The Valley of Amazement

“They took him away from me,” he said. “My father ordered it. They would not tell me where. They hid him and said they would never allow me to see him if I did anything to harm my father’s reputation. How could I go to you? You would have fought. You did before, and they knew you would continue to do so. In their eyes, you respected nothing about our traditions. You would not understand their position, their reputation. I could not say anything to you, because that act alone would have been the end of my ever seeing our son. You are right. I was a coward. I did not fight, as you would have. And what is worse, I betrayed you and justified why I had to do so. I told myself that if I submitted to their will, you would have a chance of soon having him back. Yet I knew that was not true. Instead I was killing what was pure and trusting in your heart. I was tormented by it. Every day, I have woken with that thought of what I did to you. I can show you my journals. Every day, for these last twelve years, I wrote one sentence before all others. ‘To save myself, I destroyed another, and in doing so, I destroyed myself.’”

“One sentence,” Mother said in a flat voice. “I wrote many more.” She returned to the sofa and sat vacant-eyed, spent. “Why did you finally tell me? Why now and not sooner?”

“My father’s dead.”

She flinched. “I can’t say I’m sorry.”

“He collapsed the day of the abdication and lingered another six days. I wrote to you the day after he died. I felt a burden removed. But I warn you, my mother has a strong will equal to my father’s. He used his to possess what he wanted. Hers is to protect the family. Our son is not just her grandson, but also the next generation and all it carries forward from the earliest of our family history. You may not respect our family traditions. But you should understand them enough to fear them.”

Lu Shing handed Mother an envelope. “I’ve written down what I’m sure you want to know.”

She put her letter opener along the seam, but her hands were shaking so badly she dropped the letter. Lu Shing retrieved it and opened it for her. She pulled out a photograph, and I strained to find an angle that would enable me to see it. “Where am I in his face?” Mother said. “Is it truly Teddy? Are you pulling another trick on me? I’ll shoot you with my pistol …”

He murmured and pointed to the photograph. Her anguished face turned to smiles. “Such a serious expression … Is that really what I look like? He resembles you more. He looks like a Chinese boy.”

“He’s twelve now,” Lu Shing said. “A happy boy and also more than a bit spoiled. His grandmother treats him like an emperor.”

Their voices fell to gentle murmurs. He put his hand on her arm, and this time, she did not push him away. She looked at him with a wounded expression. He stroked her face and she collapsed against him and he embraced her as she wept.

I turned away, slumped to the floor, and stared into the pitch-dark of nothingness, of all possibilities for fear. Everything had changed so quickly. This was their son and she loved him more than she ever had loved me. I went over all that she said. New questions jumped out, each more troubling than the last, sickening me. Her son was of mixed blood as well, yet he looked Chinese. And this man, my father, whose eyes and cheeks I wore, did not bother to take me to his family. He had never loved me.

I heard rustling in Mother’s office and turned back to peer through the curtain opening. Mother had already put out the lamps. I could not see anything. The office door closed, and a moment later, I heard her bedroom door open and close. Did Lu Shing and the photo of Teddy go into the room with her? I felt abandoned, alone with my agonizing questions. I wanted to be in my room to mourn for myself. I had lost my place in the world. I was second best in Mother’s eyes, a castoff to Lu Shing. But I could not leave the room, now that the servants were rushing through the hallway. If Golden Dove saw me sneak out of the room, she would demand to know why I was there, and I did not want to speak to anyone else about what I was feeling. I lay on the bed and wrapped myself in the quilt. I had to wait until the party began, when everyone would go downstairs to the Grand Salon. And so then and there, I began my bout of self-pity.

Hours later, I was awakened by the sound of a distant door opening. I rushed to the window and looked through the lattice. The sky was a wash of dark gray. The sun would be up soon. I heard the office door open and close and I went to the glass doors. His back was to me and her face was visible just over his shoulder. He was murmuring in a tender tone. She responded in a high girlish voice. I felt heartsick. She held so much feeling for others, such gentleness and happiness. Lu leaned forward and she bowed her head to receive his kiss on her forehead. He tipped her face back up, and said more of those soft words that made her smile. She looked almost shy. I had never known her in so many new ways, so wounded, so desperate, and now bashful.

He embraced her, held her tightly, and when he released her, her eyes were shiny with tears, and she turned away. He quietly left the room. I darted back to the lattice window just in time to see him walking past with a pleased expression, which angered me. Everything had turned out well for him.

I stepped out of the room to return to mine, and immediately Carlotta strode toward me and rubbed my legs. Over the last seven years, she had grown fat and slow. I picked her up and hugged her. She alone had claimed me.

I WAS UNABLE to sleep, or so I thought, until I heard Mother’s voice talking to a manservant, instructing him to bring up a trunk. It was not quite ten in the morning. I found her in her bedroom laying out dresses.

“Oh, Violet, I’m glad you’re up.” She said this in a light and excited voice. “I need you to select four frocks, two for dinner, two for daytime, shoes and coats to match. Bring also the garnet necklace and gold locket, your fountain pens, schoolbooks, and notebooks. And take anything else that is valuable. I can’t list everything for you, so you’ll have to think for yourself. I’ve already called for a trunk to be sent to your room.”

“Are we running away?”

She cocked her head, which she did when a guest presented her with a novel idea that she actually considered unsound. She smiled.

