by Virginia Pye
He finally wrenched himself away from the window and paced on the braided rug to keep from crying. Then he threw himself back onto the quilt, and felt the forceful thud of his own heart as it echoed against his ribs. He was alive. He was breathing, even if his father was not. Only there was little pleasure in it. No joy. Just a pang of guilt and a heartsickness that made every part of him hurt.
If he stayed in bed too late in the morning during those mournful days, Lian would yank back the covers and pull him by the hand down the steps and out onto the front porch, where Han stood waiting. While it embarrassed Charles to have his friend see his red-rimmed eyes, he was grateful to him, too. Lian gave them both a few coins to spend at the market and insisted they bring home fish from the river for supper. Never before had Charles been instructed to go fishing. Lian was also the one who had suggested that Han show Charles the pigeons that Cook had been training up on the compound wall. Charles had enjoyed caring for the birds, even if he didn’t know the first thing about them. Mostly he liked being with Han and away from his sorrowful, too-quiet home.
Now, as he went in search of supplies, he considered the possibility that his summer might no longer feel like a lonely nightmare, although he also knew that in more ways than he could fathom, things would never be the same.
Five
A tall Chinese man with silver hair stepped through the crowd on the verandah and crossed the threshold of the Carson home. Shirley had spotted his distinctive profile above the others at the door and noticed the way people shifted out of his way as he moved forward. He stopped before Shirley, bowed first to her and then to Lian.
“Captain Hsu,” Lian said out of turn, “what an honor to have you join us.”
Shirley looked from Lian to the Chinese gentleman in the threadbare, mismatched jacket and trousers and realized that they seemed to know one another.
“Thank you,” he said in clear English. “It is my honor to meet the widow of Reverend Caleb Carson. Your husband was a good and courageous man.”
Shirley tried to recall the striking profile but couldn’t place it. Surely she’d have remembered the scattering of pockmarks on his cheeks or the pale scar over his right eye.
“You knew my husband?” she asked.
“He was devoted to our cause. He visited our camp up in the hills a number of times. He would be proud of us now, though we still have many battles ahead.” He leaned closer and bowed again. “I am Captain Hsu, Eighth Route Army of the Second United Front.” He pulled from his pocket a green cap with a red star on it and shifted it between his hands before stuffing it back into his pocket. He then glanced around at the crowded house. “I see that you are like your husband, Mrs. Carson, most generous and brave.”
“Not at all, Captain.” She glanced around, too, and let out a sigh. “I so wish he were here. He would know what to do. He was far better than I am at dealing with—” She wanted to say “adversity” but felt compelled to admit instead that the trouble she had was with “people.”
“Mrs. Carson cannot say no,” Lian explained. “I have been telling her we must shut the door. That is all. Simply shut it!”
Outside, the line of Chinese snaked down the porch steps and into the dusty courtyard. Shirley could see similar lines weaving from the other mission homes. The courtyard was packed with Chinese who milled around beside their mules and carts stacked high with bundles.
Captain Hsu offered a nod and said, “I will see what I can do.”
He then slipped around the Chinese in the front hall, stepped outside, and stopped on the top step. He clapped his hands. Shirley made her way past the strangers, too, and brushed aside the thick curtain at one of the open dining room windows. The line of people outside grew quiet. Through the open window, she did her best to follow the words of his announcement, but his voice was too quick, though authoritative and resounding. When he finished speaking, the crowd began to disperse right away.
When Captain Hsu returned inside, Lian blushed as she looked up at him.
“What on earth did you say out there?” Shirley asked him.
“I said that you are most generous but that we are Chinese, and we must take care of ourselves. The Eighth Route Army is nearby, and they must sit tight and be patient and join us to create a harmonious and free China. Also, I said that food rations will come to all who wait outside in the courtyard and not in the house.”
Lian let out a surprisingly girlish giggle. Shirley wasn’t sure why she had felt predisposed to be wary of this captain, but she couldn’t help smiling at him now, too.
“And will food come?” she asked.
“That is the plan,” he said. “But meanwhile, do you need any help here?”
Lian jumped in with a reply. “We need water brought from the river. We have a decent supply of bandages but will soon need more. We have not much rice but plenty of turnips and even a few potatoes.”
“Excellent, excellent,” Captain Hsu said, and Lian blushed again as she bowed her head.
Was it possible that Caleb had visited the Red Army military camp without her ever having known about it? Shirley wondered. She had often discouraged him from talking about politics, so he must have chosen to spare her his interest in Communism. Although, now that she thought about it, she recognized that his impulse for egalitarianism had grown steadily over recent years. She recalled him using words like “proletariat,” “cadre,” and “comrade” with striking frequency.
Then it occurred to her that perhaps her husband had never mentioned his interest in Communist ideals because she was of the class the revolution wished to eliminate. With her interest in Chinese furniture and silks, not to mention her love of simple but elegant outfits worn with a strand of pearls at the collarbone—though never anything flashier than the typical ensemble of a tasteful Vassar girl—she would have been labeled bourgeois in a heartbeat. Weren’t the Communists all about toppling the current structure and putting well-off people like Shirley and her parents at the very bottom of the heap? She tried to picture her stylish mother as a street sweeper or a chambermaid. Surely Caleb couldn’t have hoped for that.
