The Lost Garden

by Ang Li

  Each year, when Mudan’s husband, Luohan, returned from his hometown of Dingfanpo, a village not far from Lucheng, he brought back broods of chicks and ducklings. The fuzzy little birds would be kept in a small hilly spot outside Lotus Garden. Yinghong would check on them several times a day, each time secretly taking uncooked rice for them. The way she littered the place with rice, Mudan could not stop mumbling “Amita Buddha, what a crime!” over the wastefulness. When the chicks and ducklings grew bigger, their soft downy feather turning stiff until they were ugly, they no longer appealed to Yinghong, who stopped paying them any attention.

  Some time passed before she was reminded of the chickens and ducks, so she strolled into the duck pens, where she was met by a large duck with a red head and crimson face, typical of the local breed. She reached out to touch it, but before she made contact, she was given a vicious peck. The shock and pain sent her scurrying, leaving the pen door unlatched and setting loose all the ducks, which now chased after her. Making a rumbling “heh-heh” sound, they waddled unrelenting on her heels.

  All she could do was let out a loud wail.

  The pecking had broken the skin but drew no blood, and soon it was just a painful bruise that took a week to disappear. With winter solstice came the season for tonics, and the ducks were slaughtered one by one. Most of the time, Luohan was in charge of slitting the throats to bleed the birds; Mudan would then dunk them in scalding water to make plucking them easier. That year Yinghong helped Mudan pluck the guilty bird clean, while cursing angrily:

  “I’m going to pluck your feathers till you’re dead and gone. Now do you feel like pecking me again?”

  Her mother just smiled and let her be. That was how Yinghong earned the right to pluck feathers when they slaughtered chickens and ducks. Mudan considered her an inconvenience, but could not chase her away, letting her play all she wanted, until her clothes were soaked. Mudan had to help her change, which naturally drew more complaints from the maid.

  After New Year’s came the next festival on the ninth day of the first lunar month, the birthday of the Heavenly King, a major festival in Lucheng that required five separate sacrificial items: two fish, two chickens, two ducks, a pig’s head, and duck eggs. The preparation was too much for Mudan alone, who had to take care of other chores after fishing one of the ducks out of the scalding hot water. Later, when she returned to work on the duck, she found that Yinghong had beaten her to it by plucking the bird clean.

  “You naughty girl! What a cursed girl. The duck for the Heavenly King’s birthday must have tail feathers. You naughty, naughty girl. How are we supposed to offer it after you’ve plucked out all the feathers? What a cursed girl.”

  The enraged Mudan picked up a broom nearby and came after Yinghong, who froze on the spot, for she’d never seen Mudan so angry before. The maid raised the broom, but could not bring herself to beat Yinghong, so she let it fall from her hands, cursing her the whole time.

  The clamor brought Mother, who was cleaning the sacrificial table upstairs. After hearing both sides, she said in a gentle tone but with a serious look:

  “Make sure you ask for permission next time, understand?”

  Yinghong nodded, but couldn’t keep from defending herself.

  “I’ll just put the feathers back,” she muttered.

  “Put them back? Go ahead, see if you can!” Mudan said, her voice raised.

  Yinghong squatted by the duck, picked up some of the feathers, and tried to stick them onto its tail. The pores on the warm duck had shrunk, making it impossible to stick in the feathers with their soft, thin, hollow quills.

  “I’ve never heard of people sticking feathers back on a bird,” Mudan muttered. “How can we offer a duck with a naked butt to the Heavenly King?”

  Now Yinghong was in a true panic.

  “It’s all right. We’ll try some others.”

  Mother crouched beside her and began to rummage through the pile of feathers. Soon she found some fierce-looking wing feathers, with solid quills, which were easily inserted into the duck’s tail.

  “Never in my life have I seen anyone replace tail feathers with wing feathers to offer to the Heavenly King. That’s ridiculous.” Mudan still would not let her off the hook.

