Anyhow, it didn’t matter what they meant. Because Papa Hui couldn’t hear them. Because Papa Hui was dead. Because so little ever really matters. Because inside the smaller coffin, there was a stirring, and in that Zhongnanhai compound, behind locks and barbed wire and great red walls intended to keep everything noisy and disruptive and ugly and real at bay, I awoke.
No time to waste, to contemplate, to hesitate. I whacked the top of the coffin with my bill. Again and again, I hammered, until, at last, the blasted thing cracked open. Light streamed in. I sat upright. A stiff ache reverberated in my neck, where the knife had sliced through, but my wound had closed, my throat had healed itself. Ay, I’d suffered a blow for sure, but we all know there are things in this world that can never be fully destroyed, and apparently I was one of them.
I stretched, climbed out, and waddled toward the bigger coffin. I paid little mind to the room’s rug, woven from the highly valued hair of Nepalese virgin orphans, nor to the wallpaper, specially infused with platinum and saffron. I had but one focus: my master.
I opened the lid.
I knew, logically, that there was not just one master in the world. Oh, comrades, I knew I would move on to serve someone or something else. But forgive me now for my lapse into weakness. Suffice to say, when one is set free after a captivity in chains, one experiences mixed emotions. Freedom is a carnival: in the early evening all multicolored lights and melodic laughter. But as the night wears on, the scene turns garish, sinister. The lights dim, burn out. The laughter belongs to demons. The rides assume lives of their own. You come to understand that no one can guarantee your safety, that you walk the midway alone.
Over that golden casket, I mourned my past, my present, my future. Memories that would grow fainter and fainter over time: his husky voice, the scratchy touch of his hand stroking my head, the bedtime stories he read aloud, guiding me to dreams. I mourned moments of perfect sunshine, warm and alluring, on late-afternoon strolls across headquarters grounds; moments of belonging; moments of love; moments of genius and triumph in product development conference rooms and laboratories. These moments were all I had.
Time ticked on.
Footsteps from the other side of the door. Hollers. Whispers. Pleasured moans.
I craned my neck, bowed into the coffin, and lay a final peck on my master’s waxy cheek.
A tiny tear fell from my eye.
But my tear, sincere as it might have been, would not bring him back.
At dawn, there’d be a commotion, a realization, and then there’d be the well-greased gears of cover-up. Our dear government leaders would replace my body, find a new goose to lay to rest. As was always the case, the public would be none the wiser. Time, as always, would tick on.
I crept through Zhongnanhai’s majestic maze, maneuvering around mahogany desks and deluxe soda machines and taxidermic cryptozoological works of art. I tiptoed along the walls of a storage room containing the cryogenically frozen heads of a number of deceased world leaders and sports stars, slunk through hallways and passageways and underground tunnels. I overheard our voluble leaders, ranting and raving on and on: talks of tanks and military personnel stationed outside the city, in case the mourners got out of hand; talks of Papa Hui’s business model finally going down in the metaphorical ground with him—no more of that “no bribe” bullshit—let freedom ring. There was dancing. There was laughing. There was cake.
3.
THE WANTS AND NEEDS OF LULU QI
IT BECAME CLEAR THAT THE KNOCKING WASN’T GOING TO STOP, SO AT the witches’ urging—never deny someone in need, they always said—Lulu cracked open the door.
Words flew at her, spit in her face: “Excuse me, miss, hello, are you Lulu Qi?”
Lulu leaned away from the man. From behind her, once-busy witchy fingers ceased. No more scratching or sorting or rustling. Just silence, loaded with questions: Who was he? How did he know her? Why didn’t she seem to know him?
The man cleared his throat. “Sorry, I don’t mean to frighten you. I’m just a bit winded from my trip. Allow me start over.” He sucked in a deep breath, his beefy chest visibly rising under his shirt. “My name is Liu Wei, and I have come to join this commune, and I would very much like to have a word with you, Ms. Lulu Qi, if you could spare a few moments.”
Lulu crossed her arms over her chest. She studied the man, who was at once familiar and strange. She looked to the witches for an answer, for advice, for anything; as per usual, they just smiled, nodded knowingly. This was a new life—trust. She permitted her arms to fall to her sides. Purpose is objective; fate gives us nothing to fear.
