by Yu-Han Chao
I didn’t always have to prepare and sell betel nuts. I used to have a better life, and certainly deserved one.
I see Moli, sitting at the betel nut stand in a lime-green T-shirt and knee-length white skirt, talking on the cell phone with that no-good boyfriend of hers again.
“Aw, really? But I wanted to go . . . okay, fine. Tomorrow night. Keep your promise, Feng!”
She hangs up with a pout, and my heart hurts for her.
She’s my oldest daughter and I named her after the jasmine flower. Even a flower has more self-esteem than her, letting a man play her like that. I’ve told her so many times to dump him.
I walk up to her and hand her a bag of betel plant leaves.
“He’s married,” I say. “It’s no use. And have you forgotten your father? How he ran off with a little tart and left us to make a living selling these dirty bin-lang?”
“Don’t talk about it like it’s my fault,” Moli mutters beneath her breath.
Haili, the younger one, doesn’t say anything, and pretends not to hear her sister or see my anger. She only folds a stuffed areca nut into a fresh green leaf and puts it into a small paper box.
Our betel nut stand has little Christmas lights around it and a transparent refrigerator case to keep the prepared betel nuts fresh. The stand faces an alley that turns away from and back to a main road, a good location for our business. This isn’t one of the better neighborhoods in Taipei, as my husband bought the apartment when he first started his job after law school and didn’t have much money. He promised we would move to a bigger, nicer place after Haili was born, but soon after we brought her back from the hospital, he ran off with a little tart. He lives in a grand house in the scenic mountains with that woman while we squat here in this ugly apartment with a betel nut stand in front of it, surrounded by open sewers that stink and sidewalks stained by dog shit and juice from garbage and betel nuts.
I should have been a well-dressed, leisurely lady who shopped in department stores and had afternoon tea with friends instead of squatting behind this bin-lang stand, peeling betel leaves apart, mixing lime tar with my daughters. A poem of mine won a classical Chinese poetry contest in high school, but now I manage a betel nut stand. My ex-husband hid away all his money so his little secretary could buy a house under her name, and by the time we were divorced, my girls and I got barely anything. He was a lawyer and knew all the tricks of family courts in Taiwan; I had no means to hire a good lawyer to fight back, not to mention he knew the judge personally.
I brought these girls up on my own.
I tell them from my own experience what men are like. And do they listen? No.
Moli used to be so chubby. Look at her now, a stick figure. One summer she decided to lose weight, and she just kept losing, losing. She’d scream at me if I made her eat some real food; she only chewed gum, ate green grapes, and drank winter melon tea all day.
Her deft fingers are wrapping betel nuts and putting them in little boxes. She and her sister, Haili, go through the motions during the slow time of day between one and two in the afternoon while I watch them from my seat in the back and balance our accounts. I keep an eye on the customers so those dirty men don’t put their salty pig hands on my daughters. My girls deserve better.
We all deserve better.
Lam brings me some tea. I smile at him.
Lam is a neighbor’s son. His family moved out of town a few years ago, but he stayed here for his job. He’s been sleeping on our sofa for years; he’s like my adopted son. He helps around the house and is like a big brother to my daughters, being a good seven, eight years older than them.
I like having a man around the house. I feel less like a sad, divorced obasan, an old bag. Lam is a great comfort to me. I never had a son, but he is almost better than my own children—he’s giving, considerate, and always listens to what I have to say.
A man calls to Haili and Moli, “Bin-lang Si Se!” as he passes by on a scooter. Si Se was one of the most beautiful women in Chinese history, but the way he says bin-lang Si Se, ‘betel nut beauty,’ is leering, and I glare at him. He’s a betel nut addict, you can tell from his teeth that are black from the stuffing in betel nuts and his loose gums. The mouths of most of our regulars look like this.
“I’m sorry, Ma, don’t be angry,” he calls in my direction, turning back to buy a box of betel nuts.
At the stand, Haili accepts his crumpled one hundred-NT bill and hands him a box.
