She looked at me the way a sage looks at a common person. Paused for way too long. “That’s what Emily says too.”

“Mama, no one will marry me for love, no matter how much I love them.”

She sat there, uncomfortable, trying to think of something kind to say.

I said, “Only the beautiful get to marry for love. Only the beautiful can be modern. In love, at least. The ugly must take arranged marriages because that is the only way they can marry at all.”

“You always were the cleverest of my children, dearest Violet,” she said.

“The clever, ugly, and modern go to school.” I sipped again. She had put little rosebuds in the tea, and their sweet odour filled my head.

“I would have liked to have gone to school. I’m smart, like you, but my father was not modern. He arranged my marriage. I suppose he was modern enough to ask me beforehand how I felt about it.” The sorrow in her beautiful face was very romantic. What did she ever really have to worry about?

“And so you married Father for his money?”

“Don’t talk like that about your father. He is a good man. A kind man.”

“A wealthy man who looks like a horse.”

“Violet!”

“I’m sorry, Mama.”

“I know you don’t think so, but it’s possible to be two things at once. Your father is both wealthy and kind. In a husband, these qualities are more important than good looks. If you decide to marry young Master Yeo, you will come to understand this when you are older.”

“I don’t want a husband. I’ll take the tuition. I want to help people. I’ll study medicine, continue our family’s commitment to the health and longevity of the people.” The University of Hong Kong offered a bachelor of medicine, and a slightly older friend of mine, Lai Po-Chuen, was one of the first women students in that program at HKU. She was halfway through the degree and enjoying it.

My mother smiled.

“If I understand you at all, child, this is the path of your greatest happiness.”

“I know, Ma. It’s also my only real choice. I just wish there was more than one real choice.”

She died of tuberculosis shortly after that. Before she died, she tried to arrange for my father to take a concubine so he wouldn’t be alone after she was gone. In the old days, men were free to take more than one wife as long as they had the means to support more than one family. It was almost expected, particularly among businessmen, who did it as one way among many to show off their success. My mother went so far as to choose an eighteen-year-old orphan girl called Ada Ng Yeuk-Hai from the Po Leung Kuk home for wayward women and girls.

But Father said no, that he would remain true to her memory.