White Jade

The trouble began three days ago when Tingting had stopped answering Betty’s calls, messages, then emails. For two days, before she arrived at the high school where she taught orchestra, Betty had waited outside Tingting’s pharmacy clinic. Then she had visited her daughter’s favorite beef noodle shop after lunch, and her apartment in the evenings. Since Tingting left home for college, Betty had memorized the rhythms of her daughter’s days. The day before, when Betty had asked Tingting’s colleague at the pharmacy where she’d gone, Betty had been rebuffed with a tight-lipped reply about Tingting’s “mental health trip.” Betty had been plunged into worry over what had upset her daughter.

Outside the high school gates, the Taipei sky now hung low in a dense grey sheet from the smoke of scooters and cars. The weather suggested indecisiveness and lingering doubts. Fifty-two-year-old Betty dismissed these moods and called her older sister Phoenix for the second straight day.

“Have you heard from Tingting?” she asked in Mandarin over the phone. She usually called Phoenix only a few times a week because her sister protested more frequent calls. In the school parking lot, Betty started her scooter and set off towards the pharmacy to look for her daughter. As she glanced in the rearview mirror, she was alarmed at her lips, whose lipstick had smudged against her phone. She rubbed at it but smeared her mouth into a twisted grin. Betty tucked her chin into her scarf and looked about to make sure no one had noticed.

“Nothing has changed.” Phoenix sighed. Betty could hear faint murmurs and the ringing of bells through the phone. It seemed that Phoenix was between sermons at her church. “She said that she was fine and just needed some time to reset with her boyfriend.” 

Betty had learned from Phoenix that Tingting’s boyfriend Min had made poor investments and been in debt for months. Phoenix told Betty that Min would propose only after he had settled his finances. Betty had called her daughter to tell her to break off her relationship, knowing that Tingting clung to men longer than she should have and suspecting that she would help pay Min’s debt then be abandoned.

“Where is she?” Betty now asked over the phone.

“I promised her not to tell you,” Phoenix said, with the imperturbable authority she adopted while preaching. Her sister always acted as if she were performing a kindness even when she was inflicting hurt. “Her therapist recommended that she spend time alone with her boyfriend away from youand people who might make her depressed.”

Tingting had started therapy for depression three months ago, and since then, she had become begrudging and inattentive, leaving early from their meetings to see Min, Phoenix, or her father. Three weeks before, the last time Betty had seen Tingting, Betty had visited her daughter’s apartment to give her DVDs of movies with her favorite actress Teresa Teng. Betty thought the DVDs might restore her daughter’s spirits. After Tingting prepared the black sesame tea that her mother had asked for, Betty offered them. But Tingting jammed the sesame powder back into her narrow pantry and said in a tired voice, “I don’t want your old things.”

Betty had sighed, disappointed that the day was following the course of their recent visits, when all her gestures of affection weighed on her daughter like impossible demands.

“Your sighing is bringing me down,” Tingting said.

“Why are you so annoyed?”

“There isn’t enough space.”

The same hot, prickling irritation from that afternoon now enveloped Betty’s chest, as if constrained by her clothes. “How will separating us help her?” she said.

“Bai-bi, the therapist noticed that she would feel low whenever she saw you,” Phoenix said. “He advised her to create boundaries. It seems like good advice.”

Betty had always been annoyed that Phoenix insisted on calling her by her Chinese name. Before her divorce twenty years ago, her husband Lin had fancied her Chinese name, her strict vegetarian diet to stay thin, and her reticence over his affairs while he traveled across Taiwan, receiving bribes for contracting construction jobs through his real estate company. Early in their dating, when she watched Lin gently tilt his head towards her while she played the piano, she was warmed by tenderness, which she took to be love. She had thought of her marriage as transparent and enduring as the white jade that she was named after, the clearest form of jade, appearing nearly invisible when held up against the sky. It seemed to glow from within and radiate light. Her mother had believed the name would increase the love in her daughter’s life by encouraging her to give it generously. Among her neighbors, there were rumors of her husband’s affairs, which she denied until she discovered that he’d infected her with a venereal disease caught from one of his lovers. She left him then and distanced herself from her past by adopting an American name, a diet of beef and pork, and the belief that she wouldn’t wait for love but seize it on her own terms.