My girls, seventeen and nineteen, are pretty in their own ways. But if they were any prettier I wouldn’t let them work at this stand—it’s too dangerous. Moli, almost model-like, is much taller than Haili, who is my size, about 155 centimeters.
People often say jokingly that I can sit at the bin-lang stand myself because I look youthful, like my daughters’ big sister, with the same upward-pointed phoenix eyes. It’s nice of them to say that of an obasan like me. My skin is sallow, unlike the nice cream color when I was younger; I have crow’s feet, bags under my eyes, and I have to dye my hair to hide the gray. I haven’t gained an ounce since I got married, though, and from the backside I could pass as twenty-five, still, if it weren’t for my hairstyle—short permed hair that is the fashion for middle-aged Taiwanese women, to hide the hair loss that comes with age.
We eat lunch separately but dinner together. Lam often cooks for us because he’s a brilliant chef—my favorite is his soy-cooked pig feet and stir-fried squid, both of which he made tonight. I fill an extra large bowl of rice for him to show my gratitude and a large bowl for myself to show my appreciation.
“Pig feet again? Not me,” Moli says and puts down her chopsticks. “I’m sick of even the smell of them, ugh. And it’s all fat. Fat makes my skin break out.”
Haili picks up some vegetables with her chopsticks and puts them on her rice in silence. Whenever her older sister is being hostile, she takes her side automatically.
Lam takes a bite out of a piece of squid at his corner of the table, head lowered. I feel bad for him. My girls have been more and more cruel to both him and me as they've grown. Adolescent girls are so ungrateful.
Moli puts an almost untouched bowl of rice back in the kitchen. Her sister follows her, and I hear the two of them speaking in low voices in the kitchen. I only catch fragments of their conversation.
“I thought he canceled—”
“I’m going anyway . . . to his house, I don’t care—”
“But he might get mad—”
“I have the right to—”
“I don’t know, Moli—”
“It’s really none of your business—”
They wash their bowls and chopsticks noisily so that I cannot hear most of what they say. Soon Moli goes back to her room, and Haili comes back to the table, peeling an orange.
Fifteen minutes later, Moli emerges in the figure-hugging floral dress she bought herself for her birthday, wearing makeup, sparkly blush and unnaturally blue eye shadow. She must have used so much blue powder for it to show on our skin tone. I don’t like to see her with powder on her face; it makes her look artificial and shallow.
“I’m going out,” she announces, one high-heeled sandal already out the door.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Out.” She slams the door.
“What’s wrong with your sister, Haili?” I ask my remaining daughter.
“Dunno,” she says, and stuffs her mouth with a piece of orange.
Later at night, I sit alone in the living room, mixing the stuffing for betel nuts. Most of the ingredients come in plastic bags, and I have to combine them in the right proportion: camphor, tobacco, nutmeg, clove, saffron, musk, coconut, fennel, gray-amber, and turmeric. Lam is scrubbing the kitchen and bathrooms, something he does almost every other day. Our floors and wall tiles are always spotless. I can hear the eight o’clock soap opera on the television from Haili and Moli’s room; at least Haili is still a good girl and stays at home, unlike her big sister.
In
the middle of the night, I am awakened by Haili’s and Moli’s voices. Moli sounds like she is crying.
I open the door and see my two girls hugging each other on Moli’s bed.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
Moli sees me, wipes her tears with the back of her hand, and screws her face into a scowl. When I see her face my mouth drops open. Beneath her left eye, red and swollen from crying, is a purple and red bruise that nearly reaches her cheekbone.
“What did that animal do to you?” I reach toward her but she jerks away.
“None of your business!” Moli screams in a hoarse voice. She must have already been yelling before this.
“Ma— ” Haili says, “Now is not a good time.”
“Not a good time? When is it a good time? When your sister finally gets beaten to a pulp by that no-good, cheating bastard? When will you girls learn?”
