In the Lap of the Gods

by Li Miao Lovett

  Liu flushed with anger. “What do you want from me, Fang? I found my girl, and I’m keeping her.”

  “Relax, Ol’ Liu. Nobody’s stealing your baby chicks. I’m tracking down some heirloom pieces for my friend. I’ll ask him more closely when I see him.” Fang got up and took the tea set away. “Tell you what, you look through your inventory, and when I come back we’ll settle on the jade, and anything else you might have found. None of it’s really yours, you know.”

  IN THE MONTHS LEADING UP TO THE WEDDING RECEPTION, MEI Ling called her parents several times to invite them to the auspicious occasion.

  The first time, Mei Ling’s father nearly broke the public phone in town when he learned that his daughter had gone against his wishes. “What a useless daughter,” Chang Duoming muttered. “Don’t know what’s good for her. If she was standing right here, I’d show her how to respect her parents.”

  The plastic casing of the receiver cracked like a brittle bone. It spiraled in wandering circles, defying Mrs. Chang’s efforts to pick up after her husband’s rage. She pulled on his sleeve, glancing furtively at the door. “Ol’ Chang! Come, come. Don’t get the authorities on your back. If we make trouble, we’ll wear out our welcome here.”

  Ol’ Chang allowed his wife to drag him out of the building. Once outside, he began his ranting anew. “That no good daughter of yours. Should have sold her long ago. What a worthless girl.”

  Mei Ling’s mother could only shake her head and allow the fires of his rage to burn out. She knew in her heart that Mei Ling had been a filial daughter, providing for them out of her hard-earned money.

  When Mei Ling arranged to call again, Mrs. Chang borrowed a cell phone from the village chief, in hopes that her husband would remain subdued in another man’s house.The conversation lasted no more than five minutes, and Ol’ Chang stormed off, keeping a lid on his temper until they arrived home. That afternoon, terror reigned throughout their little farm. The pigs squealed as if they had been strung up live on the rafters. The hens clucked and rushed around their chicks in a maternal frenzy. The goats bleated like plaintive petitioners declaring they had done nothing wrong.

  Ol’ Chang stayed in a foul mood for days. The government had claimed a parcel of land to build a wind farm, and his small plot of land would shrink further. Their son was only fourteen, and when he came of age, perhaps there would be nothing left for him. If only he had another daughter to marry off to his neighbor. But if one daughter was worthless, what good would a second one be?

  “I will become a toothless, blind beggar on the streets before I depend on an ungrateful daughter,” he muttered to himself while chopping wood one afternoon in a small shed.

  Chang Duoming had learned to make do his whole life.When he was a child, his family was reduced to boiling tree bark and corn husks during the worst of the great famine. Once, he managed to save a merchant’s cart from being raided by bandits. The grateful man gave them a sack of rice. He remembered how his father’s eyes had swelled with pride. Ol’ Chang knew, at the age of seven, that he could die from hunger unless he kept his wits about him.

  In their old village near Wushan, he had been unable to keep his family from being forced off the land. But in spite of defeat, Chang Duoming refused to give up. A battle cry filled his lungs, and when he lowered his axe on a stump of cedar, the wood split with a groan. “No, they’ll never run me off the land again,” he declared.

  Chang Duoming wondered what his daughter’s fiancé did. In his disappointment, he had not bothered to ask. If this fellow had some resources, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  Before the third phone call, the Changs received a package in the mail from their new son-in-law. “Liu Renfu expresses gratitude for the marriage of your daughter,” the note read. A box of sweet cakes was accompanied by a small red envelope, which contained two 100-yuan notes.

  On the fourth call, Ol’ Chang and his wife agreed to attend their daughter’s wedding reception. The invitation came in a large, calligraphed envelope, and the card was crimson red with gold lettering. An accompanying note from Mei Ling indicated that their actual wedding would be a church ceremony two months before the libations.

  Ol’ Chang was disdainful of his wife and daughter’s religious devotion. He wondered why Mei Ling was so anxious to get married; perhaps the thoughtless girl had gotten herself pregnant. But if this fellow Liu was a man of means, he could provide for not only his wife and son, but the in-laws as well.

