Inheritance

by Lan Samantha Chang

  After a moment, my father spoke. “Those are unforgiving terms,” he said.

  “Those are my terms.”

  “I’d hoped that after all of these years—”

  “You thought I would forget.” My mother smiled. “Meimei, do you remember once in Hangzhou, years ago, when we were chatting with Li Bing? He asked what you would do if the enemy came to the door, and you said that you would learn to live with him. I was foolish. I thought you were only a child.”

  “Jiejie, it was not that way—”

  “You wanted it to happen,” my father said.

  His cheeks were flushed. His gaze was fixed upon my mother. “There is nothing you can do now. Please understand. You began this, you put it into motion. It is true I was at fault. But you can’t tell me that my weakness wasn’t part of your design.”

  My mother met his eyes. Her face was gray, implacable. “You would break apart our family.” She spoke carefully, then looked away. “You mean to stay here, too.”

  “After they captured me, I had to face the truth. I—”

  “You know that you must leave! You are a Nationalist general!”

  “No, no longer. I’m not truly a Nationalist—I never was—nor am I a Communist. I am only a man. I am Chinese and I will suffer as China suffers.”

  We all sat without a word. It had grown dark outside and our blurred reflections floated in the rain-streaked windows: Hwa’s shirt a splash of red, and, hovering around us, the white-draped furniture.

  My mother sat very straight. Her fair skin, her long bones remained, but sometime during the war, her beauty had been stripped away.

  “You think Li Bing will hide you. But you listen to these words. You’ll come begging to me.” She stood. “Goodbye, Li Ang. Goodbye, Meimei.”

  “Jiejie.”

  “Junan—” My father raised his hand wearily to his forehead.

  “You will come begging,” my mother said. She looked at him with an unreasonable smile. Her pain was hardly to be borne. We sat frozen as if the slightest movement might shatter us. Then my mother stood. She wanted them gone.

  I couldn’t meet their eyes. I turned to watch their reflections in the window, surrounded by the darkness. My father, weary, leaning on his cane; Yinan, pale and tearful. They were abandoning us. They were leaving me and my mother, from whom everything had been stripped away. Only her bare will remained, fused into her long, white bones, bones as familiar to me as a lover’s.

  I knew I couldn’t stay in China. How could I—letting my mother leave in such pain? How could I stay with the people who would hurt us so? Sorrow and darkness tore at me. I wished to run to my father and ayi and clasp their knees, and I wanted to cry, “I will stay here with you!” But as I looked at my mother’s desolate reflection in the glass, I knew that I would not.

  Taipei 1949–55

  WE ARRIVED IN TAIWAN SUFFERING FROM DEFEAT. THE WHOLE island was awash in it, a fever that had been carried across the water from the mainland by those of us who had fled our homes, abandoned our lives, and brought what we could salvage to this unfamiliar ground. This malady—taking the form of a contagious blindness, a seductive forgetfulness—had overcome the most unimaginative among us, so that certain women who had once led responsible and earnest lives would hunch over their mahjong, not talking, cracking tiles and sliding stacks of chips across the stark white tablecloth, playing relentless games to hold back thought, until their eyes burned and their arms ached and the lamplight faded in the dawn. And courageous men, previously determined to return and recapture the mainland by force, instead retreated, outnumbered and pummeled by exhaustion, to this last island. There they spent their strength struggling to defend themselves, subduing its inhabitants and building up a life in that new place, rocky, steaming, and cleansed with rain.

  I can still recall the lush odor of spring growth mingled with the turbulence of hope and loss. In the first few weeks, I sat for hours by myself, wearing the pendant Hu Ran had given me, composing letter after letter to the mainland. Now and then I put down my pen and looked out of the window, where somewhere across the crowded island and the tumbling brown water the old country remained, its beaches vast, its streets dark with people. For centuries, the water between the mainland and the island had been a permeable membrane, easily crossed by sailing ships and steamships, and finally in our century by planes. Over thousands of years the dialects had grown apart and woven themselves back together. There were many families with relatives on both sides, exchanging care packages filled with canisters of tea and other sundry local items nestled in dried mushrooms. So much had made the journey between these two places. Certainly there would be a way to erase what I had done. Hu Ran and I must meet again, as we always had, against all possibility and expectation.

