Lo spoke again. “Miss Lin, you’re the only one who can help your mother.”

“No, I don’t have a mother who’s a death row criminal. My mother is dead, period!”

Lo’s look was penetrating to the point of scary. “Miss Lin, let me reiterate, Mindy Madison, or Cai Mindi, is your mother, and your deceased mother, Cai Mayfong, was your aunt.”

I shook my head.

“These are facts.”

“Then prove it.”

“I will do that, later.” His tone softened a bit. “You’re entitled to know the truth of your life, which has been buried for so many years.”

I pointed an accusatory finger at the lawyer, then the death mask. “If the truth is that she’s my mother, then I’d rather not be enlightened to it.”

“But you have no choice.”

“How’s that?”

“Because only a daughter’s compassion can save her mother’s life.”

Big tears rolled down from Madison’s eyes. She wiped them off with her filthy cloth.

I thought of the sufferings my mother had to endure her whole life, and my heart softened. But my voice came out unintentionally sarcastic. “Then tell me how, since I’m neither a government official nor a doctor.”

“We are still appealing the case and therefore need more time for Miss Madison to regain her strength to fight. That’s why you were asked to get the special snow lotus from the Mountains of Heaven. This herb is your mother’s last hope. Even if it can’t cure her fatal disease, then at least it may boost her energy so she’ll have some time for you, her daughter.”

Feeling a splitting headache coming on and not having enough energy left to resist, I said dejectedly, “All right. What else can I do?”

“Be nice to your mother.”

Just then the guard returned and opened the cell door, motioning us to leave.

Madison’s sobbing was the only sound I could hear as Lo and I walked away from her cell.

Inside the car, I asked, “Mr. Lo, do you have any proof that Mindy Madison is indeed my mother?”

“Absolutely, “ he said with such confidence that my heart sank to the bottom of the Black Dragon Pond.

31

My Mother, Both Dead and Alive

The next day I returned to Lo’s office where, as promised, Lo gave me my birth certificate. The space next to “mother” read: Cai Mindi. Mindi was almost the same as Mindy, and Cai was my mother’s family name, and she was Mayfong. But why had this woman changed from her Chinese name Cai Mindi to Mindy Madison?

Lo said, “Cai Mindi was briefly married to an Englishman—one of her admirers and overseas art contacts—so she could move out of the country when she’d learned that the government was starting to crack down on art smugglers. She’d hoped that her new, foreign name would prevent the government from finding out her true identity. But obviously it didn’t work.”

“What happened to her foreign husband?”

“Miss Madison only used him to change her name, and to help smuggle art to Europe. So after he went back to London, she divorced him.”

This weak, dying ghost woman certainly didn’t look as if she’d once had another incarnation as a cunning femme fatale. Then I suddenly realized why my mother had never shown me my birth certificate. All I’d ever seen was my Hong Kong Identity Card.

As a teenager, when I’d have big, hormonal fights with her, I’d scream, “I wish you were not my mother!” or even “I wish you were dead!” Now finally I was being punished by the bizarre karma of “Be careful what you wish for.”

I sighed. “Mr. Lo, what am I supposed to do now?”

“It was your mother’s wish to reunite with you and atone for what she did before she dies. Maybe she shouldn’t have lied to get you to come back, but she had no other way.”

“Did you just say she lied? Then is she really my mother or not?”

“Hmm…” He had the expression of an animal trapped between a cliff and a rifle-wielding hunter.

“Answer me, please!”

“Of course Mindy Madison, or Cai Mindi, is your mother. What I mean is, there’s no money left for you to collect.”

I felt blood rushing to my head. “I’ve been waiting for you to tell me when I’ll get paid. So now, what do you mean, there’s no money left to collect?”

“The statement is self-explanatory.”

My voice shot up to the ceiling as my heart dropped on the floor. “You mean that I won’t be paid! That I risked my life for nothing! But it was written in the legal document!”

“Legal document or not, there is no money.”

“You serious?”

He nodded. “Calm down, Miss Lin. The money did exist once, but it was all confiscated.”

I should have never trusted anyone in China, and maybe should have discussed this with Chris, who was much smarter in money matters than me.