  WITH LESS THAN TWO WEEKS BEFORE THEIR NUPTIALS, MEI Ling rushed about her days with a glowing, breathless vigor as she combed through stores and catalog pages for wedding attire. There were consultations with the priest and fortuneteller, invitations to send out, and a long list of tasks that only a bride could check off with zeal.

  There was also a new home awaiting Mei Ling. When she first laid eyes Liu’s apartment, she could tell it had been tidied up and decorated with festive calendars. Yet Mei Ling cringed at the sight of the burned-out pots and the rusted pipes beneath the sink. Frayed curtains hung limply in front of a view of the old cement factory, a gray, prison-like complex. Her spirits faltered, like a young bird pitched from the safety of the nest into alien surroundings.

  Mei Ling was sorry to leave her roommates, especially Pei.Their eviction at the end of the month rushed the couple’s wedding plans, but Liu was happy to accommodate her need to move.

  Hours after her roommate Lan departed for her graveyard shift, Mei Ling continued to sit at the old wooden desk, listening to Pei’s soft breathing as she slept. Anxiety crept under her skin at those hours. One night, she let the glossy magazines slip out of her fingers, and rummaged deep into the drawer, fishing out a stone amulet carved by her old boyfriend.

  She had almost eloped with him five years earlier, during those terrible storms that seized the Yangtze. Living on the steep banks near old Wushan, the Chang family had cultivated a small grove of oranges, a handful of walnut trees, as well as corn, wheat, and potatoes that were staples they lived on and bartered for rice. When the first storm came, the family huddled in the common room, watching the light of the bare electric bulb flicker and then extinguish as the wind howled and tore through their farm. In the morning, the fields were covered with detritus. The tall wheat stalks had been crushed as if stampeded by a herd of water buffalo. The corn stood like scarecrows with the tasseled ears dangling like broken limbs. The family counted their losses, and with heavy hearts, braced for a lean winter ahead.

  A few days later, a bigger storm tore through the entire region. The Yangtze had turned into a bloated serpent, engorged with torrents of rain that emptied the sky of humor and light. Cascades of topsoil rained down the slopes in thick, brown tentacles, moving toward the river. The lattice of stones used to brace the terraced hillside was pried loose and hurled with the force of catapults into the Yangtze. Whatever had remained of the Changs’ crops met a watery death.

  The terrible rains had destroyed the Chang family’s roof, and one after another, their feeble reinforcements gave way—the buckets soon overflowed, the plastic tarp on the roof tore loose and flapped like a howling demon, heavy boards and bricks did nothing to stem the inevitable destruction. When at last a whole section of the roof collapsed under the fury of the rains, the family gathered their meager possessions and huddled under a makeshift lean-to while Ol’ Chang drove his donkey to town to secure a government-issue tent. Under its blue and white awning, the family subsisted for a month and a half as they rebuilt their home and salvaged what was left of their cropland.

  It was during this time that Mei Ling thought of eloping with her boyfriend, whose home in a nearby village had not been destroyed. She had seethed for years under her father’s derisive attacks, and now his vitriol was unbearable. It was Mei Ling’s fault that she was not of age to bring income into the family, that she had taken the place of an able-bodied son, that she brought a line of penniless suitors to their door, and somehow, it was Mei Ling’s insolence that in
voked the vengeance of the gods on their family.

  On the night of the planned escape, Mei Ling broke down and told her mother, who prostrated herself tearfully at Mei Ling’s feet and promised that she would keep Ol’ Chang’s wrath at bay. “Don’t think of it as a daughter’s duty calling you to stay, my child. Think of your mother’s love. Be patient; this isn’t the time to break away, when the floods have torn everything out of our grasp.”

  Almost four years passed before Mei Ling did finally leave her niang jia to start a new life in Wushan. And now, as she was forced out of her apartment and welcomed into her new husband’s home, she wondered why God had taken so long to free her from her father’s grasp. Mei Ling turned the stone amulet over three times, as if performing a ritual for the departed, and then released it into a small wastebasket by the desk.

