In the Lap of the Gods

by Li Miao Lovett

  He was angry. Liu had been adrift for the past two years, since the death of his wife. Guilt, remorse, longing, these became his mistresses, and they had their way with him. Still, he held back the tears. As his outer world crumbled, as all that was familiar disappeared and new towns emerged in the shadows of the old, Liu became even more stalwart within. Now the façade started to crack, and for the first time, Liu felt a helpless rage. It shook his body, coursing through his veins, flooding his temples with a feverish pulse. Liu threw his cigarette on the cheap tile and stamped it out.

  He wanted to pick up a chair and hurl it out the window with his grief tumbling after it. He did not have to lose his wife and his child. He could have been like that farmer, a man with a family and a future; now he could only pretend to a stranger in the park that he was a real father, a devoted husband with loved ones, and responsibilities. For the first time, Liu felt resentment toward Fei Fei. She had to die, leaving him stranded on this island. The angry voices reached a crescendo, driving him out of the apartment and into the dark streets.

  Liu stumbled downhill like a drunken soul, past prowling dogs and evening strollers, until he reached the fringes of old Wushan. He made his way down the dirt path to the cemetery, which stood intact among the few remaining buildings. He fell on his haunches, leaning against the trunk of a willow tree, as the wind whistled through its leaves.

  Fei Fei is gone from my life, he thought. And she will not come back. The tears dribbled down his chin, and he did not wipe them away.

  His knees scraped against rock. She is walking in the spirit world, and I have to muddle through this life on earth.

  Then Liu pulled himself up, and listened to the scuffling sounds of the wind. He squinted at the mounds where the dead were buried. They did not stir; they were at peace. But all around were shadows of movement: crawling insects, shanty dwellers on the hill, ghosts wandering through the night. There was movement in his body: the tingling in his fingertips, the rise and fall of his chest, a shudder from the cold. His life was still intact. It had been uprooted, not just by her death, but also by his own volition. He would find a way to anchor it again.

  Liu wiped the moisture from his face, and stumbled back along the rocky path. In the new town, he slipped past the lamplights like a scarecrow in the night, sleeves and pant cuffs flailing. The tears had dried without a trace; nobody but Liu would know about this moment, when his life began to emerge from the shadows again. His footsteps fell lightly on the sidewalk, carrying him home as a full moon emerged from the clouds.

  9

  LIU’S TRIP TO THE CLOTHING STORE WAS A MAJOR EXPEDITION, more daunting than his forays into abandoned villages. He had never seen so much apparel; all of Wushan could be clothed by this one store. The life-sized manikins were all legs, dressed in seductive colors, but Liu merely felt a tingling, creepy feeling on his skin. He bought the first item that caught his eye, a light green linen shirt with a stiff collar. At home, Liu tore up his old shirt, a fossil record of his various jobs, and threw it in the trash.

  That evening, the waitress appeared at Liu’s side again. She had on the same pale blue outfit. Tonight, however, a white apron set off the mermaid outline of her hips. “Do you come here often?” she asked.

  “Well, yes. I’ve been coming here for a while, since Tai had a shop in old Wushan.”

  “What was that like?” She tilted her pencil against her lips. Liu followed her movements, then looked away.

  “Good food, but not as nice as this place. I guess you’re new here. Where are you from?” Liu spoke casually, trying not to appear too interested.

  “I’m from around here. Glad to move out of old Wushan. I never felt comfortable there walking the streets alone, even in the evenings when they were filled with street vendors.”

  “I know what you mean.” Liu nodded. “I was rather fond of the huoguo stands. I like the dish extra spicy, you know.”

  “But you can’t taste the meat when you drown it in spice.”

  “Oh, I would drink the broth, swallow a chili or two.” Liu smiled. He didn’t feel so uncomfortable tonight, but had an urge to impress her.

  “Well, I’ll have the cook make your beef noodle extra spicy then.” She remembered his order from the night before. “But if you start sweating, don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

  “You’ll bring me some water, won’t you?”

  “Well, yes.” She crinkled her eyes, the painted dark lines tilting toward her smooth temples. “But I rather like watching a man sweat.”

