In the back of that tailor shop you could hear the whirr of sewing machines and the chatter of the tailor’s assistants. We would hand over the fabric we’d bought from the Brylcreem man and the tailor would come and take our measurements, and in ten days Emily and Mama would have smart dresses and I’d have a pantsuit or whatever it was I wanted—Mama was indulgent and Father’s business was doing well.

On our way home we would walk through the flower market and admire all the open-air flower stalls. You could buy any kind of flower you wanted, loose or in bunches with leaves and baby’s breath, all firmly tied together with a piece of hardy grass. You had to be careful, though. The flower sellers were tricky—they’d wire fast-fading blooms to stalks of split bamboo. Mama loved those flower stalls. She loved to chat and bargain with the sellers.

Sometimes she would take us to the department stores. She was more comfortable at the Chinese-run Sincere and Wing On, but sometimes we would go to Lane Crawford or Whiteaway, Laidlaw & Co. just to marvel at the wide array of goods, some made in Chinese factories across the border but many imported from Britain, Australia, Japan, and even Canada. She took us to the Swatow lace shops that sold fabulously embroidered tablecloths, Swatow drawnwork, filet lace, and silk shawls decorated with birds, flowers, and dragons.

These are the things I think about in the closet. I can’t be where I am.

I still can’t hear the screaming, the pleading, the grunting, the shouting, the human teeth tearing human flesh

There are smells. Of gunpowder blood shit fire vomit. My nostrils burn.

I focus on a bird on Nurse Petrov’s pretty scarf—its bright eye, its curved yellow beak. Its blue feathers flutter in the light breeze that blows in the scarf’s imagination. The pretty pink flowers surrounding it rustle, and a lovely, delicate scent of roses wafts off them. The leaves that surround them clatter softly against one another. The scarf’s breeze is so cool I can feel it on my face. The bird’s beak opens, and a pretty song warbles from its throat, which quavers, soft and fragile. The breeze blows harder, becomes a wind that scatters rose petals to the supply closet floor. I hear her voice. “Violet.”

“Mama?”