Seeing you is a burden, the man with the knife said, the waves crashing beneath him.
She stood in the kitchen, Evangelical. “More tea?” she said over her shoulder, her hands reaching into the cupboard for two thick white mugs.
Lucky closed her eyes. That missing minute, Evangelical here and then suddenly there, haunted her. Her throat tight, she swallowed again. Found herself considering taking a sip, a small sip, from her tea.
She looked up to find Evangelical at the door, shaking the rain from her red coat, a bag of groceries at her feet, the second one still balanced in the crook of her arm.
No, that’d been earlier. She blinked, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment, just a moment, and opened them. Evangelical came close with two steaming mugs of tea in hand, past and present once again on the same page.
“We should talk,” her salvation had said.
I want to, Lucky said in that quiet voice that only she could hear. But there was too much. Too much dust, too many cobwebs.
You have much to answer for.
Yes, the blood had dried and the flesh had been nibbled and the bones gnawed years ago. Nothing worthwhile hid in the past.
There will be other chances, the slaughtered said from the corner, the words slow. She knew why they were thick. She knew why they sounded wet.
Lucky looked to the window and squeezed her eyes shut. Stop it, she thought. Nothing of use waited under those stones left unturned. To speak now of what was then, it was pointless.
Her stories could only destroy.
Besides, she wondered, her trembling hands rising to cover her ears, who would believe her beginning began the day she died?
CHAPTER TWO
In a shining villa in the center of Shanghai, her thighs burning, her back aching, and her knees rubbed so raw they all but whimpered, Lucky kneeled, silent, waiting and more exhausted than any almost twenty-four year old should be.
The Revolution had arrived almost a decade ago on the heels of a brief, bloody civil war. The Communist storm which had darkened the horizon for years had finally crept in and swept out the poor, the infirm, the religious. And now, outside the city, in the rural areas, thousands were dying in what was feared would be an historic famine. The old and weak falling first. Small children left to starve in the fields under the watchful eyes of hungry prey. The trees plucked of their leaves and stripped of their bark, the birds silent in their absence.
But far from the devastation and desolation, Lucky worked.
Her father dead and her mother dying, the family had abandoned Bad Luck Lucky. Closed their hearts, closed their pocket books, and closed their doors, leaving the cursed girl to fend for herself. Scraps of food dug from gutters. The touch of strangers endured for the warmth of a blanket and a bowl of rice.
Then one hot day, the clouds building and the air thick and wet with a coming storm, the woman with the lopsided smile had appeared and Lucky’s life changed.
Although still young, she’d now spent five years as an indentured soldier in the army serving Madame Xuo the Silent. One of many girls who scrubbed Madame’s endless floors and polished Madame’s precious silver and bent under the weight of the buckets of rainwater carried into Madame’s house.
Her fingers would dig into her elbows, squeezing the ache away. And she’d grit her teeth and close her eyes, willing away the fever, the chills, the exhaustion as she wet the brush and lathered the rag and scrubbed away stains that didn’t exist. Accepting her fate as if she was old and the best bits of life were far behind, she’d pick her way through her rice, her fish, her piece of fruit, and then lay on the floor hoping sleep would come.
But regardless the misery the hours held, each day would close with Lucky and her fellow recruits standing shoulder to shoulder to offer a low bow as Yin Ying, the favored servant of Madame Xuo the Silent, passed by on her way to Madame’s very private quarters.
One never saw Madame. It was said she was small and her skin was the color of moonlight. That her feet were tiny and her steps were nimble and all her kimonos were expensive golden silk, her wealth so immense and her power so vast that not even Mao Zedong dared interrupt the life Madame Xuo the Silent had carved for herself.
A life Lucky had a very small part in. And after four birthdays ignored, four birthdays having passed without a word, this, her fifth birthday under Madame Xuo’s roof, her twenty-fourth year, was when the dreaded invite came.
Like much of Madame Xuo’s life, her birthday teas were legendary. An event that lived in furtive fears confided in quiet corners. Yin Ying would approach to whisper in the girl’s ear. A nod of the head followed by a small bow and the newly damned would join the mysterious favorite to trudge down the Great Hall, turn the corner and never be seen again. At least not in the house.
