“Come,” her mother said. “Talk to me. You seem troubled. Is there some problem with your employment? Have you been let go? You know I’m here for you. Anything you wish. How are you?”
That was all she could imagine—that Amelia had returned to her a failure. Yet Amelia had been sending her letter after letter, week after week, detailing every stage of her success.
How are you?
Those words were like a handshake. How are you? I am well. Nobody wants to know anything more.
Amelia looked her mother in the eyes. “I am not well.”
Her mother’s eyes widened. “Oh dear. Are you ill? Have you been let go?”
“None of that.” How was she? If she shut her eyes, she could see an entire maelstrom of emotions, blue and red and orange. She finally settled on this: “I am angry.”
“Who has wronged you? Are you in need of assistance?”
Amelia didn’t answer the first question. “No. It’s not that kind of…” She shook her head. “I just need to understand. Can we talk about my Chinese mother? Tell me everything.”
Her mother looked at her. A wrinkle in her brow deepened; her lips pressed together. “Dear. Are you still letting that bother you? I thought you were past it. If the circumstances of your abandonment are still giving you pause, it won’t do any good to stir it up.”
Amelia shouldn’t have phrased it as a question, one that could be avoided. Amelia bit her lip, the slight pain centering her. “I need you to tell me everything about her.”
Mrs. Acheson looked over at Amelia. Maybe she finally saw something of what was happening because she exhaled, long and slow. “Very well. I don’t think it’s wise, but…” A shrug, as if to say that it was all on Amelia. “What would you like to know?”
“Everything.” Amelia was not calm; she was frozen solid.
Her mother tapped a finger against her teacup. “You know there isn’t much to tell.”
She still looked sincere—so sincere that for a moment, Amelia wanted to doubt Leland’s story. What if he had been wrong?
“I’m not sure what specifically you’re asking for,” her mother said, shaking her head. “But I’ve told you how it went already. More times than I can count. We were offering water and a meal to refugees when your mother came in with you.”
She had told Amelia this story more times than Amelia could count. Amelia had a mental image of that moment in her mind, just as she had an image of all the stories she’d been told.
“You were small for your age and yet wide-eyed and inquisitive, looking about everywhere. I held you for a moment to give your mother a chance to rest. And I think she saw how happy we were together. She told me that she wanted me to have you.”
“What was her name?” Amelia had asked this before.
Not so much as a blink. “I don’t know.” Same answer as before. “We only had a few words in common; we could hardly communicate well enough to exchange names or directions.”
It was so odd. So odd. Amelia had been told this story so many times and from such a young age that she had accepted it as absolute truth. Not once had she stopped to question what was now so plainly obvious after eleven months of working out how to transmit information in the Chinese language, working alongside Chinese men and women who spoke slightly different dialects, trying to make sure they all understood one another.
“If you couldn’t communicate with her well enough to obtain her name,” Amelia asked, “how could you communicate well enough to know she wanted you to take her child?”
There was a long pause. Her mother stared at her, and there it came—the first hint of uncertainty. Blink. Blink. That wrinkle on her forehead popped out again.
It lasted only a moment.
“There are ways to communicate such things,” her mother said, three seconds too late. “Gestures. I could see it in her eyes.”
Gestures. Amelia had spent nearly a year of her life hammering out efficient and effective modes of communication. She’d read books about it. She could have written one now; if one counted the telegraphic manual, she had.
“Oh,” Amelia said. “How extraordinary that you both knew semaphore.”
Her mother looked at her.
“Or was it some other form of gesture-based language that you had in common? A sign language? Those differ from region to region.”
“If you’re going to be sarcastic,” her mother said snippily, “this conversation is over.”
“I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic. I was listing gesture-based forms of communication. Which one was it?”
“None of those. Just gestures. Human gestures.”
Amelia didn’t even know what to say about that, so she went on. “Was there anything else that happened? You’ve never heard from her after?”
“Of course not,” her mother said.
Amelia shut her eyes. “Mother.” She said the next item as matter-of-factly as she could manage. “I know you’ve heard from her since. Did she use human gestures the next time you met as well?”
There was a long pause. Even now her mother did not look upset. She simply sighed before rubbing her temples.
“Oh dear.” She said this the way she might respond if a servant knocked over a teacup. “You must have talked to the mission in Shanghai.”
Amelia blinked. The mission in Shanghai?
“And they told you. How upsetting for you that must have been. I told them not to. They don’t know you the way I do. And now look where we are. They’ve upset you.”
“They have upset me?”
“I didn’t tell you about any of that when you were younger because I knew how hurt you already were when your mother abandoned you the first time. Was I going to subject you to upheaval a second time? No. Of course I was not, and I will not apologize for it. She left you. You were mine.”
Intellectually speaking, it would be fascinating how swiftly her mother transitioned from of course I’ve told you everything to I lied to you about everything, but it was for your own good.
“I was yours?” Amelia felt her anger rise. “On the basis of what? Human gestures? I wouldn’t take a dog without clear, unequivocal communication that it was allowed, and I’m not a dog. I’m not yours. You don’t get to own me.”
“There you are. Talking nonsense about dogs again.” Her mother shook her head. “I didn’t mean it that way. I love you.”
“I know.” The truth was beginning to break through the confusion in Amelia’s heart. “But love doesn’t give you the right to take a child.”
“Listen to yourself. Take? I didn’t take. I gave. I gave you a life, an opportunity. It was for your own good.”
“Was it?”
“It’s always been for your own good.”
“When the devil comes courting…,” Amelia said slowly.
Her mother looked up sharply. “He tells you what you want to hear,” she finished.
“You were always so quick to tell me not to want things. You came up with an explanation even now why I shouldn’t hear the truth as a grown woman. You told yourself it was right to take me in. It was right to lie to me. It was right for you to send my mother away without even letting her see me.”