“Oh, I didn’t mean to—of course, it’s all . . . I’m sure the struggle is the same everywhere,” she said, her voice trailing off.
“I meant to say you would find your people there,” Shan Dao said with a faraway look; he had been transported by memory. “You would recognize their kitchens. Be at home in them, perhaps.”
She imagined being in a kitchen with Shan Dao; it was a much more peaceful image than navigating a kitchen with her brothers.
“Tinseng said you’re a vegetarian,” she said. “Do you eat fish at all? Or shellfish?”
“I . . . have. I prefer not to.” Yukying heard concessions in the pause. Between their births and now, there had been far too many reasons why a boy might starve, and why he might tear into whatever scraps he could find without asking what it was or where it had come from. There had been times Yukying had starved too. Almost everyone in their generation had. It wasn’t an experience she wanted them to share.
“If you don’t mind me asking . . . the diet can’t be for religious reasons?”
Shan Dao shook his head. “Religion is not needed for a man to feel moral responsibility or to advocate living without exploitation.”
Yukying smiled out at the court where her brothers were swinging rackets to test them. “An answer even Cheuk-Kwan wouldn’t find fault with.”
“Would that stop him from trying?”
“Probably not,” she said, and laughed, delighted that Shan Dao already knew both her brothers so well. She put a hand on his arm. “Tell me, what are some of your favorite foods? Have you craved anything since you left home?”
He paused for so long that she wondered if she’d insulted him in some way, and she was about to change the topic entirely when he finally admitted, “Röstis bernois und spinat . . . a Swiss food.” His hesitance made sense now: He had assumed she would reject his Western answer. After all, hadn’t Laurence said it last night? One never knows about these foreign types, if they only know how to eat 面包 and not 面条. She wondered if he felt he could be open about missing Paris. Tinseng had said he’d spent the majority of his life there. It would be a shame if he had to pretend that wasn’t a part of him, and yet they both knew that would be the expectation when he settled in Hong Kong: to assimilate, to learn the language and forget all his others, to eat rice and not bread.
Shan Dao expected her to say something dismissive now, perhaps about how they didn’t eat that kind of thing in Hong Kong. She’d have to disappoint him.
“Ro… rowstees?” She smiled and shook her head. “Once more?”
“Röstis bernois und spinat.”
“Spinach,” she guessed, “and . . .”
“Do you know—” he had to reach for English, “hash browns?”
She shook her head.
“Mm. Then… it is a little like 葱油饼 . . . no.” he shook his head ruefully. “That’s wrong.”
“Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s delicious. Do you think you can get me a recipe?”
“Why?”
“So I can make it?” She would have thought that obvious, but Shan Dao looked up at her quizzically.
“Why?” he asked again.
“Well . . . for when you’re homesick.”
He began to protest, but she hushed him with another pat on the arm. “It will be easy to add your ingredients to my list.” She didn’t cook every meal—she shared the responsibility with Laurence’s mother and sisters—but she did buy most of the food because she loved going to the markets first thing in the morning when the ocean air still smelled like crisp possibility. “Though, please use the kitchen whenever you’d like. You’re probably used to cooking for yourself, and I want you to think of the house as your own.”
“As . . . my own?” Shan Dao’s frown deepened.
“Yes. Has that been worked out?” Yukying tilted her head at Shan Dao’s confusion. “Tinseng explained your situation, and we asked him to let you know we insist that you stay with us. . . He did tell you, didn’t he?”
“I . . . no.” Shan Dao frowned. “No, he didn’t.”
“Oh . . .” Her stupid, stupid brother. “I’m sorry; I probably misunderstood something.”
They both looked over at Tinseng, currently pointing and laughing at Cheuk-Kwan—until his younger brother threw a tennis ball into the air then aimed the serve directly at his face.
“The fault is not with you,” Shan Dao muttered.
Yukying suppressed a sigh and decided to search out Mrs. Lanzette. Even a sewing circle full of wary strangers would be easier to navigate than these boys.
She found the group in one of the smaller lounges, which was decorated like a cozy library. Unlike a regular library, there were delicate metal grates over all the shelves—it wouldn’t do to have books dropping on guests all the time, she supposed. She meandered between occupied tables and individuals reading on couches, shy about approaching the group of women directly; the sewing circle was the largest group in the room. She pretended to read the book titles on a nearby shelf as she listened to one of the women say, “Betty Friedan says the younger generation hasn’t suffered a crisis of identity yet. We think we don’t have to look into the future or plan what we want, really want, for our lives.” The voice was nasally American and imperious. “Here, let me find it . . . ‘They had only to wait to be chosen, marking time passively until the husband, the babies, the new house decided what the rest of their lives would be.’”
“You carry that thing around like the Bible, Rebecca,” a woman with an English accent said.
“We might be better off if it replaced it.”
The group tittered at the casual blasphemy. As Rebecca started speaking again, someone else called out, “Mrs. Li! I thought that was you.” Mrs. Lanzette waved her over. “Thought you’d escape me, eh? No such luck. Come join our little band of firebrands. I see you’ve brought your basket.”
The women had fallen silent at the sight of her, but Mrs. Lanzette was a battle-axe of a woman, accepting no awkwardness at her table. Introductions were made, and Yukying was thankful the table hid more diversity than their whiteness implied. She shook hands or nodded to them all: Mrs. Biddle, a stately London woman with seven grandchildren (there were pictures) and with whom Mrs. Lanzette had kept correspondence over many years; Rebecca Arden, the American typist who had “gotten the hell out of Ohio” and now lived alone in New York City; Mrs. Duncan from a place called Maine, who seemed no firebrand but did, to her credit, seem absolutely uninterested in anything but cards and drinking; her daughter, Miss Duncan, the only daughter of Mrs. Duncan’s five, openly mooning over Rebecca and her defiant freedom; and a young woman from the Eastern Bloc, Marissa Grodescu, who lived in France with her husband. Yukying pounced on the topic of France eagerly.
“I wanted to visit Paris while my brother lived there,” she said, as they all went back to their sewing and conversation. “He was there three years and I never visited once. The time slipped by so quickly.”
“Paris can be beautiful in spring, but not now. The heat makes the city sweat.”
“Oh, if you think it’s hot there, never visit Hong Kong in summer . . .”