“You shouldn’t treat your own sister like this,” Betty said, drawing out every word until she exhausted her breath. “I just want to tell her that she’s making a mistake with Min.”

“She’s thirty-three,” her sister said. “You can’t control who she sees. You’re being crazy like Ma.”

Their mother had opposed Phoenix’s marriage, assuming that her husband would bully her like his native country of mainland China. At the time, China had been silencing Taiwanese demands for their own elections and other freedoms through threats of invasion. Though Phoenix was two years older, Betty had supported Phoenix on every move when she was dating him. Betty had persuaded their mother to accept him by describing how affectionate and devoted he was to Phoenix, washing the dishes for her after every meal and learning Taiwanese for their father. But Phoenix’s husband became homesick before they could have children. He now spent most of the year developing his shipping business in China apart from Phoenix.

Betty sniffed a short sarcastic laugh. “I’ve been reasonable enough to hold my tongue for two years,” she said firmly. “If she keeps listening to you, she’ll be waiting forever until she’s left over as a lonely old woman.”      

“You’re always so dramatic. If you keep overprotecting her, she’ll push you further away. The Bible says that love is like sand. If you squeeze too hard, it’ll slip through your fingers.”

Betty winced. She thought of herself alone in her apartment, of the scratching of termites in the walls, of the blue and white porcelain rice bowls gathering dust, of her searching for movie clips of Teresa Teng to send Tingting. “Don’t lecture me. She’s foolish if she gives up her family for a boy.”

“Tingting and I have been praying that you all be happy together as a family for her birthday. Have faith in God’s plans.”

Betty recalled her daughter’s birthday was in a few weeks. She decided she would cook Tingting’s favorite meal like she did the previous year: honey roast duck with pancakes and seafood soup. Min had been away tracking a big investment on Chinese precious stones with his import company, but Betty and her daughter had no problem finishing all the food. After, Tingting had thanked Betty for the tenderness of the duck.

“Your religion doesn’t work for me,” Betty snapped. “It doesn’t teach Tingting to be a good daughter and answer her mother’s calls.” 

Betty hung up with a fierce good-bye and pulled up outside the pharmacy. She looked for Tingting for twenty minutes until a policeman asked her to move on. She nodded glumly, noticing that her daughter hadn’t appeared. The setting sun spread behind the distant mountains, the peaks opening and closing like a hand. She thought to calm herself by driving to see Bing, the English teacher at the high school who she’d been dating for a year. Betty had often found relief after fights with Tingting and boyfriends by driving through the Taipei streets in the evenings. She sped past other scooter riders who nodded at her in camaraderie, seeming to acknowledge her worries over Tingting.

While Betty ascended towards Bing’s apartment, the warm rush of the road wore off. A few months ago, before Tingting had started therapy, Betty had introduced Bing and her daughter to each other over dinner at the Hong Kong Cafe near Betty’s apartment. She’d hoped that Tingting would acknowledge them as a couple. Her daughter had always resisted meeting Betty’s boyfriends since she was a child, resenting the idea of Betty replacing her father. On the night before the meal, Betty had asked her daughter over the phone to join for dinner.

“He’s playing you like Ba,” Tingting whined in a shrill voice. 

Betty suspected that Phoenix had told Tingting that Bing was married with a daughter of his own. Betty couldn’t help revealing the details of the relationship to Phoenix, believing that having it recognized would make it more serious. “Bing promised to leave his wife for me,” Betty replied. “He comes to my apartment every week.”

“Even Auntie Phoenix says that you’re imagining things. You’re going to get hurt again,” Tingting said, with her aunt’s lecturing tone.

