by Anchee Min
Papa worried that when Absalom returned from his latest trip, he would find the numbers down. Papa didn’t want to lose his job. Every night, Papa worked hard on refreshing the Bible stories.
For several Sundays, Pearl and I sat in the back of the church listening to Papa speaking to an almost empty room. Pearl didn’t seem to be bothered by the declining numbers. She continued to bury her face in her books.
I wondered what we would do if Papa lost his job. NaiNai’s illness had worsened during the winter. The medicine no longer had any effect. NaiNai was reluctant to call for a doctor for fear of going deeper into debt. At the thought that I might lose NaiNai, tears came to my eyes. As I raised my chin to push back the tears, I noticed something strange was happening to the church’s ceiling. The beams were covered with brown-colored spots. I went to Pearl and pointed out what I saw. She wondered if the spots were bugs.
For the next few days we watched. The bugs did not move. A week later we found that the bugs had swelled and were turning into green leaves.
“The leaves are growing!” Pearl and I looked at each other and were excited.
In a week, the green leaves took up the entire corner of the ceiling. They began to spread over to the window and then to the top of the doorsills. We called all our friends to come and look. They came. They went home and told their parents about the green miracle on the church’s ceiling.
Eventually we learned that the green growth was willow sprouts. The beams had been made of willow trunks. Although the trunks were stripped bare, the warm spring had brought them back to life.
The news that the foreign god was showing signs of his existence brought people rushing back. Papa called the church’s ceiling God’s Garden. The place was packed the day Absalom returned. The willow beams were flourishing. The new sprouts were five and seven feet long. With the breeze from the window, the leaves swayed like dancers’ sleeves across the room.
With Absalom by his side, Papa read from the Book of Revelation. The crowd listened while enjoying the miracle of God at work. Bees, butterflies, and birds flew in and out of the room and drove the little children wild.
CHAPTER 5
An opera troupe, the Wan-Wan Tunes, arrived. For the Spring Moon Festival it would play The Butterfly Lovers. The moment Pearl and I heard the news, we could barely contain ourselves. Pearl begged Carie for permission to join me and NaiNai, who said it was the last show she wanted to see before she died.
We dressed up for the performance. I wore a blue floral cotton gown and Pearl wore a purple silk dress embroidered with pink butterflies. Pearl carefully stuffed her curly hair under the black knitted cap. From the back, we looked like twin sisters. We made necklaces with fresh jasmine buds. Hand in hand, we walked toward the riverbank where the performance was to take place.
The stage was next to the riverbank. It was an abandoned temple with four columns. The crowd began to gather at sunset. Some people came with boats and others watched from rooftops. There were also people watching from a faraway hillside. With Pearl and me on either side of NaiNai, we pushed through the crowd. We settled near the stage. NaiNai took out roasted soy nuts for Pearl and me to share as we waited for the curtain to open.
The drums finally began. Our hearts raced. We cheered with the crowd. “Wan-Wan Tunes! Wan-Wan Tunes! ”
The curtain moved aside. The stage warmers entered. A string of cartwheels followed. The chorus singers introduced the story. A moment later the actors appeared. The star actor, who played the male lover, the handsome Liang, was a girl. She wore heavy makeup. She was dressed in a splendid sun-colored costume with long jade beads. Her voice had what opera fans would call a copper sound to it, considered the highest quality for a young male voice. Her Wan-Wan tune brought joyful tears to NaiNai’s eyes.
My eyes followed Liang’s every move. His lover, Yin-tai, was a supreme beauty. The actress was wrapped in a long-sleeved pink silk costume. She moved like a goddess stepping from the clouds. Although her breath seemed a little labored, her voice was sweet.
The evening deepened. The stage was brightly lit with lanterns. In front of our eyes, the love story unfolded. The lovers proclaimed their passion and fought the feudal force that tried to separate them. Pearl and I both wept at the end—the lovers had taken their own lives in the face of society’s brutality.
