A Hundred Flowers

by Gail Tsukiyama

  Tao liked walking home with Suyin; it made him feel older. He liked the way she nodded at him without saying a word, without making a fuss the way Auntie Song did trying to help him with his books or forcing him to put on his jacket as the days grew cooler. Suyin kept things simple and to the point. If he didn’t feel like talking to her, she never pushed.

  “Ready to go?” she said.

  Tao nodded that he was.

  “I need to make a quick stop for your mother,” she said. “It’ll only take a few minutes.”

  “Sure,” he said, following her as she turned down the street and away from home.

  As the days went by, he also liked the way Suyin reached across and helped him with his book bag without saying a word, and how she purposely walked slower so he could keep up with her, but never in a way that seemed deliberate. Once in a while, she asked him a question about school and what he had learned that day, but she never asked about his father or his grandfather and he never asked about her family.

  As they weaved in and out of the pushing crowds, she leaned over and took hold of his sleeve so he wouldn’t be pulled away from her. She’d never know how grateful Tao was as he hurried to keep up.

  “How’s your leg feeling?” she asked.

  “Better.”

  Suyin leaned closer and asked, “Where did you go the other day when we were looking for you?”

  The question was so unexpected he paused for a moment before he said, “I went for a walk.”

  “It looked more like you were running away from someone, or something,” she said.

  Tao stayed silent. His mother had been angry at him for taking the coins and leaving the house without telling her, but she assumed he was on his way to the store before he simply changed his mind and returned home. Tao wasn’t sure if he should tell Suyin about the man in the park, but when he finally decided he would, he realized she had let go of his sleeve and was no longer walking beside him. He turned around to see that she had paused at the corner and was staring at something down the street.

  “Is everything all right?” Tao asked.

  Suyin didn’t answer.

  “What is it?” he asked. “What are you looking at?”

  Tao followed her gaze and didn’t see anything particularly special. It was a street teeming with people going about their business, just like every other street in downtown Guangzhou. He watched all the people moving back and forth, a grandmother walking with her grandchild, two boys a bit older than he was standing in front of a storefront, a woman and man in a heated conversation, nothing out of the ordinary.

  When Suyin finally did respond, she looked serious and sounded very far away. “You see those two boys?” she said. “They’re my brothers.”

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, Tao paused at the opened door of Suyin’s room. He never thought she’d have family of her own so close by. Why hadn’t she said anything about them? As much as he wanted to ask her, he knew not to, not yet. She was standing by the window with the baby in her arms and he suddenly felt sorry for her having to be all alone.

  Suyin turned unexpectedly and caught him watching them. “Do you want to come in?” she asked.

  Tao’s face flushed warm. He was all ready to say no, but his left foot led and he stepped in.

  “How’s your baby?” he asked, trying to sound more grown-up.

  She laughed. “Growing. She’s getting bigger every day, and her rash seems to be disappearing. See?” She held the baby out toward him.

  Tao took another step into the room. With the drapes drawn, a harsh sunlight illuminated everything. It was the first time he’d seen the room in the clear light of day, the water stains like dark puddles across the ceiling, the peeling paint that curled along the edges of the wall, the faded armchair that sat in the corner of Great-Auntie Shu’s old room.

  Standing in the middle of it all was Suyin and her daughter. The baby was so small, he thought, with a full head of black hair sticking up. She opened her eyes wide and raised her tiny fist up, reaching out toward him.

  “I think she likes you,” Suyin said.

  Tao touched her hand with his finger and smiled. “What are you going to name her?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure…”

  “Ma ma says you’re supposed to wait a month,” he said, remembering what he’d heard.

  “I’m afraid I’ve missed that deadline already,” she said. “She’s almost seven weeks.”

  “You’d better start thinking,” Tao said.

  Suyin looked down at the baby and then back at him. “Maybe you can help me find the right name for her.”

  Tao thought for a moment. There once was a stray cat that wandered into their courtyard that he’d named Mao, not for the Premier, but because it had the same sound as the word cat in Chinese. Mao came every day for months until he began to think of the cat as his. And then one day, Mao stopped coming and he never saw him again. Tao had cried when the cat hadn’t appeared by the third day, but his grandfather sat him on his lap and told him Mao was a very busy cat and had other children to visit. Some cats strayed from one place to another, never forming attachments, he said, so the fact that Mao stayed for so long visiting him was already something very special.

  Now Tao wondered if Suyin and her baby would suddenly just disappear too.

  “I’ll think about it,” he answered, slowly backing out of the room.

  Wei

  Wei awoke just after dawn. For a moment he couldn’t remember where he was until he heard Tian snoring softly in the cot across from his. He was in Luoyang waiting to see Sheng. His back ached and when he stretched out lengthwise, his feet hung off the end of the small cot, which must have been someone’s childhood bed, a child Tao’s age. Just the thought of his grandson made his eyes tear up in the dismal room.

