But no one asks the fish if it wants to be fresh any more than they ask it if it wants to be eaten. Just as nobody asked me if I wanted to be beautiful. Nobody asked me if I wanted to be a girl, and nobody asked me if I wanted to be pretty. I know my father thought that he could marry me off to the son of his business partner, Yeo, to consolidate his business and make sure it would last into the next generation and the generation after that. Or maybe he thought he could marry me off to one of the sons of the Ho Tung family or one of the sons of Shouson Chow, should they have deigned to be interested in my tender meat. I was that pretty—it’s not bragging, it’s the truth carefully assessed by my father, my mother, my horse-faced sister, Amah, Driver Lim, Auntie Lim, Second Mother Polly, and all the little half-brothers and half-sisters who came after my mother died. I was the kind of woman through whom alliances and fortunes could be made. They knew it, and I knew it. Everyone knew it—that I was like a fresh, steamed fish that could impress guests and satisfy family members as long as it was cooked until the flesh came just barely free of the bone.