Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Tofu Liu put Marie in contact with Yiwen, who was now a divorced mother and an electrical engineer. Yiwen told Marie that Ling had died in 1996, the same year that Ai-Ming had returned from the States. “Ai-Ming wasn’t well” when she arrived, so she was unable to obtain residency in China (416). Instead, Ai-Ming went to live with Big Mother Knife after writing Yiwen a letter saying she planned to move to the desert. Yiwen had responded to Ai-Ming in an “extremely harsh” way and Ai-Ming never wrote her again (416).

Yiwen expressed her love for Ling and said that they had been very close before she died. Marie asked if Ling or Ai-Ming every talked about Marie or her mother, but Yiwen explained that they had had never mentioned them out of decorum. Marie thought about how her father appeared to have killed himself because he felt guilty over the trouble he had caused Sparrow, as well as the trouble he had caused Marie and her mother. She finds it hard to “forgive” him, but mostly wishes he had learned to “forgive himself” (419).