***
The evening light fell over the bamboo trees as Little Jade stepped into the yard. An Ling was squatting next to a copper basin. He was trying to light a cigarette, his back against the wind, his hair blown over his forehead. In the darkening yard, Little Jade watched as a fire lit up next to his face and died, briefly illuminating his profile. After several tries, he finally lit his cigarette. She could see a red dot burning as he inhaled, soon to be lost momentarily in white smoke. Little Jade walked toward her father, stopping beside the bamboo trees. She leaned against one of them. An Ling was untying bundles of paper money that were stacked in the copper basin. He twisted them into smaller bunches, as he readied them to be an offering to his ancestors. He struck a match and started a fire. The edges of the paper money quickly caught fire and burst into flames.
While watching the money burned in the backyard, Little Jade remembered earlier that day how her step-grandmother had stripped her of her clothes in the kitchen and later she burned her dirty clothes outside in the yard. “They were full of fleas and diseases,” she had said.
Afterwards, she dressed Little Jade in Silver Pearl’s old quilted jackets and pants that she rolled up around her ankles. The clothes constantly gave out Silver Pearl’s body odor mixed with a perfume that smelled of jasmine. Little Jade felt oddly grown up in these clothes. She cut off Little Jade’s hair, which was infected with lice. To do this, she spread newspapers on the floor and sat Little Jade on a chair in the middle of the kitchen. Sheets of newspapers were also clipped around her shoulders with clothes-pins. With each snipping sound of the large pair of scissors her long hair fell onto the newspapers. Little Jade bent her head, looking at the newspapers on the floor, as her step-grandmother parted her newly short hair and surveyed her scalp. She said, “Aiya, the lice eggs are all over the roots of your hair. The warmth of your scalp will incubate them and they’ll grow up living on the blood of your brain. We’ll have to kill the eggs and the lice.” She went to the kitchen to boil water while Little Jade waited, sitting motionless on the chair.
Little Jade imagined that her hair grew into an infinite forest of lush trees that fed on a rich soil as red as blood. At the root of each growing plant nestled eggs, exquisite and white, like the snow eggs her step-grandfather made. One sunny day, the air would be warm and the forest would itch with expectation. And the eggs would break open letting out thousands of birds that fluttered their wings toward the sky. Then the step-grandmother came back with two buckets of steaming water. She washed Little Jade’s hair many times with a strong-smelling soap and a purple medicine that stung her eyes. Dead nits washed out of her hair and floated atop the buckets of dirty water.
In the yard, the fire was dying, as Little Jade watched the light and shadows gliding across her father’s face. His cigarette was only a stub, still burning and laden with ash, clenched between his teeth. He blinked at the smoke. The wind lifted the tissue-thin ashes that seemed to turn into black butterflies and disappear over the rooftops. Inside the too-long sleeves of her jacket, Little Jade clenched her fingers into fists as if wanting to squeeze something out of herself. The wind, coming from nowhere, shuddered through the bamboo trees.
The sky blackened and there was no moon—only a basin full of fire glowing in this small yard, its light filtering through the bamboo trees, throwing overlapping shadows on the walls. The spirits were coming. Their voices trembled like the bamboo leaves in the wind, sobbing and sighing. They circled about the fire for warmth, for the world of the dead was cold and damp. They gazed at the solemn face of the man feeding the fire with paper money, and read his silent prayer. My ancestors, I am among the last of our clan. I don’t know where the others are. If they are still alive, I don’t know whether they are burning paper money on this New Year’s Eve. I am away from our ancestral land, and you have traveled far to receive this modest offering. I am here temporarily. I don’t know where I’ll be this time next year. Please bless what is left of our family. With your blessing I hope to continue burning paper money year after year in my lifetime and have someone do the same for me after I am gone.
Chapter 13: Husband and Wife, Tianjin 1945
The early afternoon sunlight came through the frosted window of the darkened kitchen, turning the flames a paler shade of orange and yellow. Silver Pearl’s mother stood next to the stove, watching a steaming kettle, and waiting for the water to boil. She rubbed her hands on a blue apron impatiently and bent down to look at the fire. Her face was red and moist from heat and steam. She straightened slowly, wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and said, “It’ll be ready soon.”