Later on, Pearl would tell me that she had learned the Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet before she knew the name Shakespeare.
The dead lovers came back to life as butterflies. They reunited and lived happily ever after. It was a tragedy with a happy ending. Spreading their giant wings, the lovers danced and sang:
Dreams possessed me
I wandered and finally was where you were
We sat on the veranda
And you sang the sweet old air
Then I woke
With no one near me
The moon shining on
Lighting up dead petals
Making me think that you have passed and gone
After the performance, we escorted NaiNai home. Pearl and I went back to the stage and waited at the exit, hoping to steal glances at the actors. We were fascinated that the entire cast was female. A turtle-faced, bald-headed lady was in charge of the girls. She had played the evil rich man in the opera. Pearl recognized the actor who had played Liang and the girl who had played Yin-tai, her partner. Without makeup and costume, she looked bone-thin. She went and sat on a stool. Her head rested against the wall. She was pale and looked ill. Liang helped her remove her boots and then folded the costumes and packed them into cases.
We learned that the troupe lived in two boats docked by the lower bank. This was where the night soil and trash were dumped. Although the air stank, we didn’t want to leave until the turtle-faced lady threatened to send for our parents.
Pearl and I talked about the opera on our way back. We entertained ourselves with the Wan-Wan tune and the opera’s theme song. We danced as the butterflies, swinging our arms up and down.
The next afternoon Pearl met with me again. We visited the troupe before they departed for the next town. We witnessed something we didn’t expect: The troupe girls were forced to practice their acrobatic skills on the stone pavement. Pearl and I felt fortunate that our parents had not sold us.
Finally we located Liang, who was washing a bucket by the water.
Pearl introduced herself and expressed our admiration.
Liang gave a grateful nod but lowered her eyes. We saw tears running down her cheeks.
“What happened?” Pearl asked. “Where is your friend, Yin-tai?”
“She is sick.”
“Maybe she is just exhausted,” Pearl comforted her. “Give her a day to rest. I’m sure she’ll recover.”
“No, there is no hope.”
“What do you mean?”
“She is dying of tuberculosis,” the actor sobbed. She pulled over the clothes she was washing and showed us a bloodstain.
Pearl and I were shocked.
“Isn’t she supposed to perform tonight?” we asked.
“The performance has just been canceled.” The actor broke down. “The doctor said that she wouldn’t make it through the night.”
We didn’t know what else to say.
The beautiful actress died. Having no money for a proper burial, the turtle-faced lady dumped the body into the river. Since the girl had been sold to the troupe at a young age, neither her parents nor any relatives had been notified about her death. After Pearl told Carie what had happened, she called Absalom and Papa. Both men went to the river and brought the body back. Absalom conducted a modest ceremony and the actress was buried in the back of the old church. NaiNai, Wang Ah-ma, and Lilac washed the young actress and dressed her in the dress I had worn to the opera. I was comforted to see that she fit my dress perfectly.
Liang came for the farewell. She was sorrow-stricken. For a moment my mind went back to the stage scene where he expressed his undying love for her as she lay
dying.
Pearl couldn’t stop weeping. Weeks later, she went to Absalom demanding an answer. “Why didn’t God do something?”
Absalom told her that “one has to work to earn God’s protection.”
The distressed Pearl came to NaiNai. She took her to the Buddhist temple and asked to read a chapter from the Buddhist scripture. The title was “Heavenly Deaths and Circle of Life.” Afterward, Pearl and I burned incense and prayed for the actress’s soul.
“I am learning what is gay as well as what is terrible,” Pearl said, as if to herself. “I’ll accept the Buddhist notion that all that is truthful is beautiful.”
Dysentery claimed countless lives during the Year of the Rat. NaiNai was among the sick. The local doctor refused to let Absalom and Carie treat NaiNai with their Western medicine. He insisted that the effect of the Chinese herbs that he prescribed would be disturbed.
