A Hundred Flowers

by Gail Tsukiyama

  Kai Ying quickly threw the garlic and scallions into the wok, followed by the pork and lotus roots and black bean paste, frying everything quickly together, her long wooden chopsticks stirring it all evenly as the hot oil splattered and the warm, inviting fragrance filled the kitchen, masking the acrimony which lay just underneath. It was one of Sheng’s favorite dishes and the thought brought another kind of sorrow.

  Tao

  Tao hardly spoke to his grandfather. His one-word answers came only after his mother had gotten angry at him for not responding to his grandfather at dinner. “Tao, your ye ye is speaking to you,” she said, her voice laced with a sharpness he rarely heard directed at him.

  In his room that night, she was still distant and stern when she told him she never wanted to see him disrespect his grandfather, or any other adult, again. It wasn’t the kind of person she raised him to be. “Do you understand?” she asked. Tao chewed on the inside of his cheek and nodded. What he couldn’t understand was how she could speak to his grandfather after what he did, but Tao knew better than to ask. “That’s not an answer,” she said. “Yes,” he said, “I understand.” He chewed on his cheek again until he tasted blood.

  Song

  Song cut the stems of yu choy and bak choy and washed the dirt off in a wooden bucket by her side before shaking off the excess water and laying them in her basket. Harvesting her vegetables was usually a task that gave her great pleasure, but today she moved through the motions absentmindedly. She glanced up when she heard a noise come from the courtyard, the glare of the midday sun blinding her for a moment. In the bright light, she thought there was a shadow in the distance moving toward her. Song hoped it was Wei coming to see her, but when she raised her hand against the glare, there was no one there.

  * * *

  Just two days ago, Song listened in disbelief when Kai Ying, shaken and on the verge of tears, told her that it was Lo Yeh who had written the letter. “That’s impossible, Wei has no interest…” she said, only to suddenly remember the day last month when he’d visited her, realizing now what he must have been trying to tell her. What was Wei thinking to have written that letter? In all the years she’d known him, he had always refused to accompany Sheng to any kind of political gathering, calling it a waste of good time. His life began and ended with his family and his work at the university.

  Since then, Song had been desperate to know how he was doing. She’d seen him only once in the courtyard and he appeared so old and frail that it frightened her. He’d lost so much weight his clothes hung loosely from his tall, thin frame. Why hadn’t she seen what had been right in front of her? He avoided her pleas to sit down and talk to her.

  “What’s there to talk about?” he said. “What’s done now has to be undone.”

  “You made a mistake.”

  “I’ve been such a fool,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

  “My father used to say that the only fool is the man who can’t admit he’s one,” Song said. “Can’t you see Sheng knew what he was doing? It was his choice.”

  “And my weakness,” Wei said. “I stood by and allowed him to be taken away in my place.”

  “He knew what he was doing,” she repeated.

  “I should have never put him in that position!”

  “You know nothing about your own son,” Song said, her voice rising. “And that should be your biggest regret. You’ve lived in the past for so long you can’t see what’s right in front of you. You made a mistake, an unintentional mistake. Who in this life hasn’t crossed that bridge?” she asked, her voice falling. “Sheng would have never allowed them to take you. He’s young and strong, he’ll survive.”

  Wei looked away from her. Song wondered if he’d heard anything she’d said. When he turned back to her, she saw the same despair and sadness in his eyes as when Liang had died.

  She hadn’t seen him since.

  Suyin

  Suyin lay in bed unable to sleep. After months of living on the streets in a constant state of exhaustion, she spent the first two weeks after giving birth oblivious to the world around her. It was as if she’d fallen into an endless dream, the bed a safe and warm place she never wanted to leave. Suyin could hardly keep her eyes open and awoke just long enough to sip some soup or nurse the baby. But it all felt distant and hazy, and before any other thought came to her mind, she’d fallen back into a deep sleep.