“We’re going to America, to San Francisco,” she said. “We’re going to visit your grandparents. Your grandfather is ill … I had a cable … and it is quite serious.”

What a stupid lie! If he were truly ill, why was she so happy just a moment ago? She was not going to tell me the true reason, that we were going to see her darling son, and I was determined to force the truth out of her.

“What is my grandfather’s name?”

“John Minturn,” she said easily. She continued to place dresses on the bed.

“Is my grandmother alive as well?”

“Yes … of course. She sent the cable. Harriet Minturn.”

“Do we leave soon?”

“Perhaps tomorrow, the next day. Or it could be a week from now. Everything has become topsy-turvy and no one is reliable these days, even when paid top dollar. So we may not be able to arrange immediately for passage on the next steamer. Many Westerners are trying to leave as well. We may wind up settling for a trawler that goes around the North Pole!”

“Who was that man who visited you yesterday?”

“Someone I once had dealings with in business.”

I said in a thin voice: “I know he’s my father. I saw his face when you were coming up the stairs. I look like him. And I know that we are going to San Francisco because you have a son who’s living there. I heard the servants talking about it.”

She listened silently, stricken.

“You can’t deny it,” I said.

“Violet, darling, I’m sorry you are wounded. I kept it a secret only because I didn’t want you to know we had been abandoned. He took Teddy right after he was born, and I have not seen him since. I have a chance to claim him back and I must because he is my child. If you had been stolen from me, I would have fought just as hard to find you.”

Fought for me? I doubted that.

But then she came to me and wrapped her arms around me. “You have been more precious to me than you know.” A tear formed at the corner of her eye, and that small glistening of her heart was enough for me to believe her. I was soothed.

In my bedroom, however, I realized she had said nothing about Lu Shing’s feelings toward me. I hated him. I would never call him “Father.”

For the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, as we filled our trunks, she told me about my new home in San Francisco. Before that day, I had not thought much at all about her past. She had lived in San Francisco. That was all. To hear about it now—I felt I was listening to a fairy tale, and gradually my anger turned into excitement. I pictured the Pacific Ocean: its clear blue waters with silvery fish darting through the waves, whales blowing their spouts like fountains. She told me my grandfather was a professor of art history, and I imagined a distinguished gentleman with white hair, standing before an easel. She said her mother was a scientist, who studied insects, like the ones in the amber pieces I tried to smash. I imagined a room with amber drops dangling from the ceiling and a woman with a magnifying glass looking at them. As she talked, now quite easily, I could see San Francisco in my mind: its small hills next to water. I could picture myself climbing and looking out over the Bay and its islands. I was climbing up steep sidewalks flanked by Western houses, like those in the French Concession, busy with all sorts of people of all classes and nations.

“Mother, are there Chinese people in San Francisco?”

“Quite a number of them. Most are servants and common laborers, though, laundrymen, and the like.” She went to her wardrobe and considered which of her evening gowns to take. She selected two, then put those back, and selected two others. She chose shoes of white kid leather, then noticed a small scuff on the heel and put them back.

“Are there foreign courtesans or just Chinese ones?”

She laughed. “People there are not called foreigners unless they are the Chinese or the black Italians.”

I felt humiliated. Here we were foreigners by our appearance. A cold thought ran through my veins. Would I look like a Chinese foreigner in San Francisco? If people knew Teddy was my brother, they would know I was as Chinese as he was.

“Mother, will people treat me well when they see I am half-Chinese?”

“No one will be thinking you’re half-Chinese.”

“But if the people there find out, will they shun me?”

“No one will find out.”

It bothered me that she could be so confident over what was not certain. I would have to act as confident as she was to maintain the secret that she had a half-Chinese daughter. Only I would feel the constant worry that I would be discovered. She would remain unconcerned.

“We’ll live in a handsome house,” she went on. She was the happiest I had ever seen her, the most affectionate. She looked younger, almost like a different person. Golden Dove had said that when a werefox possessed a woman, you could tell by her eyes. They sparkled too much. Mother’s eyes sparkled. She was not herself, not since seeing Mr. Lu.

“My grandfather built the house just before I was born,” she said. “It’s not as large as our house here,” she continued, “but it’s also not as cold or noisy. It’s made of wood and so sturdy that even after a very big earthquake shook the city to its knees, the house remained standing without a single brick out of place. The architectural style is quite different from the foreign houses in the French and British Concessions. For one thing, it’s more welcoming, without those tall fortress walls and gatekeepers. In San Francisco, we don’t need to defend our privacy. We simply have it. A hedge in front and a low iron gate is all we need, although we do have fences on the sides of the house and in back. But that is so we can keep out stray dogs and put up trellises for flowering vines. We have a small lawn, just enough to serve as a grassy carpet on the sides of the walkway. Along one fence, there are rhododendron bushes. And on the other side there are phalanxes of agapanthus, scented roses, daylilies, and, of course, violets. I planted them myself, and not just the ordinary kind, but also the sweet violets, which have a lovely fragrance, the scent of a perfume I once wore that came from France. I had many clothes of that color, and I used to eat candies made of sweet violets and sprinkled with sugar. They are my favorite flower and color, your namesake, Sweet Violet. My mother called them Johnny-jump-up.”

“They were her favorite, too?”