All the Flowers in Shanghai

by Duncan Jepson

  “Doctor, wh-what happened?” he stammered.

  “Master Sang, nothing happened.”

  “Then why . . . why is it like that?” my husband continued to stammer.

  “Master Sang, we don’t know why these things happen but they have done so since time began. There is nothing that can be done. He is otherwise healthy.”

  “I must go tell my parents.” Xiong Fa walked quickly out of the room.

  I was so tired Yan had to help me back into a lying position. I closed my eyes and saw that twisted and stunted little foot, like a large walnut with its creases and knots. But I did not care. This boy was mine. I lay still for a few minutes, then the door was pushed open so hard it slammed against the wall behind and Father-in-law marched straight up to the cradle with Second Wife. They peered inside. I could not hear what they said though I strained my neck trying to follow them.

  “Yan, what did they say?” I asked her.

  “Mistress, it is best that you wait until you are well before you talk to them.”

  “Yan,” I shouted, “what are they saying? Please tell me?”

  “They are saying that this child is no good. This child is not properly human. This child cannot be an heir.” Yan started to cry very hard then, tears flooding from her eyes. “I cannot say anymore . . . please do not ask me.”

  I tried to take her arm but could not reach her. She could not hear my entreaties through her tears. “Yan, it doesn’t mean anything. He’s mine,” I said to her urgently. Finally she bent closer to hear me. “He’s my child.” I was choking on my own tears and the after pain from the birth was intense. “I want this child!” I was nearly crying as well. “He is just fine as he is. It doesn’t matter about the Sangs . . . I don’t care.”

  I let her arm go and she stood up again and wiped away her tears with the side of her hand.

  “Let them go and when I am better, please bring him to me.” I could only speak very weakly now and once I had finished I closed my eyes and passed out.

  When I awoke it was late morning and I found Yan sleeping in the chair beside my bed. I pulled myself into a sitting position against the head of the bed. I was very sore, tired, and ached terribly. I shook my maid awake.

  “Yan, what happened? Please, can you get the baby for me to hold?” I asked her impatiently. She looked at me with bloodshot eyes. Her skin was pale and blotchy. Strands of hair had come loose from her bun and fallen across her face. She coughed, almost choking, sounding old and close to breaking down, then she straightened her hair before standing up and doing as I said. She jumped back when she saw the cradle and let out a shriek.

  “Mistress, the baby’s gone. He’s gone!” she called out.

  “What?”

  “He’s not in his cradle. Master must have taken him.”

  “What happened last night?” I shouted across the room. “Yan, tell me what happened last night after I passed out.”

  Yan told me that Father-in-law and Second Wife looked angry and disappointed when Xiong Fa had come to join them. Before any of them spoke Xiong Fa stood over the cradle and stared at his son. Father-in-law spoke up first and told his son that he had discussed the baby with First Wife and Second Wife, and they all agreed that this was not an acceptable heir.

  “Ah Xiong, this baby should be given away, there is no point keeping it,” Father-in-Law said bluntly.

  Second Wife injected quickly, “If you were my son, I would tell you to take a second wife. A proper wife, one who will produce a proper heir. Not one that gives birth to dead babies and broken creatures like this thing!”

  Yan said Xiong Fa was silent. He would not say anything, just looked into the cradle at the little boy. He remained silent for several minutes then he looked from the baby to his father and to Second Wife’s ugly face.

  “Father, I want to speak to you alone. Please tell Second Wife to leave,” he asked flatly.

  “I don’t see why I should go,” she snapped back.

  Father-in-law looked at her and nodded for her to leave them. She snorted and left reluctantly.

  “Father, I’ve not thought of giving this baby away. Whom would I give it to? Who would take it and look after it? We have enough in our family for this child. But more than that . . . he is my son.” Xiong Fa paused but his father quickly took the lead.

  “Xiong Fa, you have done well this year and last. You have become a strong man, well able to run the family business. But this is not right, not for an heir to the family, a son to whom you cannot pass on the business responsibility for the family. Get another wife who can give you and this family what it needs. This wife helped you. Still, she is not right for giving you a family. You must be sensible.”

  Yan told me that after they left, Xiong Fa remained watching over the baby until the tiny boy had fallen asleep, after which Xiong Fa gave him a kiss on the forehead and then left himself.

  As Yan finished speaking the door opened and my husband came in with a nursemaid who was holding the baby. The child was wrapped in a white blanket with a dragon on it. I could only see his face, which was light pink with wisps of black hair projecting from the corner of the blanket above his head. His eyes were closed and he looked so fragile that I almost did not believe such a being could survive a night filled with such anger and hatred.

  “Good morning,” Xiong Fa said, looking directly at me. His fat face was smiling and his eyes were bright as water in sunlight. “I’m sorry I woke you but I wanted to take him out.”

  My heart beat hard.

  “Why? Where did you take him to?” I asked impatiently.

  “Oh, nowhere, just around the landing.”

  “Please can you bring him here? I have not seen him.” I desperately wanted to hold him, just to feel his weight against mine and smell his sweetness.

