After the death of their mother, a six-year-old Claudia watches her older sister Emily tell their father to go away, blaming him for their mother’s death. The family goes through a forty-day mourning period, and the girls’ father begins to focus on his job, inviting his colleagues over and trying to assimilate into American culture. Claudia and Emily help their father prepare for and entertain guests, and Emily hates seeing her father trying to appeal to the American men. One afternoon, Emily tells their father she is going to a friend’s house while guests are over, and a disagreement breaks out; Emily exclaims that he doesn’t deserve her respect and that she wishes he had died instead of their mother. After the party, Emily tells Claudia that she is going to leave the house when she turns eighteen. Claudia remembers another fight that occurred on the eve of the Chinese Spirit Festival when Emily asked Claudia to help cut her hair before she went on a date. When their father realizes Emily plans to go out that night, he demands that she stay home and ridicules Emily for her clothing and makeup. Emily retorts that her father is a coward and cares too much about what other people think. Claudia tries to comfort her father afterward, and he reveals that someone ten years younger was promoted into a rank above his, so he no longer wants to try to impress his colleagues. As Emily leaves, their father lights incense, following traditional Chinese customs for the first time in years since their mother's passing to keep Emily safe from the wandering ghosts on that night. Claudia knows that her father loves her older sister more, noting she is often overlooked in her father's eyes. When the girls grow older, Emily leaves home to go to college at UC Berkeley, and Claudia gets accepted at Columbia, studying hard to impress her father. In Claudia’s third year of college, the girls’ father has a stroke and dies. Emily returns for the funeral and requests that they not have a Buddhist cremation ceremony which they had held when their mother died. Still, Emily dresses in black and white, a traditional custom, and tells Claudia that she never fights with anyone anymore. Claudia responds that the reason why their father was the only one Emily argued with was that their father was the only one who cared about Emily that much. Claudia feels jealous of her sister because her father loved her more and she has more memories with their mother. After the funeral, Emily asks Claudia to give her a haircut, and Emily cuts two feet of her sister’s hair off for the first time in their lives. That night, Emily screams after seeing the ghost of their father, and Claudia waits for her father to visit her, too. He never does.