Papa spent all his savings. NaiNai continued to get worse. I was with Pearl in the hills when a neighbor came and told me that NaiNai was about to depart. By the time I reached NaiNai’s bed, she was almost unconscious. “Carie . . .” she kept calling.
I flew from the house and went to Carie. Without saying a word, Carie picked up her medicine box and came.
“My mother is possessed by evil spirits,” the panic-stricken Papa warned. “If you touch her, bad luck will follow you home.”
“What a shame that my husband converted you!” Carie was disgusted. “You certainly don’t sound like a Christian.” Opening her medicine box, she ordered Papa, “Stay away.”
Taking out her needle and tube, Carie administered a shot for NaiNai. “The dose will do the job,” she said. “Let me know if it doesn’t. I’ll fetch the doctor at the embassy.”
By midnight, NaiNai was asking for water. At sunrise, she said that she was hungry.
While Papa got down on his knees to express his gratitude to Carie, Absalom said that it was God’s will that NaiNai lived.
“It has nothing to do with my wife,” Absalom insisted. “It’s the church members’ collective praying that God answered.”
If Papa was a fake Christian, he changed at that moment. So did NaiNai, who officially said good-bye to the little Buddha statue in her room. She replaced it with a clay figure of Christ—a gift from Absalom.
Still, some things would never change. In NaiNai’s Christian heaven, angels took the form of peach flowers, butterflies, and hummingbirds. God himself lived in a Chinese landscape where lakes reflected clouds and bamboo and pine covered the mountains. What amused Pearl and me the most was that NaiNai’s Christian God traveled on the backs of deer and rode a crane if traveling great distances.
By the time I turned eleven, Pearl knew almost everyone in Chin-kiang. Our favorite person was the popcorn man, who made it to our town the first week of every month. The man spoke a northern dialect and his skin was the color of coal. Dirt thickened his hair and he wore the same canvas clothes with patches on top of patches year after year. Although he never smiled, he couldn’t have been a nicer fellow. His fan-shaped nose was forever smeared with coal dust. Pushing his little cart, he wandered from village to village.
On the popcorn man’s cart was a cannon-shaped cooker made of iron. The firebox was made of tin cans. Connected to the bottom of the firebox was a wooden bellows with an aluminum pipe. A crate of firewood was on the side. On top of the wood sat a cotton sack. We got excited when the man started to heat up the cannon. We watched the flames shoot high. We kept our distance after adults warned that the cannon might explode.
Pearl and I stood by the popcorn man and watched for hours on end. He rotated the cannon with his left hand and worked the bellows with his right. The man needed no clock to tell him when it was time to pop the corn. When he felt that the temperature was just right, he picked up the cotton bag and covered the cannon with it. Using an iron pipe, he pried the cannon open. The sound of an explosion followed. This was what the children had been waiting for.
“Pop!” the man would shout right before the explosion.
While small children covered their ears and some closed their eyes, Pearl and I enjoyed the sound of the explosion. Following the sound came a delicious smell. The cotton sack was instantly full. To us, it was pure magic—a can of corn or rice could be made many times its original size.
Pearl and I jumped for joy the day Carie finally agreed to give us a can of dry corn. It was already dark and the popcorn man was gone. We caught him and begged him to pop the corn for us. The man shook his head and said that the stove was already shut down. We begged and begged. We offered to help him.
We were thrilled when he finally agreed. I worked the cannon while Pearl pulled and pushed the bellows. The flames blazed. Pearl kept looking at the popcorn man—she didn’t want the cannon to explode. About ten minutes later, the moment arrived. The man took over.
We heard the grand sound of the explosion. It felt as if we might go deaf.
That night, the popcorn tasted better than ever.
It became our passion to follow the popcorn man. We were like two fools, said Carie. Her rice jar was our target. Before long, Carie found out that we had been gradually emptying her grain storage. When the popcorn man came, Carie showed up. She called him a crook. Her opera-like voice was heard by the entire town. Carie grabbed the popcorn man by the arm and demanded that he leave.