  “That’s all right,” Mother said to Mudan in a light-hearted tone. She smiled at Yinghong. “It’s fine now.”

  By dusk, all the sacrificial items had been washed clean; the chickens, the pig’s head, and the duck eggs, along with the ducks, were neatly placed in a large iron wok resting on a big stove, where they were parboiled and then fished out. With steam still rising from the birds, Mother removed the feathers she’d stuck in earlier and replaced them with several tail feathers she’d washed that afternoon. The tail feathers, which had been boiled in hot water, went in easily through pores now enlarged, once the duck was cooked through.

  After a long afternoon of trepidation, Yinghong was finally able to smile. And she never again forgot to keep the tail feathers on sacrificial ducks for the Heavenly King’s birthday. Her mother commented lightly:

  “You won’t make the same mistake next time,” she said quietly. “Ayako needs to learn to do housework. If you’re lucky, you may not need to do it yourself, but you should know how. That way, your servants won’t try to show you up, and you’ll have the authority over them. Understand?”

  Yinghong nodded quietly and looked down at her hands.

  She had small hands. A young girl in the process of turning into a woman, she still had the hands of a child. As she never had to do heavy work, her knuckles kept their size and shape and her hands remained soft and smooth. Even after she’d grown up, her hands remained the picture of “boneless soft.”

  On that afternoon, as they prepared the sacrifice, she looked down at her fair, slender hands and, with full knowledge that she was the favorite child, asked her mother in a childish voice:

  “Okasan, can there be women who never have to do housework throughout their lives?” She paused and thought before continuing, “Or will there be people like Mudan, who do all the work for them?”

  “Ayako,” Mother fixed her gaze on her. “Life goes on for a long time, and you should never say anything with such certainty. No one knows what will happen in the future. You could live in a big house or a tall building one day, and have nothing left the next.”

  There was a hint of sorrow in her voice. At home, they followed Father’s dictate to use only Taiwanese or Japanese. Mother spoke Japanese in a gentle, clear voice, and, with the usual “a,” “na,” “ni,” “ye,” and “hai,” sounded tender and charming in the Tokyo accent prized by those who knew Japanese well. So at the moment, she seemed to be whispering a delicate sense of sorrow.

  On that afternoon, she was surprised to hear a different tone in her mother’s voice, so Yinghong snapped her head up to look at her. The face must have displayed that sorrow, with a subtle frown and lowered eyes, but when Yinghong looked up, her mother was already returning to her usual bright, warm self, the frown replaced by a smile at the corners of her mouth.

  It was past noon, and Mother had been busy all morning. She had combed her hair and tucked it behind her ears before wrapping her head in a dark blue triangular head scarf sprinkled with small flowers, not a single strand going astray. The loose dress she wore around the house was neat and spotless. Her face showed a tinge of red, from the busy work and the heat from the stove, but mother had maintained her composure and proper demeanor even at a busy time like this; she had quickly recovered from the sorrowful look when Yinghong scrutinized her face. All this proved unusual to Yinghong, who couldn’t stop staring at her mother as if in a trance.

  “Let’s go see how the sacrificial table is coming along,” Mother suggested calmly.

  In Yinghong’s recollections, her mother had always looked gentle and reserved, rarely showing emotion, during all those years she was in elementary school and even when Father was laid up in bed.

  Her middle school summer unifo
rm consisted of a white short-sleeve blouse and a black pleated skirt. The collar of the blouse was what Mother called a “komika collar,” with pointed tips turning outward, while the skirt was made of coarse black cotton with inch-wide pleats created by tailoring and ironing. It required vigilance and constant ironing to maintain the pleats; otherwise, the hems would lose the pleat lines and spread out, like a puffy skirt.

  When she wore the black skirt, Mother was adamant that she mustn’t let the hem roll like waves when she walked. When she sat, she was to gather the pleats first, and mustn’t shift her body too freely. That was the only way to keep the shape of the skirt after a day at school. After she took it off upon returning home, Mudan would hang it up immediately.