Silver Pearl sat on a chair by the greasy wall, wearing a dark purple robe. Her legs were crossed and a worn red slipper dangled from the toes of her right foot. Her hair was wrapped in a white towel. Under it, her face looked yellow and blank. She fingered a strand of wet hair absently, narrowing her eyes as if the light were too strong.
The mother picked up the kettle from the stove and walked heavily toward a red wooden tub half-filled with cold water. Silver Pearl felt dizzy as she watched her mother pour hot water into it. She listened to the sound of running water and watched the rising white steam. Her mother tested the water with her hand and said, “Come, the water is just right.” Silver Pearl took off the robe and stepped into the tub. She slowly sat down in the middle of the steaming water. Her mother squatted behind her and rubbed her back with a sea sponge. Silver Pearl crouched over holding her ankles with her hands. She closed her eyes and wished that the water were hotter so that she could curl up inside the tub and let her skin turn red in the scalding heat. Her husband had not slept with her since he had returned, and she had become desperate and afraid.
Before An Ling came home, Silver Pearl had been sleeping alone in her bed of clammy sheets and damp quilts over which the mosquito netting hung like opium smoke. She withdrew beneath the cold, heavy quilt like a hermit crab seeking shelter under a rock, and she kept the windows closed and the curtains drawn. Refusing to leave her bed, she contemplated her life in the darkness of the room where cobwebs flourished and fallen hair and dust balls gathered under the bed. She ate little of the food her mother brought her. She dwelled on every detail of her short time with her infant son, keeping her wound fresh and bleeding. Still, with time her pain grew dull and her body healed steadily, and her health improved under her mother’s care.
While An Ling was away, Silver Pearl had wondered whether he had found Little Jade, and whether he would ever return to her. What if he kept his word and abandoned her? What would she do if he didn’t come back? Silver Pearl had not dared to think of it. She never mentioned her fears to her mother out of a vague superstition that expressing her fears might somehow hasten their realization.
In time, their money ran out, and Silver Pearl’s mother pawned a few pieces of jewelry. The money would last them through the New Year and not beyond. Because An Ling had returned with Little Jade, but not with Silver Pearl’s stepfather, the old woman’s eyes were always red and swollen from tears. Since then, An Ling had acted like a stranger, sleeping in the living room. His suitcases lay filled and open on the floor—as if he was only staying a short while and was ready to leave given the slightest provocation.
Silver Pearl was indeed afraid that he might leave her again. It was easy for a man to leave his wife. Her mother had been telling her how lucky she was that An Ling returned. “You have to hold on to your husband,” her mother repeated. “He still has money, and he’ll take care of you. Don’t fight with him. Don’t let him leave you again. What would you do if he didn’t come back?”
The fire was still burning over the stove, but the flame was smaller now and it wavered gently in the still air. The bath water was already lukewarm and Silver Pearl felt cold. She lowered her arms and pressed down on her knees, trying to immerse herself in the cooling water, drawing from it all the warmth she could. She looked at the wilting fire fading into its own ashes. How could she keep her husband
from leaving? She wondered. She was a useless woman who had only herself—her face and her body. Would this be enough to hold on to her husband?
With her mother’s help, Silver Pearl was willing to try. There was no other way. Silver Pearl dropped her head, feeling small and humble. The mother bathed her daughter with great care, the way she had when Silver Pearl was a child. She scrubbed her daughter’s skin until it flushed pink. She complained that her daughter was too skinny and that she must eat more so that her bones would not show through her skin. After the bath, the mother rubbed jasmine oil all over her daughter. Then she sat Silver Pearl in front of the big, foggy mirror, and combed her wet hair free of knots.
***
An Ling could not sleep. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Next to him, Silver Pearl was already sleeping. He turned slowly, not wanting to wake her. He wanted to be alone. Silver Pearl shifted in her sleep pulling the quilt up to cover her shoulders. Her movements stirred up a torrent of jasmine scent, bringing back the memory of a warm summer evening of long ago, when he was still a child...