“Then how did she have the fifty thousand to pay me?”

“The fifty thousand was nearly all she had left. The rest was used to pay for better treatment in prison—much can be arranged, if your wallet is as bloated as a glutton’s stomach. “

I scoffed. “Three million. Oh, God… and I did that for nothing?!”

“No, not for nothing. You got paid fifty thousand, you reunited with your mother, and maybe you can even save her life.”

I felt too dejected to say anything.

“Today you can ask her as many questions as you wish and stay as long as you want. My advice is, forget the money. The most urgent thing is to clear your mother’s name so she won’t be executed.”

“But how can I do that?”

“I’ve already asked experts to verify the Diamond Sutra and Gold Buddha you put back in the Turpan Museum. Once they’re proved authentic, the accusation of theft will be dropped.”

“But don’t they know that the fakes had been sitting in the museum for a long time?”

“They only care about having the real ones back and don’t want to lose face by telling the whole world that the treasures were stolen right from under their eyes. Did you bring the fakes you exchanged?”

I nodded, fishing them out from my backpack and handing them to Lo.

He studied the two objects for a few moments. “I’ll destroy these so there’s no evidence they ever existed.”

“Destroy? Please don’t! Can’t I keep them?” Fake or not, they were beautiful pieces, and I’d gone through a lot to get them—the mountain path with no stairs, the hanging-upside-down-lotus, my sane performance of insanity to trick Floating Cloud.

Lo laughed. “Don’t even think about it. Now give me the piece of clay you scraped from the terracotta soldier and the herbs.”

I handed them over. When he was staring at the clay, I asked, “What’s the use of this tiny bit of dirt?”

Lo cast me a chiding glance. “This is enough to prove the soldier is a fake and that Miss Madison didn’t, nor have any intention to, steal it in the first place. So, after the clay is proven fake and the two museum pieces genuine, the government will not detain her anymore, let alone execute her.”

Next, Lo, to my surprise, not only examined the snow lotuses but also rubbed them against his nose and sniffed them with great affection. “You have no idea how important this is for your mother. Snow Lotus is the number one Chinese herb to cure cancer and prolong life. If she can be released from prison and recover, it’ll be a happy ending.”

Happy ending? Definitely not for me, three million dollars poorer than I’d expected to be.

He gave me a stern look. “So my advice is, be loving to your mother. That’s the reason you were told to read the Filial Piety Classic at the Stele Forest at the start of your trip—to remind you to be filial.”

Oh… that’s the reason. But I was filial to my mother, the one who had raised me in Hong Kong. Now my head was spinning at these revelations, and I felt too confused to argue.


The next day, Lo arranged a car to take us to the prison. Again he led me into the hellish institution and went through all the procedures with me, but after that, he took his leave.

“You’re not coming with me?”

“No. Today it’s your private meeting with Miss Madison. I’ll be waiting in the car.” He handed me a thermos he’d been carrying. “This is the snow lotus decoction for your mother. Make sure she drinks it all.”

Today Mindy Madison still looked weak but seemingly in slightly better spirits. I realized how I must seem to her eyes—suspicious, cold, heartless, stubborn. But could I be blamed? I had to deal with a stranger who not only plummeted into my life as my newly revealed mother but also was a cancer victim, a criminal, a death row prisoner—and whose mess I was now supposed to clean up.

Madison’s haunting eyes, hollow in her paper-white face, stared at me like a famished child’s. My heart sank. I’d never seen anyone so pale. It was clear that her blood, her qi, and her soul itself were all draining fast as she was about to pass from this body and this life to the next.

I handed her the thermos. “Mr. Lo said for you to drink all of it.”

She took it, poured the liquid into a filthy plastic cup, and faithfully downed its contents in long, noisy sips.

After that, she reached to hold my hand, and this time I let her. That was the least I could do for a person approaching the end of this journey. So I was willing to let her absorb my life’s vibrancy and my body’s warmth as she was losing hers.

“I know it’s difficult for you to accept me as your mother,” she said in her smoke-thin voice.

I avoided her hungry-ghost gaze as I felt her hand icy cold like that of a skeleton in a medical lab. “But you are not my mother.”