  At night when Mudan finished all the household chores, she would take the skirt back to her own room, where she removed the straw mat and, after carefully gathering the pleats, place the skirt on the wooden bed planks. Then she’d replace the mat and lie down to sleep on it. The following day, when she got up, the pleats would be nice and sharp, as if ironed, each and every pleat retaining its shape.

  “I want Ah-hong to be the best student on campus with the neatest uniform,” Mudan said proudly.

  It was an interesting novelty to discover that lying down to sleep helped preserve the pleats in her skirt, so Yinghong asked Mudan to let her try it. Imagine her surprise when Mudan pointed and mocked her with a hearty laugh:

  “You’re such a little unruly monkey! I’ve slept next to you before and, boy, you squirm like a fat worm all night long. If you slept on your skirt, you’d never be able to find it the next morning, let alone keep the pleats.”

  This effectively shut Yinghong up, since she could recall how Mudan could go to sleep in one position and wake up in the same one the next morning, not moving an inch.

  The school had requirements for the winter uniform also, which included long pants, a jacket, and long-sleeve shirts. In addition, she came into possession of a few “chemises,” which, according to her mother, meant underwear.

  Sleeveless and collarless, the chemises were long enough to reach the knees, though shorter than her uniform black skirt. They were usually made of fine linen, with a slight curve around the waist. Mother instructed her to put the chemise on before her school uniform.

  Her first day of middle school was in September, when it was still hot. Upon returning home, she immediately took off the uniform and unbuckled her Girl Scout belt, and, wearing only the chemise, was eager to go to Flowing Pillow Pavilion to tell Father what had happened at school that day. The moment she stepped out of her room, she ran into her mother, who said:

  “You’re not a little girl anymore and you can’t run around in your chemise. Go put something over it.”

  Yinghong lowered her head. The sleeveless and collarless chemise exposed her skinny arms and bony shoulders. On the slender, flat body of an undeveloped twelve-year-old, she sensed the signs of femininity, which made her blush, and quickly went back inside to put on the dress she wore around the house.

  Mother had her own chemises, and she never wore them outside. Yinghong liked to rummage through Mother’s stuff. The drawers in the black-lacquered armoire painted green, light brown, and vermillion were filled with her mother’s chemises. They were made of different fabrics—satin, silk, and poplin—all in white, but in different shades. With the satin, it was a bright milky white with a high sheen; the silk ones had a hint of beige, a light yellow showing through the white, and the poplin ones were a clean white, light and airy.

  The chemises had layers of lace edging at the hems, the slits, and the necklines. Sleeveless and collarless, they had shoulder straps made of thin strips of horizontal fabric or lace, which were exquisitely embroidered with fine eyelets to hold up the low-cut, V-neck satin, silk, or poplin chemises, with or without a curved waist.

  Yinghong liked to bury her face in the drawerful of chemises. The cool, fine fabrics always made her shudder when they touched her skin, as if brushed by a light breeze, accompanied by a subtle, nearly imperceptible fragrance. When she was older, she learned that that came from the empty perfume bottles her mother placed in the drawer, not from the chemises themselves.

  Yet she’d never seen her mother in any of those gorgeous chemises. As a middle school girl, she didn’t dare ask her mother about them, for she knew Mother would be unhappy with her if she learned that Yinghong rummaged through her drawers. Besides, she wanted to savor the pleasure of these wondrous pieces by herself. It wasn’t until she was about to leave for college in Japan that she asked her mother in a feigned casual tone in one of their conversations. Why had she never seen her wearing those fancy chemises?

  “Do I have any of those?” Mother thought hard before finally remembering. “I bought them overseas before I got married. I did wear them, before and shortly after I married your father. Then, what happened? I probably stopped wearing them after that incident with your Otosan.”

  Yinghong knew that Xigeng was besotted with anything refined and luxurious, partly because he had good taste, and partly because he understood that the greatest refinement and elegance meant something that could not be bought at any price.