Betty shook her head. Tingting was always siding with Phoenix against her. She was becoming her aunt’s daughter, excluding Betty from their Christian family. Tingting had become religious during high school. She started attending church with Phoenix on the weekends and after fights with Betty, seeming to need the space to recover. At the time, when a boyfriend had left Betty, Phoenix had urged her to attend church with them for deliverance from her troubles. Betty had sat beside them in a pew and prayed, but she was embarrassed when her wishes were swallowed by the thick, enclosed air of the church. There was no proof that she’d been heard. She had always seen religion as false comfort, a way for Phoenix and Tingting to justify their inconsiderateness towards her.

“I’ve been alone for twenty years because of you,” she said to Tingting, raising her voice. “Not many men are willing to accept a woman with another man’s kid. Can’t you just do this little favor for your Ma and the man she loves?”

Betty’s question lingered as an echo in the silence, straining to reach her daughter, until Tingting finally said, “All right.”

But at the restaurant, Betty had to repeatedly correct Tingting. She forgot to serve Bing tea until Betty reminded her and called him “Mr. Bing” instead of affectionately referring to him as “Uncle.” Halfway into the meal, the waiter knocked into Betty while she was sipping her chicken corn soup, causing her to splash it onto her blouse. Betty was annoyed and asked the waiter to call his manager. She demanded that he compensate for the mistake with a coupon and a window seat for more space on her next visit. “Lady,” the manager replied with bewilderment. “We don’t give out coupons and you need to make a reservation for window seats.” Tingting covered her face in embarrassment then abruptly left as the waiter served the steamed fish that Bing had ordered. The other customers’ eyes slid from Tingting towards Betty and Bing with disapproval. Bing seemed humiliated, wiping his face with his handkerchief after every few bites, until he excused himself to see his daughter, Mei. Betty left and scolded Tingting over the phone for ruining her chances with Bing.

“I couldn’t bear it anymore,” Tingting replied. “You kept embarrassing me.”

“You could have stayed for the fish.”

“I kept thinking of the time when I didn’t greet another one of your boyfriends and you slapped me in the face.”

Betty paused in astonishment. She recalled when Tingting was in high school, she had asked her daughter to meet a boyfriend for lunch at their apartment. Tingting threw a tantrum, saying that the boyfriend disliked her, and ran off to Phoenix’s house. When Tingting returned to their apartment after a few days, the boyfriend was gone and had stopped replying to Betty’s calls. Betty demanded that she apologize, but her daughter refused, so she struck her in the face. She remembered Tingting’s cheek resisting then softening beneath her palm. She had never hit Tingting and regretted having done so, but it seemed the only way to express her outrage and her longing for Tingting to return home. “You’re always running away.”

“It’s not my fault that men leave once they’re done using you like a pair of chopsticks.”

“Can’t you be a little kinder to your Ma?”

Tingting muttered that she had been nice enough then hung up. The following day, Betty heard from Phoenix that Tingting had stayed with her aunt and had cried over the memory of Betty slapping her. Betty called Tingting to check on her. But Tingting replied that she was sick, and Auntie Phoenix was helping her feel better. After a week, Phoenix told Betty that she’d started taking Tingting to therapy because she couldn’t eat or concentrate at work. Betty agreed, recalling that Tingting had been hospitalized for episodes of depression in college, when she stopped speaking and her stomach grew upset whenever she ate food Betty bought for her. The episodes had started after Betty didn’t allow Tingting to study abroad in London. Tingting blamed her mother for limiting her freedom, even though Betty had been unable to afford the expenses. The depression subsided when Tingting started therapy with the college psychiatrist and followed his recommendations of a trip to Bali, a break from her mother, and a course of antidepressants. Though therapy had become more popular in Taipei since Tingting was a child, Betty had always been skeptical, believing it was another way for Tingting to run away from responsibility.

When Betty knocked on the apartment door, Bing answered that he was coming in a singsong voice ringing with contentment. But his smile vanished in embarrassment once he saw Betty. She worried that he was expecting his wife. She asked to speak with him inside, and after barring her entry for a moment, he pulled her into his apartment. Betty’s eyes lit with eagerness for Bing to arrange slippers for her in the foyer and plant a kiss on her forehead like usual. But as she bent forward to remove her shoes, he left her in the foyer. He hurried to his bedroom and banged drawers open and shut.

