Hanna could recall only one time in her life when she had wanted to be white. Back in Los Angeles, when she was around four years old, she had seen an older girl whose blond hair was all ringlets and curls. Hanna had taken a skein of yellow wool from Mama’s knitting basket and played with it in front of the big mirror on the shop wall, draping the yarn over her head as she stared at her reflection. She had been more interested in the curl than the color; she kept trying to twist and twirl the yarn into ringlets, so different from her own straight tresses.

Then Mama had seen what she was doing. Without a word, she took the wool away from Hanna. She brought out a hairbrush and a fine cord of red silk. After brushing Hanna’s shoulder-length hair, she plaited it carefully, weaving in the silk cord, then wrapping and tying it at the bottom of the braid.

Standing behind Hanna at the mirror, Mama moved the braid to rest on Hanna’s shoulder. Hanna saw the red silk cord against her black hair, both of them smooth and shining. From that moment on, Hanna never again wished for blond curls.

How she missed it, the feel of Mama’s hands doing her hair.

If she were white, she wouldn’t be Mama’s daughter. And she wouldn’t have the same understanding of the precious knowledge that Mama had revealed to her a few weeks before she died.

“I’m half-half too. Just like you.”

Hanna didn’t know a single person besides herself who was half-Chinese and half-white. Mama always said it made her special. When she was younger, some things about being half-half did seem gratifying. Their dinner might be bread or potatoes—or rice or noodles, Chinese style. There were always two kinds of tea, green and black. Hanna could speak both Chinese and English.

Papa knew some Chinese—way more than most white people—but Mama’s English had been better than his Chinese. So as a family, they had always spoken English. When it was just Hanna and Mama on their own, they usually spoke Chinese. But Hanna had not spoken Chinese for more than a year now, since leaving Salt Lake City’s China­town. Sometimes she felt that she could almost see her Chinese slipping away, the words flitting around the edges of her memory and then flying off one by one.

Most of the time, being half-Asian and half-white was special in a hurtful way. White people, except for Miss Lorna and a few of her church friends, didn’t like Hanna because she wasn’t white. Chinese people accepted her but didn’t like Papa because he was. Hanna’s Chinese half was what Mama had given her. How could she ever wish that away? But why did her being half-and-half bother other people so much?