The Jade Peony

Sekky begins the chapter by telling us that the Old One, whom he calls Grandmama, died in 1940 at the age of 83, when Sekky was almost 7. She promised the family a sign before her death, which they all nervously await in her wake. Before she dies, she tells Sekky that she will never leave him, and that he will see that she will be with him in a different way. 

Sekky recalls that when he was 6, Grandmama taught him how to juggle. She herself learned these tricks when she was a village girl in southern Canton, and an acting troupe lodged on her father’s farm. One of these actors, “tall and pale as the whiteness of petals,” fell in love with her and promised to return to her (144). His last gift to her was a windchime “made of bits of string and the precious jade peony, a carved stone the size of a large coin, knotted with red silk to hang like a pendant from the centre, like the clapper of a sacred bell” (144-45). “My juggler,” as she called him, never did return, and Grandmama mused that the famine claimed him. However, in the last years of her life, the memory of him returned to her. While the windchime eventually broke, she kept the precious jade pendant in a small red envelope that she always kept in her pocket, until the day she died. 

Sekky most admired the way that his grandmother’s hands could fashion windchimes, which she made for each of her grandchildren’s birthdays. They were intricate and not at all like the cheap, mass-produced ones that stood in Chinatown stores. In order to make them, the Old One would rummage through garbage in alleyways, causing everyone in the family except Sekky grief and embarrassment. Sekky was her partner in these forays, which became their private and secret adventures. They began straying to farther neighborhoods, in order to appease the family’s objections. His dearest memory of these foraging missions is the time that he and Grandmama went into the Chinese Presbyterian Church after it was destroyed by a fire. There, they excitedly foraged for bits of stained glass, which they secreted away under her bed—the place they put all of their treasures. Grandmama declared that the stained-glass fragments were special because they came from a sacred place. 

Sekky also recalls a small argument that broke out at the dinner table one night, after supper had gone badly, school exams were around the corner, and Father had failed to meet a deadline at the Chinese Times. Liang and Kiam declare that the Mandarin they are being taught at Chinese school is useless and confusing, because they are Cantonese speakers. Father’s retort is to ask them whether they complain about the Latin, French, and German that they are taught in their English school. Kiam responds that those languages are scientific and match the world of which they are now a part. Father, wishing for his children to grasp both the old and new ways, grows silent. Grandmama, trying to stop the argument with a firm tone, emphasizes that they are all Chinese. 

Sekky is still homebound because of his lung infection; his siblings tutor him on Sundays. However, Grandmama is his greatest teacher, as she would bring him into her room, which was festooned with embroidered tapestries, herbs, and potions and teach him how to make windchimes. He remembers that, in the six months prior to her death, they worked on a special windchime, for which Grandmama had to obtain silk that exactly matched her treasured jade peony pendant. He recalls the way she would hold her precious jade peony pendant up to the light, a pool of pink light in its center, its veins unfurling into the petals of a flower. She declared its color the color of her own spirit. She would recall that her juggler, who had white hair and white skin, gave her that pendant with a rare color in its center: the color of Good Fortune. She worked tirelessly and single-mindedly on the chime. Then she decreed that once it was tied and complete, not even she could raise it: it must not make a sound until she died, at which point Father would hang the chime in her old window, in order to guide and beckon to her ghost. Grandmama states that she “must say goodbye to this world properly or wander in this foreign land forever” (150). 

Late on one September evening, Grandmama is preparing supper when she sees a lean white cat jump into the garbage pail and knock it over. She goes outside without her thick sweater to shoo it away, and when she comes back in, a chill has gripped her. She says, “That was not a cat […] It was all white and had pink eyes like sacred fire” (150). This statement causes Father alarm. Although Stepmother tries to tell Grandmama that she was confused by the fog, Grandmama insists that the cat is a sign.