“I thought we agreed last time to only meet at your place,” Bing said, his voice hardening with annoyance. “The neighbors will talk if they see you.”

Betty strained to mentally explain away Bing’s coldness—a fight with his wife, students who hadn’t read their assigned English texts. She swallowed down the sense that he was trying to get rid of her. She sank deeply into the living room sofa with her arms wound behind her head and sighed towards the ceiling, like Teresa Teng when she seduced a Chinese spy in a recent film, If I Were for Real. “I’ve been having such a difficult time with my daughter,” she said, squeaking out the last few words. “I had nowhere else to go.”

“You should have called first,” he said. She heard the whipping of a tie across his shirt. “I promised my wife we would take Mei to a musical.”

Betty thought she and Bing had constructed a private life together, mutually unburdening their troubles. He had described his wife scolding him for forgetting his daughter’s play performances while Betty had complained about Tingting’s neglect. Betty had last met Bing after her fight with Tingting over the DVDs. Bing had rushed over to her apartment to comfort her, letting her cry into his chest. Since that visit, Bing had refused to see her, blaming her for his wife’s anger. Suddenly, she was an intruder in his life. She worried that Bing would scold her if she rested her head on his spotless white shirt. “I thought you said you were thinking about leaving your wife.”

“I still need to spend time with Mei.”

“Can’t I stay a little longer?”

“I’m sorry, but you have to go,” he said, busy looking for his keys on a hallway table. She remembered, just a few weeks before, his wide, tender eyes and his fingers working through her hair. Now the waning evening light emphasized the gauntness of his face so that it seemed harsh and indifferent. “What if my wife and Mei find out about you?”

“Can you come see me later?” she pleaded, leaning forward to catch a glimpse of concern on his face. Her lipstick and a pocket mirror spilled from her purse onto the floor. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep at all tonight.”

“I can’t. My family’s almost here.” Bing turned away from her towards the hallway mirror.

The reply seemed to confirm her suspicion that she was losing him. It seemed inevitable, this path from longing to hatred that she had travelled dozens of times before with men neglecting her. She sprang from the sofa and shouted, “You don’t even care that I’ve lost my daughter.”

“I’m sure she’ll turn up soon,” he said, in a quiet, brisk voice.

“I don’t need your empty words. You don’t want anything to do with me.”

“You’re overreacting,” he said. “I’ll let you know when we can meet again.”

“I’m not your call girl,” she said, sweeping her accessories back into her purse. “I don’t want to see you anymore.”

On Betty’s scooter ride back home, she hardened her face against tears filling her eyes. She had come to Bing for just a few comforting words, but he couldn’t even give her that. Betty could hear Phoenix and Tingting chide her for being used. Perhaps they were right. But she’d learned to release Bing before he did the same to her. It was a matter of principle: she refused to remain a burden on someone unwilling to bear it.

For the next few nights, Betty weathered the insomnia that occurred whenever she and Tingting fought. She felt hollowed out, like a ghost. She filled herself with large bowls of pork ramen at the corner noodle shop, where she didn’t have to suffer alone. Betty imagined herself as Teresa Teng, cried over by millions of Taiwanese when she sang “The Moon Represents My Heart” after being abandoned by her daughter in If I Were for Real. In the mornings, Betty checked her face in a hallway mirror that had been a gift from Bing. He’d said it would cheer her up as a reminder of him when he was away. But the mirror blurred her image into a puffy woman she couldn’t recognize, even when she switched between her contact lenses and glasses. She stored the mirror away in a closet.

Two weeks after Tingting left for her trip with Min, Phoenix told Betty over the phone that her daughter had returned to Taipei. In her apartment kitchen, Betty was straining to lift black sesame powder from a shelf to make herself tea. She had sunk into a malaise. Daily life became a battle, a minefield of painful triggers. She became dizzy and listless before routine tasks of teaching and cooking dinner, which seemed pointless and tremendously demanding. She thought that she was suffering symptoms that sounded like Tingting’s. But Betty resisted any labels because she believed that her misery was the fault of Tingting and Bing rather than any sickness of her own.

