Chapter 2

My mother choked on that for a long moment, unable to get a single word out.

She turned to the relatives, and the tears came the instant she wanted them.

"You all hear that? The daughter I raised with my own two hands finds herself a husband and comes back to trample on her own mother."

"All I did was borrow a little money from her first, and now she wants me to never be able to hold my head up in front of the whole town."

My aunt stepped forward at once to prop her up.

"Pearl, do you have any idea how hard these years have been on your mother? Your brother's a son, he's the one who'll carry on the family someday. What's wrong with lending a hand?"

"And fake funeral money isn't a curse on you or anything. It was just padding at the bottom of the chest. Who was ever going to know?"

I looked down at that red chest.

The double-happiness sign was pasted across the front, red silk tied at all four corners.

Last night I'd still had my hand on it, thinking to myself, in secret, that even if my family gave me next to nothing, as long as they were willing to send me off with a sincere heart, I'd have made my peace with it.

But they wouldn't even give me that last shred of dignity.

I bent down and lifted out the stack of fake funeral money from the bottom of the chest.

The yellow paper was light, falling apart at a touch.

My mother panicked and reached out to stop me.

"What are you doing with that? Don't go waving that unlucky thing around!"

I raised my head and looked at her.

"So you know it's unlucky too?"

Her lips moved, but nothing came out.

Stella couldn't sit still any longer.

She stood, one hand braced on her belly, her voice soft enough to drip.

"Pearl, I know you're upset, but I'm carrying your nephew. Every day the house isn't settled, I can't sleep at night."

"Just take pity on the baby, all right?"

I looked at that stomach of hers that wasn't even showing yet.

A month ago, she'd come over for dinner and made a point of picking up my wedding ring from the coffee table to try it on.

When I said the ring was custom-sized, her eyes went red on the spot.

My mother scolded me right there for being petty, said wearing a ring for a second wasn't going to cost me a pound of flesh.

Afterward the inside of the band came back with a scratch gouged into it.

They said a little wear on newlywed things was what held the good fortune in place.

I let it go.

Half a month before the wedding, the bedding I'd set aside for my dowry got carried into her room.

She said the new house was damp, so she'd borrow them to lay out for now.

My mother said I was about to marry into the city, so I shouldn't be squabbling with country folk.

Three days before the wedding, I went to a makeup trial, and came back to find my red umbrella gone too.

My mother said Stella needed to keep up appearances in front of the man's family, so she'd borrowed it to take a few photos.

When the photos went up on her feed, the caption read: the dignity my in-laws gave me.

I stared at it a long time, and there was nothing but wasteland inside me.

And now, today, they'd pressed fake funeral money into my dowry chest.

So it turned out all my giving in had never bought their tenderness.

It had bought me their certainty that I had no line I wouldn't cross.

I held the fake funeral money up and turned toward the neighbors craning their necks at the door.

"You all see this, aunties?"

"This is the money my own family gave me to fill my chest."

The crowd erupted with a roar.

My mother's face went white, and she lunged to clap a hand over my mouth.

"Pearl Henson! You won't be happy until you've driven me to my death, is that it?"

I caught her by the wrist and pushed the stack of fake funeral money back into her palm.

"Mom, you're the one driving me."

She froze for a beat, then swung her hand up to strike me.

The slap never landed. A woman's voice came from the doorway.

"Anyone who lays a hand on her answers to me."

I turned and saw Brandon's mother standing in the doorway.

My mother pulled her hand back at once, laughing in embarrassment.

"Jeanette Sawyer, what brings you here? The child's throwing a tantrum, we were just talking her down."

Jeanette didn't spare her a glance. She only walked up to me and looked down at my wrist.

There was a ring of red where Brian had gripped it.

Her face darkened.

"And this is what you call talking her down?"

My father got to his feet, reaching for the weight of an elder.

"Jeanette, we've spoiled Pearl rotten. I'll have her come apologize to you all later."

Jeanette finally looked at him.

"Mr. Henson, the Sawyer family is taking in a daughter-in-law, not buying home a punching bag."

"Today, this wedding happens one of two ways. Either Pearl walks in from the hotel with her dignity intact."

"Or my son stands with her and we call it off."

The flesh on my mother's face twitched.

"How can it just be called off? The banquet's already paid for!"

I laughed.

So she knew too, after all, what it felt like to hurt over money already spent.