The next morning, Grandmama is bedridden with a serious cold. Sekky, confused, asks why Father jumped when she described the cat the previous night. Grandmama explains that her friend, the juggler and magician, was “as pale as white jade […] [with] pink eyes” (151). “He has come back to me,” she states (151). Sekky falls into a troubled sleep by her side, and in the morning he discovers that she has been taken to the basement of St. Paul’s Hospital, which houses the sick Chinese. A few days later, she passes away due to pneumonia complications. Upon her death, Father returns home and wordlessly hangs her last windchime in her window. Sekky begins to cry and searches in his pocket for a handkerchief. Instead, he finds the jade peony pendant. He narrates: “In my mind’s eye I saw Grandmama smile, and heard, softly, the pink center beat like a beautiful, cramped heart” (151).

In September, one month prior to Grandmama’s death, the whole family is concerned about Sekky, who is longing to start school again and to keep up with his older brothers, who bring home grand books, and even Liang, whose fast reading ability impresses him. The doctor has recommended homestay for him, due to his breathing issues. Grandmama, seeing Sekky’s great disappointment, tells him not to cry and opens up her jars of pungent herbs. 

Sekky remembers the first time he was sent home from school in Grade One as a result of his own actions. Eager to earn a Good Deed Star from Miss MacKinney, he volunteered to clean blackboard brushes during recess. However, as he clapped them together and a thick cloud of chalk dust formed around him, he choked and his nose began bleeding. Two girls had to drag him to the nurse’s office. Liang, lamenting what a mess he was, had to walk him home. Once home, Grandmama made him breathe in eucalyptus vapors after putting Tiger Balm on his chest. The episode also prompted a visit from the Vancouver City Medical Officer, who tested the entire family for TB. They all passed, but Sekky was made to stay home. Grandmama promised him that they would find a way for him to go to school the following year. 

After her funeral, Sekky begins to look for her ghost. He knows that even though she is dead, she will never leave him, and that she will see to it that he starts school next September. After seeing her laid out in her coffin, he is convinced that he needs to see her spirit in order to be assured that he will begin school. 

He wanders around the house and opens the door to her room, staring into the silence hopefully. Stepmother promises to clean out Grandmama’s room in February, for the lunar new year, in order to give it to Liang. Sekky is outraged and begins to sulk. He hardly eats and must be cajoled to do anything beyond his solo war-games. When he is taken out of the house, he puts on “a strange, open-mouthed look and [whispers] openly to Grandmama” (156). 

People begin to talk about Sekky’s behavior. Stepmother’s mahjong friends counsel her to be patient. Father receives condolences from both his friends and foes: “no one wanted to debate China’s future […] with a man who had a haunted son” (156). Liang refuses to let Sekky be seen by friends. To Sekky, the truth is that “the Old One’s ghost was tugging at [him] and would not let [him] go” (156). When she was alive, she taught him that ghosts and spirits surrounded them because of how ancient the Chinese people are. The accumulation of deaths of Chinese people meant a surplus of spirits, mischievous ones as well as those that bring harmony, “the yin and yang forces—the fung-suih, the wind-water element that helped to balance [their] ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ natures. Wind-water shaped [their] destiny, cured [their] illnesses, brought good or bad fortune” (157). However, Grandmama did add the qualification that only a small number of ghosts populated Vancouver’s Chinatown, and most of them were in a state of confusion due to their inability to go back to Old China with their bones. 

In January, three months after Grandmama’s burial, events—which the family calls “incidents”—begin to happen to Sekky. The back door sometimes swings shut in the exact way that Grandmama used to shut it. While Sekky insists that it’s her, Kiam blames humidity and Father blames drafts, while Jung says it is both and Liang, stricken, says nothing. Once, before lunch, Sekky sees Grandmama, wearing her favorite, blue, quilted jacket and standing as though waiting for him, on the staircase. When he calls Jung, Jung vaguely sees the outline of a shadow dissolving into the air. Then, one cloudy afternoon at exactly 3pm, the Old One appears to him again, this time in the hallway. No one in the family wants to affirm nor deny Sekky’s sightings, as the supernatural and superstitions still have a firm hold on their communal psyche. 