A cry sounded from the parlor just then, and Shirley slipped away from the other two and went in. Charles had correctly placed the wounded young man on the sofa and propped up his leg on pillows covered by a rag, but nothing more had been done for the boy. He bit down on a stick to control the pain as blood oozed through the tourniquet. Shirley noted that the color had gone from his face, and his body sweated profusely.
Shirley returned to the hallway and interrupted Captain Hsu and Lian. “Excuse me, but I will need bandages, Lian. And boiled water, please. Also, retrieve my medical bag from the far back of my bedroom closet. Captain, do you have any iodine or other antiseptic to clean the wound?”
He stared at her blankly and did not reply.
“Something to disinfect a wound?” she repeated. “Your troops must have basic first-aid supplies.”
“My troops have nothing. We manage the injured with poultices and other traditional remedies. We know nothing of Western medicine.”
Shirley placed her hands on her hips. “But you do know about germs? How infections occur in dirty wounds? More often than not, that is what kills a patient, not the initial injury.”
She glanced around at the beleaguered Chinese and straightened her spine. Everyone knew that the average peasant’s hygiene left something to be desired, but now, in this fearful time when they had left their homes in great haste and traveled on dusty roads for who knew how long, the bodily smells of the poor around her bloomed with a frightening putridness. “I swear,” she muttered as she shook her head, “I sometimes think that I’m living in the Middle Ages. Ignorance and filth abound! Imagine not yet grasping the concept of germs.”
The captain straightened up, too. He spoke slowly, his voice quiet and controlled. “Mrs. Carson, you are welcome to teach us new things, but we have our own knowledge, too.”
His expression remained dignified
as he spoke, and Shirley immediately recognized a familiar pinched feeling that came over her quite often here in China: she had once again been utterly wrong. She let her hands drop to her sides, and her gaze fell to the hardwood floor as she recalled her husband admonishing her at a similar moment. My darling, he had said, the Tsar and Tsarina were executed for behaving in a less imperious manner than you.
With her head bowed, she said, “I’m sorry, Captain. I apologize for my rudeness. I’m sure that you and your troops are excellent at what you do and know a great deal.” She glanced at Lian. “It’s just that this is what I do. I am a nurse. At least I was trained as one, though I haven’t practiced in years.”
“Very good,” he said. “And useful.”
“I will get the bandages now,” Lian said and headed for the stairs. Dao-Ming, who must have been hiding behind Lian’s back, scurried along after her.
Shirley didn’t know what to say to the captain, nor did he seem to know what to say to her. They stood in the milling crowd in the hall for several endless moments as Shirley began to notice that they were the same height. When she raised her chin, their eyes met on the same plain. She wouldn’t have registered such a thing back home, but here in China, where the people were so much shorter, this coincidence felt odd and almost intimate.
“Nurse Carson,” he finally said.
No one had called Shirley that since before she had come to China. She wanted to argue with the captain and insist that he call her Mrs. Carson instead, but she simply replied, “Yes?”
“We have injured from this morning’s skirmish out on the plains and I assume more to come. I would like to ask for your help.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” she began, “but I need to be with my son, especially with all this going on.” She waved a hand at the chaotic scene around them. “I can’t go traipsing off to some military camp up in the hills the way my husband apparently did.”
Captain Hsu stepped closer. “We go wherever the fight takes us. As soon as the Japanese Imperial Army leaves this town, which we have reason to believe will be quite soon, I will bring my injured men to you here in your home. You will not have to leave the mission.”
“But I have no bandages, no medicines, no beds. Nothing. And I’m not a doctor. I can’t be responsible for the care and treatment of an army. That’s absurd.”
“Do not think of them as an army. With the Japanese here, my men will not come to you in uniform but will look like everyone else. The truth is, they are just country boys, the sons of farmers. None of us has ever seen a doctor before. Whatever you do to help us will be more than we have ever received. We just need care and attention, not complicated medical procedures, though I will see what supplies I can find. A mother’s love would be a most generous and needed gift to my boys. I am sure your husband would approve.”
Shirley didn’t know what to say. She was about to decline the captain’s request again when Charles called to her from the second floor.
“Mother, come quick,” he shouted.
She did not hesitate but hurried upstairs. “What is it, Charles? Are you all right?” she called.
But when she reached the top step, her son looked perfectly fine. He held a stack of towels and other supplies but managed to grab her hand and pulled her into his bedroom. Lian was there already, standing beside the window with several rolls of bandages limp in her hands. Dao-Ming clung to her side.
Charles stood close beside Shirley at the window; his large, damp hand continued to grip hers. She placed her other palm against the warm windowpane and pressed. When Charles was young, they would sit on the window seat in the parlor on rainy days and together trace raindrops with their fingertips. They’d press their palms to the glass and leave ghostly prints, each trying to catch the other’s shadow before it faded. Now, through the glass, her hand felt vibrations.
