“Nonsense, you will grow up to be a pretty girl and get married to a good husband someday.” She patted Little Jade’s head.
“I don't want to get married!” Little Jade exclaimed. “Never, never, never!”
She hid her face in her grandmother’s neck.
“What are you going to do if you don’t get married? You want to be a Buddhist nun? You’ll have to shave your head,” the grandmother teased, rocking her back and forth.
Chapter 4: The Grandmother, 1941
It was raining outside. Little Jade pressed her nose against the window. The rain fell quietly upon the earth, washing the maple tree in the courtyard. The maple leaves trembled gently in the wind. The gray sky hovered above.
The rain was light. It brushed against the newly pasted window paper, making a scratching noise. Little Jade could hear the sounds of people in the hall: footsteps, talking, shouts for servants. Soon the grandmother would lead the family to the temple. Little Jade had accompanied her grandmother there many times before. She was always awed by the great hall with the painted Buddha statues that reached to the ceiling. The monks at the temple had received scheduled donations and deliveries of grain and oil from the Su family for generations. The Su’s had their private prayer hall behind the main temple.
Ever since Little Jade’s great-grandfather died while he was sunning in the courtyard, the family had not been the same. For all of the great-grandfather’s life, he had been rich. He boasted that he had never been anywhere without owning some part of it. He owned countless acres of farmlands and orchards, blocks of streets in different cities throughout the province, and land in several mountains to the west. It was difficult to keep track of the properties and income from the tenant farmers. He had a network of accountants to estimate rents to collect and taxes to be paid to the local magistrate. But starting with the demise of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, vast ownership of land became less and less profitable and meaningful.
After the great-grandfather’s death, his property was split up into lots. Each of his four sons and his one grandson, Little Jade’s father, got a share. After the family estate was divided, the four great-uncles moved out of the big house with their wives and daughters, leaving Little Jade and her grandmother to look after the old house along with a dozen servants. Much of the old housing compound was no longer occupied.
The grandmother wanted to visit the temple to pray for her son and daughter-in-law’s safe journey during their honeymoon. An Ling wanted to survey his share of the family properties in nearby towns and counties. Silver Pearl wanted to go along, but the roads were no longer peaceful. An Ling said that with the war raging between the invading Japanese Army and both factions of Nationalist and Communist Armies of China, there were no functioning governing bodies in the surrounding counties, leaving the bandits to the roam the countryside. He insisted that they be accompanied by two guards and a maid to look after Silver Pearl.
“Little Jade,” the grandmother’s voice came from behind the young child. She placed her hands on the girl’s shoulders.
“Are we leaving soon?” Little Jade turned and saw her grandmother smiling at her.
“I have decided that you are not going to the temple with us. It’s raining and it’s chilly outside, and you’re still weak. I don’t want you to get another wind-chill,” the grandmother said.
“But I don't want to be in the house alone.”
The grandmother smiled, stretching the web of fine wrinkles across her face. She hugged her granddaughter and said, “Orchid will be home to keep you company. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Stay home and rest. Don’t go out in the rain.”
She patted Little Jade’s head and walked away. Little Jade noticed her grandmother’s back hunched over slightly and that there was more white in her hair. She could hear her grandmother and her father talking and getting ready to leave in the family hall. The noises moved farther and farther away.
The house grew quiet. Little Jade wanted to go out. She was tired of staring out the window. She put on a quilted jacket and red rubber boots. Outside, Orchid was feeding the pigs. Little Jade took an oilpaper umbrella and stole out of the kitchen door. The big door closed behind her with a squeak, and a cool breeze swept across her face as she hurried down to the vegetable garden. The rain fell like soft cow’s hair on Little Jade’s face and clothes leaving traces of dampness on her skin. Her heart leapt. The squash vines scratched the top of her umbrella. She walked carefully and kicked the growing stems of the vegetables out of her way, trying not to splash mud on her boots. Beyond the vegetable garden, the bamboo forest hung like mist. In the other direction, wheat field stretched endlessly under the gray sky.
Little Jade heard someone singing. In a distance, she saw the figure of a boy slowly riding an ox along the side of a wheat field. He wore a broad brim hat made of bamboo leaves and a cape of matted reeds. He played a bamboo flute, and Little Jade stood and listened to the stream of clear notes. It was an ancient song about the spirits, about how cold and lonely it is beneath the earth.
“Today you cry over my tomb,
and make an offer of grain and wine to my soul.
But in this world of chaos,
who knows what will happen tomorrow?
The soldiers will march over the graveyard,
disturbing the dead.
And you won't be here
to clear the weeds off my tombstone
next year.”
Little Jade listened to the song, watching the boy and the ox moving away, disappearing into the mist. She felt an unnamed sadness. She wished that she were in the family temple, kneeling and praying next to her grandmother among the ancestral tablets and statues of the Buddha, listening to the temple bell, and inhaling the smoke of the incense.
