Tiger's Heart

by Aisling Juanjuan Shen

  My mother told me about her young life, history that I’d never had a chance to learn. It was a night with a full moon when she ran away from the Lin family, she said. The zigzagging path through the fields between the Lin and Feng hamlets seemed endless. Prickly bushes stung the wounds on her arms and legs. She ran for all she was worth, panting loudly and scaring away the frogs jumping around her feet. Her thin, patched cotton coat was soaked in sweat.

  The mulberry trees in front of the Feng Hamlet looked like a line of glowering ghosts. Faint light from a kerosene lamp came through the small window of a shack set off a little to the east. She knew her father was inside, sitting at his desk with knitted eyebrows while her mother lay in bed coughing. She quickened her steps.

  She pushed open the shack’s wicker door. Her father leaped to his feet, shocked. She threw herself at his knees and grasped his right leg as firmly as she had held it two years earlier, before the Lins had pulled her away. She pleaded with her father to take her back. Looking at his second daughter’s limp skinny body at his feet, my grandfather felt his legs shaking as if he too were going to collapse. He had never felt so weak in his limbs. That day, his only meal had been some bark and weeds his two boys had gathered. But despite his poverty, he couldn’t turn his daughter away.

  After several unsuccessful trips to the Feng Hamlet, the Lin family stopped searching for my mother. Using her bamboo walking stick, my grandmother took my mother with her from village to village to beg. My grandmother was always sick and could not walk for too long. When they came to a house, she would lean against the door and try to catch her breath. Clutching the bottom of her mother’s ragged clothes with one hand, my mother would hold out a dirty ceramic bowl with the other and chant, “Uncle, Aunt, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, please be generous and throw us some leftovers. My mother is ill, and I have two younger brothers waiting for food at home. We will pray for you day and night and wish that you live longer than Mount Tai.” When it grew dark, Mama would cuddle next to her mother in a haystack or under a leeward eave and fall asleep with a smile on her face. Her mother was so thin that her body felt like a skeleton, but despite having rags for clothes and little in her belly and occasionally having to escape ferocious dogs, my mother wished life could go on like this forever.

  It was dusk on New Year’s Eve when they arrived home at the Feng Hamlet. Every family gathered at their table for the big New Year’s dinner, and firecrackers could be heard firing from Zhenze. Inside the ragged cloth bag slung over my grandmother’s shoulder, there were four steamed buns and a small sack of rice for the family. My grandmother knew that her children were waiting eagerly for their food, but after six months of drifting, her life was like the last dim flame in a dried-up oil lamp. Before her hands touched the wicker door of the shack, she fell to the ground.

  My grandmother was confined to her bed, and she never got better. My mother’s older sister, Jasmine, was thirteen then, old enough to follow her father to work in the commune, planting rice. Every day at noon, my mother would take her two younger brothers and the dirty ceramic bowl to the commune canteen, stand in line, and wait for the allotted porridge. It contained so few rice grains that they could see their faces on its watery surface.

  Life was indifferent to my mother’s prayers and diligence. My grandmother eventually grew so ill that my grandfather Lianshen had to take her to the hospital in the city of Huzhou. Back then, the doctors and nurses were kind and didn’t ask for a deposit. He returned to the commune and left my mother at the hospital to take care of my grandmother.

  She stayed at her mother’s bedside for a month, listening to her coughing hoarsely day and night, sounding as if she was going to cough up her lungs. The doctor in white overalls stroked my mother’s head and praised her, calling her a wonderful girl, only twelve and taking care of her mother all by herself.

  The smell of sodium carbonate from the doctor’s cuff lingered in my mother’s dreams the night they left. My grandmother shook her awake. She whispered that they had to get out of the hospital right away, because they didn’t have the money to pay the bills. They walked on tiptoe to the end of the long, white corridor and staggered into the darkness. The six miles between the city and the Feng Hamlet stretched on forever. Mama supported her sick mother with her arm, and they had to stop so often that it was almost dawn by the time they reached home.