“Tingting wants you to come for her birthday dinner at my place this Saturday,” Phoenix said. “I told you that she’d feel better after the trip.”

Betty was so relieved that she ignored her sister’s note of condescension. “I can bring her favorite honey roast duck and seafood soup.”

“Just don’t cook too much,” Phoenix said. “Her stomach is still sensitive from when she was sick.”

“It’s her birthday, I want to make it special for her.”

Her sister sighed. “Min will be there. Don’t mention his money issue or you might make her sick again.”

Betty was sobered by the memory of her dinner with Tingting at the Hong Kong Café. “All right.”

Phoenix thanked Betty then instructed her to sit further from Min at the dinner so she wouldn’t be tempted to say anything. After the call, Betty assured herself that Tingting had finally welcomed her back into her life.

On the day before Tingting’s birthday dinner, Betty was invigorated by her preparation of the duck and the seafood soup. She believed that her reconciliation with Tingting largely depended on her daughter’s enjoyment of her dishes. After school, Betty rushed to the supermarket, where she bought the fattest duck and a seafood broth rich with herbs. She cooked for hours, though charged with such cheerful energy and purpose, they passed quickly. Betty browned the duck with honey, then arranged it over vegetables to roast for three hours in the oven. She prepared the seafood broth with an array of prawns and scallops, which she adjusted for four hours with soy sauce. She resisted messaging Tingting to avoid irritating her and took comfort in the calming smell of honey.

At eleven, as Betty laid down in bed with tired contentment, she recalled when she reconciled with Tingting after slapping her for running away from lunch. Tingting stayed with Phoenix for weeks, refusing to speak with Betty. She didn’t see her daughter until Phoenix brought Tingting to their parents’ house outside Taipei for summer break. The iciness between Betty and Tingting was melted by Granny Lee’s warm encouragement and cooking. They started swimming together in the ocean beside the house. Betty would hug her daughter’s back on the surface of the water to guard her against the strong current pulling her away. She now remembered the pressure of her palm against Tingting’s back and an expansion of breath in her chest. She would slowly release Tingting by drawing her arms away in a widening circle. Betty longed for that summer, when she was shouldering her daughter’s burdens.

Betty arrived at Phoenix’s apartment with a camera, her golden duck in a pan, and her seafood soup. Her sister squeezed her shoulder then set out slippers for her. The apartment was designed in typical Taipei fashion, with an eye towards compartmentalizing narrow spaces and obscuring one’s neighbors for a sense of seclusion. A wooden staircase linked three floors: a sitting room on the ground floor, a kitchen and dining room in the middle, and the bedrooms and a prayer room on top. Betty had always been bothered by the apartment’s intense privacy and strict boundaries, forbidding her from its top floor with a locked door to the stairs. Phoenix led Betty into the dining room with her broad hips and stately walk, looking back through her round, silver-rimmed glasses. She cautioned Betty to step more lightly so as not to startle Tingting with the slapping of her slippers.

“I’m not even making that much noise,” Betty said impatiently.

“You might provoke her,” Phoenix said in a low voice.

Betty nodded stiffly, annoyed that she was already being corrected by her sister. They found Tingting and Min at the dining room table with their backs towards them. Tingting turned and waved shyly at Betty. Min smiled faintly before his phone started ringing. He groaned that he had to take the call and darted into the adjoining kitchen, where he huddled in the far corner and talked in a rushed whisper. Phoenix arranged Betty’s dishes on the table behind her own, a bean sprout soup and chicken with vegetables sprinkled in a clear garlic sauce. Phoenix patted the chair to remind Betty where she should sit, across from Tingting and furthest from Min.

“Min’s been having some money trouble with his sister,” Tingting said, hanging her head. “She’s suing him for money lost in an investment they made together.”

