In the Lap of the Gods

by Li Miao Lovett

  Rose leaned into her father, and Liu put a protective hand across the small of her back. “I don’t think so,” Liu began on a tentative note. And then the sound of his own words strengthened his conviction, and his voice deepened. “Rose is my little girl now, and she sees me as her father. Her Po Po may want her back, but her own mother gave her up, and you can’t change that fact. What’ll happen when the old woman dies?”

  A strange light appeared in Fang’s eyes. He rapped his knuckles against the wooden frame of the crib. “That is none of your business. I tell you, the girl belongs to the Chu family. You will be given a handsome sum of money. Consider yourself fortunate. Why, it’s a wonder how your wife can take care of a man and child on her paltry income.”

  Liu drew her daughter closer, clutching her tightly, worried that the broker would simply reach out and try to seize the child. The old man’s rapping became insistent.

  “Listen, Fang, that’s generous of you to intervene, but I’m not going to give up this child. I almost did at the beginning, and we’ve been through too much together since then.” He turned to Rose. “Little monkey, who’s your father?”

  The girl looked at Liu, who awaited her answer intently. “You are, Ba Ba.”

  The old man rose to his feet, and stood over Liu and the child. “You’re making a mistake, my friend. This is your chance to be free of debt and burden and return the girl to her relations, where she rightfully belongs. I’ll give you three days to reconsider. When you come to your senses, here are the papers to sign, to make this all legitimate, one surrendering the child to her legal guardian, the other acknowledging a payment of 10,000 yuan for your services in the past year and a half.”

  Fang threw the papers on the couch, tucked his briefcase under his arm, and yanked the door shut behind him. Liu stared at the document, a mass of undecipherable scrawls, and a new object of fascination for Rose. She dug her moist, wrinkled thumb into the layers and picked at the rubber band as if she was playing a crude instrument. For the rest of the afternoon, Liu sat there in stony silence. He was numbed by it all, the marital disappointments, the loss of those who mattered in his life, and the reappearance of this swindler who threatened to take away his precious little monkey.

  Ten thousand yuan. What would a man do for a little peace of mind? If he signed those papers, would his little Rose be in good hands? Would he ever see her again?

  No, he was resolved. He would not be seduced by Fang’s offer. Ten thousand yuan meant nothing to Liu if he had to endure the rest of his days in forced solitude. In his youth he had struck out into the world alone, enduring its tyranny with a stiff upper lip. He needed no family then, and it was only when he found Fei Fei that a new of way of existence revealed itself. She had understood him as a woman could, and her imagination breathed life into his world.These experiences he had sought to recreate with Mei Ling, but now the distance was too great. It was Rose who indulged her father’s whims and pleasures, just as he indulged hers. She could not threaten to leave him; the little girl embraced him wholeheartedly in spite of his failings.

  When Fang came back, Liu would tell him no. “No, Fang,” he’d say, “I am not a fool who falls for your schemes anymore.”

  And then Liu’s gaze fell on the papers; its cryptic text bore the stamp of authority. Doubt seized him now. What if the woman had a legal claim to Rose? What if the authorities could take her away on the pure grounds that he was not her real father? Rose began to claw at the papers; he shooed her fingers away nervously.

  He could take Rose far away where nobody could find them. He could live in the mountains with her, seek temporary refuge in a monastery. He imagined Rose as a wild child, playing among gibbons and wild geese. And he thought of the ancient fables that Fei Fei used to tell. In his mind’s eye Rose would ride on the back of a tiger, her nimble legs braced against its flanks, her arms outstretched, defiant and straight as a spear. When his thoughts alighted on Fei Fei, Liu felt an old, familiar twinge. He got up and lit and cigarette.

  The little girl was chewing on the rubber band wrapped around the documents, and it snapped in two. She screamed, rearing back, and Liu reached out to stroke her cheeks.

  Fang’s friend had nothing to prove her blood ties besides a faint resemblance across two generations. Rose’s mother had abandoned her, after all, and she would not have kept any records that this child existed. He watched Rose sucking on her thumb, soothing herself. Perhaps they did not need to flee.

