Inheritance

by Lan Samantha Chang

  Certainly, she couldn’t ever look a part of the place. She had white skin—it was really white, not ruddy, like the British faces Hu Mudan had sometimes seen in Hangzhou—and startling gray, almost colorless eyes. Hu Mudan couldn’t believe that a Chinese man had married this woman. She was curious to meet this man and find out what he was like.

  Rodale Taitai spoke Chinese slowly and clearly. Hu Mudan watched her thin, pale mouth forming the Mandarin words and listened, fascinated; it was like watching a stone talk. With her shape and coloring, she resembled a stone, and she had the slow, logical language that a stone might have. She was saying that Yinan wasn’t at home. Yinan had gone to run an errand, but Hu Mudan was welcome to stay and speak to her when she returned.

  Beneath Rodale Taitai’s solemn manner, Hu Mudan detected a certain spirit. She must have a sense of adventure to live so far away from home. Moreover, she cared about Yinan and seemed eager to talk about her.

  “She’s been here less than a month. I have asked her a thousand questions, but she doesn’t like to talk, and when she does talk, she can’t always explain things in a way that I can understand.”

  Hu Mudan met the gray eyes and compelled her to continue.

  “Madame Hsiao asked me to take her in. Yinan wouldn’t stay here unless I agreed to hire her as my companion, so she can earn her living.”

  “You must be patient with her.”

  “I understand what you mean. She is tentative around the house. But she’s intelligent, and interesting. The company is good for me. My husband has been so busy these days. Much as I wish to help him, much as I don’t want to be another one of those Chinese women who sits in the house—and I know you’re not of that nature yourself, I can see it—it does seem to be true that in a time like this, the duty of a woman is to stay out of trouble and not be a burden on the men.”

  Hu Mudan brushed these words aside. She didn’t understand the necessity for these endless debates about the difference between Western and Chinese ideas on the place of women. The entire topic was idle chatter among people who had too much time to think and not enough work on their hands. She was too busy making her own life to bother about such issues. “What happened?”

  “It was Madame Hsiao who told me what I know. She explained that Yinan is from a very good family and that what has befallen them all is not her fault. It seems that Yinan’s sister—is it her older sister?—is Li Ang’s wife, and the only family Yinan has left in the world. They were very close. To be honest, I’m relieved that you’ve arrived. Yinan needs comfort from a friend.”

  “But what happened?”

  “I’m not entirely sure myself. I know she was—involved with the colonel. Now she’s punishing herself—she’s sent herself away. But the sister has forgiven her. She’s punishing herself for some other reason.”

  “What does he want? Does he want them both?”

  The American woman regarded her somberly with colorless eyes. But when she spoke, it was with a note of pain and understanding in her voice. “Yes, it’s true. We know that he could have them both. Many of the military men are taking concubines. They’re claiming that their marriages were arranged, that they had no actual love for their first wives. It is legal. It was decided in court. But I don’t think that is the problem here. It is something between her and her sister.”

  “She loves her sister.”

  “Her sister wants her to come back.”

  Hu Mudan shook her head. Junan’s assumptions, with their impossible simplicity, would not so easily fix this problem. Something was seriously wrong. Aloud, she said, “I’ll try to talk to her.”

  They heard a sound on the stairs. Hu Mudan recognized the footsteps. Tentative, with the soft old shoes. Familiar, but not quite the same.

  The door opened and Yinan walked into the room. When she saw Hu Mudan, she cried out with pleasure. Then her face fell.

  Hu Mudan went over to Yinan and took her into her arms. Yinan shook. Hu Mudan felt her own face wrinkle with tears. “There, there,” Hu Mudan said, patting her on the shoulder. “Don’t cry. Why are you crying? A reunion between two old friends is supposed to be a good thing.”

  “Have you seen Jiejie?”

  “I have.”

  “I’m so glad she told you how to find me! She is—upset with me for being here, but I knew that if you ever came by, she would want you to see me! Tell me how she is.”

  “She seems to be in good health.”

  “Does she miss me?”

  “I think she does.”

