.”

Rumei snorts. “You don’t think she’s a bit lecture-happy?”

“I think all old people are like this,” Heihei says.

Rumei says, “Do you even know old people?”

“My paternal grandparents,” Heihei says.

That’s right. Rumei almost forgot about Ruzhen’s in-laws. “They’re around? You see them often?”

“Around Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

“What are they like?”

“They’re nice,” Heihei says. “They’re very nice.”

Rumei tries to imagine Ruzhen fitting into a murky sea of white faces. They cannot possibly know Ruzhen like she does, how Ruzhen gets shy and awkward around strangers, how she is unable to meet the eyes of people she wants the approval of most. She doesn’t even know what Ruzhen talks to them about. She considers having Heihei describe Ruzhen’s in-laws, but Heihei’s limited vocabulary keeps her from speaking precisely, and when it comes to Ruzhen, at this stage Rumei wants no misunderstandings, no miscommunication.

“I wish we came back more,” Heihei says.

Rumei’s hand stills. “Heihei, you mustn’t build the habit of apologizing for your mother.”

“I wasn’t apologizing for her,” Heihei says.

She’s not even aware of it, Rumei thinks, resuming. “Your grandparents on this side are no longer here,” Rumei says. “If you were to visit this area you’d be visiting just me, and I understand that it’s a long way to fly.”

“Great-Aunt is lucky that she can rely on you,” Heihei says.

“Lucky?” Rumei says, and laughs.

She wonders what Heihei’s experience of China is—not a place to live, for sure. A place to have fun? A place to see family? The US doesn’t feel so far in Rumei’s mind, because of Ruzhen, but the last time she and Ruzhen had spoken, really spoken, was quite long ago. She is certain Ruzhen has not changed drastically—no one can completely shed their childhood selves, and no one can completely cast off the people whom they were molded by when they were so young—but she does have to admit that the circumstances put a certain gap between them. This must be the life Ruzhen wanted for her daughter. A life sanitized of the stink of family; a pruned, nuclear life.

Rumei’s phone rings, and she leans forward to the coffee table to see who the caller is. It’s Aunt. Rumei will hear no end of it if she avoids it.

“Give me a second,” Rumei says. She hands Heihei the hairdryer, picks up her phone, and walks into the kitchen.

Aunt is complaining about how all the fish won’t fit in the fridge. You gave me too much, Aunt says. And that girl, that Heihei, she’s barely literate. She can only smile and nod. Ruzhen really went floating off like a dandelion puff, didn’t she, and now what a pity, this family that my poor late husband who put so much time, this family—

“A family you married into,” Rumei snaps, and hangs up.

The sound of the hairdryer stops. Rumei comes back into the living room to see Heihei putting the hairdryer in a coil on the chair.

“I’m going to bed now,” Heihei says.

Rumei can’t read how much of the conversation Heihei overheard. She is suddenly overtaken with tremendous exhaustion. “Okay, good night,” she says.

Rumei takes the hairdryer and puts it back in the cupboard. She’s alone in the living room now. The kitchen is clean and tidy, and the floors are spick and span, no child to muss it up. She spots a strand of black hair on the rug under the coffee table and picks it up, disposes of it. The trash lid bangs shut.

Rumei reminds herself that Aunt is growing deaf, and in some years she’ll be blind. Her children are far away. The only person she can rely on is Rumei.

From one perspective, this situation is worse for Aunt, who doesn’t know what Rumei knows. A night some thirty-odd years ago the electrician or whoever came and Aunt gave him a tinkly little laugh and a look full of meaning, a look Rumei had been practicing herself in the mirror for the right time. Her uncle had been out, Ruzhen with him, sure to bring back a hawthorn stick or two. The toddler, the ten-month-old boy their aunt had birthed on the first day of spring last year, had been crying piteously in the next room.

Some nights Rumei thinks she’s done her penance. If she has to look at her husband for the rest of her life, perhaps this is the universe’s way of saying, you wanted a child, so take care of this one. Here is your dream, isn’t this what you asked for? Cock your head and wind on a dry reed can sound like flute song. So if that child cried a little loudly for his mother and if Rumei was a little impatient and if he cried a little more loudly for his father, a father who might be the man next door, and Rumei shook him a little bit to quiet him down, then this was what he deserved. And that afternoon, when the sun had set, when Ruzhen came back with Uncle indeed with candied hawthorn for everyone, even the little brother in his crib, and found him not breathing—the scene is inked into Rumei’s memory. She would review again and again the crying and finger-pointing that followed for the months and years afterward and plumb the depths of her heart for contrition, and come up dry every single time.

At night, Rumei lays in bed for an hour and a half, listening to her husband’s wheezing breaths, before finally climbing out for a glass of water. Standing in the kitchen, she contemplates the wavy patterns on the tabletop formed by the curtain-filtered lights outside.

She doesn’t want to go back to her room, and she doesn’t want to stay awake. She tiptoes to Heihei’s room and opens the door slowly, in case it squeals.

Heihei is starfished on the bed. A belt of moonlight lies across her face. When Rumei comes close, Heihei stirs, murmurs, but doesn’t open her eyes. Rumei wonders how many times Ruzhen has come in the middle of the night to do exactly this.

A conversation from many decades ago, at the child’s funeral: “So what? It’s not his anyway.”

“You can’t say that, sister.”

“That child,” Rumei said, “can’t have a good life.”

Had Ruzhen’s expression changed, at that moment? She no longer remembers. Sometimes it feels like she’s spent her entire adult life trying to identify the point at which they split.

Rumei sits herself gingerly on the bed. She touches a lock of Heihei’s hair. Heihei doesn’t stir, so emboldened, Rumei gently runs her fingers through a strand. The dye job really is good. The hair really is so thick, heavy, and dark. Crow’s black. Ruzhen’s hair was like this. Is it streaked with gray now, like hers? So long ago they slept in the same bed.

One night one new year Rumei had fallen sick with fever at uncle’s home, and she had half woken up to the sound of a woman’s voice. A lullaby, low and throaty. She was so far under that she could make out the tones but not the words. Ruzhen was not there—they had moved her to Mother’s bed once they discovered Rumei was sick—and Rumei was alone, and she strained for more of the sound as thirstily as a cat lapping at a puddle. So cold outside, and so hot inside—she had wanted to puke but the sound soothed her, took some of the pressure off her chest, she could feel someone’s fingers working through her hair, the air felt nice and cool on her scalp. The hand she reached out and grabbed was not her mother’s hand. She knew her mother’s hand, knew the roughness, the palm texture, the thick fingers—this hand was different, smaller, thinner-boned, not Ruzhen’s, but still, like a girl’s. This would do.