Then, one hot spring afternoon, the three front parlor windows suddenly slam shut, one after the other. Sekky pronounces that it’s Grandmama, and everyone scowls at him. Father then puts a large building brick, to be used for propping the window open, on each windowsill. The bricks sit precariously on the narrow sills; Kiam politely asks Father if he should use smaller bricks. Father says, “And have Poh-Poh push them over like feathers?” (159). Everyone except Sekky laughs. Father also puts a hook and chain on the back door; sometimes, it rattles, as if someone is pushing the door from the other side. 

Eventually, Father takes Sekky to be examined by the herbalist, in a bid to rid the boy of his clinging to the Old One. The herbalist simply says that Sekky is wheezing too much because of the humidity. When Father asks the herbalist about Sekky’s visions of the Old One, the herbalist’s reply is a question: “Is the boy hurting anyone?” (159).

After some weeks, the family grows accustomed to Sekky’s “faith in the Old One’s return” (160). While Liang taunts Sekky by reminding him that the Old One is dead and decomposing, Kiam emphasizes that the Old One is scientifically dead, “disintegrating into basic atoms and molecules” (161). Sekky maintains his position that he has seen his grandmother: twice on the staircase and numerous times in doorways. He also knows that if he were to tell his family that Grandmama had once called to him and told him to say “Old way, best way,” they would laugh at him, especially since Father and Kiam have started to talk about how “[they] all must change, be modern, move forward, throw away the old” (162). Father firmly believes that after all the wars are completed, only those that comprehend the new ways will survive. 

Sekky also recalls a particular time that the Old One appeared on the staircase landing above him. She pointed her finger toward Mrs. Lim’s home across the street. Sekky knows that Mrs. Lim also likes the old ways. Mrs. Lim reports seeing the Old One in the upstairs window across from her. When word of this gets back to Stepmother at the mahjong table, she becomes very upset, dismissing the story as “old-fashioned talk” (162). 

None of this can dissuade Sekky from believing that his grandmother never left him. Father and Stepmother enlist Sekky’s Chinatown uncles to convince Sekky to relent. They do their best to reason with the boy, but he will not be swayed. One night, Jung tries to reason with Sekky by telling him that each family member is too busy and burdened by their own lives, and by worries about making ends meet, to continue to contend with Sekky’s visions and insistence. As Jung talks, Sekky looks past him and sees Grandmama standing at the end of Jung’s bed. When Jung angrily asks Sekky what he’s staring at, Sekky espies a smile on the face of the Old One before she disappears. 

Father tells Third Uncle that he will have the Old One’s bones exhumed and taken to the Bone House in Victoria if he ever manages to raise enough money. Sekky recalls that Liang told him about her Monkey Man’s journey back to China with bones from the Bone House. However, with the war happening, shipments are restricted to munitions and emergency materials. 

Kiam insists on “the Big Fact: Death [means] the end of someone’s activity on earth. There [are] no such things as ghosts or demons or spirits” (164). As a retort, Sekky reminds him that Mrs. Williams, his teacher at the Methodist Sunday School, teaches that the Holy Ghost is omnipresent. 

Third Uncle insists to Father that he hasn’t paid his proper respects to the Old One. He says that Father must bai sen—bow. He adds that Father has forgotten that he is Chinese. When Father storms out of the house and slams the door in response, one of the heavy bricks on the front windowsill goes crashing onto the porch. The window slams shut with such force that the glass cracks. Everyone turns to look at Sekky. Grandmama’s room is cleaned out soon after. 

The entire family prepares for a final ceremony. Mrs. Lim, Third Uncle, Uncle Dai Kew, a bald man with a black jacket who is a Buddhist monk, and a tall man in a badly-fitting western suit (who, according to father, is a geomancer) all gather for the what is hoped to be the final bai sen. Sekky is told later that the two unknown men were called because of his stubbornness. 

