“Can we try this one, this one… this one’s rather pretty… Your clothes are a bit plain, Ivy, and I think some color would liven you up… I want you to look brighter, more energetic…” Sunrin glanced around. “Where are you?”

Ivy took the white dress, of a heavy cotton material, to the changing stall. After strapping on the heels, she looked at her reflection, hardly daring to believe she was the girl in the mirror. A sprinkling of fine baby hairs framed a soft oval face, cut by dark brows arched vividly against iridescent skin, a result of all the plumping moisturizers she’d been using the past week. The drape of the dress was severe in its lines, she would never have picked out something like this on her own, and yet the very austerity of the dress made her appear more feminine and youthful by contrast.

She peeked at the price tag. Her chin quivered with despair. She said in a gay voice, “Do you think it makes me look too—old-fashioned?” The four thousand RMB Nan had given her for the summer would barely cover the cost of the shoes.

Not at all, Sunrin and the shopgirl chirped. You look like a bird—an egret!—you look like a dancer; that white is a shade only very beautiful-skinned girls can wear.

“We’ll take everything,” said Sunrin, pulling out her Amex from a designer Mickey Mouse wallet.

Ivy feebly tried to protest, but Sunrin laughed her wonderful, deep-throated laugh and waved them away.

At first, Ivy tried to abide by her grandmother’s teachings (there are no such things as free carrots) by telling herself she was in Sunrin’s debt, she couldn’t take advantage of her aunt’s generosity without wearing out her welcome or causing Sunrin to think Ivy was an ungracious, low-class girl. But as the days slipped by in two-hour tasting menus, private guided tours, mall after mall after mall, Sunrin’s Mickey Mouse wallet flashing its cute black ears in and out of her purse, Ivy’s vague sense of caution receded as mist in the presence of Sunrin’s blinding sun. She still adopted an air of bashful embarrassment at the sight of the gold Amex swiping for her various purchases, but she’d stopped pretending to pull out her own meager four thousand RMB, still untouched, and she’d toned down her effusive thank-yous, not wishing Sunrin to think her insincere or, worse, pitiful in her overwhelming gratitude for something Sunrin considered inconsequential.

“You’re family,” Sunrin said one day after Ivy once again stammered out her thanks. “How often do you come to China? And besides, what’s the purpose of making money if not to spend it?”

Ivy could not deny this logic. For every RMB Sunrin spent on her, she spent an equal amount of money on clothes for her two children, for her husband, for herself. The only person Sunrin never bought any gifts for was the ayi. At first, Ivy felt sorry for the hired help, always coaxing or chasing a screaming child, a three-headed shadow trailing after them in beige slacks and white sneakers. But one evening in Hong Kong, Ivy saw Sunrin hand the ayi an envelope of cash as her “bonus” for the trip, and Ivy understood: not all forms of money were equal. She thought: I’ll always carry my wealth on my body, not in my wallet.

One day she saw a pair of beautiful blue suede sneakers and thought how handsome they would look on Austin. Intercepting Ivy’s glance, Sunrin asked for help in picking out souvenirs for the Lins. She said she’d been meaning to choose gifts for them but Ivy would know better what they liked. Ivy picked out cashmere sweaters, summer pajamas, and leather gloves with fur trims for Nan and Meifeng; battery-powered toys, sweets, the blue suede sneakers for Austin; and for Shen, who Sunrin had said was like a brother to her, a mini karaoke system after Ivy said no, her father had no hobbies, and Sunrin said, “Oh, but how he loved to sing as a boy.” Ivy took just as much pleasure—if not more pleasure—in selecting these things for her family as she did for herself. Her stammering embarrassment when dealing with suave shop clerks evaporated. Sunrin had bestowed her authority, as if Ivy were a treasurer whose job it was to allocate the queen’s funds. She ordered salespeople around with a loftiness she mistook for ownership, and she only colored a little when, on her last evening with Sunrin, she had to ask her aunt for a spare suitcase to hold all of her new purchases. Awash in the rich peripheral glow of her aunt’s money, Ivy felt she and Sunrin were alike, with the same tastes, opinions, and expectations, and that Sunrin’s generosity was her own, there was hardly any difference between them at all.

* * *

ON A SWELTERING Saturday in August, Sunrin drove Ivy to a very different part of Chongqing, full of crumbling gray and brown homes, where laundry fluttered over plastic wash bins on cement balconies. Aunt Hong came out to greet them, a broader, older version of Nan in a floral blouse and checkered slacks. “Thank you for taking our Jiyuan,” she said to Sunrin, bowing repeatedly. “I hope she wasn’t too much of a bother! Nan says she has a weak stomach, she’s always been a sickly child… and the trouble you’ve gone through to take her traveling…” Aunt Hong went on and on. After two weeks of listening to Sunrin’s mellifluous “proper” Mandarin, Aunt Hong’s coarse dialect jarred Ivy’s ears. Sunrin drove off in her gray German car after one last jaunty wave and throaty laugh, the fairy godmother back to her fairyland, and Ivy abandoned, back to the real world.

Everything about this new neighborhood repulsed her. Old men spitting on the sidewalks, little boys peeing on the street corners, rotting meat hanging from hooks along the stores, the pushing and shoving and random violence that seemed to occur on a regular basis: fistfights, knife fights, women pulling at each other’s hair while a circle of onlookers shouted their allegiances. The noises from the street vendors woke her up every morning, selling freshly butchered meat, farm-picked vegetables, dried herbs, teas, fresh fruit, dried fruit, nuts. It was a cacophony all day long until late evening, when the food vendors went home and then the entertainment vendors set up shop selling pirated American movies, cotton pajamas, plastic house slippers, cheap light-up toys. This was Meifeng’s China, the one she had sold her daughter to escape.

Aunt Hong’s older daughter, Yingying, was in her late twenties and engaged to a middle-aged man who owned a car repair shop. The younger daughter was named Wang Yan Jiu but everyone called her Jojo. She was only nine months older than Ivy but nevertheless called her meimei, an endearment given to younger sisters. Jojo was short and thickset, dressed most of the time in basketball shorts and tight, flashy T-shirts, her hair brushed into a fluffy bob. Her eyes were the same as Ivy’s—those beautiful lashes. Jojo always said what she thought, even if it got her in trouble, as it almost always did. Ivy recalled Nan’s old stories of Jojo’s delinquency: how she flunked all her exams, skipped class, how she got kicked out of school for fighting her classmates, how she smoked and drank and tattooed her bicep at age nine with the Chinese character for free, how she never listened to her mother and suffered beatings for her uncontrollable temper. Stories like this always ended with: “Poor Jojo. But then, she never had a father.” It wasn’t her fault, they said. She’d had no firm hand growing up.