  Now what was that? Liu thought. His heart fluttered as she walked away. Liu wondered if her womanly charms were displayed with other customers in the course of her duties, to keep them coming to Tai’s. After all, the place was no longer a hole-in-the-wall, but an enterprising business whose owner could change with the times.

  When the waitress returned with the beef noodle soup, Liu saw that there were several red chilies floating on the surface of the broth.

  “As you like it.” She smiled.

  Liu thanked her, and raised the bowl to his lips. A firestorm leapt from the chilies into his mouth, stinging his tongue, his lips, taking siege of his vocal cords in a wicked blaze of heat. Liu coughed and spluttered until tears welled up in the corners of his eyes. A bit of broth splattered onto his new shirt, staining it brown and orange.

  The waitress’s smile dissolved as Liu clutched his throat in agony. She ran into the kitchen to fetch a glass of water. Liu gulped it down and slumped back in his chair.

  Liu mustered a faint smile. “You’re a woman of your word,” he mumbled when he was able to speak.

  “And you’re one to tell a fib!” She smiled good-naturedly.

  “Okay, you called my bluff. Tai will be glad that you keep his customers honest.”

  “Listen, I’ll bring you another bowl, okay?” The waitress took the uneaten noodle soup back into the kitchen.

  When she returned, Liu worked up the courage to ask her name. It was Mei Ling.

  That evening, Liu rolled her name around on his tongue as he tucked Rose into bed. Mei Ling. Mei for beautiful. Ling, bright and alert. He wanted to know more about her. He would get over to the noodle shop before it opened in the morning, and have a talk with Tai.

  LATE AT NIGHT, AFTER MEI LING RETURNED HOME FROM THE restaurant, she counted up her wages for the week. One hundred and twenty yuan. Sharing a small room with two other women, she needed to set aside some of the money to pay rent. Mei Ling would wait until the apartment quieted down to sort out her finances. She loved the feeling of the paper bills in her hands. She stared at the image of Mao Zedong on the notes; it was always the same portrait of the middle-aged Mao with a heavy-set chin, and a certain fatherly but aloof look in his eyes. He actually reminded her of some of the businessmen who had come into the beauty salon in old Wushan where she had briefly worked. These men had eyes that grabbed. In the presence of men they grabbed power. Around women they grabbed attention and admiration, but always with that standoffish air.

  When seated, the men would lay hold of her arm, her thigh, or any convenient spot if they wanted to tell her a funny story, which was never that funny anyway. She would swivel the chair away; they would resist. When they got up to go, they brushed against her breasts, never apologizing, just assuming it was their right, by dint of their status.

  One day, the salon owner propositioned her about making more money. “Just hand them a card,” he said. It was a plain business card with the bust of a woman, all hair, no clothing. “Girls, at your service. Sexual favors. Reasonable prices.”

  Mei Ling was shocked. She knew that women prostituted their bodies, and got paid well to do it. But she had learned from her father to stand up for herself, and from her mother she learned to be resourceful. Of course, they were simple peasants, and they spoiled their male child, which she resented. Dzong nan tsing nu. The son carries more weight than the daughter. Mei Ling was keenly aware of these injustices, but she had decided she would neve
r put up with a bad situation.

  So she declined, acting as if her boss’s proposal was not unusual at all. And perhaps it hadn’t been.The large posters in the windows of the hair salons all depicted women in sexually suggested poses; the models were foreigners with blue eyes, straw-yellow and earth-brown hair, but their Chinese counterparts were simply the backroom part of the equation. Her boss began to treat her differently, snapping at her over trivial things, and diverting customers to the other women. Two weeks later, Mei Ling quit.

  That was almost a year ago, and her new job seemed to be going well. She had seen the sign in front of Tai’s noodle shop seeking hired help. Mei Ling had never done waitress work before, but she convinced Tai that she knew how to take care of customers. She made him laugh when she said, “At the hair salon, they paid me to take something away. Now I can actually give something to the customers for their money.” Mei Ling told him she had quit in order to find better prospects in new Wushan.