Sekky stands in the doorway of the Old One’s room and feels her presence (165). The two men don white gowns and place lit incense sticks in red clay bowls, which have been placed at the east and west corners of the Old One’s room. As smoke gathers in the air, the family is being prepared to let her spirit go. The two men also urge the family to bai sen for their future prosperity. Father presumes that the ceremony has properly paid respects to the Old One, and that Sekky’s nonsense will cease. 

Sekky, however, sees Grandmama three more times. Mrs. Lim, too, insists that she sees the Old One flitting between her neighbors’ home and the O’Connors’ home, next door. Sekky then insists that the Old One wants them to bai sen once more. Although Kiam and Father object, Uncle Dai Kew asks what the harm could be, and Third Uncle volunteers to bring incense. Stepmother then decides that she will make the Old One’s favorite dish: steamed chicken with black mushrooms. The next afternoon, the Buddhist monk returns, and the whole family participates in the ritual again, each bowing three times before a photograph of the Old One while speaking aloud to her. Sekky triumphantly thinks, “To bai sen meant molecules did not count” (167). 

Sekky’s health rapidly improves, and he knows that it’s because the family has directly addressed Grandmama. The family members each express their own exasperation at Sekky, but also cannot deny his assertion. He watches them quietly while also seeing the Old One, wearing her blue jacket, lean against the kitchen doorway and smile at him. Sekky, feeling no need to create any more incidents, tells no one of her presence.

The Old One no longer haunts the family after the last bai sen. Now, when Sekky beholds the jade peony pendant, it serves as a reminder of her absence. Kiam hammers three nails into the parlor wall opposite the three front windows, and Father hangs a portrait of the Old One in between two beautiful scrolls of memorial calligraphy. However, the home’s front room, as well as the Old One’s room, which Liang now uses, retain the fragrance of myrrh. A peace comes over the household. 

The following summer, seven months after the Old One’s death, Sekky fully begins his life without her. He wants to grow up quickly and imagines himself piloting a fighter jet in China’s skies, bombing and killing as many Nazi and Japanese enemies as he can. His brothers take him to soccer games and football practice, spurring him to be as strong and athletic as they are. Sekky also begins to run with a group of boys his own age; they play incessant war games, imagining themselves to be Nazi-defeating good guys. On one occasion, Alfred Stevorsky, one of these boys, sets a Bakelite doll aflame and then urinates on it. 

On June 20, 1941, Japanese submarine shelling hits Estevan Point on Vancouver Island. Shells make contact with the Oregon coast one day later. Every family living on the West Coast comes under government orders to place sturdy blackout cloth over every window, and air raid alarms begin drills. Kiam and Father agree with the numerous editorials that assert that the Japanese people located on the coast are possible spies and traitors. Calls to do something about this possible threat mount, and fights break out in the streets. A Japanese boy, trying to protect his mother, is shot and killed. Stepmother tells Father to write something about this incident, in order to protest the murder. Father, however, insists that Chinese boys are being killed by the Japanese in China, and reminds her that her own friend, Suling, was killed by Japanese bombs. 

In September, Sekky passes both a medical exam and a English reading test, and is cleared to begin Advanced Grade Three at Strathcona. He believes that the Old One has kept her word. His family bestows him with small gifts, in the form of school supplies, to celebrate his victory. 

Advanced Grade Three is the class for immigrant children whose English skills are lacking. Sekky’s teacher is named Mrs. Doyle, and she runs the class “with compassionate terror,” as though she were a general, and the students are her small soldiers (175).Through her clearly enunciated English and drills, she nourishes her students’ English vocabulary and abilities, almost without them even knowing it. Although she is quick to use her authority, as well as the strap hanging in the front of the room, most of her students do their best to please her.