  Yinan cried harder.

  “Well, that’s not a bad thing,” Hu Mudan said, dryly, but Yinan didn’t pay attention. She leaned into Hu Mudan. Hu Mudan closed her eyes. Yinan was as familiar as a child of her own. Then she reminded herself that Yinan was no longer a child. Something had altered Yinan’s scent, changed the molecules of her blood. The narrow face, purple under her eyes, shadowy at the temples, held the look of one who had known passion.

  Rodale Taitai hovered over them. “I didn’t know she felt as bad as this—”

  “She’ll be all right,” said Hu Mudan. She sat Yinan down on the chair where she’d been sitting. “When are you going to talk to your jiejie?”

  “I did try, once. She doesn’t understand.”

  “You must try again.”

  Rodale Taitai spoke. “Are you hungry? Have something to eat; it always makes you feel better.”

  This remark surprised Hu Mudan. Since childhood, Yinan had lost her appetite whenever she felt emotional.

  “Oh, no,” protested Yinan. “I couldn’t.” She glanced at Hu Mudan.

  “I’ve eaten already,” Hu Mudan lied. Rodale Taitai brought a dish from the cupboard, leftover beggars’ chicken. A savory scent rose from the wrapped lotus leaves.

  “Ming is always getting gifts in exchange for favors,” Rodale Taitai explained. “He works for Colonel Jiang and because he has access, people are always giving us things.”

  Hu Mudan nodded. Even she had heard of this colonel; he was the man who ran errands for Madame Chiang Kai-shek. Yinan unwrapped the lotus leaves and the smell of chicken filled the room.

  “Your husband works on the hill?” Hu Mudan asked, to stall for time while she observed Yinan. “Does he see the Generalissimo?”

  “Not often. Although once, in a pinch, he was allowed to take refuge in the bomb shelter behind the Generalissimo’s office with the family and a few secretaries, and he did have a pleasant conversation with Madame Chiang.”

  Hu Mudan watched Yinan eat. She held the chicken thigh in both hands, working the leg away from the joint with slender fingers, stripping off every shred of meat and sucking the bones. She ate steadily, with concentration, and as she chewed, her face grew smooth and dreamy. Her pinched expression eased away; she occasionally shut her eyes with pleasure, licking the grease off her lips. When she had finished every particle, she wiped her hands, folded them in her lap, and attended to the conversation with a private, watchful look that Hu Mudan remembered from another time. Rodale Taitai was asking Hu Mudan where she was born and how she came to Chongqing. Hu Mudan could barely reply. She was stunned and worried by what she had just seen. The girl was pregnant.

  EVEN IN ITS BLEAKEST DAYS, THE WARTIME CAPITAL WAS A city of reunions. From its fog-filled valleys to the hilltop lanterns lit to warn of imminent attack; from mud huts near the river to mansions on the heights; all over the city, there were meetings between people who’d been separated. Owners of factories and mills that had been carried piece by piece away from occupied cities reassembled their machinery and reopened their doors to those workers who had followed. Former neighbors found each other in new restaurants named after provinces departed. Classmates, brothers, friends, and lovers, sundered by the enemy, sought each other in this last, great stronghold in the west.

  And so
we reunited with my father. I still remember my first sight of him after two years. Seated next to Hwa, I leaned forward in the jouncing chair and glimpsed him on the hill. He stood waiting in his uniform, lit up by light and fog. He looked like pure qi, poised to leave the ground, and in that moment I believed that with his energy and courage he could keep our family—and the entire country—safe from the confusion that besieged us. I was filled with gratitude for his lightness and his strength. I knew he wouldn’t fail me when I placed so much hope in him. He couldn’t fail to love me when I loved him so much.

  But everywhere we went we saw the signs posted by those who hadn’t been so lucky.

  LOST ON 9/14 NEAR THE OLD ELEPHANT ROAD:

  HUANG DAI, MALE CHILD, 7 YRS. ONE METER, 20 CM,

  TWO LARGE MOLES ON LEFT ANKLE. REWARD.

