by Janie Chang
“But he was trying to kill us,” I said. “And I’m sure he killed that poor Mr. Shih. How can we be the ones in danger now that Wan Baoyuan is dead?”
“Wan Baoyuan was mixed up with some very dangerous people,” he said, “and some very dangerous politics. You don’t want your name in any newspaper stories, Jialing.”
“But I’m not involved in anything political. I don’t understand.”
“For now, you don’t need to,” he said gently. “You just need to keep quiet and help me get rid of this body. First we need to carry it to the car. Can you get a blanket, something big to wrap around it?”
I avoided looking at Wan Baoyuan’s body, limp and still, his fine suit sodden with rain. Shivering, I ran into the erfang.
Use that quilt, Fox said, pointing. She was kneeling by the pallet bed where Ping Mei lay. My mother. It hadn’t been a dream.
I yanked the folded quilt from the cupboard and ran out again. We lifted Wan Baoyuan’s body onto the blanket.
“We need to wrap his head,” Liu Sanmu said, “or he’ll bleed through.”
The embroidered skirt panel lay on the steps. With strangely cooperative fingers I removed the embroidery hoop and gave Liu Sanmu the fabric. He wrapped it several times around the head, but even then I fancied I could see through the delicate embroidery to a pale face and closed eyes. Then we rolled the body over and over in the blanket.
Liu Sanmu lifted the roll by one end and I lifted it by the other. Together we carried it to the front courtyard. Is there anything in the world so heavy as a corpse?
He opened the back door of the Pierce-Arrow, and together, we heaved the body inside. It lay on the floor of the car, the quilt a ludicrously colorful shroud. Liu Sanmu opened the door on the other side and tugged the corpse farther in. His coolness unnerved me almost as much as handling Wan Baoyuan’s body.
“Say nothing about this,” he said, holding me by the shoulders. “Wan Baoyuan never came here today. I’ll explain everything later. I promise. This must be our secret, Jialing. Do you understand?”
I didn’t, but I nodded. All I wanted was for him to drive away, take that horrible cargo with him. I opened the gate. The street outside was empty, rivulets of rain washing down the paving stones. The automobile pulled out onto Dragon Springs Road, and its dark shape vanished in the downpour. I shut the gates, my hands numb with cold, barely noticing the rain.
Then I stumbled through the courtyard and went into the kitchen. I picked up a twig broom. I swept water from the stones of the courtyard and into the bamboo garden, sluicing rain and blood into soil and moss until the puddles ran clear. I swept the same paving stones, over and over and over, until Fox came out and took the broom from my hands.
She led me into the erfang where I slumped with my back against the wall. Fox dabbed my face dry with a cloth. My mother was sitting up on the pallet bed.
“You’re soaking wet,” my mother said. “You must get changed into dry clothes. My poor Ling-ling.”
That was a very filial thing to do, Fox said, letting Liu Sanmu think you were responsible for that horrible man’s death instead of your mother.
“I didn’t want her dragged into a police investigation,” I said.
But it was a lie. I hadn’t asked Fox to erase Ping Mei from Liu Sanmu’s mind out of filial piety. I didn’t want anyone to know she was my mother.
Wan Baoyuan, his lifeless body, the rolled-up quilt. I wouldn’t think about it.
WHEN ANJUIN RETURNED, I was huddled on my cot running a fever. I slept for two days. While she put cold cloths on my forehead, she told me that Dajuin was confused and angry. Wan Baoyuan had vanished. There hadn’t been a note or explanation, no money had been transferred to the Yangs’ bank account.
“Was he toying with us?” Anjuin said. “He seemed so eager to buy the property. I hope Liu Sanmu is still interested. He hasn’t been in touch either.”
Recovered, I read the newspaper every day. There were editorials in support of the strikes, condemnation of Western nations, and criticism of our own government for being unprepared at the peace conference. The police were struggling to stay in control of the city. They had arrested so many protesters that one of the city’s administrative buildings was being used as a temporary prison.
There was nothing about the body of a man dressed in expensive gray flannels, his skull beaten in. By a wooden chair leg long since burned in the kitchen stove.