  Mei Ling liked her customers. They were an odd mix; more foreign tourists were showing up, but among the Chinese, some seemed well-to-do and others were dressed shabbily, like poor peasants. She thought of the fellow who wanted chilies in his soup. Tonight, she had noticed the sinewy coils of his muscles when his shirt sleeves were rolled up. He was rather handsome, although his linen shirt did not go with those old cotton pants. She wondered if he had been trying to impress her.

  She put most of her earnings in a small tin box, and shut the drawer. Two 20-yuan notes remained on the table; she wrapped them in several pieces of paper, and wrote a cursory note.

  Dear Pa,

  I hope your first harvest is a good one. Give my best to Ma.

  Your daughter,

  Mei Ling

  WHEN THEIR VILLAGE WAS EVACUATED, IN THE SPRING OF 2002, Mei Ling’s parents learned that they would all have to move across the country to Guangdong. Her father resisted, but his pleas with the village chief were met with gloomy refusal. “Ol’ Chang, I have no say in the matter. Those are government orders.”

  “We have lived here for generations. My parents survived the terrible famine; my family made it through the floods in ’98. We are rooted here,” Mei Ling’s father said.

  “Well, the government is like the Yangtze; she’s stronger than you. All you can do is submit to her. If you refuse to leave, you’ll simply be drowned by this last flood. And it’ll be a big one.”

  Ol’ Chang grabbed the chief’s arm with both hands. “I beg you, can we stay in this area? Guangdong is like a foreign country. We can’t understand their dialect. Besides, they’re wily people; you can’t trust them.”

  The chief shook his head. “Ol’ Chang, I don’t have a choice, either. Just make the best of it.You’ll have a nice little plot of land. You’re lucky. The neighboring village got stuck with shabby land up the mountain.”

  In spite of her mother’s wishes, Mei Ling decided she would find a way to stay in the area. She did not want to remain a peasant’s daughter, and marry to become a peasant’s wife. She could find work in a nearby city. In old Wushan, there were dozens of beauty salons, mostly on the main street. The posters had caught her eye. How could they not, with their life-sized images of stacked breasts and stacked hairdos.

  Mei Ling did not tell her parents why she really quit that job. That the hairstylists were expected to perform other services, selling their bodies. Or that, in the last days of old Wushan’s existence, the women she had worked with still sat behind the salon windows. They wore a listless expression, as if they didn’t care about going under and taking their seedy patrons with them. In her letters, Mei Ling only told her parents how happy she was to live in the city, even a city that faced imminent destruction.

  She managed to squirrel away enough money until she moved to new Wushan with her roommates. They were kind to her, splitting the rent between the two of them when she was looking for another job. Pei’s waitress job paid decently, and Lan made good money working at a new hotel in town.

  In the new city of Wushan, she found work as a nanny for the child of a professional couple. Mei Ling shuddered whenever she thought about the wife, a chatty woman who sold cell phones. The wife was the jealous type, and although her husband worked long hours at the health clinic, she found every excuse to give Mei Ling grief.

  “Mei Ling, you forgot to put two napkins in the lunch bag. My son must have two napkins. One won’t do. Greasy foods makes greasy hands.” The doctor’s wife was fastidious in washing her hands, even after touching her own child.

  “My darling soiled the bed last night,” she would say. “I told you that the sheets must be changed immediately.” But Mei Ling could never do anything to please the woman. And what if she had been there, in the middle of the night, tugging frantically at the sheets as the accident was happening? She would have been blamed for giving the boy wet dreams.

  The final straw came when the wife accused Mei Ling of lying to her. “You wanted to be alone with my husband,” she hissed. “You never told me that my friends had cancelled that lunch date. I waited and waited.” In fact, Mei Ling had, but the woman continued to fume, stomping around her son’s room in a rage, gathering toy trucks and robots in her arms, hurling them like grenades at Mei Ling. The little boy cowered in the corner, and then ran out of the room.

  The woman’s temper terrified Mei Ling. But she denied the charges, steeling her nerves as the jealous wife screamed and ranted about bad women. Finally, Mei Ling’s patience snapped. She couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Okay, I quit!” she shouted. Her voice trembled, but she fought back tears. “I quit so I don’t have to put up with your unreasonable demands! You find yourself another girl, a spineless girl, to take care of your son. I . . . I have more respect for myself than that.”

