Inheritance

by Lan Samantha Chang

  I DREAMED THAT I was lying in a cave. The dark was my protector, my shelter, my cocoon. I felt myself reshaping there, developing hidden eyes and ears, delicate senses, even wings, like the tiny furred creatures that made pockets in the edges of stones.

  Light and pain. My mother’s face hovered. “Push now, Xiao Hong. Push now.” She would not let me rest. She commanded me to try. I hated her, my mother who was so unforgiving, who had in her soul this dark, cold iron. But she was my mother. She had given birth to me. I reached deep into myself and did what she commanded.

  I became aware that the darkness held many shapes. Some of them were familiar, some were people I had heard about in my mother’s stories. There was a sad, pale woman with her hands outstretched, waiting in silence with empty arms. There was Hu Mudan, crouched in the room fiercely alone and waiting for her own child to arrive. I thought I felt Hu Ran nearby—his bright face, his hope, his soul shining. Then I remembered Yinan, surrounded but alone in the bomb shelter, and I cried out for her, and for my mother, and for myself. It seemed the whole world rang with cries for those who had been left behind.

  And from that dark place, those people who had departed, I could sense my child, my little one, arriving.

  “Ah,” my mother said. “A girl.” A baby’s wail lifted over the room like a siren. It pulled me out of the fog. Later, when I held her, she looked right into me with eyes the color of earth at the bottom of a pond.

  From the moment little Mudan was born, she banished the old curse against mothers loving daughters. From the moment she appeared, with her great wail, her strong grasp, and her utter lack of apology, she brought out in me the strength to carry two. She was born on the second of December in 1949, the Year of the Ox, and she would need all of the Ox’s strong endurance to thrive in the middle of the story she had entered.

  IT WAS, ALWAYS, my mother’s story. It flowed ever and around our house; it was our atmosphere, our air. It cast its own light on everything we saw and touched. She had been defeated. Yinan had defeated her. My mother had left the mainland thoroughly shamed. Now, away from them, she vowed to make her own life big enough and fine enough to hold her shame. She had told Pu Taitai that my father was captured, likely killed. Then she built an unassailable fortress of his death.

  She wore dark clothes to mourn his loss. With Pu Taitai’s help, she rediscovered the others who’d come across and entertained their condolences. Many small deals were taking place during those visits. In a year, she had secured what she was looking for: an antique dealer with impeccable taste, a man who knew everyone and knew how to keep his mouth shut. Mr. Jian was a slender, balding fellow from Beijing, with a long, aristocratic northern nose, which he used to sniff out the money that flooded the island.

  On that fateful day months ago, in another life, my mother had asked Li Bing to help her smuggle shipments of the furniture, art, and other valuables she had long kept in storage. He had not forgotten and the goods had come through the blockade. My mother hid them and waited. She suspected that these symbols of the old world would soon be in demand, and she was right. Everyone wanted something. Mr. Jian charged outrageous sums and told her later who had taken what. A wealthy woman from Hangzhou paid in gold bars for a painting of West Lake. A museum curator in Taipei bought several pieces. Even Hsiao Taitai paid in gold for the scrolls that she had once cast off in Chongqing, and Mr. Jian arranged things so she never knew that my mother did not like her enough to offer them as a gift. The refugees surrounded themselves with symbols of the past, and my mother took in more money, which she invested for the future.

  I was absorbed in a future of another kind. I had little interest in anyone except my daughter. We spent our days together in my bedroom. I nursed Mudan myself, and in the afternoons, while she napped, I read kung fu novels or looked out the window or answered a letter from Katherine Rodale. Because we were so close Mudan almost never cried. My mother’s visitors would often come and go without remembering there was a baby in the house. We spent our time wrapped in our private world—me loving and mourning, and Mudan in a private world of her own baby dreams. She was too young to know that her father was gone and that I, her mother, had betrayed everyone else whom I had ever loved.

  She had the strength of both our families in her straight back and fine sober energy. She quickly learned to pull herself to her feet, and I took pleasure in the ease with which she learned to walk and run. My mother, too, noticed all of these things. But she looked at little Mudan with a certain resistance in her gaze. It seemed to me that she was seeing in little Mudan the remnants of a time that she would rather not recall. Or perhaps she thought of Mudan as proof of my own shame. She never said a word, but as time went on, I began to see that others were not as careful. Even Pu Taitai avoided Mudan, and as time went on, I kept my daughter away from my mother’s friends. I didn’t want her to be harmed by such judgment and dismissiveness.

  One day, when Mudan was almost three years old, my mother called me to her room.

  “I have something for you, Hong.” She brought out a wooden box. It was very plain, the size of a shoe box. She placed it upon the table and opened it with a small key.

  She began to show me, one by one, the necklaces that she had hoarded over the years. There were strings of bright green jade and red jade. There were freshwater pearls shaped like silk cocoons and tiny round wax candles. I could remember nestling up to her, feeling the strings of them around her neck. The last three strands were perfectly round. There was a long rope of large, flawless silvery orbs and one of creamy white. Finally she pulled out a set of matched pink pearls, perfect, long enough to loop twice around the throat.

