her chest and leaned closer to her window. The bus was passing a roadside market where people were quibbling over squawking chickens awaiting their execution, and dragon fruit, grapefruit, young green coconut, and an abundance of other fruits and vegetables in all colors of the rainbow. After the market were the lush green fields from which the bounty of the market had come. Overhead, the tropical sun cast a brilliant light, making the colors of this rain-drenched region even more alive. My mother had to squint against the assault of light and colors. Life was happening all around her. People talked, smoked, bargained, bought and sold. The world continued to move as it had always moved; it was just another ordinary day. Yet for her the world had become a dream in which she and everything she saw were not real. She had a feeling that if she tried to grab the cigarettes to toss them out the window, her hand would slip right through them as if she were a ghost, or if she got off the bus to feel the smoothness of the young coconut’s skin, it would vanish in mist and the whole market would disappear with it. For the last month, she had been caught in this dreamlike state, ever since my grandmother had discovered that there was something wrong.
The only things that did feel real were the warring voices in her head. They had grown more strident with each passing day, and now on the bus they were deafening.
I can’t do this!
You have to do this. There is no other way!
There must be another way. She is so beautiful, so adorable. Just look at her skin and how smooth and healthy it is. And her hair—it’s so thick and shiny. Feel it! She’s perfect in every other way, every single other way!
There is nothing we can do for her. Even your own parents think this must be done, not just her. You cannot let your child, whom you say you love so much, suffer through life like this.
Would her life be so bad? I would be there to take care of her. All my life, I swear.
You won’t be around forever. And then what will happen to her? You already have one child who can’t see right. That’s enough to deal with.
I’d rather die than do this.
It was the same conversation that had been churning and churning in my mother’s head since my grandmother had made her wishes known.
My mother had waited so long for me. I was to be part of her dream of having four children and a full family. Four was a nice, even number, not too many, not too few. She’d always felt that her parents’ six kids had been too much, and yet she had enjoyed the noise and chaos of a full household. Lyna had come first, less than a year after the wedding, sweet and gorgeous with pale skin like our father’s. As the first child and first grandchild on both sides, she had been spoiled with new sweaters and Barbie dolls and the attention of many relatives welcoming the birth of a new generation. Mau came two years later. As the first male child and the first grandson on both sides, he was especially welcomed. Everyone commented on his potato-shaped head, which they believed was a sign of incredible intelligence.
Four weeks after my birth, my grandmother had been holding me by her bedroom window. It was the first time I had been taken out of my parents’ bedroom and out of my mother’s sight. Consistent with Chinese traditions and superstitions, until then my mother and I had been secluded in my parents’ bedroom, prohibited from bathing, required to breathe air moistened by the steam of boiling lime and lemon leaves, and compelled to follow other rituals that had been passed down from generation to generation, all to ensure that our bodies’ qi, our life force, properly recovered from the trauma of birth, thereby reducing the risk of future organ failure and other illnesses.
Since my parents’ bedroom was an internal room, the bright daylight streaming in through my grandmother’s window was the first natural light that had shone on me since I had been brought home from the midwife’s house hours after my birth. My grandmother, holding me on one arm with the practiced ease of one who had cared for many babies, gazed down into my face, studying me under the light, trying to determine