  SEARCHING FOR MY MOTHER, HWA NEIBU OF JIANGSU

  PROVINCE, LOST IN 2ND ATTACK ON CHANGSHA. REWARD.

  MEIMEI, MEIMEI, WHERE ARE YOU? I AM WAITING AT THE GATE CONNECTING WITH DISTANT PLACES.

  Chongqing was also a place of chaos and separation. From my high window I could see the steps below filled with survivors of wartime dislocation: men and women sagging under the weight of ragged bundles holding everything they owned; filthy, hungry children and stray dogs. The swollen city was divided into factions. The waves of refugees had flowed beyond its walls, but the original residents remained, contemptuous of the newcomers. At first my mother thought the street signs were being rendered unintelligible in the local dialect. Then she learned the native residents called the streets by their former names, creating an unnavigable palimpsest of the geography.

  Soon after our arrival, a jagged crack split the newly whitewashed mud wall of the kitchen. An earthenware steamer threw itself against the floor. Weiwei patched and swept, but the breakage couldn’t be repaired. Too much had been lost. Hu Mudan and Hu Ran were somewhere in the city, but my mother wouldn’t speak of them. Also, something was the matter between my mother and my father. They were together once again, but I missed the palpable joy that had surrounded my mother upon every past reunion. The two of them had never been talkative but they now conversed in disconnected phrases, pausing often, waiting for a third person to speak.

  “I miss Ayi,” I said one evening at dinner.

  “I miss her, too,” my mother replied. “But she’s not well right now, and she needs to live in peace and quiet for a while.”

  “She used to read to us,” I said to Hwa. “Do you remember Ayi?”

  “No.”

  “Hwa!” my mother scolded her, but she put another piece of chicken in Hwa’s bowl. She turned to my father. “Poor Yinan,” she said.

  My father didn’t answer. But one evening around that time, when my mother was putting Hwa to bed, he gestured to me and pulled a brown paper package from his bag.

  “I found this for you, Hong,” he said.

  It was a slender collection of Grimm’s fairy tales in English, printed on thick glossy paper and illustrated with color pictures.

  “You’ll learn the English soon,” he said. “You’re growing up.”

  We were alone. I peered into his eyes, searching for the father I remembered in his expression mysteriously changed and softened in two years. I saw him looking sadly back and knew that he still loved me. “Thank you, Baba,” I said.

  He touched the top of my head. “Now go up to bed.”

  Later my mother cautioned me against reading too many fairy tales. She said they were like opium and I would grow up into a useless woman. I tried to show the book to Hwa, but she was furious at being left out and wouldn’t look at it. I knew only a few English words, but I spent hours studying the stories and looking at the pictures. I hid the book under my pillow and in late spring, when the bombing began, it was the one item I brought with me into the shelter.

  We’d been together only a few months when my father suddenly left Chongqing. He’d been ordered to the south, my mother said. That explanation was enough for Hwa, who’d known him only those short months. But my memory was longer. I had waited for the return of his teasing buoyancy and the embrace of his strong arms. I had waited, like my mother, to be with him once again. He was the reason we had come all the way to Chongqing. His new departure hurt me. Caught in my own disappointment, I didn’t consider how much it must have hurt my mother.

  SHE WOULD NEVER desert us. She kept us safe even from the Japanese bombers. In cloudy weather, when visibility was low, we spent our time the way we had in Hangzhou. We sang songs, learned poems, and played games. On clear days, we lay open to the enemy. We watched the signal lanterns, listened for the sirens, and when the lanterns turned red we hurried to the bomb shelter. There we ate supplies our mother hoarded: salted eggs, hard buns, and dried fruit. We took turns doing our business in a community pot. Our mother struggled to keep us clean, wiping us with cloths that had been dipped in precious water.