  “I want to give some of my jewelry to you and Mudan,” my mother said.

  Surprised, I kept my gaze low.

  “I’ve been watching her. She is a certain kind of person. Her wings will carry her far, if she has any opportunity. If she is caged, she won’t forgive you. You know, Hong, that this is not a good place for—a child with no father. You must look for a safe place, a safe place for you and Mudan.”

  “Where should I go?”

  “To a place where no one knows you, a place where no one will hold your past against you. Someplace where you can hold your head up high and face the future. You’ll need money. You should sell the jade and freshwater pearls and keep the matched pearls for your daughter and yourself.”

  She was telling me to leave. Her voice was determined, her lips set.

  “You come from a line of women born into bad luck. Each of us has been constrained by circumstances. Your grandmother, by an unforgiving society. I myself was forced to struggle through the war. And you—you have been trapped into a net of your own choosing, Hong. Try to understand. You must try to keep your own choices from damaging your daughter.”

  I took a pearl between my fingers. It was a lustrous silver-white, smooth, a violation hidden in a glowing shell.

  “And Hwa?” I asked.

  “Hwa will be married.”

  She picked out the rope of pink pearls and laid them aside. “Hwa will be married.”

  FOR YEARS I HAD withdrawn into the urgency of motherhood, leaving Hwa to her own devices. She pouted for me, but, finding no support, turned her focus and attention toward her friends. She grew sociable, confident, lively, and ambitious. At some point in those years, she also fell in love with Willy Chang. He had matured into a lithe, dark young man with a handsome face and a sensitive temperament. Before they left the mainland, Willy’s father had put all the family money into gold, and as a result Willy was highly eligible.

  To all appearances Willy and Hwa’s shared interests were academic. He had a passion for writing poetry and my sister majored in literature to keep him company. They shared class notes at the library and rarely met in private. Hwa claimed she wasn’t in love. But her words betrayed her feelings. “He can be a difficult boy,” she to
ld me once. “He is as sensitive and prickly as a pineapple, but just as sweet inside.” She delighted in his poetry and his playfulness; she was as proud of his good looks as a lover.

  Many of the other girls liked Willy as well. Fighting off their interest took all of the perseverance and strategy that Hwa had once learned watching my mother’s mahjong games. She was particularly concerned about Yun-yi, the granddaughter of Hsiao Taitai, and Hsiao Meiyu’s only child. When I think back, I know I should have told my mother about all of this, but in those days it mattered more to me that Hwa valued loyalty and secrets.

  “A good boy,” my mother said to me around that time. “A boy with a solid reputation—a good reputation—from a good family, with a profession to make an income.”

  I knew she wasn’t thinking of Willy Chang. “You think that Hwa will need someone with money?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, “we have the money. In this modern world, it will be more important for him to have a profession than a fortune.”

  “But I think that Hwa might want to choose a man for herself,” I said.

  My mother shook her head. “Do you think I notice nothing? You wait.”

  Hwa’s problems began the summer before her senior year. I remember it very clearly. I had left Mudan with my mother for a few hours. Hwa and I were in a department store, shopping for an outfit to wear to a graduation party, an outfit that Willy would like. She had grown her hair long and pulled it into a stylish chignon, and had already begun to favor American skirts and sweaters. Hwa found a pale pink cardigan sweater that suited her quite well, but nothing to go with it. She wanted a flowered summer skirt, she thought—she could wear the combination with her favorite white blouse that had embroidery on the collar.

  Approaching the plate-glass doors, we saw Hsiao Meiyu and her daughter Yun-yi on the sidewalk, about to enter the store.

  Here in Taiwan my mother knew Hsiao Meiyu socially; she and my mother sometimes went to the same dinner parties. Now that their mother was gone, Meiyu had outshone her sisters. She had become a notoriously snobbish, difficult woman, associating only with the families of generals. I would rather have avoided her, but even I knew we must be friendly.

  What happened next took only a moment. Meiyu and Yun-yi came through the doors. We smiled at and waved. Meiyu glanced in our direction—I believe she almost met my eye. Then she and Yun-yi walked away. We came toward Meiyu and Yun-yi—smiling, eyes open, hands extended—and they walked past. We continued moving through the revolving door and a minute later were standing on the windy street.

  “Did she see us?” Hwa wanted to know.

  “Who cares?” I scoffed, although the encounter had left me shaken. “I don’t think she did.”

  “I think she did. I know she did.”

  We went on to the next store, but seeing Meiyu and Yun-yi had cast a pall over the trip, and we soon returned home. Hwa would talk of nothing else. I soothed her, telling her the pink sweater she’d bought looked good on her, that no one else at the party would have such a sweater—but she was troubled.

  “Did you notice,” she said, “that Mama didn’t attend Hsiao Taitai’s party last weekend?”

  The following week, our mother socialized as much as ever. We said nothing to her about the incident. But a few days later it happened again, this time with another mahjong friend of my mother’s whom Hwa bumped into on the way home from the bus stop. Still, it was days before we knew what was going on. Naturally it was Hwa who pieced it together.