  She had let him touch her, little by little and only her arms, head, behind her ears and lips, all places usually not covered by clothes. When she decided to allow his hand under her clothes, she picked out satin underwear that had been washed once only to soften the fabric. The underwear had been called chemises before she grew into a woman, she recalled.

  He had an 18,000-square-foot penthouse apartment that came with a living room decorated by a designer in the French style of pastel blue and lilac, and, yes, intersected with gray. It was in this room that she seduced him, though she made sure that he took the initiative of putting his hand under her clothes. She let him unbutton her blouse but would only allow him to touch her shoulders.

  What was exposed was her white satin chemise, whose fabric was soft but thick enough to reveal nothing. She had made sure of that, and was certain he would not see anything, except for the lacy trim around the neck. To be sure, the eyelets on the lacy trim would betray her by revealing a bit of décolletage, and he could get a glimpse of her breasts. But would he see everything? No. She needn’t worry; the dense satin fabric was the ideal cover-up. No one, not even an experienced man like him, could detect anything by simply looking.

  She knew that he retained a degree of deference toward her; in fact he was even a bit in awe of her. He held himself back for the time being and acted decorously, because she came from the Lucheng Zhu family, and because the large amount of delicate lace decorating the fine satin underwear created a lavish impression. It was never her intention to give in to him, not yet, so at this stage she had only planned to let him see part of her body, along with her beautiful, lacy underwear. The trim wasn’t handmade and not all that expensive, but she was certain that he had yet to learn, or might never learn, to tell handmade lace from one made by machine.

  Under his gaze, she lowered her head bashfully, but let him gaze at her and her underwear. Naturally she had to stop his advances every once in a while. What went through her mind was how, given her current financial situation, she still could not afford underwear with real handmade lace, the chemise from her childhood.

  “You’re a grown-up now, not a little girl anymore,” Mother had said.

  Like most of the kids in Taiwan back then, she had been brought up on the instruction that “children have ears but no mouth,” except that it was Mudan, not her parents, who told her that.

  Rarely would Father instruct Yinghong with these rustic sayings, and Mother went out quite a bit after Yinghong began middle school. She knew she should never inquire after her parents’ whereabouts, but it was clear to her that Mother was the one who ran the household.

  And so, besides Father, Mudan was the person she saw most frequently after school; Mudan was also the one who took care of her.

  Mudan had been Mother’s maid before her mar
riage but she had forged a close relationship with other servants in Upper House. The first few years after Father’s return, Lotus Garden saw few visitors. It was not until Yinghong was a third-grader, the year she wrote that she was born in the last year of the First Sino-Japanese War, that Father began to walk around the garden, and guests made visits.

  The first group coming to get news was not her uncles from the Upper House but their maids and servants. Prompted by the country folk’s tendency to gossip, they came to see what had been going on in Lotus Garden. Some had been good friends with Mudan and were not afraid to come see her, now that there had been no serious consequences. Soon all the maids and servants had resumed their former relationships with Mudan.

  Before coming with Yinghong’s mother to the Zhu family, Mudan grew up in Taipei’s Dataocheng area, which meant she had lived a different life than the other Zhu family servants, who had been hired from areas near Lucheng. All the Zhu servants agreed on one thing about Mudan—she was a nice person, but she talked too much and was a show-off.

  Her tendency to show off had been apparent back when the clan lived in the Upper House together. At the time, the large family shared wells and Mudan had to fetch water every day. The inconvenience often led her to complain:

  “We used tap water when we lived in Dataocheng. You turn the faucet and the water flows freely.”

  It would take Lucheng more than two decades to get tap water, after Yinghong went to Japan and then to the United States to study. So when Mudan mentioned tap water to the other servants in the Upper House, it surely sounded wondrous and unusual, and Mudan did not stop there.

  “There was once a soldier from China. When he saw in Dataocheng how we turned the faucet to get tap water to flow out of the wall, he went and bought a faucet and stuck it on his wall, but nothing came out.”