I named my daughter "Stella," hoping that perhaps this English name would counteract her ominous Chinese name. I suppose her maternal grandfather, Mr. Huang, had given her that name as a reminder of his granddaughter's sins.
Her grandfather must have known from the beginning that the child was not to blame for her mother's demise. But, you see, after more than 14 years since the child's birth, his sentiment regarding the girl remains largely the same.
He named her "Mei Qian."
"Qian," as in "to owe" or "to be in debt."
"Mei," a word for "beauty."
It's a simple name--a name with very few strokes and at the same time, sounding pleasant enough to be regarded as a common name. For Mei Qian, it allowed her to easily spell out her name, stroke by stroke, on her exercise books, textbooks, and homework. To her, writing it was that much more convenient, and almost as rewarding as the perfect completion of her spelling quizzes when peers in her kindergarten struggle to write their respective names.
I remember Mei Qian breezing into my room at 10 am on a Sunday to show me her spelling book, and with a smile, she said to me, "Daddy, I can write my name! Stella is clever, right? Auntie Yvonne said that I am 'in-tel-li-gen'." Seeing her exuberance that day, I could not help but praise her--telling her that it was due to her scoring a hundred in her quizzes, rather than the neatly written Chinese characters, "Wan Mei Qian", that she earned the praise.
"But Wei Han can't write his name even though he also got a 100!" Mei Qian justified. "So I'm more clever than him right?"
It took me another 10 minutes to remind her not to be too proud of her achievements, and that Wei Han probably had a name with complex writing. Mei Qian sulked, but it was to be expected of her. I refrained from telling her that the true essence of a name is in its meaning, not in its pronunciation or spelling--an adage which Father used to say before he left for the afterlife.After all, both he and Mei Qian were only 5 then, too young to understand the meaning of their names and the wishes of the people who named them.
Ever since I met Mei Qian when she was barely a month old, I I knew from the back of my mind that she would one day question her parentage. And until now, I am still waiting for the day when she would mouth her first doubts regarding the identity of her mother.
To that end, I have taken all the necessary steps Yvonne and I could think of. And the fact that even until the age of 14 I have yet to hear her queries regarding her mother reinforces the thought that I, as her father, have succeeded in my attempts to avert the inevitable. But I understand that this method of biding time will become ineffective. As Mei Qian matures, she will no doubt, gain more insight into her life and the wisdom of the ways of the world around her.
I have to be ready for the day when she begins seeking answers to the many things which are absent in her life. To that end, I have always tried to find a way to explain to her who her mother was, and who Mei Qian is now. Each night, I would ruminate for an hour or so, reminiscing about her mother while gazing at the distant skies through the window of my room. While doing so, I would always pen my thoughts onto slips of paper to make sense of what exactly happened between us and to aid my revelations regarding her mother should the need arise.
I have done so dutifully until this very day and the scribbled notes which I hurriedly squeezed into the drawer beneath the table date back to the first night when I lulled Mei Qian to sleep in my arms. However, most of my memories of her seem to have undergone slight alterations in the course of time.
Yvonne, who must have already been sleeping in her room next to mine, has always warned me against putting things out of context and blurring truths when I think about the past. Yvonne would tell me again and again that perhaps that was never what she meant when she said them. Yvonne would always tell me how she was not one to be able to foresee the future with that degree of precision. Yvonne would then, in a harsher tone uncharacteristic of her, scoff at my theories, calling them delusions or whatnot, before reassuring me that things were perhaps, much simpler than I imagined.
But you must understand--Yvonne has never met Mei Qian's mother.
That alone should be enough to explain her haste in arriving at those conclusions. I reckon that anyone who has spent enough time with Mei Qian's mother will understand that my conjectures were not mere fantasies.
Because it sounds similar to her mother's. That was why, no matter how foreboding her name meant, I did not heed Yvonne's advice to change it.
The mother whom to this day I still hesitate to call her my wife, was aptly named "Mei Qian."
"Mei" written in the same manner as her daughter's.
"Qian" another adjective for "beauty".
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Author's notes:
Stella Wan's Chinese name is written like this: 万美欠
her mother's name: 黄美倩