  Two months after leaving the hospital, my grandmother died of tuberculosis, leaving behind nothing but debt. After burying her in a small tomb behind the Feng Hamlet, my grandfather moved the family half a mile away, to the Shen Hamlet where there were better fields and crops.

  “And then my grandfather Lianshen started to carry on with Old Number Two and gave you away to Dad?” Our neighbor, Old Auntie Feng, had told me this when I was little.

  “Yes.” Mama nodded her head in disgust. “I’ll always hate your grandfather for that. He could’ve carried on with any woman, just not that dying old bitch.”

  “Mama, I had no idea you went through so much.” Mama, I wanted to say, this is all in the past. The future will be much better. I will take care of you. I will make sure you have food, even if I have to starve.

  The next morning, I got up early and went to the eatery downstairs. After breakfast, I sat at the computer and waited for my mother to wake up. Soon her sleepy voice came from the bedroom. “This is the first time in years I slept more than two hours in a night!”

  I entered the bedroom, put a pillow behind her, helped her sit up, and then handed her a bowl of congee.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s congee with preserved egg and lean pork. It’s delicious.”

  Her eyes became moist and glinted in the room’s pallid light. “Did you get this for me?”

  She was that moved just by a bowl of congee. Probably no one had ever done even such a small thing for her as bringing her breakfast in bed.

  I lowered my head, avoiding her eyes. Then I waved my arm in the air and said hurriedly, “Yeah, have it while it’s still hot.”

  I rushed out of the room, running away from my mother’s tears like a hare fleeing from a hunter. I knew now that my mother had suffered greatly, and I had secretly forgiven her for all the things she had done to me when I was a child, but I was still not ready to break down the wall between us.

  The next three weeks flew by. I took my mother everywhere in the city—downtown, to the beach, and to the famous tourist spot, Gulangyu Island, a small island five minutes away from the city by ferry. It’s also called “Piano Island,” as there is a piano in almost every residence on it. We strolled leisurely through the small lanes on the island where motor vehicles were prohibited, enjoying the classic European-style architecture while breathing the extremely clean, fresh air. My mother was very excited everywhere we went. It was the first time in my life that I had seen her laughing genuinely, without a hint of sadness.

  We took rolls of pictures together, and I had all of them developed as soon as possible so that she could take prints with her when she went home.

  About a week before she left, I went into the bedroom with a Kodak envelope in my hand. “Mama, the pictures are here!” I yelled gleefully.

  I sat on the bed and took the pictures out of the envelope. My mother moved closer to me. We laughed together when we saw the picture of her struggling to take her shoes off in the tide at the beach.

  She put her arm around my shoulder, but when her skin touched mine, it shocked me like electricity. I felt uncomfortable, as if a bug were crawling around my neck. I shook her arm off and moved away from her.

  She looked at me with a helpless but amused smile. “You’re a strange child. Ever since you were a little baby, you always hated me even laying a finger on you. Other mothers and daughters are not like this at all.”

  She clearly did not remember how she’d neglected me. So many times, she had held Spring and left me in a corner. Now she blamed me for avoiding her touch. But I didn’t mention any of that. “I just
don’t like to be touched,” I said.

  We continued going through the pictures. Holding a picture of me standing on the beach looking at the camera happily, my mother heaved a sigh and said regretfully, “If only Spring were like you.”

  I found I couldn’t control myself any longer. All of a sudden, the question that had haunted me my whole life came out of my mouth like a firework shooting into the air.

  “Mama, why did you love my sister more than me?”

  She raised her head and looked at me, utterly confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “Why did you love my sister more than me? Why did you pay so much more attention to her than me? Why did you never care about me?”

  “Oh, you silly child. You’re the older one. Of course we needed to pay more attention to your younger sister. We were so poor at that time. Your Dad and I worked in the fields day and night like two dogs. We barely had time to care about ourselves.”

