Inside the examination room, the tech squirted warm jelly onto Scarlett's belly, tattooed with the dark line of pregnancy. Scarlett had requested an ultrasound a week ahead of schedule because she yearned to see her baby. The local clinic had Chinese doctors and staff, and the tech, Gigi, was originally from Chengdu. Within minutes, she'd shared her life story, how she'd come to Los Angeles on a special nursing visa, how her wages kept her family's hotpot restaurant afloat and her brother in school. Scarlett soon stopped listening. She had to leave Perfume Bay before she went crazy, before she hurt anyone else. She had a temper, but she'd never been one to catfight. Always restless, she was now skidding out of control, a scooter on gravel. She'd dropped a baby! She wanted to fly to Hong Kong and decide what to do next, but if she stayed here beyond her thirty-sixth week, which began in a few days, no airline would let her board. Mama Fang held everyone's wallets, passports, and their cash in the safe in her office, part of her pledge to take care of every detail. That meant Scarlett couldn't pay for the fare and couldn't leave the country. And if she asked Boss Yeung for a ticket, he'd refuse. The waxy tissue paper on the exam table crinkled beneath her. She would have to think of another way to find help, to play the part of a pregnant woman in distress. She could hitch a ride to the airport, but still, what of the ticket and the passport? Her mother would have to go into debt to assist her, if she could get in touch with Ma at all. She'd given her mother a mobile phone, but Ma always kept it turned off; she didn't know how to check her voicemail although Scarlett had shown her dozens of times. Ma didn't know she was in America. Except for Boss Yeung, no one else in China did, either, not her co-workers, not her neighbors. The tech circled the wand around Scarlett's navel. In China, Boss Yeung had bribed the nurse with a hong bao, a red envelope of lucky money, to give a secret sonogram. Her mystery, put on display. The government forbade sex identification, to prevent parents from aborting girls. When told they were having a boy, Boss Yeung had bowed his head and clasped his hands to his mouth, speechless. His face had seemed almost young, and so unguarded she wanted to run her thumb along his jaw, to stroke the curve of his brows and down his nose and press this memory into her flesh. She'd never made him so happy, and never would again. After that day, after he'd peered inside her, he acted as if he had a right to her every thought, to her every move. This machine was much fancier, with a large screen bright as a winter moon. Her baby would be bigger now, his features defined, his limbs longer, and body plump, in her second sonogram, the last before he emerged from between her legs. She wished she could have told Ma. Her mother worked at a family planning clinic, tracking pregnancies throughout the district. The people had to sacrifice, chi ku, to eat bitterness for the sake of their country, and the more you defied Ma at the clinic, the harder she struck back. To enforce the one-child policy, she escalated her punishments: she issued fines to the schoolteacher who refused to urinate in front of her during the pregnancy test and to the teenager discovered in the fields screwing a man who wasn't her husband. If you didn't show up for your abortion, she locked up your parents in a dank cinder-block cell beside the clinic. If anyone found out that her own daughter was pregnant and unmarried, Ma might lose the grim job that had sustained her as Scarlett never had all these years. If Scarlett had gone to her for help, Ma might have forced her to end the pregnancy. "How much does Mama Fang charge?" Gigi asked. Having shared the details of her finances, she had no qualms asking about Scarlett's. "Twenty-five thousand dollars." Years of Scarlett's salary. "Waaah!" Gigi exclaimed. She pressed the wand down hard against the lower curve of Scarlett's belly. "So expensive! You know, you can deliver for free." Scarlett winced from the pressure. "Free?" "Some people just go to the emergency room when they're in labor. The hospital can't turn you away, even if you can't pay. Even if you're not an American." She had to be wrong. Boss Yeung wouldn't have spent so much on Perfume Bay if labor and delivery services were free in the United States. A black-and-white blur appeared onscreen, and Scarlett felt like a bride in an arranged marriage