“Yeah, sure, okay,” she said. “Please, do come in.”
The witches, all raised eyebrows and girlish giggles, excused themselves outside for a walk, leaving Lulu and the man alone. He was, Lulu determined as she boiled water, most certainly a former businessman. Only a businessman could sit, as he had, without hesitation in a stranger’s home and appear completely at ease.
She removed the kettle from the heat and poured water into two cups. She pushed one cup toward the man and pulled the other toward herself. “Drink,” she urged. “Please drink.”
The man lifted the cup to his lips and took a careful sip.
She lowered herself to sit. He stretched, his eyes occupied, traveling the room, lapping up the scene. She didn’t want to be rude, to tell him to get on with it already, to tell her who he was and where’d he come from, but it wasn’t every day that a strange, handsome, man showed up at your door, a man who knew your name and wanted to speak with you about some seemingly important matter. And there was that whole business about the woods two nights before. The glowing red eyes. The question. The “What do you want?” Her answer. Her answer. Her answer.
Once upon a time, Lulu Qi had wanted, simply, to lead a normal life. She wanted a normal mother who’d take her to the cinema and to the playground, who’d cook elaborate dinners at holidays, who’d sit beaming in the audience during school performances, who didn’t spend most of her waking hours faking maladies and rotting away in bed. She wanted a normal father who’d take the family on weekend trips, who’d return from work in the evenings grumpy but satisfied, who didn’t go missing for days at a time, who didn’t gamble away his paychecks, who didn’t return to their apartment one night with a strange woman who smelled like the dumpster behind the flower market near their home.
And oh, the things she didn’t want: For her mother to scream at her father as he clung to the strange lady’s noodle arm. For him to take a swing to silence her mother’s shrieking mouth, to miss, to accidentally clock the strange lady in the side of the face, to send her to the floor, squealing like a pig, “My nose, my fucking nose!” For her mother to shove him and his whore out the door. For her to order him never to set foot in that apartment again, or may he be stricken down by a thousand vengeful deities. For him to listen, to heed, to disappear forever. For the last memory she had of her creator to be drunk, slurring, swinging, fly undone, pocked cheeks glowing red.
For a long time, she didn’t want anything. She’d stare at television commercials, unmoved by their emotional pleas. She’d sleep at night and dream of nothing. At school, the bored cafeteria ladies would give her a choice between topping her rice with one kind of slop and another, and she’d stand there, bowl in hand, face blank, not answering, until, frustrated, they’d pick for her, slap a ladleful down, curse her for wasting their time. In class, she would hurriedly circle answers on quizzes and exams, not sweating a drop over scores or rankings, and as the other students deliberated and stressed themselves into earlier graves, she’d stare out the window at the desolate grounds and concrete basketball courts without purpose or desire, absent of want.
It went on that way until things, as they so often do, went another way entirely. One afternoon when she was nine, two years after her father left, her bedridden mother sent her, as she so often did, on an errand.
Lulu dawdled over to the same corner store where she bo
ught her instant noodle and chip rations. She dawdled through the narrow aisles and finally happened upon what she’d been sent for. She dawdled to the register. She set the package on the counter.
The cashier, a woman with severe, tattooed eyebrows, chortled. “A bit young for this business, eh?”
Lulu glared. Child bullies she could tolerate, but grown-ups should know better. “They’re for my mother.” She spoke with a biting tone, an attitude she dare not cop around her school-aged tormentors. “Not that ‘this business’ is any of your business.”
The woman blinked slowly, unimpressed. She turned up her nose and robotically announced the total. Lulu paid and tucked the change and the small package into her jacket pocket, out of sight.
She stomped down the street, dodging bicycles and pedestrians and motorbikes, all enemies, all trying to hit her, all trying to take her out for good. It was bad enough that her mother had sent her to buy these stupid, embarrassing things, but to have someone make fun of her for it, my god. Lulu ran through all the derogatory names she would call that wretched cashier, if she ever had the chance: Sausage Fingers, Fat Watermelon Head, Mean-Spirited Devil, on and on. She finally stopped herself at Useless Rice Bucket and decided then and there that she would never go back to that convenience store again as long as she lived. There were other stores. Farther away, yes, but what was her time? She didn’t have a better way to spend it.