  That was it? That was the reason why she had loved my sister more than me? It was just because I was the oldest? I didn’t know if I could accept that.

  “Why did you and Dad beat me with the broom all the time, but you never beat Spring? You didn’t raise your voices to her once.”

  “We were so poor at that time. Don’t you remember? Some days we had nothing to eat. I was always in a bad mood. When you didn’t listen to us, of course we would beat you.”

  So all the beating, yelling, and abuse was just my illiterate parents disciplining their child. My entire childhood had been twisted and ruined because my parents had been raised in the same way by their parents. So I had been wrong all these years, thinking that my mother didn’t love me?

  “Silly child!” my mother continued. “Are there any parents who don’t love their children? Both you and Spring are my children. Why wouldn’t I love you?”

  Her words made sense. My mother loved me. She and my father were just peasants who hadn’t known any better. I didn’t know if I fully believed it, but for the first time I began to allow for the possibility that my parents really did love me.

  We kept flipping through the photos. I saw a large picture of my mother and myself leaning together and smiling happily on Gulangyu Island. I held it up in the air. “Mama, why don’t I look like Dad at all?” I joked.

  “What are you talking about? Nonsense.”

  “I’m serious. I can see that you and I have similar noses, but Dad and I look like total strangers. My face is meaty; his face is flat—”

  “Stop it,” she snapped.

  “Mama, what’s wrong?” I asked. “Why are you so nervous?” Suddenly some dim thoughts that I had had before flew into my mind. Why had the villagers always joked that I didn’t resemble Dad at all? “Is Dad not my father?” I blurted out.

  “Don’t be crazy. Of course your Dad is your father.” She clasped her hands tightly in her lap.

  “No, Mama.” I tucked my knees under my chin. “Why are you avoiding me, Mama? Dad isn’t my father, is he?”

  “I’m not going to talk to you any more.” She turned her back to me, got up, and walked to the other side of the room.

  “Mama, talk to me. Please, talk to me. I want to know. Dad isn’t my father, is he?” I sputtered.

  “I told you not to talk about this. Why are you being so stubborn?” she yelled at me angrily.

  Nervous and flustered, I ignored my mother’s temper and kept pressing her. “Dad isn’t my father, is he? Who is my father, then?”

  “Stop this nonsense,” she said harshly. “Of course your Dad is your father. He raised you.”

  My mind was rattled. “Who is my father, then? Who?” I thought quickly, images of all the men in the Shen Hamlet running through my mind. One seemed to fit. “It’s him, isn’t it? That son of a bitch Beiling!”

  She didn’t budge, glaring at me like a warrior. My stomach turned. The man I had hated in my childhood was my biological father.

  Mama moved closer and sat down on the bed. Eventually she began to speak. “That bastard. He sent your father away to guard the boats for the commune and then . . . it was only a month after your father and I got married. . . . He sneaked into our hut at night. . . .” Slowly she explained, twisting her fingers in her lap. She looked like she was being forced to swallow a bowl of sour medicine.

  “He raped you?” I cried out. “Why didn’t you tell the commune and the police?”

  “Silly, he was the commune. He was the police. He was the head of the commune. He decided how much you were going to eat, what kind of work you were going to do. Would anybody listen to me? Every woman in the commune, as long as she was not ugly, was raped by that son of a bitch. Look at him today. Isn’t he still the most powerful and rich?”

  “So you gave birth to me? And then you never loved me? Why did you bring me into this world and let me suffer?”

  “No!” She looked at me with anxious eyes and said, hastily, “Don’t think like that. Every mother loves her child. This has nothing to do with that. Really, we were just too poor for love.”

  “Does Dad know this? Does anyone else know this?” I murmured.

  “I’ve never told anyone except your aunt Jasmine. When you were young, your father once joked that you didn’t look like him at all, but he never asked anything.”