just before the red silk is lifted to reveal her husband's face. What if the tech found something wrong, what if his arm had shriveled, a hole was hollowed out of his heart, or a cleft palate twisted his lips? With each pass of the wand, Scarlett glimpsed a fish-bone spine, the cap of the skull, and the limbs folded like an umbrella, in a silvery shaft of light. The blobby images had little relation to the kicks and flutters deep within her, the secret connection that she and the baby shared that no machine could record. "She's a swimmer," Gigi said. "Really moving around today." She. The other sonogram. "They said I was having a boy." Mistakes happen all the time, Gigi said. "It can be hard to read." "Maybe you made a mistake." "Not today." Gigi pointed an arrow at the baby's crotch, at the three white lines that marked her sex. "Not this far along. She's practically posing for us." Gigi showed her the baby's face, ghostly through the static, a broadcast from a distant planet: the pointed chin, Scarlett's, and the squat nose, Boss Yeung's. The tech hit a button and the machine spat out grainy images. Scarlett couldn't breathe, couldn't move. If she so much as turned her head, she might topple off the exam table. She stared at the three lines, the sonogram exposing the parts she'd never gotten a clear view of on herself, exposing yet another daughter for Boss Yeung. A girl. A girl like her. Sharing her blood, her breath, her flesh. If—when—Boss Yeung disowned his bastard, her daughter would need every privilege American citizenship afforded her. Scarlett couldn't risk him summoning her back to China and demanding a refund from Mama Fang. She reached for her purse, on a shelf by the examination table, and dug around until she found the velvet box. Her T-shirt slid onto her sticky belly, clinging and clammy. "Are you sure it's not a boy?" Scarlett pulled out the gold necklace. "A girl." Gigi nudged the arrow again. "Three lines." Scarlett turned her cheek into the light, toward Gigi. The bruise from the catfight was fading but visible. She wanted the tech to understand the danger she was in. "It's a boy." The heavy pendant swung through her fingers, twisting and glimmering. Gigi slipped the necklace into her pocket with an ease that made Scarlett wonder if the young woman had taken gifts from other expectant mothers with secrets of their own. "Congratulations." — On Thursday, at six A.M., on the ninth day of the seventh lunar month, Lady Yu had an appointment to deliver her son, a day shy of her thirty-ninth week. Almost all the women at Perfume Bay booked their C-sections in advance. Some like Lady Yu had previously given birth via C-section, and others wanted to remove the pain and unpredictability of going into labor and make sure their child's birthday fell on an auspicious date. The mothers-to-be wanted to ensure their children weren't born on the seventh day of the seventh month, the night of the Magpie Festival. On that day in the village, Scarlett and the other girls used to pray for a good husband, newlyweds wished the gods would grant them a happy marriage, and elders told children the legend as romantic as it was tragic. Long ago, two lovers—a humble cow herder and a weaver girl, a fairy in disguise—were torn apart when the Goddess of Heaven, the fairy's mother, scratched her hairpin into the night sky, welling up a river of stars to separate them. Once a year, on the night of the festival, magpies would soar to the heavens, hovering wing to wing. The lovers crossed the universe on this quivering bridge of feathers and reunited for a kiss. Lady Yu didn't want her son's fate linked to this day. Although he might not marry until two or three decades from now, she would align the heavens in his favor. After all she'd spent on fertility treatments, she considered Perfume Bay a bargain: giving your child U.S. citizenship at birth for twenty-five thousand dollars, compared to the hassles of the green-card program she'd heard about that required you to invest a half-million dollars, create at least ten new jobs, and then wait a few more years to obtain U.S. citizenship. She wasn't planning to emigrate, but wanted her family to collect passports as they might Ferraris or residences in New York and London. No riches cleared smoggy skies, no riches protected against tainted milk, no riches safeguarded against the poor who might rise again in China. Only your child's American citizenship defended you from all your present