Dora would be busy with work, was the answer, but she was willing to meet if I was. I was willing to meet if she was. Going in these circles hurt my head. There was an evening chosen.

Dora explained to Stella that she’d taken the asylum case of six Chinese women in San Jose. That was why she was coming. The women had been trafficked into prostitution, living with their pimp.

I knew Dora had reasons for coming that didn’t have anything to do with these women or how to save them.

“These women were living in an attic,” Stella said. “All six of them together.” They needed her mother’s help. There was a note of pride in her voice I hadn’t heard before.

I remembered the bride in the photograph on Angel Island. Her eyes looked like something that could reach out and grab you. She’d been afraid, too.

Dora was only staying a few days. Stella and I agreed to meet her at a Chinese restaurant on Stockton. The owner had offered to let these women stay during the proceedings, so it had become Dora’s unofficial base of operations.

I saw her sitting like a shrine—perfectly still, so elegant—in a room full of drunken Chinese businessmen. Her body had such clean edges, just like I remembered, as if she’d been perfectly carved. She stood when she saw us.

“Matilda,” she said. “Tilly.”

I saw myself as she must have seen me: ridiculous, with a run in my panty hose and a pair of sweaty palms, so nervous to be standing in front of her. I didn’t speak. What did she want me to say?

She hugged me stiffly. “Well,” she said, “here we are.” I nodded. We sat. Dora turned to me. “I don’t want this to be hard between us. I really don’t.”

I nodded again.

“Please say something. Just say anything.”

“Mom,” said Stella. “Lay off.”

There was a pause. Dora looked at me. Stella looked at me.

“It’s already hard,” I said. “It’s hard for me.”

Dora sighed. “The restaurant wants to bring us some of their lychee wine,” she said. “On the house.”

The walls were draped in red fabric. In the corners of my vision, they gave the impression of bleeding.

“Oh,” said Stella quickly. “None for me.”

Dora smiled. Her terrible smile, as if nothing you could possibly say would ever ruffle her. “They’re happy to bring you anything you want. Green tea, Peking duck. Frog legs, if you’re up for it.”

“Just tea,” said Stella.

I smiled politely. “The same for me.”

A girl came to the table and stood quietly with her hands tucked behind her back. She was wearing black pants and a red silk shirt, her hair pulled into a bun so tight it must have hurt her face. One ear looked wrong, flattened across the top. She didn’t look old or young. She looked small. Dora wasn’t much bigger, but she seemed bigger, and the girl slouched under my sister’s loud voice like it was something heavy.