In the summer, the jasmine grew next to the kitchen door. It bloomed at the same time every evening—the hour when the maids cooked the dinner. An Ling could not forget the overwhelming scent of jasmine mixed with the smell of steaming buns along with a whiff of the smoke of burning firewood, the scallions being chopped and the hot oil sizzling in the wok. An Ling had just bathed, and he was wearing a fresh cotton shirt and shorts. His neck was white with talcum powder, and his crew-cut hair was still damp. He poked his head into the kitchen and saw his mother bending over the pot to taste the food with one hand on her waist and one hand holding a pair of chopsticks. Her head was cocked slightly. A cluster of delicate flowers, the color of yellowed pearls, nested beside the loose bun of hair at the nape of her neck. At night, before she blew out the candles, she would remove the flowers from her hair.
His mother always wore blue—powder blue and lake blue during spring and summer, and gray blue and inkwell blue in autumn and winter. The colors of her clothes were like the different shades of the sky. There were no stars and no clouds. An Ling wondered whether her heart was as clear and changeless as the sky her clothes evoked. During the summer nights he slept beside her. The windows were open and the nights were warm. Inside the mosquito netting, An Ling would listen to his mother sleep as he inhaled the scent of jasmine. She slept fitfully. Her bare arms were the color of the moonbeams, faded yellow with a hint of frost. Her soft-looking skin made him want to touch her. But she would turn abruptly, her throat fluttering and grumbling. She dreamt violent lonely dreams, from which she called out in a muffled voice, her hands fighting blindly in front of her face begging to be awakened. An Ling would watch her twisted face and listen to her shortened breath as her mouth opened and closed as if she were calling for help from a distant place. He would grow afraid and pull her arms and shake her. She woke with frightened eyes and sweaty palms and hugged him tight in her arms whispering his name over and over to calm herself.
In her arms, he was overcome with the intimacy of being so close to her while feeling the moist skin of her neck and the softness of her chest. He felt a suffocating happiness in the middle of those dreamy summer nights as his mother’s hands held him and stroked his hair.
Was it the beginning of the month? The new moon loomed outside the window, beaming a thin, frosty light. An Ling grasped the cool, slippery, satin quilt and felt an inexpressible emptiness in this rented house. What had surely been his—the people he loved, the family fortune—were not certain to be his any longer. He could no longer plan his future with the casual optimism he used to have. An Ling propped up his head with the pink satin pillow, and he looked at the woman sleeping next to him. Silver Pearl’s thick black hair spilled over her pillow. Her face emerged from the dark waves looking fragile under the moonlight. He moved closer and closer to her. Every strand of her hair reeked with the smell of jasmine. His body tightened, and his breath turned heavy as he reached for Silver Pearl’s shoulders peeping from beneath the quilt. He turned her toward him. She opened her eyes and looked at him meekly, and then smiled, closing her eyes again.
***
The next morning Silver Pearl sat on her bed and looked out the window. It opened to a small back yard covered with snow and a brick wall that separated the house from the rest of the city. She listened to the dogs barking and the cars honking from blocks away. An Ling told her to get away from the window and close the curtains. Tianjin had become far more dangerous since December 7, 1941, the day that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and precipitated war with the United States. The sky buzzed with American airplanes as bombs exploded over Japanese quarters and the Japanese in Tianjin had become warier and perpetually on edge. This disturbed Little Jade. So during the night, when it was quiet, she sought to calm herself by focusing on the predictable ticking of the clock that her step-grandmother kept on the top of her bureau.
Little Jade shared a room with her step-grandmother. The room was decorated with pictures of opera stars that she cut from a calendar. She listened to operas on the radio all day long. The gongs and cymbals lost most of their effect due to the static and the frequent interruptions of the transmission. But the voices came through somehow, singing about a gentleman eavesdropping on his beloved lady who was praying to the moon goddess. Sitting on her bed, Little Jade peered out the window. Outside the window, beyond the brick wall and high up in the bright metallic sky, a black bird was flying. Her eyes followed it until it cried hoarsely and disappeared from her view. The radio was screaming, and a woman’s shrill voice was singing, “Peach Blossom River in the springtime, the little sister washing clothes by the river, she is thinking of her lover, Ai ya ya ya, ai ya ya, Peach Blossom River in the springtime...”