  Those were surreal times, and her emotions, once brimming with passion and outrage, now seemed hollow. She had once sought marriage to escape, but there was nothing pressing her now. Her tyrannical father was in Guangdong, and the distance castrated him of his power over her. The eviction was an urgent matter, but nothing could drive her away from home like the onslaught of rain and her father’s harsh words. At last, Mei Ling felt that she was free from the stranglehold of her past.

  18

  On the LAST DAY OF THE ELEVENTH MONTH, THE PARISHIONERS OF the Catholic Church gathered to celebrate the marriage of Liu Renfu and Chang Mei Ling. Father Chong conducted the brief ceremony at the end of Mass that Sunday.

  When Mei Ling appeared at the entrance to the church, her radiant presence captivated each old soul in the pews, who sighed and exhaled as if an angel had descended in their midst. A gale of exhilaration swept over Liu, quelling the nervous shake in his hands and the pains in his feet, which were unused to such fancy shoes. Accompanied by an elderly parishioner, Mei Ling strode down the aisle like a great white crane with glorious feathers. A hush descended on the congregation as the escort placed her hand into Liu’s.

  That moment of contact carried Liu through the strangeness and tedium of the wedding ceremony. All the while, as he listened to the droning chants of the priest, and gazed upon the self-effacing countenance of Jesus Christ, Liu took comfort in the memory of that warm palm pressed into his.

  When the moment came for Liu to kiss Mei Ling, he suddenly felt dizzy from the attention of a hundred frail souls. The smell of perfume and smoke from snuffed candles overpowered him. He leaned toward his glowing bride. Her crimson lips loomed like festive lanterns before turning black. And then the darkness swallowed him for a long, painful second. As he crumpled to the floor, the last image etched into his fuzzy brain was that of the priest, his long robe swirling in eddies, pale blue and white, like the frothy waters of the Daning.

  A splash of cold water on Liu’s forehead revived him, and the elderly women, who had nearly swooned in sympathetic reaction, now fanned themselves and mumbled prayers of thanks. The faces of the priest, Mei Ling, and her escort hovered above him in anxious anticipation. When he got back unsteadily on his feet, Liu felt a violent rush of blood to his temples, the heat erupting through his skin in prickles of self-loathing.

  He took a deep breath as he faced Mei Ling again and peered into her deep brown eyes. The gentle pressure of her hands comforted Liu. If there were any dark feelings she harbored, the coal-tinted lines of her eyelashes obscured them.

  “I pronounce you man and wife. You may now . . . uh . . . take the bride’s hand,” Father Chong chuckled.

  The couple left the church amidst the thunderous echoes of the organ, past the old women who dabbed at their eyes and careworn brows. A few in the congregation uttered prayers for the young couple, in hopes that the day’s mishap would not be an omen of future calamities.

  FANG SHUPING SELDOM VISITED THE HOUSES OF THOSE WHO lived in circumstances beneath his. Standing in the courtyard of Chu Longshan’s modest home, he lingered before knocking. He had set out early in the morning, heading west with the sun, to make the long trip to Lanping village. He could hear the chickens scratching in the dirt outside the compound. The brief moments of solitude allowed him mastery over any house, not just his fine brick bungalow on the outskirts of Wushan.

  Chu Longshan had been his only friend during his stint of commune life in Sichuan. In the thirty-five years since, Fang had amassed a small fortune. His real estate dealings over the past few months buoyed him up from the shadowy realms to a new level of respectability. His friend Longshan, however, had remained a common peasant. After the large commune was disbanded, Longshan saw his meager fortunes slip away as he struggled to defend his land against natural disasters and human schemes that grew like weeds in Sichuan province.

  When Fang arrived, Chu Longshan’s eyes lit up, and he pumped his old friend’s hand vigorously. “Fang ol’ brother. It’s been too long. Come in, come in. Your hands are cold. Let’s warm you up.”

  Longshan told his wife, a pretty woman whose gray hair showed at the edges, to throw wood into the stove and make some tea.

  Fang stared down at his leather boots. The floor seemed cold and dirty, and he did not offer to remove them. He glanced around the common room, which contained only a dining table hewn from pine and rickety low chairs that could easily be mistaken for kindling.

  Longshan invited Fang to sit down. “Please make yourself at home.”