Then Shanghai returned to normal. Students went back to classes and factory workers back to their jobs. Now every noise out on Dragon Springs Road made me tremble. The shouts of laborers across the street, the rumble of handbarrows, and the sound of tools tapping on wood.
And finally, there was news of Wan Baoyuan’s death. The papers provided only the sketchiest information. Wan’s body had been caught against a barge ferrying construction materials across the Huangpu River. Workers on the barge had found him, a body that had been floating in the water for days. At first they had thought it was the corpse of a pauper, someone whose family was too poor to pay for a proper burial, but there was no shroud wrapped around his body, not even a rope to prevent the indignity of splayed limbs. Then there was the suit, which made it clear he had not been one of the nameless poor. The unidentified corpse went to the morgue, another of Shanghai’s many anonymous murder victims.
His body might have been consigned to an unmarked grave but for the manager of the Shanghai Hotel, who had grown concerned about Wan’s unpaid bills. He reported Wan Baoyuan missing. His description led police to look through the morgue.
There was no mention of head wounds or a quilt. Or a length of fabric embroidered with orange chrysanthemums.
A single police detective came to Dragon Springs Road to speak with Dajuin. In Wan Baoyuan’s hotel room they had found papers dealing with the Yang property. Dajuin was genuine in his confusion. There was no reason why he would want Wan Baoyuan dead. He had every reason for wanting him alive. The police detective agreed.
“Surely Liu Sanmu has seen the terrible news,” Anjuin said. By now the investigation into Wan Baoyuan’s murder had moved to the back pages of the newspaper. “I don’t understand why he hasn’t come to see us. At least to let us know whether or not he’s still planning to buy the property.”
“I’ll call on him and find out,” Dajuin said.
WITH FOX AT her side, my mother hobbled out onto Chung San Road each day to beg. Perhaps Fox had always been at her side, only I hadn’t been allowed to see. It made me feel better to know she wasn’t out on the streets alone, that Fox was with her.
I had grown accustomed to thinking of her as Ping Mei the servant, the disfigured beggar woman. Someone I could dismiss, someone who had been of interest only for what she could tell me about my mother. To my relief, she didn’t expect me to treat her as a mother. Nor did she ever press me to spend more time with her.
For a decade, I had blamed her for abandoning me, blamed her for my foreign blood. I had believed her dead. Over the years my memories of her had become encrusted with a prickly shell of resentment. Yet I had also longed for her. I had wanted the sweet-faced woman whose laughter tinkled like wind chimes, the loving and playful companion who had made each day feel safe yet full of adventure.
But that mother was gone. The woman in front of me had suffered more sorrow than I’d ever seen, survived more cruelty than I could bear to imagine. She was drained of the liveliness that once suffused her being. She was content simply to exist.
Each time I saw her now, I searched for the clues I should’ve noticed. The mole on the side of her mouth, the once-shapely brows pulled taut by her scars. The tune she hummed unawares in her scratchy voice, “Spring Snow.” Why hadn’t I recognized the notes of her favorite melody, even in that hoarse rendition? And then there was the embroidery. Why had I not recognized my mother’s skill in the tiny, perfect stitches, so smooth that every leaf seemed to unfurl from the fabric?
What I did recognize was that as mother and
daughter, we were strangers. The woman who sat before me had missed a decade of my life, and I hers.
“As Ping Mei, you were so diffident,” I said. “Taciturn.”
“I didn’t dare talk too much,” said my mother, “because there was so much I wanted to ask you. It would’ve seemed overly curious.”
“Did you always know my mother’s whereabouts?” I asked Fox, who sat up and stretched, a long, luxurious elongation of limbs from nose tip to tail that nearly flattened her against the floorboards of the veranda.
I knew she was somewhere in Shanghai, she said, but that was all.
“Fox’s powers are not unlimited,” my mother said. “I made her promise to expend them all protecting you.”
Yet my mother had been the one who had faced more danger, who had suffered more by losing Fox’s protection. The hard shell of resentment softened ever so slightly.
“What binds a Fox to a promise?” I asked.
Only friendship, she said, yawning to show sharp white teeth and a pink tongue. No magic. Just ordinary friendship.