  When Wei was a boy, it was a different world, one that was now condemned by Mao and the Party as extravagant and wasteful. But he also remembered the beauty and intellectual curiosity of a country that could have easily caught up with the rest of the world, if she weren’t always being dragged backward. And now he didn’t know if Tao would ever experience any of China’s glories, other than in the stories from the books he read to him. In the China his grandson was growing up in, just surviving each day left very little time for much else.

  Wei pulled the thin blanket closer against the cold, thankful he was still fully dressed, or else he might have frozen to death during the night. Wei looked around the cell-sized room, the two small cots, a wooden chair and table, a small coal stove in the corner. From one side of the ceiling, a long zigzagging crack ran across it and all the way down one wall. He had hoped things might appear better in the daylight. Instead, it looked sadder and dingier as light filled the room and everything came into focus. Wei’s heart sank at the thought of returning to the police bureau for another long day of waiting for any information about Sheng.

  When Tian coughed, Wei knew he was awake.

  * * *

  Wei watched Tian drop a few pieces of coal into the little corner stove to heat some water for tea. When it was ready, he made the tea and pulled one of the cots closer to the wooden table where Wei sat in the only wooden chair, rubbing his back.

  “Did you sleep well?” Tian asked.

  Wei nodded. “For the most part,” he said, his hands cupped around the hot tea. It was the most warmth he’d felt in days. On the table was their breakfast: the package of dried plums and tin of biscuits he had bought back in Guangzhou. “It’s much colder here in Luoyang,” he added.

  “I’ll ask Mrs. Lai for a couple of extra blankets tonight,” Tian said. “I forget how this dry cold settles into your bones here.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Wei said. “I don’t know what I thought. It’s obvious I came without planning everything thoroughly. I wouldn’t have known what to do if it wasn’t for you.”

  Tian smiled. “I knew there was a reason to return to Luoyang now. It
’s good to know that something will come out of this trip.”

  Wei had spent his life holding on to the past, trying to preserve the old and failing to live in the present. And now he would give whatever was left of his life just to know that Sheng was all right.

  “It’s time we both moved forward,” Wei said.

  Tian smiled and sipped his tea.

  * * *

  Wei felt better after he’d eaten. He prepared himself for the long day ahead while Tian stood up and cleared the table. Wei watched him move easily through the tiny room and didn’t dare ask when he would be returning to Guangzhou. At the moment, he was just grateful that Tian had enough enthusiasm to carry them both through the day.

  Tao

  Tao heard someone on the stairs and looked up to see Suyin standing in his doorway carrying her baby. “What do you think about the name Meizhen?” she asked. “Your ma ma calls her that when she doesn’t think I can hear,” she said, and laughed. “Now I find myself calling her Meizhen, or Mei Mei, too.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. He felt good having her confide in him. “I like it.”

  “Me, too,” Suyin said. “Good night then.” She nodded again and was gone.

  Suyin

  Suyin walked quickly down the street. Once or twice a week she ran errands in the morning for Kai Ying while Auntie Song watched Mei Mei. Dongshan appeared different now that she was actually living there, the villas behind the tall walls no longer a mystery. They were filled with families and problems just like in Old Guangzhou. But instead of the multitude of voices all screaming at once from the crowded apartments, there was a quiet seething just below the surface in Dongshan. Upon closer scrutiny, she saw the cracks in the stone walls, the big houses crumbling slowly behind them in need of repair or paint or new tiles. All Suyin’s illusions of grandeur had suddenly disappeared. She would never be the same wide-eyed schoolgirl walking down the street for the very first time, and the thought brought both a sigh of relief and a moment of sorrow.

  It was a mild morning. Most of the trees that lined the boulevard were now stripped bare of leaves. The last time Suyin had stumbled down the street in the rain was almost two months ago, the baby pushing her way out into the world. The pain had been unbearable. Suyin didn’t know what she would have done if she hadn’t made it to Kai Ying’s house.

  * * *

  The vendors were just setting up when Suyin arrived at the marketplace. Kai Ying had asked her to buy a lean piece of pork before they sold out. Pork was the main ingredient for most of her soups, providing taste with little fat. If there wasn’t any pork, she was to bring back a chicken.

  Suyin wondered if any of the vendors recognized her as the pregnant beggar girl scrounging for their throwaway fruits and vegetables. Only with close scrutiny would they find any resemblance to the girl she once was, and Suyin knew they’d never paid her that kind of attention. It shouldn’t matter to her now what they thought, but it did.

  Suyin bought a piece of pork from a woman who had once given her a bag of soup bones, not thinking she didn’t have any means to make soup with them. She had gnawed on the bits of dried, raw meat, sucked out the bone marrow, and had given what was left to a hungry dog afterward. The same woman now pushed the wrapped package of pork at her and took her coins without a second glance.

  * * *

  From the marketplace, Suyin began walking in the direction of Old Guangzhou. It was still early. Ever since she’d seen her brothers, she longed to see her mother again. If Suyin hurried, she might catch a glimpse of her ma ma leaving the apartment for work.

  It had been more than eight months since Suyin set foot in Old Guangzhou, the only home she’d ever known. The familiar streets she knew so well lay before her: the Qilou buildings with their shaded corridors, lined with the cramped and cluttered shops of her childhood, the pulsating mix of voices and smells and people who all lived together in the small, teeming area.