and future ills. On Tuesday evening—two days before the scheduled C-section—Nurse Sun wanted to send Lady Yu to the hospital because her blood pressure had risen and her feet had become puffy as steamed bread. Scarlett wondered if their catfight had caused the symptoms. Lady Yu refused to go. She didn't have a headache, blurry vision, or pain on her right side, none of the riskier signs of preeclampsia. "The baby will wait," she said at dinner, imperious, as though she sat in a sedan chair and not on a donut-shaped hemorrhoid cushion. Lady Yu wasn't going into the operating room today, not on the unlucky seventh day of the seventh month, and not when her physician was unavailable. Mama Fang hardened her jaw. She didn't like being challenged, but must have understood that if Lady Yu enjoyed her stay, she would bring in many new customers. Scarlett stirred her soup, spongy fish bladders and lily bulbs boiled with pork bones. She was long accustomed to eating every part of the animal, but this menu—despite its benefits to pregnant women and new mothers—must be hard on the delicate stomachs of the other guests. Countess Tien massaged her hands, complaining her fingers ached. She'd developed her own physical therapy for the baby Scarlett had dropped. For an hour each day, she pinched her son's nose to straighten it, as he flailed his arms and legs in protest. A crash outside made everyone jump in their seats. Mama Fang's lanyard snagged on the spindle of her chair, jerking back her head. Rubbing her neck, she set the keys on the counter before peering out the patio door. "Hello? Who's there?" She disappeared outside. "Did you see him? That man?" Countess Tien said. "I saw his reflection in my window the other night." "Nali!" Nothing, Lady Yu said. "You're dreaming." The keys to Mama Fang's office. To the safe. To freedom. Before Scarlett could brush against the keys, push them behind the hot water dispenser to fetch later, Mama Fang returned. She washed her hands in the sink and slipped the keys around her neck. "Raccoons. Knocked over the can. Garbage everywhere." Scarlett bit back her disappointment. As much as she wanted to flee Perfume Bay, she had to remain here until after delivery. Boss Yeung could love a daughter; she'd seen the softness in his face when his eldest called. When Scarlett and the baby returned to China, he would forgive the misfortune of her gender. Scarlett's ambivalence about the pregnancy had been a kind of grief, she had come to see. Because Boss Yeung had claimed the boy wholly, it felt like she'd already lost the baby. A daughter was hers to protect. Mama Fang ladled soup into Daisy's bowl. "More soup?" the teenager asked. At least it wasn't a dish that tasted like baby food; many meals at Perfume Bay were steamed and mashed. The cook's constant boiling soured the air with wine, ginger, and vinegar, and fed mold that slicked the kitchen walls. Daisy pushed her bowl aside, sloshing soup onto the tablecloth, and tucked back her overgrown bangs. Her barbs were hollow and halfhearted, tinged with misery after her failed escape. The other guests wanted nothing to do with her. Daisy's jailbreak must remind them of their own captivity, a condition they'd rather not consider closely. Daisy needed a mother in a house full of mothers and mothers-to-be. Scarlett tried to catch her eye, puckering her mouth to show her shared distaste for the soup. The teenager flipped her off. Brat. After dinner, Mama Fang followed Scarlett, asking how she felt, how she slept. As much as she hovered during the day, she typically didn't come into their rooms. She led Scarlett to bed, tucking pillows around her to take pressure off her joints. "Sleep with one between your legs, one behind your back, and between your arms. Feels like someone's holding you. When men aren't around, women find a way." Mama Fang sat on the edge of the bed, wafting a granny's scent of medicinal herbs. "Strong women, like you. Like us." Scarlett tensed, wondering why she'd taken this sudden interest in her. "You left home young, didn't you?" Mama Fang asked. White roots peeped out from her hairline, above a forehead smooth as tofu pudding. She might have been in her mid-fifties. Judging from her hands—thick and strong from hard labor that probably started when she was a girl—she hadn't led a pampered life. If Papa Fang existed, he never visited, and Mama Fang never spoke of him. Maybe, before founding Perfume Bay, she'd run a brothel. Maybe she'd been a rich