  She taught us how to close our eyes, as if the darkness were our choice, and as time wore on we grew accustomed to it. Then bombs came, like great gods that worked a powerful unmaking. They were huge and cruel, but when we stayed absolutely still, hidden with our mother, they did not harm us. Hwa and I learned to listen for the sound of her pulse. We grew familiar with her heartbeat and the courage of her body, recovering the knowledge we had once held long ago, when we had been enfolded in its pounding darkness. We clung to her, Hwa asleep and I awake. I could feel her lithe and watchful under many layers of clothes, light, thick layers that muffled and softened the strings of beads and pearls around her neck. When I nestled up to her, I felt the hard, heavy whorls pressed into my face, but I said nothing. I knew that I was never to speak of them. They were what she held in trust against a disaster greater than we had known.

  One midsummer afternoon, Hwa and I were working on Hwa’s shoes. Before this, our mother had paid a country girl to help her with the soles, which were created from many layers of cloth stuck together with paste. The hardened layers were then pierced with an awl and stitched with thick linen thread. The arrangement with the local girl had worked out until one day when my mother returned from a brief errand and discovered her eating the paste. My mother’s disgust and pity at this made it impossible for her to bear the presence of the girl. She sent her home with a few yams and resolved that we would do the work ourselves.

  “It’s about time you learned to sew,” she told me. “You need practice in the home arts. You have no idea how lucky you are; your grandmother had to learn to walk with bells sewn to the hem of her dress. If the bells rang, she was punished.”

  On my own shoes, I’d stitched the character for “victory” with rough cotton. They were finished, and I wore them on that day. But my mother insisted that I embroider on Hwa’s shoes chrysanthemums for autumn—an intricate flower requiring hundreds of small stitches. I’d been working for an hour when there came a knock on the door. There was something familiar in the knock, yet carefully polite.

  Hwa and I ran to the door. I threw it open and backed away, surprised. Before me stood my aunt Yinan wearing a loose dress. Hu Mudan was at her side holding a basket with some paper parcels. Behind her stood a tall boy with thick hair in a wild brush.

  Hu Ran spoke first. “Hello, young miss.”

  “Ayi!” I shouted. Yinan smiled her old smile, the one I’d always felt was meant for me alone. For a moment she looked ready to gather me into her arms. Then her smile dropped away and her gaze shifted behind me. My mother had entered.

  “Li Taitai.” Hu Mudan spoke over my shoulder. She held out her package, fragrant peppers and a box of sesame cakes.

  In that brief instant I feared my mother might tell them to leave. We hadn’t seen Hu Mudan since the day my mother had willed her from the room. But my mother beckoned, triumphantly, and I began to see that she was pleased Yinan had come to her. Yinan’s eyes filled with tears. Hu Mud
an handed the packages to my mother.

  “I’ll put these in the kitchen,” my mother said. She gestured to the others and they walked after her. Hwa went to use the toilet and Weiwei followed.

  I stole a glance at Hu Ran. He’d entered adolescence, and his adult features had emerged: prominent cheekbones, a high-bridged nose, and long, Mongolian eyes that held a watchful expression. He looked around the room, taking in the radio, the scattered sewing project, the furniture and curtains my mother had brought from Hangzhou. Then he turned his curious, bright eyes onto my face. Our gazes locked. He looked at the door and without thinking I went toward it.

  Hu Ran moved fluidly down the city steps. I followed more slowly, keeping my new shoes out of the dust, watching his square, brown elbows sticking out of his shirtsleeves. His pants rose halfway up his sturdy calves. He had no new things, he explained, because his mother was sending him to school. He was much larger than the other children, but he didn’t care. He wanted to learn to read. After school, he rented a bicycle to run errands for money. Two coppers for the bicycle brought in as much as seven coppers in payment. He could buy his own ink and school supplies, and he was saving for a bicycle of his own.

  His manner was entirely natural and friendly. But as he spoke of all these things—his school, his coppers, and his bicycle—I held back. I felt left out of his new life. And clearly, he knew more about Yinan than I did. How did he have the right to know about my aunt, when I, her favorite, had been kept in the dark?

  Then there were physical changes. In the past, Hu Ran had smelled only salty, like a boy, but now he gave off a puzzling scent that made me look away. There it was again—the mystery of the afternoon behind the willow tree—but this time I was old enough to know there was no proper place to put my curiosity.