  But maybe he did know, and that was why he had never loved me.

  “Does that son of a bitch know?” I asked her tensely, feeling all the muscles in my body cramping.

  “After you went to college, once he came into our house. Your father wasn’t around. The bastard smiled and asked who I thought Juanjuan resembled—him or your father. I didn’t say anything. He grinned and said of course you were more like him since you were such a smart kid. I threw him out.” Staring into the air, she spoke without emotion, but her eyes were full of shame and anger.

  “Is this why he always smiled to me when I ran into him on the asphalt road? Is this why he always peeked into our house when passing by? Is this why his wife always glared at me as if she wanted to eat me alive? Is this why you never liked me?” I rambled angrily.

  “No. I told you I love you as much as I love Spring, and your Dad is still your father,” she said in a flurry.

  Before she could say more, I fled the bedroom. I ran to the iron anti-thief gate, opened it, and stormed out of the apartment.

  I walked out of the elevator with a crowd of people and exited the building. The sun hugged me with its warm arms, but I couldn’t think or feel anything. Everything my eyes could see seemed to be mixed up and blended together, the sky, the earth, the trees, the shops, the buses, the people, the bikes, the air, the breeze. I looked back on my life, and it seemed like a dream. In this dream, I ran and ran with all my might to find an oasis. I walked across rivers, climbed mountains, trekked through deserts, and finally I got to my oasis. I lay down under a lush apple tree, but as soon as I closed my eyes, I woke up to find that none of it had been real.

  The dream had lasted twenty-three years. I felt so exhausted, cheated. I wanted to drop to the ground and howl loudly. I wanted to laugh to the world hysterically. So I walked along, laughing for a while and then crying for a moment, and then I paused, staring into space, feeling lost because I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry.

  It is said that fairness always prevails, that the truth is always better than a false reality. But it wasn’t fair that my life was doomed to be miserable just because I was conceived during a rape. It wasn’t fair that my mother didn’t love me just because of the way my father was chosen when I’d had no chance to refuse. It just wasn’t fair. I laughed dryly to myself. What should I do now? I wondered. How was I supposed to live my life from then on, having just discovered that my entire life up to then had been nothing but a big lie?

  Hours later, I dragged my feet back to the apartment and went straight to my computer. Fortunately, Ethan, the American friend who I knew only through Yahoo chat windows, was online. He had become the only person I could share my thou
ghts with since Steven and Xiao Yi had disappeared from my life.

  “I am very sad at this moment. I have just found out my father is not really my father, and my real father is a rascal who I hated my whole life.” I typed out my message of despair and hit send. My mind was buzzing like a swarm of June beetles.

  “Oh, I am sorry, Caroline,” Ethan responded right away. “It must be very hard on you, the truth.”

  “I don’t know what I should do now. My whole life is a dream. I hate my mother. She should’ve told me this a long time ago. Instead, she just didn’t love me.” Warm tears poured down my face. Twenty-three years of grievances were bursting out.

  “Maybe she didn’t tell you because she wanted to protect you. You shouldn’t hate her. Every mother loves her child, in different ways. Maybe your mother loves you in a way she thinks right. Perhaps she did her best under the circumstances.”

  I pondered Ethan’s words. They weren’t genius, but they magically cleared my head. Maybe my mother didn’t know how to love because she had never been loved herself. She never smiled when I was little, but I remembered she had always tried her best to either make or buy me a new piece of clothing every New Year. She had made me a bag for my first day of school. She had visited me at college. She had cried both times I left for the South. She had never hugged me or said she loved me before, but since the day I was born she had been like an octopus wrapping around me with her endless and seamless care.

  My mother loved me and perhaps always had. And even if she hadn’t, it didn’t matter any more, because I knew I had her love now. Why should I blame her for the past? And it didn’t matter any more whether my real father was a criminal guilty beyond forgiveness or a man without emotions either. That only determined where I had come from, not who I was today.