  “I am sorry,” I wrote again and again. “I could not abandon my mother.” I invited him to Taiwan, giving instructions to our house in Taipei. I made wild promises to return to the mainland. My words seemed hollow, even to me. I had no way of getting back to the mainland and no way to support him in Taiwan.

  Two weeks passed, then three. I saved the letters and slipped out every few days, hurrying through the crowded streets until I reached the post office. On one of these clandestine trips I ran into Pu Taitai. She was tired and gray, but overjoyed to see me. She had just posted a letter to Pu Li. She had managed to scrape together enough money to send him to Macao, where he was waiting for a student visa to America. I nodded, smiled, all the while thinking of my own letters. Where were they going? Certainly it was not possible for them to simply vanish, drop into the widening expanse between two worlds.

  THAT AFTERNOON THERE WAS a knock on the door. I flew out of my room with my heart pounding. I flung open the door, smiling, my eyes filling with tears—and caught the familiar scent of sandalwood perfume. The visitor was Pu Taitai; our chance meeting at the post office had led her back to our mother. Hwa, too, was disappointed. But I saw my mother awaken from her malaise and smile as if the reappearance of this woman with her loud voice and in her shapeless gray and lavender blouse were a lucky sign.

  “Li Taitai!” Pu Taitai cried. Behind my mother’s back, Hwa raised her eyebrows. Pu Taitai entered, praising my mother’s abilities: She had found a decent house! In this crowded city! She remarked on how well we looked despite the difficult times. Not a word about my father’s absence. Not a question or aside. Nor did my mother ask her, How do you manage here? How do you get by? Instead, she told our maid to prepare dianxin.

  “Sit, sit,” my mother said. And she recruited Hwa and me to make up a mahjong game.

  Pu Taitai ate. She ate a dozen salted plums and several bowls of green bean porridge. She ate peanuts in the shell and watermelon seeds. She ate enough dumplings and fishballs for three people. Her cheeks took on a healthy color; her eyes lost their hollow quality and began to glow. We pretended not to notice. The evening dimmed into a comfortable dark. The night lay over our house like soothing gauze and we relaxed into its stillness. The electricity was out again. We kept the candles low and let the room darken around us until we could barely see the playing pieces.

  Pu Taitai did not stop talking. She bragged about Pu Li, who had received an engineering scholarship to a school in California. She told heroic stories of the Nationalist generals defending the islands, about the pockets of resistance on the mainland. She spoke with sorrow of my father, whom she believed had been trapped—captured, perhaps—and left behind, possibly killed. I don’t know where she got this idea. I assume my mother had lied in order to save face. Then Pu Taitai chanted the slogan of that time:

  Year one: prepare

  Year two: counterattack

  Year three: saodang (sweeps)

  Year five: success

  Over and over Pu Taitai counted our victories: General Hu Lian’s brave island defense, the latest capture of a Communist spy
. She said nothing of defeat, nothing of the weariness, surrenders, loss, or death. My mother smiled and gestured toward a dish of sesame candies; Pu Taitai picked one out and ate it. At last they two were truly friends. I felt happy for my mother; she hadn’t had a real friend before. But something in this sympathy brought Hu Ran to my mind, and as Pu Taitai rolled the dice to begin, I felt that I was watching the game from far away.

  “We must breed a new generation of Chinese patriots,” Pu Taitai said. “When Pu Li marries your daughter Hong, we will mix the blood of two great generals, and this mingling will create a Chinese hero.”

  She beamed at me. And in that moment my mother also turned to me and smiled: an ironic, knowing smile that took my breath away.