  The next day, Liu took little Rose down the Hundred Steps Ladder, carrying her for long stretches, and when they reached the main street, he whisked her through the crowd until they arrived at Tai’s restaurant.

  A hazy winter’s light illuminated the storefront. He remembered the signboard, which Tai had so proudly commissioned. The red lettering was a little faded, like a smear of chicken blood; the dusty black background now cast an aura of doom and decay. The windows of the restaurant were covered over with newspaper, and a hastily taped notice fluttered against the door. Like the symbol tsai, the scrap of paper appeared to sentence buildings to death.

  “Who lives here?” asked Rose.

  “An old friend,” replied Liu. “It’s not his home, but my friend lived here.”

  “Friend lived here. Friend lived here,” little Rose chimed.

  Liu peered into the dark interior through a torn edge in the newspaper. The furniture was gone; devoid of tables and chairs, the room had a haunted quality, as if otherworldly residents had set up shop, playing mahjong and frittering the hours away. Liu could see the outlines of drooping posters on the wall, a calendar from the previous year with the same dimpled beauty, and the faint halo of smoked glass on the wall sconces that he and Mei Ling had picked out. He thought of the evenings when he had settled into his favorite table, staring at the customers with languid interest.

  It must have all been a dream, he thought bitterly.

  Liu peeled himself away from the window and shuffled home, dragging Rose up the long stretch of the Hundred Steps Ladder when he was too tired to carry her. Perhaps he was driven by the desire to forget. Perhaps there was nothing to forget, as all that had brought him warmth and comfort no longer existed.

  Three days after Fang’s visit, there was no sign of his return. Liu was tempted to evade the old broker, but he decided to confront Fang and refuse his offer once and for all. He would tear up those papers, show the man that he could be neither bought nor intimidated.

  As the hours slipped by, doubt seeped in once more. What would happen when Fang showed up with the old woman who claimed to be Rose’s grandmother? He could refuse 10,000 yuan more easily than he could turn away from the imploring gaze of his daughter’s Po Po. If she proved somehow that Rose belonged to her, if the little girl fell into her arms with a sigh of remembrance, then Liu would have to surrender the last remaining thing that was dear to him.

  The hours crept by with the heaviness of molasses, and the old broker did not return.The anticipation of a showdown became too much to bear. He needed to get out of the house.

  “We’re going to watch the ships come in,” he told Rose. His fingers worked swiftly to bundle her in a warm coat and scarf. The two headed down to Guangdong Road, and as Liu turned toward the familiar winding path to the docks, a small crowd arrested his attention.

  In the center of the crowd, three children knelt on the ground, their spines upright like mahjong tiles despite the heft of their backpacks. The trio, an older girl about twelve and two younger boys, kept their heads bowed as the onlookers stood in silence. Periodically, someone would toss a bill or a one-yuan coin into the tin can. One or two people would walk off, and another pedestrian would arrive, glance at the poster board scrawled with bold block characters, then throw a bit of money into the collection bin.

  Staring over the shoulder of an old man, Liu nudged his neighbor and whispered, “What does the sign say?”

  The man replied without turning his head. “This family has been struck by misfor
tune. These children have lost their father, and their mother has lost her sanity.They have to fend for themselves now.”

  Liu stared at the children’s sunken heads. The girl had two orderly braids, and her skirt was as neatly pleated as her hair. The boys wore nylon jackets of orange and gray and none of the clothing was tattered nor riddled with holes. These children did not look terribly poor to Liu, certainly not like some of the peasants he had seen on his scavenging forays. But he gave them the benefit of the doubt and tossed them a coin. He eased his way out of the crowd with little Rose at his side.

  The two arrived home shortly before dark, after a windswept stroll along the waterfront. The door was slightly ajar, and when Liu stepped closer, he saw that the lock had been broken. The apartment was in shambles, as if a great flood had swept through it. The chest drawers sat empty as abandoned rafts, their contents tossed out like flotsam. The bed sheets were thrown against the crib, and the thin mattress turned up. The small kitchen was cluttered with the debris of smashed jars and emptied containers. Rice lay strewn all about the floor, mixed with fragments of glass.

