Chapter 9

Mama Fang paused before the empty storefront, where dust inside glittered in a beam of sunlight. The counter could go there, by that pile of papers, and the desks back there, by the heap of metal fixtures. This location had good feng shui—though perhaps not so favorable after all, because the last business here had presumably failed. Yet the Chinese supermarket and the bank drew a steady stream of traffic to the strip mall, and most important, it was located down the street from the top-ranked middle school in Cupertino. She jotted down the phone number of the real estate agent listed in the window. On the drive here, she'd passed a shopping mall packed with cars between light poles adorned with banners of pumpkins and autumn leaves. Soon after Scarlett and Daisy went missing from Perfume Bay, her neighbors had complained to police about the frequent turnover of pregnant women—a brothel in reverse—and the stink from the industrial-sized trash cans overflowing with diapers. During the predawn raid, the sound of heavy pounding reverberated through the house, the front door shook, and then the men in black uniforms and helmets burst in. Babies cried without end. The guests had to submit to hours-long interrogations. Within the week, Perfume Bay had been condemned as structurally unsound, the regrettable outcome of an unlicensed contractor and unpermitted renovations. Mama Fang had to refund her guests, in addition to covering their meals and hotel stays until they returned home to China and Hong Kong. Uncle Lo had lost his entire investment, but even worse, he'd lost face to all the clients he'd referred to Perfume Bay. As soon as she could, Mama Fang moved north to Cupertino, a Chinese enclave in the heart of Silicon Valley, where no one would know her, a sprawling city of low-slung ranch houses and office parks surrounded by rolling hills. She had settled in quickly, for Chinatowns the world over shared markets selling live fish and dusty imported foods, cultural centers with the familiar clack of mahjong tiles and the whine of the opera, all attempts to remake, remember, and reclaim. It wasn't the first time she'd started over. Back in Hong Kong, she'd opened a series of businesses that expanded in scope and ambition, but with the handover to China looming in 1997, she joined the many who left. The wealthiest immigrated to Canada, the United States, and Australia, while Mama Fang arrived in Panama after sinking her savings into a residency permit she could afford. She'd heard the little curve of a country was a back door to the United States, and she married a retired American serviceman who wanted a nurse on the cheap. Medicine wasn't too hard to learn with a bit of practice, and Mama Fang was a quick study. She'd changed his bedpans, administered an IV, and fetched him the beer he drank most hours of most days, its sourness leaking from his pores. She'd divorced him soon after her green card arrived. With the money from her settlement, she'd bought a plane ticket and rented a cheap room fifteen minutes down the freeway from the Tuscan-style mansions with three-car garages popular with Chinese who were settling in the hills east of Los Angeles. After embarking upon several ventures, she'd eventually written Uncle Lo with her business proposal for Perfume Bay. She had to give up the expansion she'd been planning: a private villa or two in the backyard of Perfume Bay; tours of Stanford and Harvard, the future alma mater of these American-born children, tacked onto the beginning or end of the trips; and even surrogates. You could get a baby with U.S. citizenship, without going through the indignities of pregnancy, and without traveling abroad—services that many of her clients would have eagerly added after spending tens of thousands of dollars on fertility treatments and sex selection, rounds of acupuncture, and offerings to Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy. She had to set her ambitions elsewhere now, but she'd always had more ideas than lifetimes.

—

Mama Fang returned to her car, and as she strapped herself in, her mobile phone rang—Uncle Lo. "Any news?" he asked. News about Daisy and Scarlett. If his detectives couldn't find them, how could she? Although she'd learned never to look back, she hoped they were safe, clean, dry, and well-fed, or living on the streets after their money ran out. Or if they were dead. They'd been spotted heading north, and Mama Fang sometimes wondered if they might have taken shelter in Cupertino, too, if she might come upon them at any minute. By now, they both would have delivered their babies. Each day Scarlett remained on the run, each day she survived without Boss Yeung, she triumphed over him and men like him. Scarlett would never know how closely Mama Fang's convictions echoed her own. "How's Boss Yeung?" Mama Fang had despised him—he'd all but wanted her to track the frequency and quantity of Scarlett's bowel movements. She blamed him more than herself for Scarlett's disappearance. A long pause. "It's hard to know. He's still in the hospital. His condition changes from moment to moment." He exhaled, and she pictured him blowing out cigarette smoke. "Just find her." "The newspaper," Mama Fang said. "Advertise in the classifieds of your newspaper, in all the Chinese newspapers. Offer a reward." Uncle Lo couldn't hide his scorn. "You think they're telling people their names? Why not hire a skywriter?" "Offer her a reward," Mama Fang said. "So much she can't refuse." Silence, not the click of a hang-up. Her heart lurched. "Money makes the mare go," she added. A proverb, of the kind he used to teach her, long ago in Hong Kong. "Even a nag like Scarlett." He didn't laugh, gave no salty grunt of appreciation. "She won't go anywhere after we find her." Taking Scarlett's child from her seemed punishment enough, but Uncle Lo appeared to have harsher retribution in mind. "Call me if you hear something," he barked, and hung up. She studied the phone, willing it to flash with an incoming call—Scarlett's. The phone remained silent. Mama Fang couldn't allow herself such foolish thinking. Even if Scarlett had the number, she wouldn't have called for help. Scarlett would find her way, just like Mama Fang always had. A car honked, and the driver motioned with his hands, checking if Mama Fang was going to pull out. She shook her head. She might never find Scarlett, but she could still return to the good graces of Uncle Lo. Her ideas intrigued him—always had, and always would, so long as he profited from them. She'd been planning to call the real estate agent after the weekend, but now found herself dialing the number. The name was Chinese. Would the agent be taking the weekend off, or like so many immigrant Chinese, did she work every day except during the Spring Festival? The agent answered on the first ring.