  * * *

  Now Suyin stared up at the high ceiling, wide-awake in the dark. Her baby was nearly a month old, and she was no longer in the grip of exhaustion and was thinking clearly again. After following Kai Ying home from the market, she began walking to the Dongshan district at least twice a week. Suyin liked the wide, clean streets lined with shady trees where she could move slowly and undisturbed, daydreaming of what it would be like to live in one of the grand old villas her mother had always talked about, safe from the outside world behind their tall walls. Suyin remembered it had been raining hard the morning she felt her first strong contraction, a searing pain that made her stop and double over. Not yet, not yet, not yet, she chanted. She took several deep breaths. When the pain finally subsided, she kept walking. She was only a few blocks away from where Kai Ying lived and Suyin willed herself to keep moving. When the second contraction came, she had just pushed open the courtyard gate.

  * * *

  Suyin wondered how much longer she’d be able to stay at the villa. Just last week she heard Kai Ying and the old professor downstairs in the kitchen quarreling, though she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. They’d hardly spoken since. Suyin couldn’t help but wonder if they’d been arguing about her. How could she blame them; she had wandered off the street and into their lives from nowhere.

  Several nights since, Suyin had slipped downstairs to the kitchen, looking for any kind of food that she might store away, just enough, she thought to herself, so that her theft wouldn’t be noticed. She needed to be prepared if she was asked to leave; dried plums, green peanuts, biscuits, anything that might keep her going until she figured out what to do next. Suyin knew that the hunger would never go away, and it wasn’t just her now, she had the baby to worry about too.

  She looked around the dark room at the shadowy pieces of furniture, the bassinet to one side of the bed, the baby asleep in it. It was still hard to believe that she’d given birth and the baby was alive and well in the room with her. The darkness no longer frightened her like it did when she was a child. The old ghosts she imagined lurking in the shadows were nothing compared to what she saw in the light of day. Suyin turned onto her side and felt a sudden pressing tension at the back of her neck as her thoughts returned to that afternoon.

  * * *

  Suyin’s stepfather never came home during the day. She remembered hearing the door opening, thinking her two brothers had returned early, only to see his oily smile appear instead. Why was he home? He usually didn’t return until dinner, or even later, most nights smelling of alcohol. Not until that afternoon did he ever really pay any attention to her. “You’re growing up,” he said. Suyin didn’t think anything about it and poured him a cup of tea, even though she could smell the rice wine on his breath. “Why aren’t you at work?” she dared to ask. “Because I’m done for the day,” he said. He looked at her strangely and she wished her brothers would return. When Suyin turned around, she could feel him standing behind her. When she told him she had to run an errand, he blocked the door and wouldn’t let her leave the apartment. He wouldn’t let her leave and she felt her heart race and her mouth go dry. She had schoolwork to finish and the boys would be back any minute, she said. He looked at her again and she felt something heavy in the middle of her stomach. And then the terrible stink of his breath was on her. “You’re all grown up now,” he said, his hand over her mouth, his body pressing against her even as she tried to push him away. “You’re such a pretty girl.” When he had finished, he left her there on the floor and wouldn’t even look at her. Suyin lay there paralyzed until s
he heard her brothers coming back and she prayed for the feeling to return to her limbs again.

  * * *

  Suyin sat up in bed, her heart pounding at the memory. The baby whimpered and began to cry, at first softly, and then louder. Just as quickly Suyin was at the bassinet and picking her up. At first, the baby was so small and soft in her hands, she was afraid to hurt her. But Auntie Song had taught her always to support the baby’s head and neck and everything would be fine. Since then, Suyin had relaxed and held her constantly, even after she’d fallen back to sleep. She stroked her daughter’s dark tufts of hair. “Quiet, quiet,” she whispered, nuzzling her neck. She would never think of her as his. Never.

  Suyin returned to bed, missing the warmth of the baby against her body, and wondered what would become of them. She touched the red, itchy pimples on her cheek and tried not to scratch, like Kai Ying told her. She longed to see her mother and brothers, but that was impossible now. Suyin felt her heart racing with each thought. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She wanted to sleep and sleep and never wake up.