Little Jade remained all day in this rented house, waking, eating, sleeping, looking through the windows. She hardly ever went outside. Her hair was still short, not yet reaching the tops of her ears. Whenever she unexpectedly caught her image on the smooth surface of the water urn in the kitchen or the dark reflecting windowpanes at night, she could not recognize herself. She could not be sure that she was this girl with hair wild like a demon and eyes sad like those of ox. She still wore her jade and pearl necklace. An Ling had had it restrung with new red thread. The old thread had become worn and dirty.
Little Jade was still wearing Silver Pearl’s old clothes with her stains and dirty collars. She felt ashamed and self-conscious in her stepmother’s clothes, especially the cotton jacket with the reddish-purple color of a bruise. Little Jade wore it constantly during the gray, winter days. She hated the jacket and hated Silver Pearl who had new gowns made for herself. Only beggars’ children wore other people’s discarded clothes. The step-grandmother called Little Jade a “little beggar” when An Ling was not around. Maybe it was because Little Jade was always hungry. At the dinner table, she ate bowl after bowl of rice, shoving it into her mouth with her chopsticks as if she hadn’t eaten for months and would not eat for months to come. Silver Pearl frowned when she saw Little Jade eating, chewing loudly and hurriedly, but she didn’t dare say anything to Little Jade in front of An Ling.
On August 15, 1945, the Japanese Army surrendered. The city of Tianjin burst into spontaneous celebration. Gunshots and firecrackers were heard for days and nights. Yet the excitement was accompanied by a great deal of confusion as Japanese soldiers and their Chinese collaborators were rounded up and killed by angry Chinese mobs.
In the rented house, sitting together on their bed, An Ling and Silver Pearl conversed in lowered voices. They needed to decide whether to stay in Tianjin or to go south to evade the Communists. Even with the Japanese defeated, the war of the Communists against the Nationalists raged on. An Ling and Silver Pearl worried about money. Silver Pearl felt helpless and fearful, but An Ling could not make up his mind to stay or to go.
An Ling became obsessed with cleaning himself. Every morning and after each meal he brushed his teeth vigorous
ly in the bathroom, rinsing his mouth noisily. Little Jade heard him turn on the bathroom faucet. The sound of running water slapping against the enameled sink drew her out of bed. Little Jade watched her father through the half-opened bathroom door. He stood in front of the mirror, his cheeks bulging and shaking, and then, he bent down to spit out the water, clearing his throat. He straightened and watched himself in the mirror as he combed scented oil into his hair. The gray light of the narrow bathroom made his face look overcast. He opened his mouth to check his teeth again, and then, he left the room.
After An Ling brought Little Jade home, he began to go out alone at night and return late, loudly singing operas as he switched on the light in the living room. Then he would turn on the radio waking the house. He was sleeping in the living room. But one night he moved back into the bedroom with Silver Pearl. Ever since, the two of them went out in the evening leaving Little Jade at home with her step-grandmother. Silver Pearl would spend hours putting on makeup and tweezing her eyebrows into two perfect arches while humming along with the song on the radio. Then they would go to a friend’s house for dinner, or attend opera parties, during which An Ling and others performed short skits from well-known operas.
While Silver Pearl and An Ling readied themselves to go out, Little Jade would hide in the bathroom. Her father’s presence seemed to linger there. The mirror was speckled with white dots of his toothpaste, and Little Jade smeared the white dots together with her fingers. Some of them were caked on. She turned on the rusted green copper faucet, sending a cold stream of water into the enameled sink. She leaned back against the wall. The white paint was peeling on the ceiling and on the wooden cover of the privy. A faint smell of urine mixed with the scent of yellow detergent soap, An Ling’s hair oil, and mint-flavored toothpaste.
Daughter of the Bamboo Forest Page 12