I am close to tears. I cannot bear the thought of my poor daughter being hit by a good-for-nothing man. My girls get hit by nobody. Even their father never raised his hand to them when he was around.
“It’s all your fault!” Moli cries, convulsing. “You made me work in this disgusting bin-lang stand. You ruined my life. He called me a dirty bin-lang Si Se and he says he doesn’t want to see me again!”
The air around me feels ice cold, but my face is burning. “You are not dirty, you are not a dirty bin-lang Si Se, you hear that? I will tell that man how wrong he is. I will show him. You are good girls, my girls, it’s not like you’re working in the transparent betel nut booths next to the highway, exposing yourselves like prostitutes. You are not that! You are good girls, do you hear me? There is nothing wrong with what you do. That man is a bastard; he is wrong!”
“I don’t care, you ruined my life! You hypocritical bitch! You talk about how horrible men are, that they cheat, prefer younger women. You are worse than all of them put together! You think we don’t know about Lam? You think we don’t know that he sneaks into your bedroom at night? I’m sick of you pretending you are a perfect mother. You are such a fake!”
I slap Moli; I cannot help it. I slap her twice: once on her face, once on her shoulder as she turns. She is so much taller that I almost lose my balance after the impact.
Haili forces her way between us, crying.
“Stop it, stop it, Mom, the two of you, stop fighting. Stop talking like that, Moli—”
“No, you know what, I’ve had enough of your silence, Haili. You know everything they do and you have no guts to say anything about it except to me. You’re the one who told me about the noises you heard from your wall years ago, the noise of our mother being a huge disgusting whore! And now I hear it all the time, you’re the one who made me realize what was going on and there you are standing there with that look on your face, like you’re oh-so-surprised, you’re almost as bad as her—”
I sink into Haili’s bed, tears flowing. Haili looks at her sister with a frightened expression on her face. I see Lam’s figure in the doorway. He heard the crying and screaming. He must have heard every piercing word from Moli. I want to fall into his arms, but can’t, not in front of my daughters. They have made me feel dirty. None of this is my fault. I told Moli not to date a married man. But she was stupid and wouldn’t listen. I warned her, didn’t I? It isn’t my fault, I am a good mother . . .
Writing on the Basement Wall
THERE IS A Chinese superstition that those who commit suicide wearing red clothes will become powerful, vengeful ghosts. They will come back and seek retribution for the injury done to them when they were still alive.
Cynthia woke up late. Fortunately, Han Lin Vocational College enforced a strict uniform code, so she did not have to rummage through her closet looking for a cute outfit. She did, however, search for a pair of long, white socks since short, calf-exposing ones were considered indecent by the president, Mrs. Lin.
The radio blasted static-y news on ICRT, the only English radio station based in Taipei. The good thing about listening to the station, although Cynthia’s listening comprehension only allowed her to pick up phrases here or there, was that it broadcast strictly international or political news. No horrible Taiwanese society news about the man who stabbed his ex-girlfriend last night or the love suicide of the daughter of Taipei's premier hypnotist. No acid poured on anyone’s face, no stalkers, kidnappers, gangsters, sex crimes.
Finally dressed and ready for school, Cynthia rushed out of the apartment. When she turned around to lock her door, she noticed a piece of paper taped onto its exterior.
Dear tenant:
a message in red mentioning your name was found scribbled on the basement wall. As much as we regret this, we must ask you to take full responsibility for cleaning the writing on the wall as soon as possible, as it must be left by an acquaintance of yours.
The Building Manager, No.3 Sing Yi Street.
Cynthia crumpled the note and avoided eye contact with the building manager at his desk as she walked hastily out of the front entrance of her ugly tile building. At the bus stop, she tossed the paper ball, now a tight, warm wad, into a wastebasket.
The sun’s last rays turned everything a burnt, golden color as Cynthia dragged her heavy feet through the front gate of her building again after school. She had no idea what went on in class all day; she drifted from classroom to classroom like a phantom.
