Petals from the Sky

by Mingmei Yip

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Mr.-”

  “Michael,” he said.

  As he patted the child’s head, a young woman with disheveled hair and a tear-streaked face dashed toward us and grabbed the child from me. She pinched the kid on the face, arms, and legs until he burst out crying. She laughed. “Oh, my jewel! My heart! Your flesh hurts! You’re alive!” Then she grabbed my arm. “Oh, thank you so much, miss.”

  I pointed to Michael. “Thank him; it’s he who smashed the windows and led people out.”

  The woman’s mouth broke into a huge grin. She put her hands together, bowed, and spoke in accented English. “Oh, dank you, dank you, gweilo Buddha.” Foreign devil Buddha. Then she turned to the child and hollered in Cantonese, “Son-ah, thank this aunty and this gweilo uncle, quick!”

  The boy plopped down, prostrate, and kowtowed like a little monk. Michael and I laughed despite the recent disaster. The woman laughed, too, then again thanked us profusely as she led her son away. I watched, with sadness, the boy’s departing back as he scurried away with his mother on his small, chubby feet.

  Michael pointed to the ambulance. “Meng Ning, why don’t you come with me to see if they need help?” He took my elbow and we hurried to the white van.

  To my surprise, I saw Yi Kong and several other people lying semiconscious on stretchers. My heart flipped. Oh, Goddess of Mercy, please don’t let anything bad happen to my teacher!

  Although Yi Kong’s face looked pale and her lips bloodless, she was whispering to the eye-twitching nun, who knelt next to her. I felt a rush of relief. Then I noticed that her torn robe revealed her smooth-skinned shoulder. It was the first time I’d seen this much of her; my cheeks felt hot. Several other nuns and monks gathered around her, muttering and watching intently. Michael walked up to the van and said to the ambulance men in English, “I’m a doctor. Can I take a look at her?”

  After he had checked Yi Kong’s breathing and felt her pulse, he said, “She’s inhaled a little smoke, but otherwise I think she’s fine.”

  Yi Kong blinked and muttered, “Thank you.”

  Michael nodded as he walked away to check on the others.

  Yi Kong reached out her hand to touch the eye-twitching nun’s sleeve. “Make sure everyone is all right…” A tear trickled down from the corner of her eye. “Oh, those books in the Sutra Storing Pavilion!”

  Though I’d known her for more than fifteen years, I’d never before seen her face and voice filled with emotion. Despite the tragedy, I felt a secret pleasure at this unexpected revelation.

  She spotted me. “Meng Ning, is that you?”

  I went to kneel down by her side. “Yes, Yi Kong Shifu.”

  She muttered, taking my hand. It was also the first time she’d touched me like this-filled with tenderness. My hand brushed against her bare shoulder-so warm and soft.

  “You’re back-How long have you been away? Five years?” The stressful situation didn’t seem to have confused her sharp memory. But as I was about to reply I saw she had already closed her eyes.

  As I watched the ambulance carry Yi Kong away, from the corner of my eye I saw a face with a red scar like a snake slithering under the sun. I quickly turned, but saw nothing except the sad-faced nuns with their excited orphans.

  7. One Day When We Were Young

  Michael and I stayed in the Fragrant Spirit Temple to help. Fortunately no one was seriously injured, for everybody had gotten out through the windows in time.

  By the time everything settled down, we were limp with exhaustion. Then I saw Michael looking at my leg. I followed his eyes and noticed my blood-stained knee and ankle. The bleeding had stopped, but the knee was badly scraped. I burst out crying. He took hold of my shoulders and propped me up. Tears of fear, pain, exhaustion, and pent-up emotion rolled down my cheeks, my Buddhist robe, and spilled onto Michael’s. Some young nuns in the front court inspected us with curious eyes.

  Finally I stopped crying. “I’m sorry, Michael,” I said. He was still holding me; I didn’t care anymore about the nuns.

  Michael took my hand and led me back to his dormitory. It was embarrassing to be standing in front of him in my torn robe. So when he said I needed to take off my stockings for him to clean the scraped skin, I hesitated.

