Chapter 2

My uncle came home right about then, still in the security uniform he hadn't changed out of, and he passed my aunt in the doorway.

She called out to him, "Second Brother," but he pretended not to hear her.

He pulled off his security cap and fanned himself with it.

"Hildegarde, why did you suddenly come back?"

"You here to borrow money from the family?"

"That poor man of yours sick? Some disaster hit?"

Then my uncle looked over at my parents.

"Big Brother, Sister-in-law, don't let her stick to you. She's like a burr you can't shake off."

My aunt heard all of it, and she couldn't take any more. She was already heading for the door.

I'd spent twenty years listening to people talk trash about my aunt.

Always the same handful of words: useless, lovesick fool, ungrateful, got what she deserved.

But no matter what they said, she shouldn't be the one carrying an old travel bag off to a motel alone.

I said I had something to deal with at work, and I turned and walked out.

Out on the street, I caught up to her, standing alone under a streetlight.

"You finally made it back. Why stay in a motel?"

"Come stay at my place."

I'd only just started working this year, and I shared a two-bedroom apartment with a roommate.

My aunt looked at me and froze, and at last a little warmth came into her eyes.

"Trudy, thank you."

First I took her to the little diner I always go to.

It wasn't much of a place, but I'd just started working, and every month I still had rent and credit card bills, so I couldn't take her anywhere fancy.

She watched me tear open the disposable plastic utensils like I'd done it a hundred times, and her eyes filled with tenderness and worry.

"Trudy, is this where you usually grab dinner?"

I felt a little embarrassed.

"When I'm tired after work, I come here to eat. It's cheaper than cooking for myself."

"Don't let the size fool you. The food's actually pretty good."

She didn't say anything else, just lowered her head and ate her stir-fry.

I sat across from her, looking at her thin shoulders, and suddenly didn't know what to say.

The steam off that dinner back at the house was still there in front of my eyes.

A whole table of food. Braised pork, sweet-and-sour fish, rib soup, every single thing my aunt loved to eat.

Grandma remembered it all perfectly. And still she wouldn't let my aunt sit down.

My aunt didn't hold it against them. Her voice was still gentle.

"You came out with me today. Your dad's going to chew you out later, isn't he?"

"Let him."

She looked at me and gave a small smile.

"Just now, you told your grandma that I had the right to choose my own life."

She lowered her head and stirred the soup in her bowl.

"That's the first time anyone's ever said that for me."

She set down her chopsticks and slowly began to talk about what happened twenty years ago.

Back then, the fine son-in-law the family had picked out for her was Mason Whitney, one of the local rich men.

That year he was forty-one, and his wife had just died.

My dad and my uncle had it all worked out with him. Two hundred thousand in bride price, plus two storefronts.

My aunt was only twenty that year.

"Your grandma called me into the room and told me, his family has money, marry him and you'll live in comfort the rest of your life."

"I said I didn't like him. I wouldn't do it."

"But Grandma said, marriage is about what a man can offer. Only a fool marries for love."

I understood it in my heart. My grandma and the rest of them were just those kinds of people. They thought money mattered more than family.

"Later Mason Whitney came by in person."

"He said it right in front of your grandma and your dad. Hildegarde, it's not that I think all that much of you."

"A fortune-teller said your birth signs would bring a husband luck. That's the only reason I'm marrying you."

"He also said, your two brothers and I have settled on a price, so once you're married in you just live your life properly, and don't go sneaking money back to your poor family."

My fingers tightened around the cup.

Who would ever want to marry a husband that cold and that arrogant?

"While he was saying all that, your grandma and your dad and your uncle were all sitting right there."

"Not one of them stood up for me. They just said how lucky I was."

My aunt gave a little smile.

"That was when I knew. In their eyes I wasn't a daughter, I wasn't a sister."

"I was goods they could sell for cash."

Later she met Mark Chavez.

That evening she'd gotten off work at the garment factory and reached the mouth of the alley when a motorcycle came tearing up from behind, and the man on the back seat grabbed the strap of her bag.

She wouldn't let go. She got dragged several yards, her knees scraped raw, her back all bloody from scraping along the curb.

Mark Chavez was set up at the mouth of the alley selling dried mountain goods, and the moment he heard her cry out, he rushed over.

He knocked the man off the motorcycle with a carrying pole, then crouched down beside her and asked if she was hurt.

"He tore a strip of cloth off his own undershirt to wrap my hand, and he was so gentle about it."

My aunt said,

"He asked me if I needed to go to a hospital."

"Told me not to worry about the bill. He'd been selling goods in the city for half a year and saved a little, he could cover it."

After that, he came to the mouth of the alley every day to wait for her to get off work.

Sometimes he brought two oranges, sometimes a small bag of dried mountain fruit.

He wasn't a man of many words. When he crouched by the road fixing her bicycle chain, his face would go red.

"He asked me if I was doing all right in the city."

"I said no, I wasn't."

"He didn't push it. He only said one thing. Then let me be good to you."

That was when my aunt first learned what it felt like to have someone take her seriously.

"The night I stole the family papers, your grandma chased me out and cursed me, said I had no conscience, said I'd destroyed this family."

"But Trudy, if I hadn't left, the one who'd be destroyed was me."

She didn't cry while she was telling me all this.

But it made me feel she wasn't someone who'd never cried. She'd just cried herself dry.

"Coming back this time, I didn't mean anything by it."

My aunt went on.

"When I was little I promised your grandma I'd celebrate her seventieth birthday with her."

"I wanted to keep that promise."

"Up on the mountain I have a yard, I have fruit trees, and your uncle by marriage is very good to me."

She smiled a little.

"Maybe I shouldn't have come."

My phone rang.

It was my dad.