  Liu picked his daughter up to keep her from diving into the shards in her curiosity. He planted her on the couch. “Stay there, little monkey.”

  “No!” She whined in protest, but her father’s voice was unusually stern. Rose sat with her legs splayed, sucking her thumb.

  As Liu surveyed the damage, he noticed that the stack of forms Fang had left remained untouched. He waded through the splattered rice and glass, reaching far beneath the counter for an old tealeaf tin where he had kept his dwindling funds. The can was nowhere to be found. His search grew more frantic. He ruffled through the bags of dried goods and containers, tossing them from one jumbled heap to another. In the dark corners, nothing but cockroach and mice-infested grains. Liu stood up and turned toward the child, who could contain her curiosity no longer.

  “Ba Ba, what’s this?” she pointed to a woolen heap beside her. Rose picked up a ragged sweater and her fingers pierced through the holes in the fabric. She peered through them at Liu with an impish grin.

  “It’s a sweater that belonged to ... your auntie. The bad guys had no use for it.” His voice choked to a whisper as she lifted the old sweater over her head. Swallowed up in the dark blue wool, she resembled a pile of cooked seaweed. Liu thought of the day when he had found her, bound in that sweater and old cotton pants that circled her body twice. He had kept that sweater, although useless, its gaping holes beyond repair.

  He took a deep breath, and sat beside Rose. “Little monkey, it’s just you and me now. And we have nothing left to take care of us.” Rose, even at her young age, seemed to understand. She reached through a hole in the fabric, round as an eye socket, and touched his hands.

  Fang was the culprit; Liu was sure of that. The dirty old broker wanted Rose back, perhaps for the sake of a wealthy benefactress, or an old lady love of his. Money and women—what else could motivate that rascal to rob Liu of the last remnants of his dignity? Nothing mattered much to him now; his mind was weary, and the great tide of misfortune had sapped him of his will.

  29

  THE OLD BROKER DID NOT REAPPEAR, BUT THE APARTMENT manager did come by a few days later to collect rent, as Liu and Rose were eating the last of the dried noodles. His daughter had clamored for eggs, but much of their food had been spilled or ruined by the burglars. All of Liu’s money was gone; what he had left in his pocket that day went toward a small bag of rice and soybeans, which Liu rationed carefully. He had swept up the debris in the kitchen, but the apartment was beyond redemption. He dreaded Mei Ling’s return; any lingering hopes that she would come back to her life in Wushan had been dashed. He dared not think of calling her or borrowing money; the support she had provided them over the months was a debt he could not repay.

  The manager stood in the doorway, fingering the broken lock. Liu tried to plea for more time. “There’s a piece or two of good furniture here. Perhaps I can sell them in the next few days.”

  The manager stood with arms akimbo, shaking his head. “I’d just as soon set a match to all this kindling. Listen, we’ve got to get this apartment in shape, turn it around to rent out. Next month’s right around the corner.”

  In the twenty minutes he had been given to vacate the premises, Liu stuffed his old scavenger’s bag with warm clothing for Rose, a small blanket, a pocketknife, a tin bowl with the remaining rice, a spoon, a bag of dried mushrooms, and his remaining cigarettes. He slipped Tai’s cassette into his pocket, although the old tape player had been stolen. Under the light of a nearly full moon, Liu shuffled down the Hundred Steps Ladder with Rose, his scavenger’s bag flapping at his side. His mind swam in confusion, going in circles, but his feet carried him from one familiar waypoint to the next. As he left the searching street lamps behind and entered the old town, his pulse quickened.

  In the silver moonlight, the fringes of old Wushan still awaited the day of reckoning. Although the daytime workers who salvaged wood and copper had gone home, the nocturnal scavengers were beginning to surface. In the ramshackle cottage where they camped, the mice scurried about, discovering the stray grains of rice in Liu’s bags. The ants blazed a trail down the mildewed frame at the entrance, where the door had been plucked away. But there was nothing for him to scavenge from this house, nothing left of value inside its crumbling stone walls.

  The wind whistled through the willow trees in the nearby cemetery. It held the cries of unrepentant ghosts, the drowned and disgraced, the unfed, the tired souls who gave up living before the old town surrendered to the dam. The shifting sounds frightened Rose, and she clung to her father as they huddled against the tamped earth floor.