  He seemed amused, then pointed toward the exit. “There’s the bathroom.”

  Although I saw no one in the dormitory besides us, I still didn’t want to use a men’s room. Finally I backed up against the wall. I lifted up my skirt at the back, found the rim of my panty hose, and pulled them down over my knees and past my shins, feeling the nylon scrape my flesh. Then I peeled the shreds first off one foot and then the other. Now my thighs, legs, and feet were bare; a pool of heat swelled inside me.

  I sat while Michael examined my knee and ankle. Then he went to the sink, got a cup of water, and poured it slowly over my leg, rinsing off the gray streaks of dirt. I gasped.

  He looked up and touched my arm. “Relax, Meng Ning; you’re fine. I won’t hurt you. Trust me.”

  I did. And I was surprised. For I had never thought of trusting a man before. I’d only trusted Yi Kong and Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. But now, although my breath was shallow and my heart raced, I felt secure in front of this man kneeling before me and tending my feet with his skillful doctor’s hands. I battled tears and watched him bandage my knee with his clean, white handkerchief. He looked totally focused as if giving full expression to his Buddha mind.

  After he had finished bandaging my knee, Michael began to examine my swollen toes. He lifted them and squeezed them lightly one by one, asking me whether they hurt.

  I nodded. “Not terribly, just a little.”

  “Don’t worry. Your toes are not broken and the swelling will be gone in a few days.”

  My knee, ankle, and feet looked much better now and the pain had also stopped. Fortunately, only my robe was torn and stained with blood; my dress underneath was fine. I didn’t want to explain about the retreat or the fire to Mother when I got home.

  Finally, still dazed, I went back to my dormitory to change, wash, and gather my belongings. Michael and I met later at the main temple gate and we exchanged phone numbers and addresses. He insisted on taking me home; I thought I should refuse-he had already done so much for everyone-but I had no energy-nor desire-to do so.

  It took us almost two hours to travel from Lantau Island back to the city. First we took the ferry to Central, then from there took the MTR to Cheung Sha Wan, two blocks from my apartment. When we had climbed up to the street, I politely turned down his offer to walk with me.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. I didn’t want to risk running into Mother with a gweilo by my side-I was too tired to explain.

  It was almost eleven when I arrived home. Luckily Mother was asleep, and I went straight to my room to change and rest. Unable to unwind, I lay in bed and looked out the window. Suspended in the royal blue sky, the silver moon peeked at me through a few scattered clouds. Su Dongpo’s poem popped into my mind. “Even a thousand miles apart, the same moon shines over us all.”

  What was Michael doing now in the Kowloon Hotel? Sleeping? Watching TV? Or staring at the same moon and thinking of me? I closed my eyes…

  Under the pearlescent moonlight, the scarred nun wandered around the Golden Lotus Temple where Yi Kong resided. She looked up at the window of Yi Kong’s dormitory and wailed, “Shifu, please give me your beautiful face! And your fingers! Those long, elegant fingers!”

  Yi Kong materialized by the window and threw down a pillow. “Go to sleep, fool!” she said in her silvery voice. “Your scar is your best friend, not your enemy. Let go! Detach! That’s what you can learn from it.”

  Just after Yi Kong had snapped shut the window, she threw it wide open again and looked down at the scarred nun with frightened eyes, screaming, “Help! Help! Fire!”

  Scarred Nun sneered back, “Let go! Detach! The fire is your best friend; you should learn nonattachment from it!” Then she sa
untered away, leaving Yi Kong on fire.

  I snapped back into my bedroom, sweating heavily. Mother burst in; her face looked as if the Japanese were again invading Hong Kong.

  “Come! Meng Ning, run!”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you just scream fire?”

  “Ma, it’s just a bad dream. I’m fine.” I looked at her concerned face and suddenly felt very tender.

  Mother put her plump hand on my forehead. “Meng Ning, you look tired. You need a big, healthy breakfast,” she said, then disappeared into the kitchen. Her cheerful whistle pierced through the clanking of pots and pans into my ears.

  The tune was “One Day When We were Young.”