  I sat in stunned silence. Pu Taitai mixed and turned; the tiles clicked relentlessly. My mother’s smile told me what I hadn’t allowed myself to know. I should have known, I could have known, but I had been too preoccupied to notice. It is true the signs were small, and similar to the signs of dislocation. The queasiness, exhaustion, the tears and inexplicable hunger had felt natural in a new place. But some other force had taken hold over my body, swelling my feet and stomach, spreading to the very roots of my hair, which had indeed grown thick and luxuriant in the way of some pregnant women.

  Of course my mother would have recognized, identified the change. She had seen these physical changes in Hu Mudan, in herself, and in her sister. She knew these signs as well as she knew grief.

  Now she set up her new tiles, daintily. “Ai, no good. Pass.” A tiny line appeared between her brows and then vanished. I suspected that she’d deliberately underplayed her hand. Pu Taitai was contented with her resulting win, and the evening ended with our guest unaware that anything had happened.

  LATE THAT NIGHT, long after Pu Taitai had left, I went to find my mother. She was in her bedroom, standing before her closet, reaching for its rich contents as if for solace. I stood behind her, waiting, but she didn’t acknowledge me. “I am sorry,” I said. “I know this brings a loss of face.”

  She continued stroking the dark fur on the collar of a jacket.

  “He was—is—good. You know it. If it hadn’t been for him—”

  “You must go to the apothecary.”

  I had last heard this tone in Shanghai, the night my father had abandoned her. Then I had been softened by her pain. But this time I felt in my fingertips an answering coldness. I took a deep breath.

  “No,” I said.

  She turned and looked into my eyes. Tight muscles slid beneath her bones. Then she turned back to her closet. And with that decision I left her, as surely as if I had stayed on the mainland.

  My news must have been hard for her. All her life, she’d had to live down the weaknesses of the few people she loved: my grandmother, my father, my aunt, and now me. She loved us, and we returned her love with betrayal and humiliation.

  I HAD LET Hu Ran go so easily, assuming that I could return or he would come to me, as if our bodies were parcels that could be dropped into a mailbox at any time and would emerge, regardless of all politics, across the ocean.

  But in the following months, I began to understand there was no way for him to make the trip. I heard rumors of the remaining Nationalist ranks surrounded, struggling, falling. Crowds of refugees hurried to board the ships to the island. Some of the ships had been prepared for the trip; others were old, waterlogged boats less seaworthy than the ferries on West Lake. The mail had ceased. The vital pathways were controlled by the Communist blockade. Gunboats patrolled the water, seeking anyone who tried to leave. Travel dwindled between Taiwan and the mainland. Only Hong Kong remained accessible, and with each week this crossing grew more challenging and filled with danger. The bamboo curtain encircled more and more tightly until the narrow strait grew wide.

  At night I struggled with my inheritance from old Mma. I could hear through the wall my mother tossing in her own bed. During the day, we spoke as little as we could, although it was impossible to avoid each other in that small house. Once, during that time, she even called me by her sister’s name. Yinan, she said to the back of my head. And I turned, and answered casually, so that she wouldn’t know what she had done.

  18 July 1949

  Dear Hong,

  Thank you for your letter. It has only just reached me after several months, having been forwarded to Hong Kong where I have been waiting to return to the United States.

  I write with unfortunate news. Hu Ran is lost. Apparently, he decided to try to leave the mainland, via the strait. At night, while it was docked waiting to leave, the ship came under attack. They said that someone on the ship provided a signal to the Communist gunboats. In the ensuing battle, Hu Ran fell overboard and drowned. Hu Mudan found out from someone who made it back to shore. She paid someone leaving for Hong Kong to write to me, telling me what happened and begging me to find you, but for these months I was unable to learn your whereabouts.

  I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it must be to hear such terrible news from a stranger. But please do not consider me a stranger, Hong. Hu Mudan, Hu Ran, and your aunt Yinan were like family to me, and I hope that you will consider me a friend. Please let me know when you receive this letter. Write and tell me how you are.