She rounded the corner and stopped at the newspaper stand. She issued a friendly hello to the old man who sat inside. Sometimes he’d give her a White Rabbit candy, tell her, “Shh, don’t tell, you’re not supposed to accept candy from strangers.” She sometimes allowed herself to imagine that he was her grandfather.
“I’m fresh outta candy”—he grinned a toothless grin—“but swing by tomorrow, and I’ll have two pieces ready!”
Lulu turned to continue on her way, but a magazine cover caught her eye. She froze. A mirror, her own reflection. A face with the same pale skin, the same smattering of freckles, the same button nose, the same bright eyes, the same cherry lips, wearing the same two framing black braids. There was text across the face, text that assured her that this wasn’t actually a mirror, text that read: “Meet Li’l Goose Girl, Our Country’s Most Darling and Perfect Child!”
She paid for the magazine with her mother’s change and sprinted back to their apartment’s courtyard. She plopped down on a planter box, rested the magazine in her lap, and shoved the entire free-with-purchase Bashful Goose Guava Goober into her mouth. Once the goober was melted, gone, she opened the magazine: a special edition of a children’s monthly, devoted entirely to the Bashful Goose heiress, Kelly Hui.
As Lulu read and read, the world fell away. There was no mean lady at the convenience store. There was no convenience store. There was no dog taking a leak on the edge of the planter box, dangerously close to her leg.
There was only the behind-the-scenes peek at a television commercial shoot for a top secret new Bashful Goose product. The article stated that an eight-year-old Kelly wrote, directed, and starred in the commercial, and even composed and performed the jingle at the commercial’s end.
There was also an essay the little darling had written at school about patriotism: I’m proud to live in China because there are people here I can trust! Printed alongside were the teacher’s comments: What a remarkable gift this young lady possesses! What love she has for our great nation! It is with a pride-bursting heart that I have decided to resign from teaching. I have nothing further to offer this world! May this young lady continue to give it her all!
There were excerpts from Kelly’s daily journal. Today I helped my mother with the household chores. We cleaned up the goose’s bedroom because Papa says the little guy is too busy with molting season and business deals to clean it up himself. We swept and vacuumed and scrubbed the floor, and Mama even let me use Clean-It-Up brand bleach! [WARNING: Bleach is a hazardous chemical, and use or consumption of bleach by children is in no way condoned by the Bashful Goose Snack Company.] Finally, we made up the goose’s bed. Mama says he gets to have high-thread-count sheets because he’s a national icon. She says when I start contributing to the household in a meaningful way, maybe I can have a super-king-sized bed just like him. What a great day!
There were drawings Kelly had completed in art class, masterpieces all of them. There were bulleted lists entitled “Kelly Hui’s Tips for Badminton Masters” and “How to Have the Table Manners of an Heiress.” There was a column called “Dear Kelly,” in which wayward youth wrote to Ms. Hui seeking advice for such issues as incurable chronic hiccuping and what to do when your mom won’t let you keep your hamster in the house because she’s uptight and afraid of the plague and the poor little guy freezes to death on the balcony. There was a photo of Kelly planting trees at the Bashful Goose headquarters for Earth Day. There was another of her distributing Bashful Goose snacks to AIDS orphans on a relief trip she took with her parents to Africa. There was a full-color, pullout wall poster in the magazine’s center, titled “An Ideal Girl,” featuring illustrated reminders for all the nation’s imperfect but improvable children: A cartoon Kelly sitting, pencil poised, at a desk. Complete your homework. A cartoon Kelly kowtowing before her cartoon father and a cartoon goose. Listen attentively to your elders. A cartoon Kelly, under a wall clock, using a knife and fork to cut into a Bashful Goose Watermelon Wiggler. Take your snacks on time.
