Baby, six days old that day, was weaned from his mother’s breast. Auntie Mei was now the sole person to provide him with food and care and – this she did not want to admit even to herself – love. Chanel stayed in her bedroom and watched Chinese television dramas all afternoon. Once in a while, she came downstairs for water, and spoke to Auntie Mei as though the old woman and the infant were poor relations: there was the inconvenience of having them to stay, and yet there was relief that they did not have to be entertained.

The dishwasher repairman returned in the evening. He reminded Auntie Mei that his name was Paul. As though she were so old that she could forget it in a day, she thought. Earlier, she had told him about the thieving egret, and he had promised to come back and fix the problem.

‘You’re sure the bird won’t be killed,’ Auntie Mei said as she watched Paul rig some wires above the pond.

‘Try it yourself,’ Paul said, flipping the battery switch.

Auntie Mei placed her palm on the crisscrossed wires. ‘I feel nothing.’

‘Good. If you felt something, I’d be putting your life at risk. Then you could sue me.’

‘But how does it work?’

‘Let’s hope the egret is more sensitive than you are,’ Paul said. ‘Call me if it doesn’t work. I won’t charge you again.’

Auntie Mei felt doubtful, but her questioning silence did not stop him from admiring his own invention. Nothing, he said, is too difficult for a thinking man. When he put away his tools he lingered on, and she could see that there was no reason for him to hurry home. He had grown up in Vietnam, he told Auntie Mei, and had come to America thirty-seven years ago. He was widowed, with three grown children, and none of them had given him a grandchild, or the hope of one. His two sisters, both living in New York and both younger, had beaten him at becoming grandparents.

The same old story: they all had to come from somewhere, and they all accumulated people along the way. Auntie Mei could see the unfolding of Paul’s life: he’d work his days away till he was too old to be useful, then his children would deposit him in a facility and visit on his birthday and on holidays. Auntie Mei, herself an untethered woman, felt superior to him. She raised Baby’s tiny fist as Paul was leaving. ‘Say bye-bye to Grandpa Paul.’

Auntie Mei turned and looked up at the house. Chanel was leaning on the windowsill of her second-floor bedroom. ‘Is he going to electrocute the egret?’ she called down.

‘He said it would only zap the bird. To teach it a lesson.’