“They found her,” the girl said, her voice low. “On the edge of the water, in the bay where the ships come in.”
“It’s true,” said her friend, moving deeper into one of the darker alcoves hidden throughout Madame’s bright, golden villa. A dream of light and beauty, it was, the scent of rare flowers carried on light breezes sneaking through large open windows.
“I heard she couldn’t speak,” a third said, standing close, her lips against her friends’ cheeks. “That she stood in a flowered dress with her eyes closed, like she was asleep.”
The first girl shook her head. “No, she opened her eyes, but they were black and wet, and when she opened her mouth, flies crawled from between her lips. And her nose, it bled, too, but the blood was thick and black.”
They all nodded.
“She stood there,” said the second girl. “Blind, her nose bleeding black and her teeth missing—”
“Her teeth were missing?” said the first.
“That’s what I heard,” the third girl said.
“How horrible.”
“And then when the black started to run from under her dress and down her legs and onto the dock,” the third said, “the sailors, even the ship’s captain, everyone who’d gathered to help, they ran away. It frightened them. They were sure she was a demon or something.”
“Yes,” the first girl said with another nod. “Something worse.”
Then, their whispers no longer quiet, their hearts fearing discovery, they’d break formation, abandoning their post to scrub the floors or gather buckets of rain water or gently wash Madame’s delicate ceramic cups, the story of this unfortunate stepping wordlessly from the dock to be pulled deep into the churning water of Hangzhou Bay left for another time and a different dark corner.
Lucky waited, kneeling, the room hot.
No one spoke of this space. Until now, Lucky had never heard of it. A part of the house, but separate, it lay hidden and protected by ignorance. Thick walls that shimmered with the glow of flames and a low ceiling that remained in shadow. Coals that smoldered with a dangerous heat in a brazier along the edge, the boards beneath her knees cracked, splintered, and covered in dust. The low table in front of her buckled with a warped ripple in its middle. The air heavy and thick, each breath was clouded with the stench of incense and herbs and heated wood. Around her, the walls were large heavy panels painted red that stretched floor to ceiling, a large bright green and gold dragon slithering, dancing, snapping along the baseboard, its bared fangs in an endless chase with its forked tail.
“You may look at Madame,” the oafish Yin Ying said through thick lips that masked a mouthful of blunt, crooked teeth.
With a glance, Lucky thanked the familiar, but mysterious, servant who stood too tall, walked too heavy, and offered slow dangerous smiles from a lopsided face.
Although both she and Yin Ying kneeled, the servant at the end, her back to the brazier, Lucky on one side of the table, facing her host, Madame Xuo sat perched in a low chair on the other, her knees gracing the floor, but not kneeling for that’s something Madame would never do.
On the brazier, the cast iron kettle came to a boil and Yin Ying, a thick pot holder wound ‘round her hand, poured the
water into small tea pots on the table—one for Madame, one for Lucky—until it overflowed to run over the black clay. The tiny lid clamped on, more water was poured, sealing and heating the pot while the loose tea inside steeped.
The ceramic cup beside her pot was larger than usual. Where most held no more than two swallows, hers could hold six, maybe eight. Delicate and precious, the outside was painted with a dragon, a smaller echo of the one slithering along the baseboards.
Although she had yet to accept Yin Ying’s earlier invitation to look at Xuo the Silent, Lucky knew what she’d discover. The face painted white, the brows careful strokes of black. A shining dark wig gathered in a large round bun. The pale powdered lips cleaved from nose to chin by a thick slash of red. The kimono a predictable expensive gold silk, her hands, the color of moonlight, sitting on her lap, discreet and out of sight.
And driven by something strong and unapologetic, something she couldn’t fight, Lucky lifted her gaze. First to the dragon wrapping around the cup and the fingers of steam rising from the clay pot, then to the dim varnish of the low table sitting between them, and finally to Madame Xuo the Silent.
Her eyes saw Madame. And as the silent woman sat, her eyes downcast, the painted, powdered lids heavy, her chin tucked to her chest, the shadow sitting behind her (which could have only been Madame’s) rose to stand and stretch, its arms reaching wide against the glow of the smoldering coals flickering against the painted red walls.