  “Hsiao Taitai and Willy’s parents are talking about a marriage to Yun-yi,” she said. “Hsiao Taitai heard that he and I were special friends and told his mother. Now Willy’s parents are demanding that he tell them what is going on between us.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he didn’t know.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s what he said.” Hwa hid her face in her hands.

  “But Hwa,” I said, “how could he know what’s going on, when you will never talk about it? If he knows the truth, he might object to the marriage.”

  “But I don’t know if he will.”

  “You must let him know how you feel.”

  “No!”

  “Hwa, he won’t know if you love him back unless you tell him how you feel. Show him. Tell him. Look him in the eye.”

  For a long moment, Hwa struggled to speak. Then she burst out, “I won’t!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just can’t.”

  “But Hwa, if you don’t talk to him, then he’ll be gone.”

  At this, Hwa straightened her back and smoothed her skirt over her knees. In her face I saw a look of sorrow and determination. It was not until later that night, lying awake, when I remembered where else I had seen that look of forceful deprivation and I knew that Hwa would never tell Willy. She did not want to be under anyone’s power.

  Shortly afterward, we heard the news of his engagement.

  Hwa was broken-hearted. Her collarbones stood out. Her periods wracked her. She had no interest in the graduation parties. My mother watched all this, her lips tight. Surely she knew what was going on. But when I spoke to her about it, she merely said, “She must keep trying. She must move on. She must learn to give things up.”

  “I hear her crying through the wall at night.”

  “She will find a new man.”

  “I don’t think that’s what she wants.”

  My mother’s lips grew tight. “A new man will make her safe,” she said. “A woman is never safe until she understands that any one man is just as good as another.”

  I said nothing. Such silences were necessary between two adult women living in one house.

  January 2, 1954

  Dear Hong,

  I write with great excitement. Because of immigration laws, it has taken Ming and me more time than we expected to get established in America, but I am happy to say that I am at last able to offer you good news. My church is offering a scholarship to a worthy Chinese student. I am writing on its behalf to offer you a scholarship at if you are able to pass the Taiwan government’s examination and gain admission to an American school. The American government also requires that every scholarship student have at least $2000 a year.

  I’m sure that with your intelligence and thoughtfulness you will have no problem passing the examination or excelling at an American school. It will be difficult to be separated from Mudan, but she could stay in Taiwan, with your mother, while you are completing your education. You will be able to see her in the summers. This is a wonderful opportunity and I hope that you will take it. Please tell me if there is anything I can do to help.

  Best wishes,

  Katherine

  The government examination was given to all students in Taiwan who wished to study in the United States. Anyone who scored high enough and found a sponsoring university would be granted a student visa. It would be no small task, to score among the top students in Taiwan at that time. But I had my daughter’s fate to push me on. I didn’t want her to grow up in a place where she would be surrounded by the judgment of women like Hsiao Meiyu. I didn’t want her to live in the shadow of what I had done. Thanks to my mother, I had the money to go to the U.S., the jewelry my mother had worn under her clothes as we were bombed.

  And so I studied more English, beginning with Yinan’s old book of English fairy tales and moving on to more complicated grammar. I reviewed my mathematics, calling on the friendliness with numbers that was in my blood. Finally, I studied the history of the country we had left behind. I had learned this as a child—every Chinese schoolchild did—and now I read it all again, sitting at my desk on the island off the continent, pushing against sleep and grief. I pored over the lists of the great emperors, who had unified the country from its yellow northern plains to
the wild southwest and the rich seacoasts of the southeast. I read of the triumphant openings and the eventual dissolutions of their dynasties. Over thousands of years, they rose, and fell, and when they fell, each left behind a group of refugees who fled into the corners and sometimes to the island where my family had come to live. I found myself reading more and more slowly, dreading the end of it, for I missed Hu Ran and my uncle, my father and Yinan, and Yao, my brother and cousin. And when the time came and I boarded the plane for San Francisco, I believed that I was leaving all of them behind.

  MY MOTHER WROTE me once a week, clear, crisp letters filled with straightforward descriptions of little Mudan’s activities. If they’d been written in a more sympathetic tone, I might have written back confessing my sheer misery at being parted from my daughter. But my mother’s words left no room for such openness. “She misses you,” she wrote. “But then I show her your photograph, and explain that you are going away because you want to make a new home for her. She’s a reasonable child and looks forward to seeing you in the summer.”

  Hwa wrote frequently at first. She was very lonely, and her autumn was long and hard. Most difficult of all was the day of Willy Chang’s wedding to Yun-yi. Hwa was invited to the wedding, but she stayed at home. She wrote a letter pouring out her thoughts. “Although it seems impossible right now,” she wrote, “I know someday I must be married. Secretly, I have always wished to marry someone I truly loved. It would somehow make up for everything that has happened to us. But perhaps that dream of love was only a little girl’s dream.”

  I tried to think of helpful words for her. She so rarely reached out to me.

  “You could take the test and come to the United States,” I wrote back. “It’s very interesting to live here, and you would probably meet somebody new. Or you might be able to go to Hong Kong,” I added. “Ma must have a friend, or someone, who would be able to look out for you if you were to transfer to Hong Kong University. Then you could learn to live on your own, and have an independent life.”