“For how much?” Betty asked.

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

Phoenix rested her hand firmly on Betty’s leg. Betty stared sharply at her and shook off her hand. “Family shouldn’t treat each other like that,” Betty said, striking a sympathetic tone. “Do you think he’ll have to pay?”

“We still don’t know,” Tingting said glumly. “He’s trying to talk her out of it. But if that doesn’t work, I can help with the payments.”

“Can he borrow from the bank?”

“He tried that already and loan sharks, too.”

Betty swallowed a sense of foreboding, seeming to confirm her suspicion that Min was burdening Tingting with his debt. “I hope she comes to her senses,” she said, with a stirring of pride at her self-control.

Min returned with a strained smile. He looked haggard, sweeping damp strands of hair away from his forehead. Tingting touched his shoulder, and he squeezed her hand. “Let’s not talk about such unhappy things,” Phoenix cut in. “This is supposed to be a happy occasion. We can’t forget to say grace before we eat.”

Betty believed that the table should be thanking her for the duck rather than Jesus, but she suppressed the thought. Phoenix bowed her head and clapped her hands into a fist. “Dear Jesus, bless this food and us to your service, and keep us mindful of the needs of others. Amen.”

Betty wondered why Jesus couldn’t make Tingting or Phoenix more mindful of her needs when she could amen to their prayers. She asked Phoenix to take a photo of her with Tingting and Min. Phoenix obliged, and charged with authority after leading the prayer, directed Betty from the center to sit beside Tingting so the couple could be together. With all the hectic repositioning, Betty complained that she moved during the picture, but her sister insisted that she looked fine.

When the table started eating, Betty was concerned whether Tingting would enjoy her duck and seafood soup. Phoenix served everyone a bowl of her bean sprout soup and her vegetables, telling the table to eat them first so they could digest the rest of the food. After finishing the soup, Tingting protested in a playful voice that she was already full. Phoenix stopped serving the table then cautioned Tingting not to eat more than she could. Betty was annoyed that Phoenix had relegated her duck to a side dish.

“Ma,” Tingting said. She set her chopsticks on her plate, indicating that she was finished eating. “Min and I have some good news to share.”

Betty looked up from Tingting’s dish, where she’d noted the absence of duck. Min was eating it greedily, as if Betty would tear it away from him. She worried that they would announce their wedding date while Min remained in debt.

“We’re moving in together to an apartment outside Taipei,” Tingting continued. “We’ve already started settling in.”

“It was the therapist’s advice,” said Min. “She feels so much better away from Taipei.”

Betty understood that by Taipei, he meant herself. She supposed that he’d learned the art of blaming the mother from Tingting and her therapist. It seemed the therapist was always arranging the world and the truth to suit Tingting and Phoenix. Somehow, it was worse news than Betty expected. There was no promise of marriage for her daughter, only deeper entanglement with this man who owed large sums of money. Betty imagined Tingting paying off a loan shark stalking the new apartment. Min clasped hands with Tingting. The dinner was going all wrong. Betty couldn’t suppress sighing, “Are you sure?”

“Bai-bi, what do you mean?” Phoenix asked. “It’s a great idea.”

Tingting released Min’s hand and turned towards Betty with a nervous laugh and lowered eyes. The mention of Betty’s Chinese name, white jade, encouraged a return to her old reticence. The curtains behind her encircled her in the glow of a bright, blinding light. She was hot and dizzy, feeling scrutinized by the others, forced to compose her face into an agreeable smile rather than betray her feelings.

“Nothing, I’m happy for you,” she said to Tingting, as sweetly as she could.

Tinging beamed, settling Betty’s nerves.

“You can go shopping together to buy groceries for their apartment tomorrow,” said Phoenix.

“All right,” said Betty, then suddenly resisted the forces pulling her daughter away. “Why don’t you celebrate with some of the duck I made you?”

Tingting clutched her stomach. “But I’m full.”

Phoenix shot Betty a reproachful look. “She can’t eat anymore.”