  That was my parents’ love song. Before he became a gambler, Father was a poet and scholar who taught school in Hualian, a town in Taiwan. Mother, his student, was nine and Father nineteen when they first met. Mother told me the moment their eyes met, she knew their fates were linked. She always boasted how handsome Father looked with his clean white shirt and thick, cropped hair, how he charmed all his students with his humor and erudition, how all the girls in his class had a crush on him, while his torchlike eyes always sought only hers. “Tall and handsome like a Hollywood star, that’s how your father’s friends described him.”

  A year later, Grandmother moved the whole family to Taipei. Grandfather had died, and Grandmother believed that only in a big city would she have a chance to lift herself from poverty and give her children a better future. Mother and Father lost contact with each other.

  One day, eight years later, when Mother went as usual to help in Grandmother’s store after school, she saw a man chatting with Grandma while choosing gold jewelry from the glass counter. The familiar voice made her heart jump.

  “Oh,” she muttered to herself, “Goddess of Mercy, let this be him!” Then she called on all the gods and goddesses she’d never believed in to grant her wish.

  Grandmother chided her. “Mei Lin, what are you mumbling about over there? Come here and help.”

  The man turned around and their eyes locked.

  Mother screamed, “Teacher Du!”

  “Ah, so this is the Teacher Du you used to talk about all the time,” said her mother. “Now congratulate Teacher Du, for he’s getting married in three weeks. He’s here to buy gold for his bride.”

  Instead of congratulating Teacher Du, Mother burst into tears and ran out of the store.

  “Mei Lin, let me explain!” Father chased after her out into the street where they fell into each other’s arms.

  At first they had no idea what to do. Finally, a week later, they thought of an easy way out of Father’s engagement to the other girl-they just gathered a few belongings, some cash, and boarded a ship to Hong Kong. A year later, at nineteen, Mother gave birth to me. After that, Father and Mother continued to live together without ever getting married. I’d always thought this was because my parents felt guilty about the jilted girl, for her humiliation, her broken heart. Yet I’d never learned the truth, for whenever I asked what happened to the girl, they’d always avoided my question by talking about something else.

  Mother never quite got over the fact that she hadn’t had a fancy wedding nor gold-framed wedding pictures. Father, on the other hand, seemed quite proud of the situation. Once, when I was small, he told me, “Ning Ning, since your mother and I were never really married, you’re an illegitimate child. But you know what? That’s also the reason you’re exceptionally handsome and intelligent.”

  “Baba, I don’t understand.” I meant my being illegitimate and intelligent and handsome at the same time.

  Father smiled mischievously. “Of course you don’t. You’re still a child. Go ask your mother. I’ve already explained it to her a hundred times.”

  Mother’s deft hands stopped in the midst of her knitting. She measured the small red sweater against my back, lowering her voice. “Ahhh…it’s because-because when a couple makes a child in a secret way, so to speak, they’re, well…ahh, more intense. They give more energy to the child when they do, well…that thing, you understand? They throw out more qi, more everything. That’s why you’re so beautiful and smart. Lucky child, because you got double what other people have. Double, you understand?”

  I didn’t.

  “Well,” Mother snapped, “then go back to your father and ask him!” She resumed her knitting in allegro tempo, lowering her head.

  Sometimes I felt glad that the other girl hadn’t married Father. Because not only would she have lost face when Father cheated on her after they were married, she’d probably have also lost all the gold that he would have bought her for the wedding. Could she, like Mother, have survived merely on the memory of a song sung one wonderful morning in May? I knew Father had taught “One Day When We Were Young” to his students in his English class, but Mother said, “Actually, your father wanted to teach it only to me, but he didn’t want the others to know of his feelings, so he taught it to the whole class.”

  Breakfast was finally ready. I sat down to eat and Mother sat opposite me to read her newspaper. On the table, I found three boiled eggs, two thick pieces of ham, and coffee with milk.

  “Ma, you seldom cook Western dishes. Why an American breakfast today?”

  “Because America is rich, just like its breakfast. You need more energy,” she answered without looking up from her paper, then, “Ai-ya! Yesterday a monastery was on fire!”