  Wei

  Wei left the house early each morning and began to walk. He had no particular direction in mind, but the walking brought him solace. He wasn’t sleeping much, his words turning over and over in his mind. It was me. I wrote the letter. Almost immediately after saying them, it felt as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, only to be replaced by another one, heavier and more nebulous. How could he ever make things right again with Kai Ying and Tao?

  Wei would never forget the look in Kai Ying’s eyes, how diminished he suddenly appeared in them. He wasn’t the revered professor everyone held him up to be, she’d said. And she was right. Now he wondered if he ever really was. So many times he’d wanted to tell Kai Ying that he’d written the letter, but there was always something, something that stopped him, the words balanced anxiously on his tongue. And now it turned out exactly as he’d feared; everything he had spent a lifetime building was meaningless.

  Kai Ying had gracefully pretended nothing had changed that evening at dinner, even as their food congealed in their bowls and Tao refused to look at him and he willed the baby to cry again to break the silence.

  * * *

  The day was just dawning, the air still fresh from the night before. Wei avoided the crowded main boulevards, instead turning onto the smaller side streets as he walked in and out of the narrow alleyways. He found himself following the same route he had walked for over forty years of teaching at Lingnan University. Old habits were a way of life for him. He knew the maze of intimate streets by heart and couldn’t bear the large crowds and bicyclists that used to push him along in directions he didn’t want to go. Wei was never comfortable being around too many people outside of the classroom, and over the years, he’d found ways to avoid them and move along at his own pace while remaining as inconspicuous as possible.

  As he approached the Pearl River, the water was flat and murky, boats tethered to the edge rocking calmly from side to side. He heard faint laughter and took a detour, walking slowly along the crowded bank where scrawny dogs chased each other, old men and women sat on the benches gossiping or dozing, and still other early risers were exercising. A dedicated group was doing tai chi; the slow, deliberate, swaying movements of their hands and legs were like poetry. A man waved at him, and asked if he wanted to join the group. “Come, come!” he said, but Wei shook his head, waved back, and walked on.

  When Wei came to the darkened walkway under a bridge, he stopped to watch a lone middle-aged woman practicing some sort of dance. Unlike everyone else, who was dressed in the drab gray or green tunics of the Party, she wore a bright red flowing outfit, lifting her leg high into the air and sharply snapping a red fan open in perfect unison. The fan snapped closed again when her leg came down. She could have easily been arrested for such suggestive behavior. Still, Wei was intrigued with her precise movements, her total concentration; the effectiveness of the red fan as it opened and closed in unison. She paused once and glanced in his direction before she began the next set. Wei watched with admiration and wondered what it must feel like to be that agile, to move with such ease and grace through life, unafraid to perform a dance she loved, a remnant of bourgeoisie decadence. Wei walked on, only to look back when heard the slap of the fan echo through the tunnel.

  Suyin

  Suyin couldn’t sleep again. She slipped soundlessly out of the room without waking the baby. At the bottom of the stairs she turned toward the living room instead of the kitchen, where her baby had been born. She’d been curious as to what the rest of the villa looked like. Kai Ying had mentioned that another family lived downstairs, although they were away visiting their daughter. Just a quick look, Suyin thought to herself, I won’t touch a thing. She wished she had a candle or an oil lamp. Fortunately, there was enough moonlight to allow her to find her way. Living on the streets, she’d always felt better when the moon was full, the darkness less consuming.

  Suyin opened the door to the sitting room and lingered on the threshold before stepping in. All she saw were shadows at first, which slowly began to take on shapes. They had carried her in here and pushed the sofa back, laying her on blankets on the rug before the stone fireplace. Above the fireplace she remembered there was a painting of a man. She couldn’t see his features clearly, not then through the pain, or now, in the darkness, although she had felt him hovering over her throughout the birth. Suyin reached out to touch the fabric of the sofa, stroking the smooth and silky material. She couldn’t imagine ever sitting on something so beautiful.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  The voice came out of nowhere, abrupt and accusing. What was she doing wandering around the house in the dark? It appeared exactly the way she didn’t want it to. She swallowed and turned around slowly, her heart pounding in fear. What if she’d been in the kitchen looking through the cabinets? The old professor was standing behind her, waiting for just this moment to validate all his suspicions about her.