No one sat at the front desk in the lobby. The building manager was too old to be of any use as a guard—had been for over a decade. Her downstairs neighbor, old Mrs. Yeh, had told her how in 1984 a bunch of robbers came in, held a gun to the manager’s head, and carried out over twenty bicycles right before his eyes.
“That was back when bicycles were actually worth something. When we asked the building manager how he could just let them take everything, he said, they had a thing.” Mrs. Yeh made the shape of a gun with her right hand.
If more robbers came and held guns to the building manager’s head, it would serve him right, Cynthia thought. As she ascended the stairs, she heard something behind her. She turned to see the shadow of a man in the stairway entrance. A middle-aged stranger emerged before her, his eyes round, maniacal, left hand holding a knife in a manner ready to stab. The gleam from the knife in the dim staircase contrasted with the dark stairs leading to the basement. She ran upstairs, up two stories, three, hearing the man’s footsteps always half a flight beneath her.
When she reached the seventh floor of the building, she saw that the door of an apartment facing the staircase was open. She rushed into the apartment, shut the metal door, and pulled the lock and chain in place. Turning around, she surveyed the apartment, heart still racing. Chinese scrolls, seashells, and upside-down, desiccated flowers decorated the cabinets. Most of the furniture was wicker or bamboo. Cynthia tread softly into the living room, rolling her feet from heel to toe. She saw an old woman, shriveled and hunched with age, watering plants with a spray hose on the balcony crowded with potted plants. When the old woman stepped in and closed the screen door after her, Cynthia approached.
“Excuse me, Po Po.”
The old woman gave her a broad grin: all gums, no teeth. Her wrinkled lips looked like bleached prunes. “You must be Yune’s friend. Welcome, welcome.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know anyone in your family. I live in your building and—”
The old woman put her hand on Cynthia’s shoulder and interrupted, “I don’t have my hearing aid, darling. It broke last week. You just wait here, Yune will be back from school soon. I’m going into the kitchen to make dinner. Make yourself at home.” She wiped her hands on her floral patterned pants and shuffled into the kitchen.
Cynthia didn’t know what to do. She peered through the cloudy peep hole in the door: the hallway was empty. She was about to sit down on a bamboo rocking chair when the old woman appeared again, holding a plate of sliced mango.
“Here, have some fruit.”
Cynthia stood, unsure of what to do. She wanted to tell the woman she shouldn’t have go
ne to the trouble of peeling and cutting up mangos, that she didn’t know Yune, and she didn’t feel like eating fruit because a stranger had just come after her with a gleaming knife. But the woman could hear nothing, so instead Cynthia nodded graciously and accepted the plate.
She heard the sizzle of moist vegetables landing in a wok coming from the kitchen. She picked up a piece of mango with a toothpick and put it in her mouth. It tasted treacly, over-ripe. She pushed the other pieces on the plate aside, creating an empty space, making it look like she had taken more pieces and had appreciated the hostess’s efforts. Then, slipping the toothpick into her uniform skirt pocket, she left, closing the door behind her.
He was Cynthia’s first boyfriend. They met under unremarkable circumstances. She was on her way to the stationery store for manila envelopes, and he stopped her to ask what time it was, leaning down from his motorcycle. In the following weeks she gave him more than her time—all her firsts besides her virginity. Once or twice they went to a motel and rubbed against each other’s bodies, and she watched or helped him finish, but she never let things get further than that. He was discontent, and things between them began going south.
When Cynthia asked for a break-up, he threatened to kill himself. He would write a suicide note, he said. The note would instruct his gangster parents to kill Cynthia, the girl who made their only son take his own life, and they would. And then they would kill her family. He sent her letters written in his own blood, the ugly handwriting bleeding shades of orange and rust on paper crinkled from the uneven drying of blood. He followed her after school, once or twice pushing her into construction sites near her campus and feeling her up savagely.
Cynthia’s father knew nothing—he did not notice that his daughter never left the house during the weekend without his company. He did not see that she had picked at and bitten her nails until they were so short and broken they cracked and bled.