Mrs. Doyle regales the students with daily reports of the war’s battles and victories. She emphasizes bravery as a central theme of her classroom, and her own brother, a brave soldier, is the subject of many of her stories. Sekky eagerly devours all of these stories and then repeats one of them to Jung. Jung then tells Sekky that Mr. Doyle was “blown to bits” last Christmas (178). Sekky, in disbelief, dares not ask Kiam nor any of his classmates for corroboration. He spends the whole week tormented, and then decides to ask Mrs. Doyle for confirmation one day after class, when only he remains. He asks, “Mrs. Doyle…was Mr. Doyle blown to bits?” (179). Mrs. Doyle recoils in shock and betrayal, and then sternly summons Sekky to her, before softening when she realizes that Sekky went to the nurse’s office the day that she told the whole class that her brother was dead. He passes by the picture of Mrs. Doyle as a girl, with her heroic brother, and knows that he still likes her. 

Sekky views Mrs. Doyle as a stolid yet nurturing teacher whose duty is to mold her ragtag class of misfit immigrants into children that belong to a country she envisions as inclusive of every last one of them. She does not hesitate to use both the ruler and the strap on the backsides of her students, and none of the parents protest. Once, however, Mrs. Doyle unexpectedly gifts Tammy Okada—a girl of mixed heritage who is stigmatized and ostracized for being poor—with treasures from the drawer full of confiscated contraband. Sekky can insightfully sense that Mrs. Doyle views each of her students as equals, and takes comfort in her sternly compassionate methods.

Sekky has made it through his first few weeks of schooling, and is no different from any of the other Advanced Grade Three students. He tries his best to maintain his standing in Alfred Stevorsky’s posse. He also notes that all of his older siblings, including Liang, are working jobs in any spare time they can muster: the household is constantly strapped for cash. While his older siblings go to Chinese School, which the doctor has forbidden for Sekky, on the grounds that it is too much stress, Sekky plays. 

Sekky learns bad words like chink, nigger, bohun, wop, jap, and hymie (186). Although he knows not to use these words in front of boys larger than him, he is overheard by neighbors, who report his behavior to Father and Kiam. Jung doesn’t care, but Liang, eager to snitch to Father, pretends to be outraged by his language. 

Alfred Stevorsky pioneers a method of creating play bombs with ordinary matches. One day, Sekky tries the trick by himself. He uses matches he has secreted away from Kiam on a stack of newspapers sitting on the curb in front of the house. He aims to create a bit of smoke and excitement, and does so, to his great satisfaction. He imagines himself to be the annihilator of countless Japanese troops. Mrs. O’Connor, however, quickly scrambles to chide him and put an end to his game with a bucket of water. Once Father hears about this misadventure, it is decreed that Sekky must stay with Mrs. Lim anytime no one is home to watch him. 

Mrs. Lim, with whom the Old One used to consort, is a widow who always wears black and still lives “in the peasant world of Old China” (189). She has an adopted daughter, Meiying, abandoned by her birth mother, who made off with a man to Toronto. Meiying is a few years older than Liang. Although Liang admires her for her beauty and perfect English and good grades, Mrs. Lim stigmatizes Meiying. Mrs. Lim can often be heard yelling at Meiying, and Jung advises Sekky to wear his pilot’s cap—with the ear flaps down—when he must be at Mrs. Lim’s shack. 

Sekky observes his father being besieged by worries: Kiam wanting to fight for a country that does not want him; Stepmother’s perpetual hunger; Jung working, instead of attending school; and Liang wanting to wear oversized sweaters that make her look clownish. 

Although Sekky has always been glad to be born a boy, he begins to envy Liang’s freedom to work and go where she pleases. Because of Sekky’s propensity to court mishaps wherever he goes, he is swiftly banned from most places that Father takes him. 

Sekky and Liang continue to trade barbs. Liang settles into the Old One’s room and Sekky tries to remind her of Grandmama’s presence, but meets with Liang’s swift and resolute rejoinders that the Old One is dead. 

One day, Sekky discovers Grandmama’s secret stash of medicines—including rare dried seahorses, roots and leaves, fragrant ointments, and Bayer aspirin—on the highest shelf in the pantry. The discovery enlivens him. 

