“Grandma has but one child and that is my mother.” I saw I had hit a sensitive string in Helena. She paled and I was ashamed. I tried to gentle myself. “Grandma loves you and I know she has already given you some valuable pieces, like that dragon bracelet you are wearing now. She wants to pass something on to Ma too, that’s all. Is that so wrong?”
Helena covered the jewelry with her other hand, as if she believed I would wrench it from her wrist. “Did Grandma call and ask you to come?”
“Yes.”
The flash of hurt in her eyes was quickly swallowed by fury. Beneath the hallway light, her face was a patchwork of white and red blotches. “That treasure belongs to me and my family. I will do anything to stop you from leaving with it. Do not cross me in this, Sylvie.”
Without another word, she turned and left.
When I still lived in the Netherlands, Grandma used to let me play with her jewelry if we were alone in her room. It was the one thing she never shared with Lukas, the only way she let it be marked that I was her direct blood relative. Our family had been rich before the Communist Revolution took over China and much of our wealth had been hidden in the form of jewelry. Some pieces had been in our family for generations. When I was little, I especially loved the articulated carp pendant set with imperial jade. The emerald-green stones were so translucent and vibrant that the fish seemed alive, and I would make it swim across Grandma’s bed.
“You were made to wear jade, Snow Jasmine. See how it comes to life against your skin,” Grandma said.
But I never dared. I was a coward, a hero with only socks on, because of the one time I had skipped down the stairs while admiring a marquise-cut gold ring set with diamonds that was much too big for my finger, and Helena had caught me.
The anger on her face had been as clear to read as parts of a book. “Where did you get that?”
I had turned and fled back upstairs to Grandma’s room, where the treasure was still spread across the bed. Helena had burst into the room and we all stood there, the three of us, as silent and unmoving as blocks of ice. Grandma gestured with her fingers. I took off the ring and handed it to her. Without a word, Grandma gathered it all up and put it back in her jewelry bag. She waited until Helena had left to hide it again. None of us had ever spoken of the incident.
Grandma did not like to mention death because it was bad luck, but she had said to me many times before I left for America, “If anything ever happens to me, Snow Jasmine, you must take this. It is for you, your sister, and your mother. This was given to me by my mother and to her by her mother, and so it must remain.”
It was the morning after I had colored Grandma’s hair. Only Lukas and I were in the house with her, and she sat upright in her bed. This was a good day. She said, “Sylvie, show me you still know where it is hidden, get it out.”
I glanced at Lukas, who looked confused.
“It is all right. He is a good boy,” Grandma said.
And so I did. I went downstairs and removed the screwdriver from the toolbox, came back and went to the small closet in Grandma’s room. I unloaded pile after pile of boxes filled with brocade and cotton, coils of old knitting yarn, outdated blouses that smelled of mothballs, and cheap Dutch souvenirs until I found the worn carpeting underneath. I pried open the loose piece I knew was in the back left corner. Then I brushed away the dirt, uncovering what appeared to be nails in the floorboards but were actually screws. I loosened them, lifted the floorboards, and pulled out Grandma’s treasure.
The embroidered velvet bag was compact and heavy for its size. I set it upon Grandma’s bed and, when she did not move, opened the drawstring to slide out the small, bulging, zipped red silk envelopes. Lukas came to stand behind me and I opened a few to show him their contents as his bushy eyebrows disappeared into his forehead. Was that hurt on his face—because Grandma had shared this with me but not him?
A jade-and-gold necklace with shimmering diamond accents, each piece dangled on a delicate shiny stream of gold. A ruby-crusted beetle brooch—when I was a child, the beetle and the carp had many adventures together. Heavy necklaces and bracelets of braided pure gold, delicate flowers and sprays of water frozen into precious stones, a small satchel filled only with wedding rings, the twenty-four-carat gold bent and scarred from years of wear, yet still glowing with gentle radiance. I tried to slip one of the rings onto my finger and it was much too small now, as if it had been sized for a child bride.
Then the two smaller silk bags, one filled with gold coins and the other with fine jade pieces. I had learned a few things since I was a child and now knew that the best jade could command a fortune on the market, especially the types I recognized here: kingfisher, moss-in-snow, and apple jade, but mainly, and the most desirable of all, imperial jade.
Grandma lifted her limp hand. Her low voice cracked. “This bag bears the weight of years, Snow Jasmine. It is as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns. From the women of our line, drawn from their happiness and their sorrows, this passes on to your mother and later, to you and your sister.”
I tried to swallow. “Grandma, I do not want to take this from you.”
“You must resound like thunder and move like the wind. Act now. I have kept it safe all these years for your mother. Do with it as you will. Tell your mother she should sell whatever she needs. This gold is meant to serve the living, not to enslave them.”
I thought about the costs piling up now that I had no job and no husband. I thought about the credit card bills lying unopened in my hallway. I thought about Amy’s student loans, Ma and Pa, and their apartment. I had not cared about anything but getting away. I wished I could shed my old skin and that my life there had been a dream. But all of it was a nightmare: Jim; the consultancy firm; the desperate, futile struggle for Ma and Pa’s love and approval—and I would have to return eventually. I understood this.
Grandma continued speaking, her eyes fixed upon the window. “I had hoped to put this into your mother’s hands. But I knew she would not come. Not even now.” There was so much grief in her voice that I took her hand.
“Ma thinks about you all the time, Grandma. She would have if she could.”
“She stayed away not because she did not care enough. She stayed away because she loves too much,” Grandma said. “I understand, but still it saddens me. You must take the treasure now, while you can.”
I said only one word, “Helena.” Helena, so jealous she could not see the sun shining upon the water. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lukas nod.
Grandma said, “That woman has eaten vinegar. She will always be spiteful. It is a pity that she glimpsed the gold all those years ago, but there had already been rumors. I am an arrow at the end of its flight. Once I am gone, she will rip this room apart looking for it. As the water recedes, the rocks will appear. There will be swords drawn and bows bent. Take it now and hide it in a train station locker or something.”
Lukas huffed out a laugh.
I said, “You have been watching too many Hong Kong soap operas, Grandma. I am not a spy. Though she may be a toad lusting after a swan’s flesh, she will never let it go, undeserving or not. She knows you plan to give it to me. She said she would do anything to stop you. If she does not find it in this room, she will know I have it.”