man's mistress and cashed in jewelry to open the center. "Young as Daisy," Scarlett said. "Younger." "Me too." Mama Fang said she had worked as a maid in the home of a wealthy Hong Kong family. "It was—" "The others here, they never worked," Scarlett said. Mama Fang pursed her lips. She didn't expect to be interrupted. Yes, yes, she said, and continued her story. She'd been very lonely, but the family's son was kind to her. After he'd gotten her pregnant, she gave the baby to his family. "I did it for my boy," Mama Fang said. "You can do it for yours." Too stunned to speak, Scarlett let the words sink in. Boss Yeung wanted to raise the baby, Mama Fang said, and give him a life of comfort and security. "You'll be free," Mama Fang said. Free, along with a twenty-thousand-dollar gift for her sacrifice and for her silence. Scarlett knew at once he'd been too much of a coward to ask himself. He must have enlisted Mama Fang, who would perform any service, sell anything, anyone for an additional fee. "He—" Scarlett couldn't bring herself to say more, but Mama Fang seemed to understand. She put her hand on Scarlett's arm. Her touch was more comforting than Scarlett would have expected. "You can travel," Mama Fang said. "Buy a condo or open a shop with the money." For once, she hadn't sounded so grasping. She also must have been a woman scorned, paid off by a wealthy family, and she was offering advice to her younger self. Her voice softened. "If you want to become a partner at Perfume Bay, I welcome you. You, me: there's so much possibility." Scarlett's shock turned to rage. Mama Fang was counseling her with one hand in Scarlett's pocket and the other in Boss Yeung's. Flailing like a dung beetle, she tried to sit up, resisting Mama Fang's attempts to help her. Scarlett hated her. She hated him. She hated herself for being tempted by what this money could buy: a new car, time off for a year or more, and an apartment for Ma who could quit her job at the clinic. Fantasizing only for a moment, but still a moment. In suspecting she might be a gold digger, Boss Yeung had turned her into one. She swung her legs around, her joints creaking, feeling jumbled as a bundle of sticks. They both stood. "My daughter, you don't need to be ashamed," Mama Fang said. "Some women aren't meant to hold babies." "I'll learn." Scarlett choked out the words. "You said I'd learn." "After what happened, the honorable Master Yeung worried about his baby, but I told him we're monitoring you closely." Mama Fang sighed, seeing Scarlett's outrage. "I had to tell him. The bill, for the emergency room. For the tests. If he had you declared a threat to your child, you'd lose your son." Your son. Boss Yeung didn't know Scarlett carried a girl. As soon as he did, he and his money would disappear. He'd end Scarlett's stay at Perfume Bay. She had to get as much as she could from him before he discovered the truth. Mama Fang studied her as though Scarlett were a salt-and-pepper crab and she wanted to extract every last morsel out of her. "More," Scarlett said. "I want more. If you get me more, then—" Mama Fang took out a red envelope from her jacket pocket, bulging with hundred-dollar bills. If Scarlett signed the papers giving up her rights by tomorrow, she'd convinced Boss Yeung to add a three-thousand-dollar bonus. "To show he's taking care of you." She must have secured a bonus for herself, too. She placed the envelope in Scarlett's hand, closed her fingers around it, and gave what she must consider the highest compliment of all. "We think alike. Never settle for the first offer." Scarlett forced herself to smile and clasped her hands with Mama Fang's. At that moment, she heard the door slam, then someone blunder down the hall, with heavy footfalls that sounded like the erratic raps of a ghost. In the hallway, they found Lady Yu barefoot and groping the wall. She was panting, heaving, and she stank of vomit. Mama Fang touched her arm, and Lady Yu collapsed and slid to the floor. Other guests closed in, a tangle of bellies and arms. Mama Fang shouted at them to get back and when they withdrew, Lady Yu was grimacing, moaning with her eyes closed, pounding the heel of her palm to her forehead as if she might knock out the pain. Mama Fang's bifocals had fallen to the floor, and a cracked lens had popped out of the frame. Nurse Sun ran in, huffing, the pink tunic of her uniform covered in spit-up. "Call an ambulance!" Countess Tien shouted. "911," Daisy said. "Call 911." Mama