  The wife stared past her, like a crazed woman who had been shot up with morphine. Her shoulders slumped; she became the frightened one. Mei Ling grabbed her coat and fled the house, running, stumbling in her flimsy sandals all the way home.

  How dare she ... how dare she treat me like that, Mei Ling thought. She ruminated about the ways she could seek revenge. She could spread rumors about the woman, or turn her son against her. She could poison her husband. She laughed at the absurdity of that idea. Mei Ling decided she would gain nothing from revenge; it would merely be a salve for her bruised ego.

  That day, Mei Ling began to think about power. She would learn to grab power too, but in subtle ways, using her feminine charms so that men wouldn’t notice. Coming from peasant stock, she was limited to work that serviced the needs and whims of others—customers, tourists, children. But she didn’t want to be someone’s kept servant. She vowed she would not put herself in that situation anymore. Never again.

  When the woman sent over the last paycheck, perhaps in an attempt to save face, Mei Ling wrapped all the money in toilet paper, and sent it to her folks.They were delighted to get the package, and pleased that their daughter was doing so well in the city.

  10

  EARLY IN THE MORNING, LIU DROPPED ROSE OFF AT MRS. Song’s and hustled over to the noodle shop. The window shades were already pulled up, and the first customers of the day were arriving. Liu headed straight for the kitchen. Here, the pots clattered as they hit the burners of the coal-burning stove and knife blades screeched against the sharpening stone. Large slabs of pork thudded onto the counter for a second slaughter. His friend Tai was too busy to notice him.

  “No, listen to me! When the foreign devils want their meat lean, you pull out those fatty pieces, got it?”Tai was shouting at his cook, Ol’ Guo. Liu stood in the doorway against its thin curtain, hesitant to intrude.

  “And what do I do with them? Feed them to the alley cats? I can take them home, you know.” Ol’ Guo sucked on a toothpick, which he often did in the kitchen where he couldn’t smoke.

  “No, no, no! I paid good money for that. You just mix it in with the fried pork dishes, for the locals.”

  “Why don’t you just buy a le
aner cut?”

  Tai looked exasperated. “Because that’s too expensive!”

  Liu was about to turn around when Tai saw him. “My friend, what brings you here so early?” Tai’s eyes darted back to the cook. “We’re sorting through something. Have a seat and I’ll be out soon, okay?”

  From the dining area, Liu could hear the cadence of their voices rise and fall, with all the melodrama of a Qing Dynasty soap. He could not help but be amused. The voices did not match the roles. The cook bellowed with royal indignation, while Tai spat out his tirade like a rasping eunuch. Tai was the boss, but he seemed unable to get his way.

  The noodle-shop owner came out shortly, wiping the sweat from his brow with a dirty sleeve. “Stubborn old goat. Can’t keep up with the times. Maybe I should fire him.” Tai grunted. “A new cook would be too expensive, though.”

  Tai launched further into his restaurant woes. All the while, Liu was growing more anxious to broach the subject of the new waitress. At last, he interrupted Tai and asked,“Your new waitress should make things better. So . . . uh . . . Tai, how’d you find her?”

  “Mei Ling? Why, she must have seen my ad in the window. She seemed bright, didn’t have experience, but you can teach a pretty young woman anything.”

  “I . . . just wanted to find out a bit more about her.” Liu kicked the wooden leg of the table, then looked up sheepishly at Tai.

  A big grin lit up his friend’s face, and all traces of frustration from the kitchen wars fell away. “Ol’ Liu, you never fail to surprise me. First the baby. Now, it looks like you’ve finally come to your senses.”

  “Wait, Tai, not too fast. I just want to know . . . you know . . . if she’s attached.”

  “Don’t think so. Hey, I don’t pry into my employees’ business, but she’s given to flirting with the customers. Especially the well-dressed ones.”

  Tai appeared to be delighted that he could attract such customers. Liu, however, was crestfallen that it was Mei Ling attracting them. “Do you think she’s married?”