Pearl and I were embarrassed. We each held Carie back as the man collected his things.
Carie yelled, waving her fist, “Don’t you ever come back and steal from my children!”
The man hurried away, dragging his cart.
For days Pearl and I were sad. We could not forget the popcorn man. We felt guilty about ruining his business.
CHAPTER 6
Absalom had been working hard to convert the town’s newcomer, Carpenter Chan. He was sixteen years old and originally from Canton. He limped a bit. He told Absalom that he had been beaten by his former employer. He had no job and was homeless and in debt. Absalom took him under his wing, hiring Chan to build his church in exchange for shelter and food. Absalom knew exactly the kind of church he wanted. He had a plan and he had purchased the land. It was a leveled lot on the main street near the market.
What Absalom didn’t expect was Carpenter Chan’s stubbornness and peculiar sense of style. Although the man was smart, he was incapable of following Absalom’s design because he found it ugly. Chan had grown up building Chinese temples and was proud of his craft. His ancestors were among those who built the Forbidden City for the emperor. Carpenter Chan’s speciality was Tokung, the traditional interlocking wooden structure. He was frustrated that he was not given an opportunity to use his skills. Carpenter Chan took every opportunity to convince Absalom to alter the design. He told Absalom, “The best Chinese architecture always has the Tokung style. It is a symbol of power, wealth, and nobility.”
“I’d like to have none of that.” Absalom was determined. “The church is a place where souls gather under God. No soul is above or under any other. Instead of power, wealth, and nobility, I’d like you to demonstrate simplicity, humbleness, and warmth.” Absalom wanted his new church to follow a Western design, to be inviting instead of intimidating.
“Why won’t you let me offer Jesus the best of my abilities?” Carpenter Chan was confused. “I should build him a temple instead of a house.”
Nail by nail, Absalom and the carpenter fought. Carpenter Chan was polite and obedient, but the moment Absalom turned his back, he put back what he was ordered to take down.
Absalom threatened to fire Carpenter Chan. He demanded that all the windows be changed. “Make the frames narrower with pointed arches,” Absalom ordered Chan and his crew. “Or I’ll have you walking, all of you!”
Carpenter Chan was miserable when he eventually complied. To him, the rough stone façade was an insult to his reputation.
Absalom called the work a masterpiece, and he praised Carpenter Chan for his fine skills.
When Car
penter Chan started to work on the interior, he invited his friends, the local artists and sculptors, for ideas.
“I understand that you are masters of rendering Chinese gods,”
Absalom warned them instead of greeting them. “But I don’t want my Entrance Jesus to look like the Kuang-yin Buddha. You are forbidden to make Jesus’s expression vicious like the Chinese gate god. Do not show his teeth. As for my Worshipping Jesus by the altar, I don’t want him to look like the Chinese kitchen god. Heaven forbid—do not make Jesus fat.”
By the time the Jesus was presented to Absalom, he had a Buddha belly.
“No Chinese would worship a god who mirrors a bone-thin coolie,” Papa advised.
Absalom was upset. He took up the scraper and carved the fat off of Jesus’s belly himself.
At Sunday church, Carpenter Chan met Lilac, the egg lady. He fell in love with her at first sight. She liked him but was troubled by his limping. Knowing that she was already a converted Christian, he converted himself to please her. It made Papa happy, because he could add one more number to his book. In the meantime, Absalom began another project—to create a school. Carpenter Chan was hired to build an addition behind the church.
Papa was put in charge of the fund-raising. While Absalom was impressed by Papa’s effectiveness and enthusiasm, he was irritated by his methods. Papa told the local businessmen that an investment opportunity had arrived—God would reward them with fortune and prosperity.
Under Absalom’s nose, Papa inflated the numbers for the church attendance. He became bold. He signed up the walk-ins as church members and put out more food to attract beggars from neighboring villages.