CHAPTER THREE
Nestled in a pile cluttering the coffee table sat a discarded pouch of Lipton bleeding into the sunken oval of a porcelain saucer.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” Evangelical said. She lowered the mug into a nearby abyss, the porcelain finding the saucer and a watery pool of its own russet-hued blood with a gentle clank.
“It can fell armies,” Lucky heard herself saying.
And raise kings, came the remembered words from Madame Xuo’s red room.
The vengeful wraith of the woman with the white face and a slash of scarlet for lips waited opposite Lucky. From a small, low chair that had once sat in a distant past, she was near the window in the here and now, her eyes low, her tongue crawling with secrets and lies and things best left unsaid.
“I’m sorry?” Evangelical said.
Madame Xuo stared at Lucky, her knees not kneeling as they rested not on the grimy grey of a familiar carpet, but on ancient boards that were cracked, splintered and covered with dust. Nearby, Yin Ying stood too tall against the worn yellow of the wall, her breathing too loud as her wet lips broke into an eerie grin. She looked at the drops rolling down the window pane, then Evangelical, and then Lucky.
And her salvation sat, a stubborn remnant of her present refusing the determination of her ominous past. Evangelical leaned forward to take her tea from the low table between them, the warped wood holding two clay pots and two ceramic cups and small plates of roast duck, rice, fruit, small bites of candy.
Chinese funeral food.
Lucky paused and closed her eyes.
Outside, heavy clouds sobbed sheets of rain.
Inside, present relented to past, the room growing hot. A dragon snapped, slithered and snaked along the baseboards, the walls painted panels of red. Lucky on one side of the table, too young to die, the cup in her hands. Madame across from her, her knees not kneeling, her eyes downcast even as Lucky took her first sip.
The brew was bitter and thick, tasting of forgotten corners in high cupboards and a misplaced pride which knew neither embarrassment nor shame.
“It’s very old,” Yin Ying was saying, her back once again to the precarious heat of the brazier. “As old as China itself, they say. They also say it’s so powerful and rare it can fell armies and raise Kings.” She laughed, the sound viscid with slobber and bordering on cruel.
A second sip.
Did Madame’s lips twitch? Lucky wondered. Was there the hint of a smile poking at the corners?
Lucky’s face felt strange. She swallowed. Blinked her eyes. Found it odd that she felt heavy. Like stone. Empty stone. Like a corpse. One of those mummified Buddhists found hidden deep in a dark cave. The skin grey and shrunken, the skeleton still sitting as if waiting for coins to clink in his bowl. She was a husk. A husk that lived and breathed. That had skin that was warm to the touch with flesh that moved. Her cheeks, her nose, the edges of her eyes, everything, were she
this unfortunate
to see it in a mirror, it’d ripple like the waves
pulled deep
in Hangzhou Bay.
A third sip, Yin Ying gasping, Madame’s gaze still downcast.
She wanted to feel her face. Put her palms to her cheeks to feel the skin coming alive, snapping, slithering and snarling like the dragon riding the base of her cup. But she couldn’t. It wouldn’t be appropriate. She needed to be silent and discreet, her hands on her lap, her head bowed.
Her face was moving. The skin was alive, yes. Her fingers could feel it—for her palms had insisted on discovery despite decorum—but she didn’t know what it was. And her neck. The flesh there, too, was pulsing, pounding, wandering. Moving in ways it never had and simply could not and should not. She blinked, her vision growing dark.
She reached for the cup. A fourth sip.
“Madame,” Yin Ying said from the past.
“Are you okay?” Evangelical said in the present, her blonde hair too close, her forehead almost pressing against hers, Lucky’s fists clenched in hers. “Are you alright?”
“No,” Yin Ying said again. “No one’s ever had more than three.” The servant was weeping, sobbing, her shoulders shaking, the heels of her hands digging into her eyes. “Madame!”
