Diamond Head (2 page)

It’s the morning after; we’ve just come home from the hospital but neither of us can sleep. My mom’s on the dock. She’s sitting on the edge, her feet skimming the water, a cigarette lit between her fingers.

At first, she doesn’t see me. I walk up from behind; she lifts her arm and inhales, blows smoke out over the marina. It catches in the mist and drifts downstream, gone before I reach the end. Her shadow, precise beneath the early sun, is long and thin. It cuts across the beams of wood, perfectly still, perpendicular.

I sit beside her and she doesn’t move, but she doesn’t make me ask again. She takes a final drag and stabs the end of her cigarette into her ashtray.

This is what she tells me. This is what I know.

1909
G
UANGDONG
, C
HINA

In Chinese tradition, child naming is taken very seriously. When a baby is born, it is first given a
milk name
, or a
little name
, consisting of either two syllables that repeat, like LingLing, or a nickname, like Little Pearl. The baby’s parents, in close consultation with the baby’s grandparents, will spend the next month carefully selecting the child’s given name. This is not a simple process. There are many rules and traditions in Chinese naming practice—dozens of lucky names to consider and even more inauspicious names to avoid. It is considered inappropriate to name a child after any famous or well-known figure, and highly offensive to name a baby after an older member of the family, or even a distant relative. If the new child has older siblings, the parents must consider the names that already exist and name the child something to create a balance or relate the siblings in some way. My father was the oldest child of his family, named Bohai, or
elder brother of the sea
. He was the first son, but they hoped he would
not be the last. In a way, my father’s name was an aspiration, a plea for more sons. He was never enough; from the day he was born, from the time he was named, my NaiNai and Ye Ye were hoping for someone else.

My entire life, I’ve called him Maku. When I was little, I learned the Hawaiian word for father:
makuakane.
The word was too long, so I pronounced what I could and it stuck.
Maku
doesn’t mean a thing, the ultimate blasphemy to the Chinese tradition, but after decades away from China, these things, like so many others, begin to fade.

Maku was born in 1909, in the province of Guangdong, to his father’s first concubine. The word
concubine
coming from my mother’s mouth startled me, but she assured me that it was common for a man like my Ye Ye. At least, that’s what Maku had explained to her. My Ye Ye took a concubine after my NaiNai lost her second child—
a second girl
—and was determined incapable of bearing any children, let alone sons. I’m told she went a bit mad that day, pleaded with the midwife to
check again, please, check again
as they removed the stillborn from the damp room. She pulled at her hair, clumps of limp black strands falling from her head in her weakened state, more deceived by her child’s gender than the absence of life. My NaiNai swore it would be a boy, swore she felt his sex the minute he was conceived.

A male feels sturdy in the womb. He sits low. He craves salt.

My NaiNai spent the last five months of her pregnancy patiently resting in bed like a good Chinese wife, nurturing the seed in her womb, coaxing it to be firm and masculine, praying endlessly for a boy. She named him Fai, secretly of course, reasoning that a named child could not be taken from the earth, desperately hoping that a boy named Fai could not emerge a girl. But after the second day of labor, it was a girl who fell from my NaiNai’s womb, slowly and deliberately, and it was then, in her despair, that my NaiNai thought to find her husband a concubine.

Her name was Hailee—fourteen years old and unremarkable, intentionally plain faced, sold to my NaiNai for less than what she
spent on Sunday dinner. A single photograph remains of Hailee and Maku—Maku barely a month old, Hailee barely a teenager—tucked away deep in a chest in Maku’s closet. I found it two years ago, when I was in high school, looking for my birth certificate among the neat, yellowed stacks of mementos. I didn’t know who she was at the time, didn’t understand that the baby was my father. All I remember is thinking what a sad face she had; square with small features, her grey eyes seeming to fade behind her eyelids, her cheeks faintly pockmarked. I brought the photo from the closet and held it beneath a lamp, taking her in. She was too young for such old skin.

Maku was born without complications. Hailee had asked for her mother, as Maku was her first child, but was denied—not by my Ye Ye, who offered to pay for the trip, but by her own mother, who wrote to tell Hailee that she no longer belonged to their family, warning her to be silent during delivery else evil spirits would swarm the newborn child. My NaiNai took her mother’s place, standing behind Hailee as she gave birth to my father, to the first Leong son.

Hailee bore Maku while squatting, in one of the back rooms of the house, accompanied by a midwife and a doctor. Heeding her mother’s advice, Hailee made no sound during delivery, but she fainted with her last push, falling backward from her shaky knees, hitting the wooden floorboards in one solid motion. The doctor picked up Maku, wiping the warm blood from his face with a square of white cotton, and handed my NaiNai her son. He was born healthy, to a soundless room, a gold necklace slipped around his neck before the umbilical cord was cut—tying his life to the necklace, instead of the cord.

The month that followed Maku’s birth was riddled with quiet anticipation. Thirty days of rest, thirty days of prayer, thirty days of protective clothing and herbal fluids. The house felt fragile, as if too much activity would make the gold-rimmed windows shatter, as if too heavy a step would crack the marble floors. My Ye Ye, who spent most of the year away on business, stayed home for the entire
month, methodically puffing on cigars in his library, he too silenced by Maku’s newborn presence. Hailee was kept in a room by herself—the same room where she bore Maku—where she was fed pig’s feet and boiled eggs to build up her strength and prepare her milk for the baby. She cried every night, quick, subdued whimpers from under her grass-colored quilt. She slept endlessly in her disheveled state, piling her unwashed hair on top of her head, going days without setting her feet on the wooden floors of her room. The doctor came every day to check on mother and child. As the thirty days came to a close, Maku became strong—his skin turning from pink to milky white—and Hailee developed a fever.

