For our New Year’s Eve dinner, we went to one of our favorite Chinese restaurants, where we knew the servers and the owner, which was helpful in that there were plenty of interruptions from them as well as from other restaurant patrons since this was a go-to for most of our friends. Not many restaurants had stinky tofu on the menu, let alone the really smelly steamed kind this place specialized in, the kind that permeated the entire space.

After a purposefully loud family prayer, which we only did when church people were nearby, enough acquaintances approached our table to signal that Mrs. Kuo’s lift of our ban had started to get around. But it wasn’t quite as many as normal. I sweated through my shirt hoping my mother wasn’t thinking about how they all believed me to be pregnant, the same thrown-out water she had been, her worst nightmare come true. If I had to apologize to her again, I might throw up into my beef noodle soup, which would then only further convince the community of my pregnancy. I swear, if I’d been old enough, my parents would have ordered me a glass of wine to prove to everyone I wasn’t with child, but honestly? My mom and Mrs. Kuo were, sadly, right: the damage was already done. Even with the wine, people would’ve either whispered I was the worst mother-to-be or that I’d gotten an abortion. No matter what happened from this point forth, the rumor had already spread along the grapevine, and only the juiciest grapes would make it to market. But I was at peace with it. Getting rid of Hongbo would always trump my miànzi in a community I had never belonged in anyway.

Once the foot traffic to our table stopped, I waited for the silence to descend, but—surprise times ten—my mother chattered away.

“You know, Jing-Jing, Hongbo is a pig.” For a moment I thought she had finally seen his puke-green colors, but then I realized she was talking about Chinese zodiac signs when she said, “And pig isn’t the perfect match for a snake like you. That was always my one concern with him.”

Yes, that was the right concern to have, I thought sarcastically.

She continued, “Andrew is a rabbit, which is a better fit, but there are still some potential issues I’m worried about. Like difficulty communicating, tendency to pick at each other, and an inability to overcome financial problems. But since his family is well off, I feel better about that last one.”