The other thing that was important was saving face. In those days, men took care of their own pride and prestige above all things and gave very little thought to women’s suffering.

Yes, Miss Sociology, I can see that saving face and forgetting might bring about contradictory actions sometimes. Well, that explains the way many people went down, doesn’t it?

You don’t want to live through times like they had to live through. You don’t want to live through a time like we had to live through either. When you live through such times, you find things out about the seemingly ordinary people around you that you don’t want to know. Tak-Wing and Old Cheung were so far down the rabbit hole it seemed unlikely they would ever come out. How could Tak-Wing, who had loved Emily so much, have had such a violent change of heart? In his youthful arrogance, he had thought that modern romance was enough to escape the damage of centuries of pillage and retribution. But in the occupation he discovered all those demons and more residing in his liver. Cheung, who was, after all, just an ordinary village boy with no education, was just as lost, though as the grown-up in the room, he should have known better. But it wasn’t about knowing. It was about feeling. It was about spirits they were carrying unbeknownst to themselves. Spirits who were starved and vengeful. It was the way that men drowned. Always taking women with them. I would have beaten sense into them with a broom handle if I had been there with them. I do believe, though, that even as Cheung and Tak-Wing made their plans, they knew what they were doing wasn’t right.

What about the way women drowned, you ask? Emily and I fought back in our own ways. Elliptically or belatedly. We weren’t raised to give as good as we got. We had to find our own paths in everything. But maybe I shouldn’t talk about these horrors anymore. Maybe we should just quit the story here? And you can go join Macy at the waterfront for all the speeches. It’s five o’clock. Time to get with the times! Macy gets so mad at me for dwelling in the past. Why don’t we eat something sweet and then go down to the waterfront to see if we can catch the farewell ceremony of the British Hong Kong troops?

Great-Aunt Violet flags down the grumpy server.

“Chung yiu mut yeh?”

She orders baked tapioca pudding.

“Twenty minutes, okay?” the server says.

“Okay,” says Great-Aunt Violet. “More tea too, please.”

Ophelia is quiet as they wait for the tapioca pudding. It hits the table twenty minutes later, by the pink-haired girl’s clock. Aunt Violet scoops a large serving onto a plate for Ophelia.

Ophelia isn’t sure she can eat. She eyes the pudding with suspicion.