Halfway into his first week of being supervised by Mrs. Lim, Sekky grows surly and whiny with everyone except Father, whom he dares not cross. Father has grown increasingly agitated with each dispatch from China, as swaths of territories fall to the Japanese. He rages against “the Japs” every chance he gets. Rumors of dead relatives and the mythically-cruel and barbaric Japanese forces swirl around Chinatown. Sekky absorbs the hatred of the Japanese, replete with images of the buck-toothed and slant-eyed enemy. When boys from other grades mistake him for a Jap, Alfred Stevorsky and Joe Eng correct the error. The Japanese children start to self-segregate in the face of ostracism as Chinatown braces for its own casualties. Sekky stews under the authority of the fat and loud Mrs. Lim. Smarting from the freedom that he had enjoyed during the interlude following the Old One’s death, he believes Mrs. Lim doesn’t stand a chance against him.

By the beginning of October, Sekky is prohibited from seeing his friends after school, and must report directly to Mrs. Lim’s home after English school. Father threatens him with destruction of his toys and confinement to the Bad Boys’ Orphanage if Sekky is found to be disobedient. However, because the orphanage is Catholic, Sekky never takes this threat seriously. The threat about his precious toy soldiers and airplanes, however, he takes to heart: he has seen his father’s foot hover over a box of his toys, his face contorted with rage. 

Sekky intimates that Mr. Lim bought the house that Mrs. Lim now lives in for dirt cheap. It was constructed in 1925, out of salvaged lumber, by a millworker named Jamieson, who eventually lived in it with his brother. One night, the brothers argued, and one of them ended up with a broken neck at the bottom of the stairs. The remaining brother fled, and no one but Mr. Lim, who had one eye, had the nerve to pay the $200 that the house was priced at for public auction. Even though a community elder told Mr. Lim that the house might be unlucky, Mr. Lim went into debt to buy it. In 1933, Mr. Lim died working at the same mill that the Jamieson brothers had once gone to for work. Mrs. Lim recalls that her husband claimed to have seen the ghost of the Jamieson brother who died the morning that he left for work for the last time. She lamented the fact that, instead of heeding the sign, she asked him, “If you don’t work […] how can we eat?” (201). 

Mr. Lim passed away prior to Sekky’s birth; Jung remembers Lim as a brusque man with a body damaged by the hard labor he undertook. Father romantically classes Mr. Lim with the other China men who “sang ancient songs and thought of other mountains, other seas […] [who] built the Great Wall and pulled ships through the cloud-piercing gorges of the Yangtze and never surrendered” (201-02). He reminds his children of the Chinese identity and experience that they share with those in their community. 

Sekky reports to Mrs. Lim’s carrying his three-inch Red Ryder pocketknife, “ready to do Mrs. Lim in if she was too mean” (202). Instead, Mrs. Lim, busy preparing vegetables with a cleaver, hardly acknowledges him and the beautiful and slightly-mysterious Meiying takes Sekky out of the house. 

Meiying walks Sekky to the “bad” end of Hastings street—to Little Tokyo—or, as Sekky calls it, “Japtown.” He sees that she is close to one of the Japanese boys, Kazuo, who plays baseball at the park she has led them to. Kazuo greets Meiying cautiously, before eventually walking away from her and chastising her, saying that her and Sekky’s presence is dangerous. Sekky struggles to maintain his position that Kazuo and the other Japanese boys and men gathered there are his enemies, as they seem ordinary and just like him and his Chinese community. Meiying tries to convince Kazuo that the two can still see each other, but she and Sekky are regarded with cold suspicion. They eventually depart when the catcher yells, “Leave Kazuo alone, little girl! He’s already in enough trouble with his family over you!” (213). 