  Xiong Fa looked at the nursemaid and nodded. The nursemaid brought him over to me and put him in my arms. His eyes looked up at me and I saw they were not narrow slits like Xiong Fa’s but wide like mine. His stumpy little arms and tiny fingers flexed aimlessly, like a sea anemone, and I let him clutch the tip of my little finger in his hand.

  “Will you be able to feed him?” I had not noticed that Xiong Fa had moved closer toward me and that he and Yan were standing watching me. Xiong Fa had not said anything about his conversation with his father but still I felt suspicious. Perhaps he was only fooling me, letting me have a few minutes with my son before taking him away. I could not bear to lose two children.

  “Yes, I think I can feed him. Will you leave him here with me?” I asked.

  “His cradle is here.” Xiong Fa pouted his lips and raised his eyebrows as if to say, where else would he be going? “I’ll leave you now but I’ll come back with the doctor this afternoon and we can ask then about his foot. We should find out how this happened and what can be done.”

  “Have you chosen a name for him?” my husband then asked me.

  The generation name had been chosen many years ago, so he would be Sang Lu, and then I would choose his first name.

  “Not yet, I’ll think about it.”

  “Well, think hard because we need it for the registration,” Xiong Fa responded, finishing the conversation. He had moved forward and was now standing directly over us. He reached down, sticking out his index finger, and stroked the baby’s cheek. He smiled again and then left the room with the nursemaid following close behind.

  I peeled back the blanket to look closely at my son’s deformity; it was his right foot. The toes had not developed properly and the foot was small, mostly bone and skin. Again I felt nothing but sympathy and love. I stared hard at the foot, which looked more like a fist. Yet, when I looked around my room—at the dark lacquered woods; the bright clothes, made against First Wife’s wishes, hanging over the doors; the old chair next to my bed; the dresser; my brushes; my flower in its pot, close to blooming; the rug from Persia that Xiong Fa had bought me, stained now with my blood—this was a place where I could raise a child, because it was m
ine, and whether Xiong Fa’s parents accepted him or not, in this room he would be safe and I realized how desperately I wanted him. I looked back at his lumped foot and cried. The tears hurt and after some minutes I suddenly felt so tired that I could barely continue to hold him.

  He would grow into the brother you have now, strong and intelligent, exceeding all our expectations, especially Father-in-law’s. I believe he inherited all that was best in me, for he was lucky, born when I thought most clearly and most selflessly. I’ve never stopped thinking about you. I’m guilty of stealing life from you and I feel this every day. I know these characters written on these rough empty cloths are not seeds embedded in fertile soil to grow and live, becoming something more than their insignificant beginning. They’re sterile and unchanging, offering nothing more than tombstones to weep over. For no matter how often they are read, they can no more bring us together than leap from the page and reorder themselves to tell a different, happier story. I know you cannot ask me why and will want to know this more than anything, as I wanted to ask Ba and Ma. I know how pained and angry this will make you, but writing these words to you is all I am brave enough to do.

  Chapter 18

  The eleven years that passed while Sang Lu Meng grew up seemed to disappear so quickly. Xiong Fa became head of the family. Father-in-law’s health began to fail five years after Lu Meng was born, but he lived long enough to be impressed by the little boy’s bravery and tenacity. Second Wife died of a bad heart only a year after Lu Meng was born but her opinion had never carried any weight; in the end, she had been nothing but a phantom.

  It did not matter to me anyway. Lu Meng would always be lame and always left behind as the People marched forward, but he would outlive his elders and see a new era dawn. The war and the Communist Revolution would try to destroy everything China had grown to be; the thick roots of tradition had become tough and impenetrable limbs, entwining and constraining everyone’s lives, trapping them in time and binding them in place. The People, suffocating, suddenly exacted revenge on their history, ripping and slicing through these ancient and once-powerful bindings.

  In this new world it would never again matter who the Sang heir was.

  I proudly watched Lu Meng attend school and ready himself to enter university, to follow in his father’s footsteps. He wanted to be a botanist though. First we lived together in my apartment, then when he got older he was put in a dormitory with other children of the family. I had tried to protect him from the outside world, requesting tutors come to the house to teach him, and during these classes, when he was no more than four or five years old, I would sit and watch him work. Sometimes I would pretend to read but listen to him instead practicing his Chinese, learning arithmetic, history, and geography. I knew it could not last and I dreaded the day I must let him experience the rest of life and let him go but the terror of the Japanese occupation was enough reason to continue keeping him close to me. The other children in the family teased and bullied him, for he was the first grandchild and yet most vulnerable. They would wait until their servants had left after putting them all to bed and then they would surround his bed and call him names: “cripple” and “animal.” I could not do anything to protect Lu Meng; these were the offspring of other members of the family.

  I was now officially First Wife, for Xiong Fa’s mother was already bedridden when Lu Meng was born, and had died a slow death four years later. I was happy she was gone, though she had not interfered with my life since I had confronted her in Tailor Street. I knew she had whispered into Father-in-law’s ear, telling him lies, any lies, until the day she died, her last erratic breaths of poison filling the air and evaporating into nothing. She knew no other way to live. But her husband had been proud and pleased of the position his son had attained in Society and his success with the family business. All this was worth more to him than anything his wives were able to give him—something she was not able to understand. I had been troublesome and chosen to live as one outside of the many, the other family members could not match my status and influence with Xiong Fa, but I could not match their numbers and conformity, so in the end I could not control Lu Meng’s tormentors.