***
Little Jade’s father and stepmother left for their honeymoon in the city the next morning. Little Jade stood next to her grandmother in the front yard, watching the servants load the luggage into two waiting wagons. The stepmother tried not to look happy, but she could not conceal a trace of a smile. The father smoked a cigarette as he waited for the wagon to be loaded, standing next to his mother, their arms touching. The sun was shining behind a thin layer of cloud. The sky was the color of tin. The wagons were finally ready. And the grandmother said over and over, “Take care of yourselves. Come home soon.”
Little Jade’s father came over to her. She looked up at him as he touched her cheeks. “I’ll be back soon, Little Jade,” he said.
Then he turned and stepped into the wagon as he was smiling and waving at his mother and daughter. Silver Pearl waved a pink handkerchief as the wagon pulled away.
***
The grandmother sat in front of the vanity table and combed her long graying hair under the light of a single candle. The hair fell loosely on her shoulders. She moved slowly and silently, gazing into the mirror. Is that really her looking back at herself from inside the mirror? She wore pale blue pajamas and her thin body cast a large shadow on the wall. The flame of the lamp flickered, changing the shape of the shadow.
Holding a pillow in her arms, Little Jade curled up in the bed, watching her grandmother. She looked frail next to the looming shadow on the wall. She made Little Jade feel sad and comforted at the same time. The grandmother put the comb on the vanity table and started to rub oil from a small jar into her hands.
She said, “Little Jade, grandma is getting old. I didn’t do much today and my back is aching. Come over and pound my back for me.”
“Yes, grandma.”
The grandmother walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. Little Jade crawled over and drummed on her shoulders.
“Is it too hard, grandma?”
“No, it's just fine, Little Jade. You are a good girl.” She sighed and said, “My bones are getting too old. Every time the weather changes, my back and shoulders become sore and painful.”
“Grandma,” Little Jade interrupted.
“Yes?”
&n
bsp; “When is father coming back?”
“I don’t know. I hope he will return in time for the Autumn Moon Festival.”
Little Jade stopped pounding and asked, “Grandma, did you go on a honeymoon when you got married?”
“No, of course not. Honeymoons are for the young generation. When I got married, I stayed home to take care of the family.”
“How did you get married?”
“I was from the neighboring village. The matchmaker arranged everything. I didn’t see my husband until I married him. I only saw his braid of hair, his queue.” The grandmother’s face softened as she remembered. “It’s an old family tale by now. One day I was sitting alone in my room, and my mother came in and threw a thick braid of hair on my bed. She told me that it was my future husband’s queue. He had cut his hair and sent it to his parents to show his rebellion against the Qing court. He was a revolutionary.”
Little Jade started pounding her grandmother’s back again, waiting for her to continue the story. But she sighed and said nothing, staring into the mirror.
“Is grandpa dead?” Little Jade asked, assuming that since she had never seen him, he must have passed away.
“I don't know,” the grandmother said weakly, but then she quickly straightened her back and added, “You have too many questions for a little girl.”
Little Jade’s hands were getting sore. “Does your back feel better now?”
“Yes, Little Jade. I never thought that you’d end up taking care of me.”
Little Jade hugged her grandmother from behind. The old woman held on to her granddaughter’s hands and squeezed them tight.
***
Listening to her granddaughter breathing evenly beside her, the grandmother could not sleep. Scenes from the past appeared in her mind like silent, stage operas. She remembered how everyone congratulated her when the news spread that she was marrying into the Su family. She was going to marry the youngest son and would be the youngest daughter-in-law. Nobody suspected that the rich Su family would need a daughter-in-law to do the housework. There would be plenty of servants in the family so that she could surely lead a comfortable life. But the old poem was right.
“The third day after the wedding,
the new bride washes her hands in the kitchen.
She is ready to cook
for all of her in-laws.”
Her father-in-law was a traditional gentleman who believed in putting women in their proper place. He demanded that the youngest daughter-in-law wait on him. So she did for twenty-five years.
She spent her life taking care of the father-in-law, the son, and her granddaughter. She knew her duties, and she fulfilled them without a word of complaint. She had been the ideal woman who obeyed the traditional “Three-to-follow Rule”: “A woman should follow her father’s wishes before she is married; after she is married, she follows her husband’s wishes; after her husband dies, she follows the wishes of her son.”
It might have hurt less if her husband had not deserted her and run away from the family for the sake of that demon woman. She should have known that there was another woman on her husband’s mind, even on her wedding night. The groom looked so cheerless throughout the wedding ceremony that it set the relatives talking. She remembered waiting for him in her red wedding gown, sitting on the bed by the red candles that were burning high. Her cheeks were hot from the heat and from shyness. She could hear him far away in the family hall, laughing after he had too much to drink. He was so drunk when he finally came to the bedchamber that he could barely walk. He threw himself on the bed, slouching over her red pleated skirt that spread over the pink satin quilt. She remembered that her mother had told her: “Don't let him sit on your skirt. If you do, you will have to lower yourself to him the rest of your life.” But it was already too late. She had not been careful and she was doomed.
Her husband was not aware of what was on her mind. He started to sing in a foreign tongue that she didn’t understand and suddenly broke down in tears. She felt bad for him but didn’t know how to comfort him. She leaned over to him and tried to help him out of his stained clothes. That was when he tried to kiss her and tore at the buttons of her red gown. She could still remember his drunken breath.