Meiying has a Japanese boyfriend. Sekky knows that, if he were to share this information, she would be disowned by Mrs. Lim. She might even be publicly humiliated and beaten—branded with a hot iron. He tells a shaken and upset Meiying that he will keep her secret. Thoughts of returning to Little Tokyo with Jung’s large scout knife intermingle with his knowledge of white mobs rioting and looting in Little Tokyo, along with recollections of the tales of a similar riot in Chinatown that left three Chinese men with broken limbs and necks, hanging murdered from lampposts.  

Sekky reports that the Japanese children at his school have begun to stick to themselves entirely, and that the teachers watch out for them to make sure that they are not being beat up by the other children, while Japanese parents nervously await their children after school. Jung throws his weight around, threatening to beat up anyone who might mistake his little brother for a “Jap.” Sekky and Liang start wearing Chinese-flag pins on their lapels; Sekky even has a shirt that reads: I AM CHINESE (219). 

Meiying and Sekky continue their surreptitious trips to Little Tokyo. Meiying explains their time outside to Mrs. Lim as walks outdoors, which are good for the sickly Sekky. Sometimes, when it rains, Meiying and Sekky stay in to help Mrs. Lim cook. Kazuo’s presence on the field is sporadic, until, by the end of November, he has evaded Meiying entirely. 

One day, after spending a fruitless few hours in the park waiting for Kazuo—indeed, until it grew dark—Meiying brings Sekky home. She brushes away her tears before Stepmother opens the door and invites them both in. It seems to Sekky as if the two women hold each other’s gazes for a long time, before Stepmother wordlessly embraces Meiying. Sekky then watches Meiying cross the street to be greeted by Mrs. Lim’s berating: “Her stupid daughter of a worthless person had left her bedroom window open again,” despite the hefty price Mrs. Lim had paid to have a Buddhist monk “seal up the windows against the broken-neck white demon” (221). Stepmother then commands Sekky to hang up his jacket, instead of acknowledging or explaining her exchange with Meiying.

It’s December, and Stepmother has made arrangements with Meiying to care for Sekky after school. Mrs. Lim prefers this arrangement over Meiying working at a local café, where her beauty attracts the attention of men similar to those with whom Meiying’s biological mother once kept company. 

Sekky notices that on some days, Meiying seems very happy. He also recalls many happy instances spent in the company of both Kazuo and Meiying. He sometimes observes the young couple entering the Methodist Church together, and Meiying buttoning her coat back up upon her exit from the building. 

All the while, Sekky carefully guards Meiying’s secret, even when Stepmother asks him pointedly if they go to MacLean Park every day. Sekky, viewing his promise to Meiying to not give away her secret as a soldier’s duty, lies effortlessly, maintaining that he and Meiying go only to MacLean Park, and not the park in Little Tokyo, which is named Powell Ground. While Sekky believes that Stepmother is fooled by his lies, she is actually testing him, to see whether he will keep Meiying’s secret. She counsels him to repeat what she knows to be a lie to Father, should he ever ask. In fact, Sekky recounts several times that his Father asked to verify where he and Meiying go after school. Sekky unhesitatingly lied each time. Stepmother even runs into the three of them—Sekky, Meiying, and Kazuo—one day on the street, but Kazuo makes a quick getaway and Stepmother makes no reference to him. 

That same evening, Sekky cannot contain himself, and he asks Father, “Are all Japs our enemy, even the ones in Canada?” (224). While Father responds with an authoritative yes, Stepmother tries to advocate for Canadian-born Japanese people. Kiam offers that Japanese-Canadians are only half bad. Sekky, to Stepmother’s surprise and pleasure, agrees with Kiam. 

Meiying, whom Sekky sometimes calls by her English name, May, promises Sekky a special present on the 15th—the following Monday—as it’s his birthday. She and Sekky discuss the fact that the Japanese are currently fighting in Hong Kong, and talk of the Canadians who are also stationed there rises in Chinatown. Sekky thinks of his neighbors, the O’Connors. Their son, Jack O’Connor, has dropped out of school in order to enlist. When he visited home in October, all of the boys crowded around him and admired his uniform. 