  Sincerely,

  Katherine Rodale

  It was Hwa who braved the silence and knocked on my door. She was polite, subdued, holding herself apart from me. Or was it I who kept my distance? The events of the past year had split us entirely apart. We would never be two girls together again. Hwa knew this. She didn’t try to pretend nothing had happened. But we were still sisters, and she sat upon my bed and gave me the news. She said my mother had told her not to mention my secret. Eventually, my condition would be unmistakable, and at that time, my mother would handle things.

  “What else did she say?” I asked.

  Hwa shook her head. “What will you do?” she asked. “Can you get rid of it, somehow? Perhaps then you could still be married—”

  I did not want to get rid of it. “I don’t want to marry.”

  “—if you could give the baby away? I know it would be hard, but eventually, you might forget —”

  “I don’t want to give it away.”

  “I know it’s hard to see, but eventually, after a few years—the only way to move ahead will be to forget all of this.”

  I listened quietly until she stopped, and when I did not reply, she said goodbye and left the room, closing the door.

  I put Katherine Rodale’s letter in my box of things that were not meant to be remembered. There was a framed image of my mother and father at their wedding and, hidden behind it, a photograph of my aunt holding a half-blown rose, the print I had stolen from the waste bin of our Chongqing kitchen. There was a book my father had given me, Grimm’s fairy tales in English. And between the pages of this book, I had pressed the slips of paper on which Hu Ran had written his notes to me. MEET ME AT THE PARK. 4 PM AT COFFEE SHOP. The ink had already begun to fade. The park and perhaps even the coffee shop might still exist, somewhere across the sea, but it seemed to me, as I remembered them, that my memories were in sepia tones, like relics drifting, gently and implacably, into the past.

  I wrote back to Katherine Rodale and thanked her for her letter. I had never met the woman, had no clear picture of her in my mind, but her kind words gave me the boldness to write back. In my reply, I told this American, this stranger, about Hu Ran and myself. I explained that I had been the cause of Hu Ran’s death. I had left the mainland after promising to stay, and he’d died trying to follow me. I told her that I was pregnant, that I wished to keep the baby, and that I did not know what would become of us.

  Katherine Rodale wrote back with questions. She was personally concerned, she said, about my fate. She wished to know more. What did I want? What were my plans? I wrote, “I do not know about me. I have
no wants. I have no plans. I will try to think.” And with these awkward English sentences, I knew that I had stated the truth. Who was I? I couldn’t say. For my whole life, except with Hu Ran, I’d never been a person, but rather a piece of something else—of my family, of my country, and now a scattered piece of its defeat. I was a child who’d been shuttled back and forth over the continent. I was a pair of eyes, a pair of ears, a witness of terrible things that I had concealed in my mind, awaiting study, like forbidden photographs sealed into a box. I had seen my uncle chased down the streets, pursued by Japanese soldiers. I had seen a snaggle-haired woman dry-nursing a hungry baby, and a woman hang herself from a tree along the steep and crowded stairs of a war-torn city. I was an obedient daughter, a jiejie, and a faithful student. If it hadn’t been for Hu Ran, I would undoubtedly have gone on to marry Pu Li. But my fierce hours with Hu Ran had changed all that. I had been cruel to him; I had used him to separate me from my mother; and in the end I had betrayed both of them. Moreover, I had betrayed myself. I knew now what had lain at the source of my terror. I knew now that I had loved Hu Ran with all my heart.

  In the next several months, waiting, I thought about all these things, writing some of them to Katherine Rodale and keeping some of them to myself. She was the first adult since Hu Mudan to be my friend. If I had to reach her in another language, I would do it. Over long hours I struggled to put my thoughts and feelings into English. “I was coward,” I wrote. “I wish I stay behind,” I wrote. Then, “I want to know how are my father and my aunt. I hope they are safe. “Months later, I wrote, “Soon the baby will be born. Hu Ran will never see the baby.”

  As I wrote, scratched out, and rewrote at the table in my room, I began to feel as if each word fortified me, gave me ground to stand on. I didn’t know where this would lead. But as I wrote to my new friend in English sentences and paragraphs, I began to see an outline of myself, barely visible; it was like tracing a constellation in the night sky. My mother’s and Hwa’s concern faded in the light from those faraway stars.