They slept with their backs to each other for many nights before she was awakened one night. His hands caressed her under the slippery quilt, enclosing her thin waist. She lay still, feeling his touch, her eyes closed. The two of them would struggle, intertwined into a tangled knot. She felt the heat in his blood as sweat broke out of his skin and the bed was permeated with the scent of his perspiration. His breath was hot against her neck, until he collapsed upon her. Feeling the weight of his body on top of her, she felt a stifling excitement, even in her exhaustion. But he soon pulled away, turned over and fell into a deep sleep.
She stayed awake watching him sleep. Sometimes he turned in his sleep and threw one arm over his head, his armpit lush with black curly hair. His skin looked pale green under the moonlight, and his bare chest heaved evenly. Carefully, she moved closer to him, inhaling his scent. How she wanted to touch his skin, which looked cool and smooth under the still moonlight—like a stone under a lake. His hair was like waterweed that grew beside the stone. She traced the outline of his profile with her fingers, almost touching him.
During the day he avoided her. Every day she sat across from him during meals, but he never looked at her directly. He would stare into his bowl as if it were the only thing that concerned him. He always glanced past her as if he were in a hurry. She suspected that he had never taken a good look at her. She felt like the woman in the ghost story who erased her eyes, nose, and mouth with one wipe of a hand and left her face as blank and bald as an egg. Nevertheless she loved him, in a confused, inevitable way. She loved the man who slept beside her at night, whose thick eyelashes fluttered when he dreamt, whose lips were relaxed and sensual. Perhaps love was just an instinct that depended on smell and taste, and whenever she collected sheets and pillowcases from their bed to be washed, she would bury her face in the armful of laundry and become intoxicated in his smell. She felt like an animal, identifying her mate by scent.
Her husband had been a pilot. He had been sent over to Europe by the Chinese government to learn to fly an airplane. When she first heard that he flew, she didn’t believe it. “He knows how to work a machine with wings,” the matchmaker had said, “and by doing that he can fly in the sky, like a bird.”
She once asked him about the airplane. “Do the wings of the flying machines flap like a bird’s wings?” Her husband broke into a laughing roar and didn’t stop for a while. She was embarrassed by her stupidity.
“You ignorant country woman!” he exclaimed.
“Can you explain to me what makes those machines fly?” She asked.
“What’s the use?” he answered. “You’ll never understand.”
The demon woman must have known how a plane worked. He probably took her flying with him all over the foreign landscape with buildings as tall as mountains and streets as wide as rivers. She saw a photograph of that woman once. She found it in a cardboard box underneath the clothing in her husband’s drawer. The foreign girl smiled next to her husband without shame, her light-colored hair flying in the wind. Her husband was also smiling. They were standing in front of an airplane.
He rarely talked to her during the two years they were together. She often found him sitting along on the marble bench in the courtyard, staring into the sky. She had hoped that the birth of their son would change his feelings toward her. But her husband deserted her and their son when the boy was a year old. The infant was just learning to talk, to say “Baba.” But “Baba” did not want his son, his wife or his family. “Baba” abandoned them all for a demon woman with pale hair and pale eyes.
The family disowned her husband. Perhaps he felt that he had fulfilled his share of filial duty for his family. He had planted the seeds and had a son, and now the family line could continue without him. After
he left, she slept in the bed alone and tried to recapture the violent memories of his touches. Over the years, his scent had faded and his ghost had dissipated.
How well she remembered the knives and swords of the sneers her sisters-in-law used to assault her. She had brought to the family bad luck and shame. She was a woman who broke the family, rather than held it together. If not for her son, her life would not have been worth enduring. Giving birth to a son had secured her a solid place in the family. Nobody could chase her out because she had extended the family line. None of the other daughters-in-law gave birth to sons. No matter how many more concubines her brothers-in-law took, it only meant more girls. Girls were running wild in the house.
She watched her son mature with a perplexed mixture of loving pride and secret resentment. How strange and fascinating it was to see the soft flesh and bones of an infant turn into a man with long legs, a deep voice, and a shade of green on his chin and upper lip. How suddenly he had grown out of her reach. Silently, he turned away from her, just as his father once did. She became frantic on the day that she caught her son sitting on the marble bench in the courtyard holding his knees together while staring into the sky. “Just like his father! Just like his father!” She screamed inside herself. She felt such faintness that she had to support herself against a wall.
She knew that her son was no longer hers. He had grown into a man and she resented it. She had been afraid of his maturity and her fear was confirmed. She resented him for being so big, so full of masculine energy, and so confident about it. He was so different from her and so much like his father. She had filled his growing years with warnings, all of which had the same theme: “Don’t be like your father.”
“When you grow up and get married,” she would tell him, “be good to your wife. “If you want a woman besides your wife, take a second wife or even a third one. Don’t be like your father. He deserted his parents, son and wife for a demon woman. He turned me into a living widow when I was nineteen.
Daughter of the Bamboo Forest Page 4