  “I was pleasantly surprised to get a letter from you. Why, the last time we were in touch was . . . let’s see ... ten years ago.”

  “My son got married,” said Longshan, “and you came to the wedding.”

  “Ah yes. And now your brother-in-law has died. How is your sister faring?” Fang asked.

  “She is making the best of it. So sudden, you know. The poor man’s heart gave out, and we were too far from medical help.”

  “Yes, a shame. But I suppose the gods take us when it is our time.” Fang fingered the rough edges of the mug that Longshan’s wife had filled with tea. He was not truly sorry to hear of his death. This man had laid claim to the one desire that eluded Fang more than half his life, the consummation of his love for Longshan’s sister, Chu Sulin.

  When Fang’s affair with Sulin was discovered, her brother had remained a staunch ally. But that did not matter in the elder Chu’s eyes. A capitalist’s son was a capitalist’s son. Fang was an enemy of the revolution who had disgraced the daughter of a brigade leader. Chu Longshan questioned the peasants’ indictment and begged his father to spare Fang’s life, but to no avail. His sister pleaded and bargained, then threatened to take her own life. At last, their father relented.

  Years after his exile from the commune, Fang learned that Sulin had married the son of a prominent Party official, to whom she was betrothed. He had been driven to despair, but his ravaged heart knew that she must have loved him still. Fang sensed that his fortunes would change again. And yet, there was no other woman like Sulin.

  “WE HAVE BEEN PREPARING FOR MY BROTHER-IN-LAW’S FUNERAL,” said Longshan,“and I’m afraid there is not enough to pay for a proper burial unless we find some items he had given his daughter.”

  “Yes, you mentioned in the letter. What are you looking for exactly?” Fang asked.

  “My brother-in-law gave his daughter a gold pendant shortly before she gave birth, about a year ago. When she had a daughter, he was quite disappointed, and asked for it back.”

  “But she refused?” interrupted Fang.

  “Yes, but she says that she no longer has it. Says the river claimed it when their home was flooded six months ago.”

  “Silly girl, should have kept the gold and given up the child.”

  “It’s a long shot, but I thought you might know some authorities in the area. Someone who might have inspected the houses before they were destroyed.”

  “No, my good man, I’m afraid those bastards won’t get their boots dirty, unless you hold their firstborn for ransom. There’s a scavenger who worked for me, however. He combed through the area where your niece lives. W
here was that again?”

  “Suchien village, down a ways in Emerald Gorge. Has your man been there?”

  “Perhaps. It rings a bell. I’ll pursue the matter with him more closely. If the fellow has the goods, he’ll cooperate. He’s a thirsty pig at the watering trough, just getting married himself.”

  Fang lit his pipe and offered his lighter to Longshan. The two men smoked in silence for a while, and Fang noticed with irony how their fortunes had been reversed, how Longshan’s carriage and garb stood in stark contrast to his own. Fang’s attire was befitting of his new status; even a cross-country trip called for a wool sweater and tweed pants, topped with his favorite black overcoat. His friend was dressed in a Mao suit in faded blue, threadbare from years of heavy labor. It seemed less a political statement than an act of necessity.

  Longshan sat hunched over in the hard wooden chair, with his elbows against his knees, as if pondering a difficult decision. His brows were knitted together out of habit; he appeared to be constantly scrutinizing his whereabouts. The worry lines only deepened when he broke into a laugh.

  “You know, Ol’ Fang,” said Longshan, “I never did like my brother-in-law. He had a foul temper, and bad breath from eating all that garlic. It’s a wonder that Sulin could stand being near him long enough to produce children.”

  “Maybe she’ll forget the old goat in time.”

  “Well, you never married. But old couples get used to each other’s ways, even if they can’t stand them.” Longshan’s wife appeared in the doorway and shot him a steely glance. “Not you, my dear. You’re perfect,” Chu Longshan added with a chuckle.

  “Ol’ Chu, I must be going. I’ve got some business in Chengdu tomorrow. But if I find those heirloom pieces, I’d like to take them myself to Sulin.”

  “Fang, you old steed. I would wait a bit. At least until the mourning period has passed. You never know what old fires you might rekindle.”