Drew pulled the sweatshirt on. Except he couldn’t quite fit his long torso into the too-tight fabric. He paused when he got stuck, not quite sure what to do. I had to stifle a giggle as I yanked it off him. Then I saw it was a women’s medium.

“You got this for me?” I blurted to my mother.

“No,” she said while also shaking her head, the double insistence displaying her guilt.

“You didn’t get him anything?” I said.

“I got him that!”

“When did you buy this?”

“Aiyah, I don’t remember. But it’s for Andrew,” she asserted. “You should be thrilled, Jing-Jing! It shows how much I support this relationship, wanting you two to be close to home in the future.” Then, beneath her breath, she mumbled, “Just be happy it isn’t pink.”

My jaw dropped and I turned to her, but she had already moved on, telling Drew, “If you don’t like it, I’ll mail you something else, okay? Just give me your address.”

“It’s fine, Mǎmá,” I said quickly just as Drew responded, “I love this. Thank you.”

To change the topic, I handed my mother her gift, a spark of excitement stirring inside before my defense mechanisms kicked in and extinguished it. She might hate it. Depends on her mood, which doesn’t bode well for me. That pessimistic gatekeeper was honed from experience, and it knew better than my silly, hopeful side.

Turned out, both sides were right—or wrong, depending on whether you’re a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty kind of person.

My mother tore into the red-glitter wrapping paper I’d specially chosen in an attempt to meld customs (red is both a Christmas color and the Chinese celebratory color). When she saw the mahogany Chinese-and-English Bible with gold-foil trim—the gold extending to where her Chinese and English names were engraved—she gasped in delight, her hand flying up to daintily cover her open mouth, which, ugh, reminded me how many times she had instructed me to do the same whenever I gasped, yawned, or laughed.

“Do you like it?” I fished.

She didn’t answer, and as she stared, her face, shoulders, spirit gradually slumped.

“It’s gorgeous,” Drew jumped in.

We shared a look, and I gave him a small shrug, not knowing what my mother was thinking.

“It’s trimmed with gold because you’re the golden duck,” I said as lightheartedly as I could. “Everyone else in Bible study wants to catch you because you fly so high.” It was a lot, but I was that desperate.

She didn’t laugh. Or smile. She only continued to stare.

“Thank you,” she said finally—quietly, with no exuberance at all.

I tried not to sound as defeated as I felt when I said, “If it’s the color or the design”—I gestured to the embellishments around the edge—“we can see if they’ll let us exchange it.”