Fang didn't want to get authorities involved, Scarlett could tell, when she announced that she and Nurse Sun would take Lady Yu. Except that Mama Fang couldn't drive, because her glasses were broken, and Nurse Sun, the only one on duty, didn't know how. She was the youngest on staff, a newlywed and new to the United States, and her husband drove her to and from work. The babies, unattended in the nursery, started wailing. Mama Fang dangled the keys and asked if anyone knew how to drive. Scarlett owed them nothing. Not Mama Fang, who'd sold her out, not Lady Yu, who'd schemed against her. Scarlett wanted the police to expose Mama Fang and shut down Perfume Bay, but if she didn't drive—now—Lady Yu and her baby might die. She took the keys from Mama Fang. Outside, she hoisted herself into the old van, the seat an uninterrupted expanse from door to door, long and wide enough for someone to take a nap. She'd never driven a vehicle this big, ungainly as an ox. After pulling up to the front door of Perfume Bay, she had to pee. She'd developed the bladder of an incontinent granny. She hobbled inside, where Nurse Sun was trying to maneuver the wheelchair through the living room. Every time the nurse bumped into furniture, Lady Yu slipped toward the floor. When Scarlett emerged from the bathroom, Nurse Sun had her arms around Lady Yu's waist. From behind, Mama Fang had hooked her arms under Lady Yu's shoulders. They followed Scarlett to the van, Mama Fang climbing beside her into the front passenger seat, and Lady Yu leaning on Nurse Sun in the back. The other guests gathered in the headlights, clutching babies rescued from the nursery. They feared for their friend, and feared for themselves even more, realizing, as Scarlett had, the danger they were in as pregnant women. She, like everyone else here, had believed herself safe, yielding to the illusion that giving birth was under her control, if only she ate a certain combination of foods, swallowed certain herbs, and performed certain exercises. In truth, their bodies had been overtaken. The residential streets of this hilly neighborhood were dark, without streetlights, and when Scarlett made a right turn out of the driveway, the front tire jumped the curb, throwing everyone back in their seats. By tomorrow, she'd have a bruise on her chest where the seatbelt held her. In pregnancy, blood seemed closer to the surface of her skin, as close as her emotions, pumping like a fire hose through her body. Lady Yu groaned noisily. Overwhelmed, Scarlett screeched to a halt and took her hands off the wheel. If she got into an accident, if the police pulled her over, she'd be detained and possibly arrested. What if she was deported? Her daughter would lose her chance for American citizenship. "Breathe," Mama Fang told Scarlett. "In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Breathe." She repeated, Scarlett followed and eased off the brake. Traffic was light, and with each block, her speed and confidence grew. At the hospital, Mama Fang dashed into the emergency room, and orderlies emerged with a gurney to fetch Lady Yu. When an ambulance appeared in her rearview mirror, Scarlett drove the van into a red zone and left the engine running, rather than find a parking spot. She didn't know how long Mama Fang would be inside the building. She hit the wipers, which sprayed and swept the windshield clean, and turned on the radio, spinning the dial until she landed on a rock music station. She adjusted her seat, belt, and mirrors, feeling like an astronaut harnessed in a space capsule before blastoff. The car behind her honked and she pulled ahead, pushing lightly on the gas. The van glided to the end of the aisle, all but driving itself. The engine throbbed through her, power restrained, though at the ready, urging her on. America called to her: the land of cars, of fast highways that opened up the country that she'd always wanted to explore, the country where she could make a life for her daughter. She could keep going, she would keep going, over the speed bump, out of the parking lot, onto the street, and into the unknown. Heading east, she hit all green lights, the road stretching endlessly ahead. Unrolling the window, she let in the breeze and drummed her fingers against the side of the van. Each beat matched her pounding heart. She brushed her hand across the red envelope stowed in the inner pocket of her tracksuit jacket and then accelerated, the lights around her blurring into stars.