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Two Chinese sisters overcome personal misfortunes and cultural obstacles to build lives as independent, modern women. |
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GOLDSEA | ASIAN BOOKVIEW | FICTION
Night of Many Dreams
a novel by Gail Tsukiyama
St Martin's Griffin, New York, 1999, 275 pp, $12.95
EXCERPT:
ll the other women in the Lew family were beautiful. Emma saw it time and time again, in the striking faces of her mother and sister, in the old yellow-edged photos of her ancestors. The difference that set her apart from Mah-mee and her older sister, Joan, haunted Emma. It wasn't that she was ugly, but in photos of herself, even as a baby, she saw a too-large nose, a too-round face, that made her feel awkward and conspicuous. She sometimes wondered what kind of fate had caused generations of Lew beauty to be withheld from her.
Emma sat at her father's desk in her parents' bedroom watching her sister get dressed to go out to collect money. Ever since she was a little girl, Joan had tried to appear older by borrowing her mother's clothes and cosmetics, disrupting the neat row of jars and bottles that lined the dresser, upsetting Mah-mee when she was home. Now fourteen, Joan worked as carefully as an artist, darkening the mole on the left side of her upper lip, then applying makeup and dressing so perfectly, Emma thought Joan must be the most beautiful young woman in Hong Kong.
[CONTINUED BELOW]
Emma glanced at the silver-framed photo sitting on one side of the desk. She leaned forward and pressed her fingertips against the two girls in the black-and-white snapshot taken almost two years ago in front of their house. In it, Joan was twelve, five years older and at least a foot taller. Emma looked hard at herself. Her flat features stared back. She stood skinny and pale, dressed in a Western-style cotton dress with puffed sleeves and a Peter Pan collar, while Joan looked beautiful in a sleeveless silk cheungsam that Emma remembered had been the color of jade. Emma recalled posing for the camera, standing on her toes so she would appear taller, leaning lightly against Joan so she wouldn't fall. Still, they looked more like acquaintences than sisters. Ever since the picture was taken, Emma had tried to catch up, as if the years that divided her from Joan were simply a space she could cross over.
Ba ba had snapped the photo during the summer of 1938, a few months before the Japanese invaded Canton. Not long after the invasion, Jaon had started collecting receipts from the shops and department stores that owed money to their father. Emma could tell by the relaxed smile on Joan's face then, that the photo had been taken before those monthly money-collecting days began. Even the mole on Joan's upper lip appeared faded, less serious now.