  “I wanted to see the house,” she answered, her voice small and hesitant.

  “In the dark?”

  Suyin didn’t know what to say.

  His tall, shadowy figure stood waiting for an explanation. Most of the time the old professor seemed lost in his own world, sitting in the courtyard with his eyes closed when Tao was away at school. Still, she always felt his gaze on her when she was downstairs with them, watching and waiting for her to misstep, watching and waiting for this very moment.

  “I wasn’t able to sleep,” she finally said, almost in a whisper.

  She braced herself for what would come next, expecting him to call her the thief she was, or order her to leave the house immediately with the baby.

  Instead, he watched her for a long moment before he cleared his throat, and said quietly, “Neither could I.”

  * * *

  He walked toward her and turned on an oil lamp. Suddenly the room appeared before her eyes.

  “It helps to see with the lights on,” he said.

  “I should go back upstairs,” she said.

  “Didn’t you say you wanted to see the house?”

  Suyin stepped away from the sofa and quickly looked around the sparse room. She imagined it was once very grand, filled with beautiful furniture and paintings, but now, in the yellow glare of the light, she saw there was only the single faded sofa with its worn armrests and sagging cushions, the threadbare rug underneath it where she had given birth. The stone fireplace looked abandoned, darkened with soot. Suyin’s gaze traveled to the painting hanging above it. The man looked distinguished in a long silk gown and gray hair. When she turned to face the old professor she saw the resemblance.

  “My father,” he said.

  “You look a lot like him.”

  “More so as I’ve gotten older,” he said. “We were very different in every other way.”

  The old professor’s voice wasn’t angry at all. Instead, he sounded weary and sad, much like what she felt
about the room.

  “I think all children say that about their parents,” she said.

  He almost smiled. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. If we’re fortunate, we reach a point in our lives when we begin to meet halfway. Before then, we spend all our time going in different directions. And sometimes,” he added, “it’s too late to find your way back.”

  Suyin didn’t quite know what he was talking about. She suddenly felt exposed in her thin cotton tunic and pants. When the professor paused, she said, “I better go back upstairs, the baby might need me.”

  He nodded. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “There used to be a library,” he suddenly said, “down the hall and to the left. I spent a great deal of my childhood in there.”

  “You’ve always lived here?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  Her eyes wandered around the room again. “It must have been wonderful to have grown up here.”

  “It was,” he said, and then he did smile.

  Suyin wanted to see the library, but didn’t dare to ask. “I should go,” she said, not knowing what to say next.

  “Yes, of course,” he said, and nothing else.

  Suyin edged past him and hurried out of the room. The old professor wasn’t so bad after all. She could almost see him standing in front of his students, tall and engaging, teaching them about the world. Suyin wondered if she’d ever be able to return to school. At one time she wanted to become a teacher, which felt like a child’s dream now. She turned back once to see if the old professor was following, but as soon as she had left the room, the light flickered off and it was dark again.

  Wei

  Wei hadn’t expected to see the girl, Suyin, roaming around the house in the middle of the night. He’d been waiting to catch her at something, but strangely, instead of being angry at finding her in the living room, he was relieved to find someone in the house who didn’t know about the letter. At first, surprised at finding her there, he’d spoken sharply, but when he saw how young and frightened she appeared, he wondered if he’d misjudged the girl, and tried to put her at ease. Was this the same effect he had on most people? Surely his students must have been afraid of him, too, always distant and self-absorbed. Perhaps this was like all the other mistakes he’d made lately, and her finding Kai Ying had simply been an act of fate. She appeared intelligent enough, simply curious and interested in everything he’d long taken for granted.