Lucky was no longer in her body. She stood somewhere else, watching, wondering, curious. Afraid. She could see herself, too skinny and too scared and too close to dead as she took another sip. The cursed child at the end of a loveless, troubled life. She could see Yin Ying kneeling, panicked and afraid.
Of what? Lucky wondered.
Her hands were trapped. Evangelical still held them.
“The day I died . . . ” Lucky said.
Too young.
She stopped, the words leaving her, her voice sounding old, the young Lucky still suffering somewhere in a past that still lived.
Are you afraid?
She looked around and saw the unfamiliar. She was not home. Eidolon had never blazed with this kind of heat. The walls had never been this red and a dragon had never raced around this room in a blur of green and yellow and gold chasing a tail it could never catch.
The shadow stood behind Madame Xuo.
A sixth sip.
“Madame, please!” said Yin Ying to Madame Xuo the Still Silent, the words choked with tears. “She should have stopped at three.”
“I need only three,” Lucky said, her voice sounding distant.
“I’m sorry?” Evangelical released her hands. A cool palm was placed on Lucky’s forehead. The devout woman’s breath smelled of Ritz crackers and weak tea. We had Ritz in the house? Lucky found herself wondering, and then thought of the discarded pouch of Lipton weeping somewhere in a saucer.
“We need to talk,” Evangelical was saying, but the table still sat low and the room was still hot. And the Lucky living in the past still held her cup of tea, one sip, the seventh, remaining. She couldn’t feel her hands. She couldn’t feel her lips. The memory of these things, knowing where they were and how they were supposed to work, is what guided her now.
The shadow stood behind Madame who had yet to drink her tea. Madame who had yet to move. Madame whose eyes had yet to raise and blink.
Madame who had yet to see.
From where she stood, the Lucky who no longer kneeled, the one who stood in this all-seeing space, saw the flesh of the woman’s painted face had split and cracked. And the skin of those lips slashed red had peeled to dangle on her chin. A layer of dust lay like a thick blanket on the dark wig and the gold of the kimono had faded, the hem worn and fraye
d.
She could see the cobwebs covering Madame, the spiders crawling from the nose to skitter across the cheek and burrow into the ears. Their brethren poking from between her lips to scamper down her chin and into the gold of her kimono. Could see the hands that were not only paler than moonlight, but lacked life. The flesh on this body that should have seen a grave decades ago, yet still sat erect as if awaiting the clink of coin, had shrunk to the bone.
Madame was dead and this red room was the deep of her dark cave.
Glancing into her cup, Lucky saw her final sip. Felt the sudden breeze. A wind that was like the gentle sigh of something lonely and longing. A sigh that ruffled the cobwebs from Madame’s hair. That brought with it the scent of putrid dust and fetid flesh. That peeled flakes of dried skin from Madame that lifted and ducked and dove and swam through the air. That danced near the window and darted away from the rain and spiraled and swooped to land in Lucky’s Lipton.
No.
This ceramic was delicate and stained a shy brown, the brew ancient. If she looked hard enough into the thick liquid, she feared she’d see her own reflection, though she knew that would never be.
And although it wasn’t something she saw, whether she kneeled here, numb and dumb and almost blind, or stood, a tourist, separate and mute, she felt the shadow come closer. Leaving Madame, it came, abandoning the painted husk in an impatient rush, the gold of her kimono rustling.
And by the time Lucky had lifted her head, she knew.
“The day I died,” she said to a world of shadow and red and chasing dragons. She knew the window was still there and the ghosts still gathered in the rain on the avenue below. Knew this past which had lived could not live again despite the familiar ghost hissing from the corner.
Evangelical spoke, her voice slow, the unheard syllable muffled as if whispered from the depths of the darkest shadow waiting at the end of the longest hall.
Kneeling at the low table, Yin Ying near, head down and sobbing, she knew the shadow would wrap around her. Knew it would embrace her. Squeeze tight. Squeeze the breath from her. Squeeze until that final exhalation was released, reluctant and slow, into the air for Madame to catch, and inhale, and suck deep, deep, deep into her lungs and hold until, with a gasp, Xuo the No Longer Silent would lift her eyes, lift her lips in a smile, lift her head, and say,
Eidolon Avenue Page 2