“See them out there,” Charles said. “Aren’t they awful?”
The thudding footfalls of Japanese soldiers shook the windowpane as they marched in unison on the dirt road outside the missionary compound. Before them staggered a line of Chinese men, most in tan Nationalist uniforms but some in peasant clothing, all with their hands and feet in iron chains. The Japanese soldiers lined the prisoners beside a ditch at a bend in the road that the Americans passed every time they went to and from market. The Japanese then took their positions, and Shirley couldn’t tell which one gave the signal, but suddenly a staggering of sharp retorts sounded as a half-dozen rifles fired in quick succession. The Chinese fell, their bodies splayed in awkward positions on the ground. A cloud of yellow dust rose around them and filtered down onto their bodies, sticking where the blood quickly pooled. Then the Japanese soldiers sauntered forward, no longer in formation, and kicked the Chinese the rest of the way into the ditch.
A high-pitched moan like that of a wounded cat issued from Dao-Ming. Lian patted her back and cooed reassuring words to calm her sorrow. Or perhaps it wasn’t sorrow the strange girl expressed but anger, for suddenly Lian had to block her from charging out of the room and down the stairs. Dao-Ming had certainly gotten larger since Shirley had last taken notice and was a more determined creature than she had realized. The girl’s pink cheeks became streaked with tears shed from piercing eyes, but a surprising fearlessness caused her arms to flail as her voice mounted into an uncontrolled, vengeful howl.
The Japanese fishmonger’s family appeared at the threshold of Charles’s room and bowed their heads out of respect. Old Tupan Feng pushed past them, his complexion scarlet and his sword raised.
“We will fight the enemy!” he announced.
“Go back to sleep, Old One,” Lian said. “We don’t need your help. We need only the skilled and the brave. We need only the good.”
Charles squeezed Shirley’s fingers harder and muttered, “Can’t we do something about this, Mother? Really, we must.”
Shirley didn’t answer but looked across to Lian in reply.
Six
The needle remained steady in Shirley’s hand while Lian’s thick, callused fingers on the young man’s chest assured the success of the procedure. Very few people would not follow Lian’s instructions when she spoke in that firm yet reassuring voice. Shirley was able to concentrate on suturing the wound and left communication with the patient to her maid.
Nursing had never been right for Shirley. Offering solicitous or comforting words didn’t come naturally, though she had risen to the occasion when the young Reverend Caleb Carson with a badly broken arm had been wheeled into the hospital where she was working. He had tumbled from a ladder while placing the shiny star atop a massive fir tree on the seminary campus. A more emblematic accident could not have befallen a more charming and handsome gentleman, who quickly became her guardian angel. He had careened into Shirley’s life on Christmas Eve, and she had tried to live up to his example of headlong goodness ever since. She tied off the thread now and tried to picture her husband’s proud, though queasy, expression. Charles had inherited not only his red hair but also his squeamishness from his father.
“Now we clean it again,” Shirley explained to Lian.
The older woman bent closer as Shirley doused the area with Mercurochrome. Charles hovered over his mother’s shoulder and seemed as eager and jittery as ever, but to his credit, he had remained quiet while the delicate work was being done and hadn’t distracted her.
“Good going, Mother,” he said as she stood and wiped blood from her hands onto her apron, causing a tremor of disgust through him. “I had no idea you could do that.”
“There’s much a son never knows about his mother,” Shirley said with a raised eyebrow, unable to hide how pleased she was with herself. “You can handle the bandaging?” she asked Lian.
Her maid, now her Number One Assistant, nodded. Dao-Ming, at her side, helped collect the rags that had sopped up the blood. They would need to reuse them, Shirley realized. Without proper supplies, they would have to be frugal and clever. She decided not to dwell on the diffi
culties ahead but instead was grateful that this one young man appeared in better shape than when he had hobbled through the front door.
Then she gazed around at the crowded parlor, the packed dining room and front hall, and grasped that each person here needed something—food, water, or medical attention. An ancient grandfather who had been carried in on a stretcher had since died. There must have been three hundred people in her home, each with his or her own story of hardship. Shirley pushed aside the muslin curtain from a front window and guessed that there had to be several thousand more Chinese out in the courtyard.
“Mrs. Carson?” a familiar, tentative voice asked.
Shirley turned to greet Reverend Richard Wells, the head of the mission.
“I wanted to check on how you are doing,” he said. “Very good of you to open your doors to all these people.”
“Not at all,” she said as she tried to contain a curl fallen from her bun.
When Shirley had risen that day, she had decided to finally set aside her mourning garb and instead put on a delicate lace outfit in anticipation of her planned tea with Kathryn. With all the subsequent commotion, the date with her friend was now out of the question, but she was glad nonetheless to have accidentally dressed appropriately to receive the Reverend. Normally she would like to have drawn a comb through her hair or freshened up her lipstick before a visitor arrived, but she was starting to grasp that such concerns were a thing of the past.