Her sister’s reply only fueled her defiance. Betty had been silenced the entire dinner, forced to withhold all her opinions for Tingting’s sake. She thought it wasn’t asking too much of her daughter to acknowledge one simple request. Betty served a few pieces of duck onto Tingting’s plate. “Just a little. I spent hours roasting it for you.”

“That’s too much,” said Min, shaking his head.

“It’s okay,” Tingting said, patting Min’s arm. Tingting smiled weakly at Betty and picked up a piece of duck. “Ma made it for my birthday.”

Tingting ate all the duck on her plate and a larger portion that she served herself while thanking Betty for the delicious food. Min paused between bites to check on her until Phoenix distracted the table with a discussion of Betty meeting Tingting at Costco at noon. Betty was relieved that Tingting seemed to like her duck, that it hadn’t gone to waste.

An hour before the meeting at Costco, Betty worried over Tingting and Min’s living arrangement. Before Tingting’s trip with Min, she would at least consider Betty’s concerns, but now they were completely disregarded. Betty walked about her apartment in a daze, steadying herself against the walls and furniture, adjusting to this new reality.

Betty sat down and distracted herself by imagining the Costco visit with her daughter: Tingting lifting a watermelon that Betty had chosen by clapping its back, Tingting asking Betty to visit their apartment every few weeks. Betty looked at their photos from the dinner, but she was disappointed to find her face blurred. The camera presented a shifty and dark image that didn’t resemble her. She looked for her reflection in the TV screen, but it was dim and hollow.

Twenty minutes after their meeting time, Tingting still hadn’t arrived at Costco. Betty had already filled a shopping cart with a watermelon and the rest of the groceries. She messaged and called Tingting but received no reply. Betty tried Phoenix, who messaged back that she was leading a sermon. After the cashier checked out her items, she fretted that Tingting wouldn’t show up at all. She waited in front of a food court, which fed into a narrow corridor with a help desk and the exit. Mothers bumped her cart with their own, toppling her boxes of tea. Betty wished Tingting was beside her to help push her cart, which was heavy and obstructed on all sides. Her nervousness over Tingting sharpened into dread, like a cavity in her chest.

As Betty found some air near the empty help desk, she finally received a call from Tingting. Betty was calmed, hoping that Tingting was on her way. Her daughter spoke in a feeble voice, “Ma, I’m sorry.”

“What’s wrong?” Betty asked, her voice rising with concern.

“I can’t make it today. My stomach has been hurting all morning.”

Betty recalled Tingting lifting her bowl to finish Phoenix’s bean sprout soup. Tingting had seemed perfectly fine then. Betty’s cart became heavier and more resistant. “What do you mean you’re sick?” she demanded. “You were fine eating all of Phoenix’s food last night.”

“It started a few hours after I ate the duck,” Tingting insisted.

“How do you know the duck made you sick?”

“Phoenix and Min think it was the duck too. I don’t think I can drive.”

For Phoenix and Min, Betty was always the cause of Tingting’s sickness. They treated her like a cancer, leaching the life out of Tingting, needing to be excised. “Why can’t Min drive you?”

“His sister won’t drop the lawsuit. He’s settling it with her.”

Betty sighed. Even if Tingting was playing up her sickness, he should have been helping her if she was unwell. “So you can pay his debt, but he can’t even stay with you when you’re sick? I didn’t want to say this, but you shouldn’t be moving in with him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You should break up with someone in such bad debt. You’ll be paying it as long as you’re together.”

“How could you say that?” Tingting asked, matching Betty’s fierceness. “Can’t you support me like how you supported Auntie Phoenix with her husband?”

“Her husband didn’t have any major problems like debt. I can promise that he’s going to leave you once you pay off his bills.”

“I’m not leaving him,” Tingting sobbed. “You’ve dumped your unhappiness on me for thirty years. I can’t see you today.”

Betty bent over the shopping cart, registering what she’d heard. She’d supported Tingting for thirty years, and she couldn’t even fulfill the simplest request of meeting her mother. It seemed that all her love had been spurned and wasted.