  Suyin paused across the street from her family’s two-story apartment building and stood behind a pillar, hidden away in the shadows of the overhang in front of a vegetable market her mother sometimes shopped at. The foot traffic had picked up, early-morning shoppers and people on their way to work. Suyin inhaled and exhaled slowly, trying to stay calm, knowing that at any minute her ma ma would come out the door and she would be no more than fifteen feet away from her. All Suyin had to do was walk across the street, throw her arms around her, and tell her she was a grandmother. The thought filled her with hope when the door to their building opened and her mother appeared, looking thinner and older. She was smiling and talking to someone following her down the stairs. Suyin wondered if it was one of her younger brothers.

  Suyin stepped out from behind the pillar and the words ma ma rose to the tip of her tongue, just as her mother turned back toward the doorway. In that instant, Suyin saw him. Her stepfather came bounding out to the sidewalk after her mother, and just seeing him again brought back the ugly memories: the look on his face, his sweaty palm over her mouth. Suyin felt sick to her stomach as she watched them walking down the street together. She leaned against the pillar and couldn’t move. A cool breeze had picked up and she felt the cold hand of winter coming. Suyin knew now that she’d never be able to return home. She pulled Kai Ying’s sweater tighter as she walked away from Old Guangzhou.

  Kai Ying

  Kai Ying found the nights were always the most difficult, lying in bed in despair with the darkness wrapping around her. In the daylight, everything appeared as it always did. Kai Ying worked hard to make it stay that way for Tao, though there was hardly a moment she hadn’t felt anxious since they’d received Wei’s telegram last week saying he’d arrived in Luoyang.

  Kai Ying didn’t dare allow herself to hope for news of Sheng. What if it was news she didn’t want to hear? What would she do then?

  Sometimes, she could almost feel Sheng’s body pressed against hers, his breath on the back of her neck, the coolness of his skin. She missed his touch, his hand on the curve of her hip. It frightened her to think that she and Sheng might never know that same intimacy again. There were no herbs to make time stand still, to retrieve the time lost. They’d each been through so much in the past year, created their own individual histories that veered away from the life they once shared together. Would they still know each other? Kai Ying knew she was just feeling sad, but the distance and the silence had also brought along dark thoughts. If only she could heal her fear and restlessness as easily as she did indigestion or constipation.

  Kai Ying sat up when she heard a faint cry and then nothing. Sometimes Mei Mei slept through the night, or else Suyin, who was becoming a very good mother, was there to pick her up. Kai Ying loved having a baby in the house, another new life to make them think of the future. She couldn’t help but wonder if things might have been different now if her other baby had lived. The child would have been three years old now. Kai Ying had miscarried so early, she never knew if it was a girl or another boy. Would two children have changed their fates? Kept them all too busy to attend political meetings or write letters to the Premier? It wasn’t like her to feel sorry for herself, and still she did. Kai Ying knew how fortunate she was. All she had to do was look at Tao to be reassured that Sheng was always with her.

  Tell me he’s alive, she thought. She lay back down and closed her eyes, willing Wei to hear her. Tell me he’s coming home soon.

  Wei

  For two days Wei sat and waited on a hard wooden bench in the drafty hallway of the public security bureau. He felt perpetually cold in Luoyang, his mein po buttoned all the way up to his neck. He found if he sat very straight, his back hurt less. The cot he slept on at the boarding house was too soft and after his first, exhausted night of sleep, he hadn’t slept well since.

  Most of the time, Tian kept him company, although he frequently went out for walks, often returning with something for Wei to eat. Who could blame him? All Wei had done since he arrived in Luoyang was sit at the bureau and w
ait. Wei closed his eyes, hoping Liang would come and comfort him, but she didn’t. He opened his eyes and looked around the dreary building, too distracted by the despairing thoughts and the constant noise in the busy hallway to concentrate. Why was everything taking so long? If Sheng was right there in Luoyang, wouldn’t they have found him by now?

  * * *

  Clerk Hu had told him that he would first have to locate Sheng, and then have someone authorize Wei to visit his son. He also reminded Wei that there were others already waiting ahead of him for authorization. But rather than remain antagonistic, Wei decided to change his tactics and thanked the clerk politely. “Yes, of course, I understand,” he said, almost cordial.

  “I see you’re learning,” Tian had said, leaning in close and teasing him.

  It surprised Wei how easy it was to talk to Tian, who had been a stranger to him less than a week ago.

  Wei cleared his throat and said, “Have you heard the saying, ‘The wise adapt themselves to circumstances, as water molds itself to the pitcher’? It seems I’ve been the pitcher most of my life. I’ve forgotten how to be fluid. It feels as if I’m finally learning now,” he said.

  Tian smiled. “You remind me of my own father,” he said, “although I’m afraid he never did learn.”

  * * *

  By the morning of the fourth day, when Tian had gone out to get them something to eat, Clerk Hu stood up from his cluttered desk in his small cubicle and approached Wei sitting in the hallway.