The following Sunday, news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor reaches Sekky and his family via radio. Father announces the turning of the tide: America will now be China’s ally as it enters the war. He and Third Uncle are vibrating with excitement. Stepmother is pensive. 

During the second week of December, Meiying and Sekky start a new routine. As Meiying has become infirm, they will now meet at Sekky’s house after school. Sekky arrives home on several occasions to find Meiying and Stepmother speaking quietly to each other, as Stepmother prepares for her shift at the factory. On one occasion, when Meiying comes to collect Sekky at school, Sekky notices that her face is cut and slightly bruised, which she explains away as a schoolyard scuffle. 

On a day that Sekky distinctly remembers as December 15, his birthday, Meiying does not arrive on time for Stepmother to leave for her shift. Sekky is anxious to receive the promised surprise gift from Meiying, but Liang reports that Meiying is vomiting profusely. However, Meiying eventually does arrive at the front door, wearing Sekky’s favorite scarf: “a trailing red and black one floating with amber butterflies over her dark navy winter coat” (230). Stepmother then distractedly prepares Sekky to go out while telling Meiying, “Make this the last time” (230). 

Meiying and Sekky make their way to Powell Ground, where Meiying and Kazuo share a wrenching goodbye. When she hands him her scarf as a parting gift, Kazuo tells her not to make things harder for him, and then begins to cry when she turns and walks away from him. While Meiying has already been crying, as Sekky expects a foolish girl to do, Sekky cannot believe the tears that fall from Kazuo’s eyes. Meiying then walks Sekky back home, whispering “Happy Birthday” while pressing a small wrapped present into his hands. He opens it to find a small blue notebook: “Inscribed on the first page, both in [Meiying’s] Chinese calligraphy and in English, [are Sekky’s] name and that title, neatly printed: A PILOT’S ADVENTURES—A STORY FOR MY FRIEND SEK-LUNG” (233). Also enclosed is a red envelope containing five dollars. 

Sekky does not see Meiying for the rest of the week and is told that she is sick with the flu. Stepmother stops going to the factory, as supplies have become scarce. Christmas arrives, but it is overshadowed by Hong Kong’s fall to the Japanese forces. The Canadian soldiers there are known to be either killed or captured, and the community rallies around the O’Connors, who withdraw into quiet grief. 

During the first week of January 1942, Father informs the family that all of the Japanese people will be interned in camps—their possessions and homes are to be auctioned off to the highest bidders; “[w]e don’t want any of it,” Stepmother quickly asserts (235). Father retorts that she has no money to buy any of it anyhow, and that she should have chosen a wealthy man to marry. Stepmother, unable to contain herself, reminds him that she had no choice in the matter, and that she was bought to be his wife. Sekky remembers: “She stood up, as if pulled against her will. ‘Even Jook-Liang and Sek-Lung, my own two children—call me Stepmother!’” (235). Father tries to dismiss this fact as a decree of the Old One, but has nothing to say when Stepmother reminds him that he, as her husband, never advocated for her. 

Stepmother then encourages Sekky to go out and play, but Mrs. Lim comes rushing across the street before he can. Mrs. Lim is crying about Meiying when she arrives. Sekky then follows Stepmother as she rushes across the street, into Mrs. Lim’s home, and up the haunted stairs. Before Stepmother can stop him, Sekky sees Meiying curled up in a quickly-spreading puddle of blood—her two knitting needles jutting out from between her legs. 

By the time the paramedics arrive, Meiying has died. One of the medics, who is kinder than the other, puts a blanket over the girl’s body. Stepmother takes Sekky’s hand and walks him back to the house. Kiam has whisked Liang and Jung away to Third Uncle’s house. 

Stepmother goes straight to her room. Sekky follows her. Wearing an old silk shawl adorned with gold flowers that Suling had gifted her when they were children, Stepmother regards her own reflection in the dresser mirror. “Mother,” Sekky says, “I’m here” (238). When she reaches out to him, Sekky presses the Old One’s carved peony pendant into her hand.