Over the phone, Tingting gasped for air, crying softly. Betty recognized the hurt she’d caused Tingting. She regretted speaking so directly. Her demands had become too heavy for Tinting to bear. Betty realized that the only way to lighten Tingting’s burden was to remove herself from Tingting’s life and disappear. In the ocean, she’d once helped Tingting breathe freely, and she would do it again. Perhaps Phoenix was right: love wasn’t a matter of force but release.

“I won’t bother you anymore,” Betty said, stifling the pain from her words. “I won’t contact you from now on.”

“Ma, that’s not what I meant,” Tingting said, with a note of apology. “I just need space.”

Betty recognized these were words of hollow comfort, said out of formality. She knew their meaning, that Tingting still meant to separate from her. “I’m giving you all the space you need,” Betty said, hanging up.

Betty was dazed. The lights wheeled above, and her right ear rang from where Tingting had cried. She suppressed her remorse over losing her daughter, telling herself it was necessary for Tingting. Phoenix and Tingting had arranged everything towards this end through the therapist. She’d resisted, but now she had obliged their plans. Betty wished they could be as generous towards her needs, but that wasn’t in God’s plans, as Phoenix would have said. Betty sighed at her groceries. She would have to carry them to her apartment, so Phoenix could pick them up for Tingting.

Betty asked a man at the help desk if he could assist in loading her groceries onto her scooter in the parking lot. The employee’s face scrunched, withholding any kindness. “Lady,” he said, taking offense. “If you can’t carry so much, return some items.” He looked past her and called over the next customer in line. She was just a lady now, not Betty, not really Tingting’s mother. Betty replied that he shouldn’t treat his customers that way. She looked for a manager to help her and file a complaint. But she was swallowed by the surging crowd of carts and pushed out of the building. 

As Betty loaded the groceries onto her scooter, she was dizzy from her exertion. Panic wound through her chest. The ringing was now accompanied by painful white flashes. She drove a few miles, pushing through the dizziness and blinking hard to recover her vision after the flashes. Tingting’s strained breathing sprang up in her mind. Betty wiped tears away. Her scooter seemed to have doubled in weight with the groceries. She wondered if this was what Phoenix and Tingting meant by depression, a bottomless sadness that hindered her movements and couldn’t be relieved.

When the cars around Betty blurred, she stopped at a street corner in front of a church and dropped her scooter against the curb. In her rearview mirror, her image was hardly visible, mostly blotted out by the white flashes. But she could see her hair tangled from the fitful drive and her eyeliner smeared from her eyes. Phoenix would have said she looked crazy, in need of a therapist, but she dismissed the thought. On the sidewalk, families walked by, laughing freely, enveloped in a Sunday ease. They stepped widely around Betty, treating her like a disturbance to their peace. She didn’t have the strength to call a taxi and had no choice but to ask for help.

In front of the church, a middle-aged woman with a perm and pink visor was pushing a sign that read “Jesus loves you” into the arms of passerby and calling out in a vigorously loud and cheerful voice, “If you are walking in the darkness, put your hand in the hand of Jesus.” She was rosy and inviting, seeming to be the most charitable person on the corner. Betty called the woman over and said that she was unwell. She asked if the woman could call her a taxi. The woman agreed, filling Betty with relief and faith in her kindness. The white flashes became more intense, blended with a blinding light from the windows of the church. Betty asked the woman if she could watch her groceries until she was better. “Lady,” the woman said, her rosiness draining from her face. “I have to get back to spreading God’s word.” She left Betty and returned to assuring passerby that Jesus loved them.

Betty slumped against the curb with her groceries strewn around her. She lifted her head to the passerby and sobbed like Teresa Teng after she’d lost her daughter. She cried loudly for help until it sounded like the saddest song in the world. The passersby ignored Betty or noticed her and turned away. She continued to cry, but her voice seemed small and quavering, unable to be heard over the ringing in her ear and Jesus’ promises of love. Phoenix was right: she was Bai-Bi, not Betty, completely invisible.

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