  A wave of regret seized Liu. What if he had agreed to Fang’s proposition? Would he have spared both of them this ordeal? He looked at his daughter, who had fallen asleep in his lap. “Maybe I made a mistake,” he whispered.

  The image of Fei Fei, robust in her eighth month of carrying their child, haunted him now. In the gloom of night, her spirit lingered and glowed like embers of incense. She told Liu to have no regrets, to embrace this child against the cold even when everything else was caught in the undertow.

  There was one thing he could do, Liu realized, one remaining friend who could throw out a lifeline to a desperate man. It was Wang Ma, who lived a short boat ride away in Fengjie. He would need ship fare to take Rose with him to that promising shore.

  THE ROBUST SMELLS OF THE CITY ENTRANCED ROSE. THE fragrance of sweet sesame oil and baked bread wafted down the street, making her quite hungry. After a few meals of plain rice and soybeans, her stomach was left wanting. But the incessant footfalls all around them drowned out the rumbling of her belly. As hulking metal buggies sped by, she huddled close to her Ba Ba on the pavement, putting her hands up to her ears when they burst into a shrill cry. She remembered sitting in a bright plastic buggy in the town square, the thrill of sliding through space with her father running by her side. But now it seemed that the rest of the world was in motion, and she was forced to sit still. It felt like punishment, but it was not her daddy punishing her, for he sat as still as she.

  Soon, a few gathered in a small circle around them. Rose could smell what they ate for lunch, the garlic and chili peppers and fried pork, when they bent over to toss a silvery coin in the jar beside her. The tinkling pleased her, and she would reach into the container until her father gently lifted her hands away. It had become a sort of game between them. As the watery light moved across the sky, the coins tinkled, her stubby fingers reached in, her father’s big hands chased them away. Coins, fingers, hands moved with one motion, up and down. Their shadows danced. She giggled with each round, but her daddy was silent.

  The strangers lingered longer than she liked. They did not touch her, as younger children or dogs would, but they stared at her with great curiosity. The older ones had eyes like chickens, beady and mucous-filled. One boy had eyes like a pig’s that bulged behind thick glasses, and he snorted
rather like a pig.

  She watched as the onlookers’ eyes moved from her to her father, and then to a gray square of cardboard scrawled with black marks. When she grew tired of the coin game, Rose began tracing the scribbles with her index finger. She lifted the finger to her mouth and tasted the dark smudge. The bitterness made her scrunch her face, and the boy laughed. She began to cry, big tears rolling down her cheeks. She tasted the salt on her lips, and that made her hungry again.

  Her father shooed the boy away, and held her close. She nestled against him, her thumb providing a bit of relief from that gnawing feeling. Now she noticed the prickle of cold cement where she had sat for so long.

  In the evening, an old woman appeared with a small plate of chicken and rice. Rose gulped down every bite her father fed her, almost swallowing the spoon. And when the streetlights began to sparkle, and a canopy of stars appeared overhead, they made their way down to the damp old house, and curled up against the musty earth. She watched the beetles skitter along, unearthing little mounds of dirt. Somewhere, a creature shrieked, piercing the darkness with the cry of a baby. Her father called it a bat. He lifted his arms, said it could fly like this, and his hands fluttered against a beam of moonlight. Perhaps babies could fly, Rose thought. She imagined herself flying away, as the heavy blanket of her father’s arm lulled her to sleep.

  “FOOL. WHAT A SENTIMENTAL FOOL,” FANG MUTTERED TO HIMSELF. No, he was not one to make house calls. It had taken him more than a month to track down the scavenger in his shabby apartment, only to hear that the child would not be given up. An impotent man with a child in tow. Fang wondered how Liu’s pretty young wife had put up with him.

  Fang took a deep puff from his pipe, and fished out the letter Sulin had given him before he left her village. When she pressed it into his palm, her fingers lingered for a moment before they pulled away. A tiny crack appeared in the porcelain calm of her demeanor. He saw how her eyes, filled with a tremulous light, betrayed her longing. He had rejoiced in that moment, even as he had feared what she would tell him.