Page 104 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
“She doesn’t speak much,” the nurse warns you. “I can’t promise anything.”
When neither of you say anything, the nurse makes an excuse and returns to other duties.
You peer into the dim little room. Wing Yun peers in, too. There’s not much to see. The room is clean but very small, and not well furnished. A small table, a folding stool, and a wardrobe occupy this end. A narrow, iron-framed bed rests against the far wall. There is one window, looking out onto the busy streets below.
An elderly woman reclines on the bed. She bears so little resemblance to your mother that, at first, you do not recognize her face. Daiyu’s hair is cut short, her feet are bare, and her clothes are strange: plain, discolored shirt and trousers, almost like pajamas. The obsidian black of her hair has grayed out, and the skin of her hands is rice-paper thin. Rice-paper pale, too, from lack of sunlight.
From a short distance away, you stare and stare, feeling overwhelmed. It has been thirty-two whole years in total since you’ve seen Mami—three years of war, twenty-nine years of entrapment—but she looks older than seventy-five. A far cry from the stern, handsome woman who raised you.
Wing Yun touches your arm. “Are you alright, Miss… ah… Tsang?”
“How?” you manage. “How did you find her? Where has she been?”
“Diligence, and time,” Wing Yun says, keeping his voice low. “Like I told you years ago, I had my own family to look for, as well as yours. After the war ended and the government locked you away, I spent time in former Japanese internment camps. Then the refugee camps, then homeless shelters and psychiatric hospitals. Just searching.”
He shakes his head and grimaces. “After the first twenty years, I started looking in homes for the elderly. There are a lot of them, and not all the patients know themselves anymore, or have good records. I didn’t have any luck with my parents, but I did seehername on a list. Plus, with those memories you gave me, her face looked familiar in the photographs. I came here and tried to speak to her myself, just to be sure.”
“What did she say?” You can’t tear your eyes away from the old woman in front of you.
“She started crying and begging forgiveness, though she wouldn’t say what for. The old lady wouldn’t talk to me much.” He shoots you a curious look. “What happened between you both? You never showed me the details. Is she the one who killed you?”
“No. She’s the one who left me to die.”
You walk through the doorway before he can respond, and raise your voice. “Hello? Is that you, Sung Daiyu?”
She looks up from the bed, making a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. “Who wants to know?”
Almost, you tell her. But you are not wearing your own skin; you are too young, too different looking, to pass as yourself. Besides, she might panic. Better to go slow.
“A friend of your daughter’s,” you say, after a pained pause.
She wrings her hands anxiously. “Friend? What friend? How did you know her?”
“At school, long ago.” Too late, it occurs to you that this wouldn’t be possible. Kit Ling is twenty-four years younger than Siu Yin, and they would never have been at school together.
Thankfully, Daiyu doesn’t seem to realize this. “If you are looking for her… you are… too late. She is dead. Drowned.” Her gaze skitters around the small room, from one thing to the next. “I left her behind… like I left everything behind. The island, my husband, her… then her again—”
“Her, then her again?” you cut in. “What does that mean?”
She flinches, as if startled by a strange noise. “I saw her,” she whispers. “I saw my daughter drown… and then I saw her alive.”
Mei Chi. Your mother must have found Mei Chi, out in the world, wearing your body.
You kneel down next to the bed, and catch her wrists. “Where?”
“In the city of ghosts. Where else?” Mami sags against her pillows. She is so sick, so exhausted. “I went to the land of ghosts, thinking… thinking she’d died. Thinking… if her ghost was anywhere, it would be… with the others. But she did not remember. Not me, not the ghosts… not the island… not even… her father.” She shudders. “But I was wrong. It was not my daughter. My daughter… my daughter is dead. I left her to drown.”
Disappointment floods you as her words sink in. This is no reveal, no sudden clue. The old woman is rambling and confused.
“If you grieve her death, then why did you abandon her?” Disgust drives your tongue to bluntness.
“It’s not… like that,” Daiyu says, weakly. “I went back for her later. Truly, I… I… I did. But… she was gone. The ocean had swallowed everything.” Her voice sinks low, barely audible. “If I could just see her again… Just one more time, oh heavens… I would ask her… No, I… I would tell her…”
She pauses, seeming to struggle with the words even more than usual. Her head bows forward and she shudders.
Unexpected tears well up in your eyes. A combination of grief, anger, andyearning. The brittle anger inside your heart trembles, almost undone by her half admission.
“What?” you manage, thickly. “What would you tell your daughter, if you had the chance?”
