I understood that my daughter would only speak lightly about these things. Yet it was important to be pragmatic. In time she understood, and we filed, and my old husband and I agreed to receive the American widow and her escort.
And then it was the day of their visit. They were coming to meet Shuying. I awoke filled with anticipation. I believed I would know at a glance whether or not the American saw her husband in our little girl.
Teacher Sheng arrived first. His black hair was brushed back with an unexpected pomade, and his narrow shoulders twitched beneath a dark suit. He proclaimed himself delighted to be here and assured me that he, the middle school English teacher, would take care of everything. We talked together about the weather. A storm was coming.
Then they were at the door. Sheng and I went together to open it. The woman was not what I’d imagined, though when I saw her I also found that what I had imagined was something I could no longer quite remember. She was small for a foreigner, only an inch or two taller than I, and dark, though her halo of curly hair immediately made her different. The man with her, Teacher Sheng explained, was her lawyer.
“Lawyer?” I said. “He’s no lawyer. Look at that hair.” To me he appeared more like a mathematician, or an artist.
“He’s a lawyer,” said Teacher Sheng.
I went into the kitchen to prepare tea. While I was there Shuying poked her head in at the door. “Naughty little treasure!” I hissed, seeing the small curly head, loving her. “I told you to stay in your room until we call.”
“I want to see them.”
“Not until I call you.” I was firm. She ran back to her room. We had spoken in the local version of the Wu dialect, which was the language of Shaoxing and the only tongue we used with Shuying. When my old man and I didn’t want her to understand us, we spoke Mandarin. Our privacy in that language would be finished the following year, when she went to school and learned it.
I carried the tray out front and set a teapot in the center of the low table, surrounded by cups. I did not serve. It was not ready. In deference to foreign ways I also set out cold cans of Coca-Cola, one for each person. No one opened them or touched them or even looked at them. This was proper, of course, though I was surprised, for they were Americans.
Teacher Sheng leaned toward me. “She says her hope was to meet Shuying.”
Of course it was her hope, I thought, why else had she come here? And yet even I had not expected her to care so much about seeing the child. Gao Lan had told me a little bit about this woman’s husband. He had loved her, his wife, but he was not happy. He wanted a child. She was not ready. These things he had confided in Gao Lan, and she in me, and I held them carefully in my mind now as I looked at the woman. “A step at a time,” I told Sheng. “I’ll call Shuying out in a minute. Here. Drink tea.” Now it had steeped, so I poured. My husband came out, Gao Fei, and introductions were exchanged between him, the widow, and her lawyer. I poured another cup.
Finally the widow spoke. Teacher Sheng translated. “She says if this child really is her husband’s daughter, she wants to take care of her. No question. But she says to do that, to make everything work with his estate, she needs a lab test. She hopes you agree.”
Gao Fei and I looked at each other.
“The outcome will be positive, right?” my husband said in Mandarin, just in case Shuying was listening. “It cannot be otherwise. So we should do it.”
“No test,” I said. I heard the stubbornness in my voice.
He looked at me. His gray brows rose toward his hair.
“No need to do more,” I said. “We filed the claim already.”
“But you heard what the widow said. And it’s clear, isn’t it? Anyone can see Shuying’s father was a foreigner. It is not as if we are trying to pass off fish eyes as pearls.”
I felt my heart trembling. “Teacher Sheng,” I said, “will you let us speak between ourselves?”
“Certainly! Yes!” He all but fell over himself trying to get out of the room to leave Old Gao and me alone. Of course the widow and her lawyer were there, but they were foreigners. They did not understand.
“The truth,” Gao Fei demanded. “What’s this about?”
“It’s something our daughter didn’t want to tell you.” I was trying to soften him by invoking her, but I knew I was equally culpable. I had agreed with her to keep this hidden.
“Well?” He was growing heated.
“She had another man at the same time. Another foreigner.”
He stared, his understanding slow in building.
“Another boyfriend,” I said.
He caved back from me slightly, ashamed, almost as if someone had punched him. “Does she know which is the father?”
“No,” I said sadly. “She has never known.” For Gao Lan had never been able to say clearly, not when Shuying was a baby, not when she became the precious child she was now. Just then I saw the American man watching us. He felt my gaze and looked away.
“Why her husband, then?” Gao Fei’s gaze traveled briefly to the wife, the widow, who sat across from us watching. She looked naïve. She looked kind.
“Because Gao Lan won’t go to the other one,” I said.
“Why?” His eyebrows looked stuck together.
“She’s afraid of him.”
“Afraid!”
“That’s what she says.”
He trembled, drew a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, shook one out, and lit it. He smoked silently, his eyes fixed on me. Blue smoke formed a cloud of displeasure around him. “You didn’t tell me this.”
“The Gods will strike me now that I have told!”
“The Gods striking you?” he said sourly. “That would be the dragon and the tiger matched in battle indeed! I have no doubt who would win. I see done is done. These things we cannot change now. Call Sheng back. Let’s hear what else they have to say.”
“Teacher Sheng!” I cried. The translator in his stiff suit hurried back from the kitchen.
When we were all seated again the widow’s lawyer took his turn to speak. Sheng listened and turned to us. “He says that for all the purposes of acting on the claim, speaking of the law firm that executes the man’s estate and also the bank that has his holdings, all of them will need to see proof of paternity.”
Gao Fei and I looked at each other. “You see why I don’t want to do it,” I said softly.
“Yes.”
“They both stress that she wants to take care of the child,” Sheng said. “As a matter of principle. She just has to know for sure that the girl is his.”
Those were good, upright words, but I was scared. Best just to let her see Shuying first, I decided. Start with that.
I sent the signal to Gao Fei. The lines on his walnut face creased deep into a smile. If anyone indulged her more than I, it was he. “Shuying!” he called out. “Come here!”
Tiny footsteps spattered down the hall and our little treasure with her sparrow’s body eased around the door frame. She darted over and wedged herself between my legs.
“Gao Shuying,” announced Teacher Sheng.
The widow’s eyes fastened on the child as I had known they would. Her gaze took in everything from her head to her little feet.
Did she see her husband in her?
Protectively I pulled the girl close. My little meat dumpling. Nothing would ever take her away from me. We were joined, like form and shadow, by blood, by affection.
“Does she say the child resembles her husband?” I put this to Teacher Sheng, and he asked her in English.
When he turned back to me he said, “She is not sure. She wants to believe. Her heart is unreliable. She says, if you will please give permission for the test, she will live by whatever it says. It’s a touch to the inside of the mouth, that is all. She has the kit and the forms in her bag.”
I listened. My heart was still pulled in two directions.