  I stopped chewing; she went on reading. “Hmm…lucky nobody’s hurt…because an American and a Chinese doctor helped people leave through windows.”

  My heart raced. Mother continued, “This gweilo doctor graduated from Zhong Hok Kin Si…and a Dr. Du…”

  I snatched the paper from Mother despite her protest. The headline of the article read: “Seven-Day Buddhist Retreat in Fragrant Spirit Temple Canceled Because of Fire. People Saved by an American Buddha, Nobody Killed, Only Slight Injuries.”

  The article went on to describe the fire, the panic, and the damage. At the end, it said:

  The American doctor, Buddha Michael Fuller, thirty-eight, who saved many lives, is a neurologist graduated from Johns Hopkins University, and currently works in New York Hospital.

  A participant at the retreat, Dr. Fuller took refuge as a lay Buddhist in the Shanghai Jade Buddha Temple and was given the lay Buddhist name Fangxia Zizai. Monks and nuns from the temple expressed immense thanks to Dr. Fuller and Dr. Du, a Chinese lay woman attending the retreat.

  I spilled coffee on my name in the newspaper to smear the ink before I handed it back to Mother. Then I gobbled down my breakfast. It must have been the temple that had given the newspaper our names. And it must have been the gossipy newspaper that had put them together.

  Memories of Michael holding the child, carrying and lifting me through the temple window, and tending my knee played slowly in my mind. Men had rarely held particular interest for me, but now when I thought of him and his Buddhist name Fangxia Zizai, which means Let-Go-and-Be-Carefree, I felt something stir inside me. And I was afraid…

  8. The Same Moon Shines Over Us All

  I peeked at Mother, who was still completely immersed in her gossip-column reading. Judging from the cheerful lifting of her lips, I assumed it must be something really juicy. Yet sadness engulfed me, for I knew well this had been the same expression she’d worn when she’d listened to Father’s tianyan miyu-sugared words and honeyed language. She had willingly let Father cheat her and cheat on her, though she’d always prided herself on being extremely careful.

  So careful that she’d spend an extra dollar, an extra half hour, and an extra half mile riding a tram to the particular market where, according to her, not only did the pork cost one dollar less, but also weighed one liang more.

  “If you’re careful, you can steer your ship for ten thousand years.”

  “But, Ma,” I’d argue, “what’s the point of steering a ship for ten thousand years when we’re even lucky to have eighty years to live?”

&
nbsp; Mother’s tongue would click away as if it were rolling in oil. “Ah, insolent girl. It’s the philosophy, the wisdom behind it.” Then she would pour out words while picking up her favorite dish, fatty pork, with her chopsticks. “Let’s say your grandmother taught me to be careful, and now I teach you. While in the future you’ll teach your daughter, and in the far future my granddaughter will teach my great-granddaughter…then all the generations added up together will be ten thousand years of wisdom, or more, right?”

  But Mother was careful only in words, not in deeds. While she would warn me not to open doors to strangers, she’d let salesmen into our apartment, serve them tea, and let herself be sweet-talked into buying expensive kitchen equipment that she’d never learn how to use, and which cost her a whole month’s food money. While she’d tell me not to drink any beverage offered at a friend’s house, she’d happily toss down a dollar onto a street stall and pick up a filthy glass swirling with unidentifiable liquid.

  And despite her incessantly cautioning me to beware of handsome, honey-lipped, flower-hearted men, she had blindly loved Father and willingly let herself be cheated by him.

  Father had charmed her, not only with his good looks, but also with the numerous love poems he had written her. In his slick calligraphy, he’d write them on fancy rice paper printed with flowers and birds or sprinkled with simulated gold flakes. Occasionally he’d also write them on photographs of himself that he had sent her. Above the poems he would add, “To dear Mei Lin, remembering our eight years’ separation”-then below, “Forever yours, Du Wei.”

  Over the years, Mother carefully pressed the poems in her diary together with the daisies or irises or roses she had bought from wet, smelly, slippery markets or picked from public parks. From time to time, she’d take the poems out to read, or recopy them with brush and ink, imitating Father’s calligraphy. Although I was deeply moved by these romantic acts, they also made me sad.