  At night I would lie in bed and think of him looking up into the darkness of the high ceiling of the children’s dormitory, faces crowding in on him, shouting and leering, while little fists punched. Heads constantly turned to look at his halting progress, eyes focused on his foot, and ugly smiles smeared across young lips and cheeks. I wanted to punch and kick them or their parents, but realized he must learn to fight them for himself. To help him, a gong fu master started to visit the house, to teach him fighting skills in the laundry courtyard. They all watched him learning, and as the months passed and he became competent and strong in basic skills, the elder members of the family were impressed, which made some of the younger ones sneer even more.

  One day after dinner—I think he was about eleven years old—Lu Meng, Yan, and I were walking back to our apartment when he showed me the man he would become and of whom I would be very proud.

  “Ma, will you come and watch me practice today?”

  “Why today in particular?”

  “Because today I will learn more gong fu fighting techniques. This is boxing with kicking. I’ve been telling you about it, remember?”

  I had forgotten and was surprised. He noticed that.

  “You needn’t worry, Ma. My legs have grown stronger now and I can stand on my left leg and kick with my right. You should come and see.”

  Aside from his foot, he had grown into a healthy young boy. The gong fu had made him quite sinewy and wiry; he looked a bit like I imagined Grandfather must have done when young. His hair was thick like Ba’s, but his lips were like his father’s; they were full and very red and would easily bleed when he got into fights. In fact, each part of his body and face could easily be attributed to my or Xiong Fa’s family, but his eyes were unique to Lu Meng. They were very light brown, and moved confidently yet slowly over the things around him. They were warm and welcoming, offering friendship and trust, and I hoped this was how they would remain.

  He had been in fights but as he learned more gong fu, he won far more than he lost, sometimes taking on two or three others at a time. While his foot remained undeveloped and would ache acutely sometimes, I was always more concerned about his hands; he had such long and delicate fingers—like Ba’s, thankfully, rather than Xiong Fa’s sausage fingers. They looked so fragile that I worried they would break or snap off. Often when he was training and would be held in a grapple or lock, I would wince and want to cover my eyes.

  “I will come and watch, but what is so special about today? You know I am always worried you will hurt yourself badly,” I told him.

  We walked on and he pushed himself forward to come and stand in front of me. He stood there and blocked Yan’s and my progress so that we both stopped and looked down, surprised by the tenacity of our little boy.

  “I know you worry, but please come.”

  “We will.”

  He moved out of the way and back to my side. We walked on. At that time I was nearly thirty-four years old and felt so tired sometimes that I simply wanted to sit quietly and just watch Lu Meng grow, peacefully watching a flower bloom. I wondered what he would do and where he would go.

  Yan followed him to the dormitory, though he didn’t need her help.

  “I will see you in the courtyard,” I called after him.

  I went to my apartment and stood by the window, looking outside. The grayness and cold of the Shanghai winter made everything heavy and static; people were silent as they went about their lives, scuttling across streets and into shops and restaurants to find warmth. The landscape had changed as the city had grown, suffering the hardships of war and now suffering again as revolutionary groups started to foment trouble in distant parts of the country. The houses opposite had been knocked down and new buildings in hard and cold gray monolithic architectural designs constructed instead. The war had
nearly cost this family everything. My pink flower from the laundry courtyard had died many years ago, but I had replaced it and then slowly added other plants to my room. In winter there were so few flowers, particularly after the Japanese had destroyed so much.

  We had been lucky during the war. Our gardener Lao Tung had created a hothouse in the basement and knocked out one wall to let in the light; if the Japanese came we would cover up the opening so it was well-hidden. In this space he grew a few vegetables, but after the war I had asked him to grow flowers as well. I had decided that I would always keep a Gardenia jasminoides in my window. It is a little plant but with a big beautiful white flower that in full bloom seemed to fill my window and my room. Its strong scent would carry me back to the gardens and to Bi and, wrapped in its power, I would lose myself in fantasies of all I had missed. I would call whichever flower I kept with me “Grandfather,” as it seemed to help me remember Bi as my grandfather had remembered Grandmother when we had walked together among the flowers and grass by the river. I had not seen my real grandfather or Ma and Ba again. I’d heard that Grandfather died just before hostilities broke out with the Japanese, and that Ma and Ba were both killed when their house was bombed. I looked at the hardy plant and pruned a couple of dead leaves; its petals were a faded pink, as if it were disappearing before my eyes.

  I looked again at the buildings across the road, built after the Japanese had burned the previous ones with the occupants inside. These new buildings changed the landscape; they were Western without Westerners. The end of the war had seen the end of the restrictions commanding Chinese one way, Westerners the other. A few days ago I had walked the Bund with Lu Meng; it was the first time we had been there together, though it had been open for some time. I closed the window and went down to the laundry courtyard as my son had asked me.