I’m told that the one-month festivities were spectacular. Red and gold balloons filled the garden sky at sunrise to signal that the waiting period had passed. My Ye Ye’s personal jeweler came to the house to outfit Maku in gold bracelets, heavy enough to keep him anchored to the earth. Guests arrived from six provinces to attend the ceremony, from as far away as Chengdu, each bringing with them a thick red envelope filled with lucky money for the newborn child. The great hall of my grandparents’ house had been waiting years for an occasion of this magnitude—capable of seating seventy guests, with room for three dozen servants to sweep the hall of empty plates after every course. There were thousand-year-old eggs to celebrate fertility, salt-and-pepper squid caught that morning, chilled duck with mahogany-colored hoisin sauce, and
yi qi tong
—shark fin soup, a favorite of my Ye Ye’s and a rich indulgence for the rest of the party.

My Ye Ye spent most of the banquet running a porcelain spoon through his shark fin soup, admiring the soft cartilage as it floated through the mushroom-scented broth. My Ye Ye was a man who took great pleasure in luxury. That’s what Maku used to say. He was a self-made millionaire who came from nothing, who gave himself his first taste of shark fin at the age of twenty-eight.

Maku and Hailee slept through the festivities, tucked away in their separate corners of the house, the lively party a murmur in the
background. Maku had a nurse by then; his care had already been transferred to Hong. Hailee was needed only for breast-feeding, and even for that she wasn’t required to leave her room. One month marked the day she could finally wash her body, comb her hair, clean her teeth. But Hailee did none of these things. She continued to sleep, under the warmth of her green quilt, as if the month were not yet over.

Hailee’s fever persisted for six days after Maku’s one-month celebration. Each day, the doctor arrived at the house with stronger remedies and more exotic herbs to help soothe her febrile body. Hailee soaked through her blankets each morning, waking up in a damp, twisted pile of linen. At first, she called out for her mother, begging her to save her from her own body, from her hot, aching limbs and the bile that emerged from her stomach almost every hour. Then she called for Maku—her son—to bring her comfort as she passed through into the next world, as Hailee was sure would soon happen. She dreamed vividly, her tenuous state transporting her mind to faraway places. She dreamed of open fields, the heat of her body warming all of her visions and coloring them with an intense fuchsia glow. She dreamed of frogs, thousands of them, leaping within the tall field grass, their legs extending far below their bodies. The frogs comforted her, sending a chill through her body when they plunged into the cool water ten at a time. Sometimes the frogs would call out—all at once—creating a deafening cacophony of low gargles and high-pitched chirps. The sky would turn a blistering crimson as her body began to swelter, and the frogs would begin to multiply. She tried to catch them, one at a time with her sweaty palms, but they would always slip through, teasing her with their fat bodies and slippery exteriors. She chased them, her aching limbs now thick and powerful, flickering against the electric-colored grass as she ran faster and faster. On nights like these, Hailee would run until her thighs were sore, beads of toxic sweat running down her temples, her sheets soaked through to the mattress.

As many times as she asked, Maku was not permitted to see his birth mother. Her room was moist and putrid, the smells of death hanging heavily in the air. The doctor said that if Hailee didn’t infect Maku, she would certainly scare him with her nonsensical mumblings and violent outbursts. So Hailee died alone. On the eleventh day, no one in my Ye Ye’s house was disturbed by the screams of Hailee’s vivid dreaming, of her awaking in a pool of icy sweat. The doctor found her splayed out on the floor by the foot of her bed, her face pressed into the smooth wood boards, her arms outstretched as if trying to catch something.

According to my mother, it took five years to realize that Maku wasn’t normal.

He wasn’t abnormal, exactly. There was nothing wrong with him; no disease, no demons, no tangible defect to blame. He was simply reserved. Modest. Shy. As a baby, my NaiNai and Ye Ye used to boast about his even demeanor. Maku never cried or howled, never spit up his food, never whimpered at the touch of a new hand cradling his body. My Ye Ye said that he would be a fine businessman one day—a scrupulous trader who would carry the family’s business into the next generation. Hong would joke to the servants that she’d never had it so easy, that raising Maku was like raising a stuffed doll.

Everything Maku did was meticulous. He didn’t crawl like other children. The day Maku decided he was ready, he raised himself onto his feet and walked, all the way from his crib to the nursing chair, steady as a horse. His first words were not a jumble, left to be deciphered by doting parents who have memorized the sounds of their baby’s gargling, but short, clear words. He refused to repeat what he could not yet pronounce. Even at this stage, my NaiNai and Ye Ye were proud.

My son can walk without crawling and speak without stumbling. Soon he will learn without instruction and make money from nothing.

For the first five years of Maku’s life, he was prized as the golden
child—attending lessons all day, always the first to eat, and never addressed by his given name, Bohai, but rather Zhangzi, or first son. For those first few years, my NaiNai and Ye Ye would have given him the world: anything he desired, regardless of the hour or the expense. But of course, Maku asked for nothing.

As the fifth year of his life passed and Maku grew into a boy, the sparse words he was once praised for began to concern my NaiNai and Ye Ye. He spoke less and less, using his voice only when spoken to, and even then, replying with one word answers, or quick sentences strung together in the most efficient way. He stayed in his room, reading the same books over and over, stacking them back neatly on his shelves. My Ye Ye, seeing his son’s interest in stories, brought home dozens of gold-bound children’s volumes from his travels, wrapped in silk bows with exotic places painted on the covers. And while Maku always said thank you, graciously but without excitement, the expensive new books remained on the top shelf of his bookcase, untouched and unopened, while he continued to reread his favorites. The heroes of these stories were furry and four-legged; they often lacked people entirely, deficient of swords or ships or perilous adventure. The rabbit would cross the meadow, finding a new home. A family of sheep, newly fleeced, would enjoy summer on the farm.