Daylight waned. Lulu realized, as she licked her finger and turned the last page, that she’d been consuming only necessary air, breathing shallow. She gulped up a lungful; she wanted to breathe. She shut the magazine in her lap and sunk her eyes into the twilight horizon. She was alive; she wanted to be alive. She was awake; she wanted to be awake. She wanted; she wanted to be that girl.
Lulu listened intently, tried to center all of her empathetic energy on this Liu Wei, on his tragic story of losing his wife and daughter to a car accident, of losing his faith in his corporate consulting business and in the merits of the money it provided.
But questions and doubts wiggled in her mind, distracting her: Was this a coincidence after all? Was this nothing to do with those red eyes, with her wish? But then why did he know her name? And why was he telling her all this? If he simply needed someone with whom to share his sorrows, there were a billion other warm bodies out there with ears attached. There were people with whom he had to have a personal connection, and still other people who had made it their profession to deal with grief. There had to be a reason he’d chosen her, a reason he knew her name, and yet, when he finished his recounting, she couldn’t bring herself to ask.
His eyes glistened with weary tears, lacking the energy to fall.
“I’m very sorry for your losses,” she said softly. She cast her gaze to the tabletop, to the piles of herbs she’d pushed to one end, out of their way.
“Thank you.” The timbre of his voice housed a complexity, a peculiar layer that nearly urged her to inquiry. Perhaps he’d seen those red eyes too. Perhaps they’d told him her name.
She clasped her teacup, a tiny heater in her hands. The noontime sun would soon sweep across the sky, shining into their windows and warming the place up. But not yet. Goose bumps rose on her forearms. She tried to formulate a delicate question in her head, but everything she cobbled together came out inappropriate, crass.
“So, anyway, I came here,” he said, as though hearing her desperate intent in the silence, “looking for a fresh start. I don’t know what that entails, exactly, but it doesn’t matter. That’ll all come later is how it works, is how I understand it. A friend told me about this place and mentioned you, showed me a picture. Kai. He said he worked with you at Hair Inc. And, I don’t know, you were the only thing about my future that I knew by name, and I nursed this funny idea you might be the one who could help me start this start.” He smiled slightly, sadly, with pale pink lips. His cheeks flushed. He looked down. “Ah, anyway.”
Lulu’s kneecaps buckled, melted into her calves�
�had she not been seated, she would’ve melted straight to the floor. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but was stopped by footsteps, voices, a creak. The witches burst in, laughing and chattering, their baskets ripe with the day’s harvest.
Witch Two, though grinning wide, winced with each step. Recently, Lulu had taken over most of the physical labor on the mountain, bending, rooting around, maneuvering over rocks and brambles and other obstacles—though spritely of mind, the witch sisters were no spring chickens. A wave of guilt crashed against Lulu’s stomach’s walls, and she jumped up, thankful her wobbly knees held out, and rushed over to help the witches with the baskets.
The witches retook their seats at the table, sighed with relief, pushed aside the lukewarm teacups, and rolled up their sleeves. Whether Liu Wei was there or not, there was work to do: sorting, packaging, and preparing potions and medicinal mixtures for the villagers down below.
Lulu joined in this familiar task, her hands occupied, but her head still stuck on this man. “Well, look, we’re on the outskirts here, as I’m sure you know. Maybe tomorrow I can take you into town. And, uh…” She looked to the witches for approval, which they issued with a slight nod each. “You can stay here tonight if you’d like. I just did some wash, so there are fresh sheets. We can make a bed for you on the floor in here.”
Lulu looked up, awaiting an answer, and watched him watch their busy fingers working their magic. He furrowed his brow, frowned. She set down the jar she was packing with mushrooms. The glass clunked against the wood. “I’m sorry, have I said something wrong?”
He jolted, genuinely surprised. “No, no, not at all. It’s just that you’re so kind. I’m very touched. And,” he added, pointing at their mess of colorful, earth-coated nature. “I would love if you ladies could explain all of this to me.”
Witch One raised an eyebrow. Witch Two grinned. They cannonballed into an explanation of traditional medicine, of healing properties, of herbs and mushrooms, of blends and teas, of theory and practice. Liu Wei listened receptively, an eager student. Out the window, the sun streaked across the canvas sky.
Year of the Goose Page 24