That night I dreamed I was in the Western Residence. It was my own dream, not one of Fox’s. She had not come to see me in my sleep since her return. The ground beneath the bamboo was carpeted in flowers. Violas, clove pinks, forget-me-nots. Anna was there, under the bamboo, her features indistinct in the mottled green light.
Brightness like dawn lit the garden arch and then the Door opened. Anna walked through the arch, copper ringlets shining. The Door remained open, and I could see her wandering through the orchard, away from me. Then Fox was at the Door, whining as she ran back and forth while the Door closed, very slowly. I lost sight of Anna.
I woke up, my heart pounding, my thoughts confused.
Fox, running back and forth in front of the Door. A Door that closed on her slowly, very slowly.
“HOW LONELY IT will be once you’re gone, Jialing,” Anjuin said. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
I couldn’t tell whether it was because I’d be leaving or because the reality was dawning on her that she would be living in a household where her sister-in-law was mistress. Yun Na and the children were arriving in a week’s time, and they were all moving to a rented apartment in Shanghai. Thankfully, by then I would be living with the Ellis family.
Time couldn’t pass quickly enough. I longed for the Ellis home, a place where I could hide myself in a different world, their world. Once I had some money I could move my mother somewhere, someplace inexpensive, but at least I could put a roof over her head. Then there would be no further reason to come back to Dragon Springs Road.
Liu Sanmu hadn’t contacted me, but what I read from the newspapers was comfort enough. The investigation into Wan Baoyuan’s death had faded away. I didn’t need to know more, to be reminded of more. I wanted to distance myself from Dragon Springs Road, forget the horror of blood trickling into puddles, blood staining the moss between flagstones.
ANJUIN HAD GONE to the market for some white radishes to make my favorite pickles. It was my last afternoon at Dragon Springs Road. I would be going to work for Mrs. Ellis the next day. In the Western Residence, my mother and Fox were putting the finishing touches on my new skirt. I’d given up on the sewing machine.
They sat together like a pair of maiden aunts, Fox in the shape of a middle-aged woman, talking quietly while they sewed. There was something strangely peaceful about this sight.
“The Yangs are hoping Liu Sanmu will keep his promise to buy this property,” I said. “He’s coming to see Dajuin one of these evenings. What will you do? Where can you go?”
Fox shrugged. The Door is here. I’m staying. Your mother and I will be fine.
“You won’t need to beg,” I told my mother. “Once I’ve been paid, I’ll bring you money for food. I’ll find you a place to live.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Fox will look after me.”
“You’re my mother,” I said, “and I’m responsible for you. But I don’t want you interfering with my life anymore. Either of you.”
Both my words and voice came out more sharply than I’d intended, but my life had been a leaf, blown around a courtyard at the behest of others. My mother, then Fox. The Yangs, Anjuin. Even Miss Morris. They had made decisions on my behalf. It had been necessary, I knew that. I had been a helpless child.
From now on, however, the decisions ruling my life had to be my own. At the Ellis house my new life would begin, in the small bedroom with yellow roses on the curtains. I was leaving Dragon Springs Road behind.
And a sodden body, blood trickling onto moss.
CHAPTER 18
The next day, Anjuin walked me out to Chung San Road.
“You’ve got the address for Dajuin’s new home?” she asked.
“Right here in my pocket. I’ll come see you on my first day off,” I said, swinging my modest bag of belongings onto the rickshaw seat. I climbed on and reached down to hold her hand for a moment. Anjuin was smiling, happy for me. Then the rickshaw puller set off. I looked back and waved, a twinge of guilt pricking my heart. Had I been too quick to get into the rickshaw? Should I have said a longer good-bye? But I would see her soon.
She had no idea, she would never know, how badly I wanted to get away from Dragon Springs Road and why.
The External Roads area was still partly farmland, blocks of small shops and tired-looking houses spaced here and there between fields of cabbage and mustard greens. Women in wide straw hats bent low to weed between the rows, some with babies strapped to their chests. Then the buildings grew denser and became cleaner, more modern, built in the Western style.
On my first visit to the Ellises’ I had been so nervous I hardly remembered what the neighborhood looked like. Now I would live here. Automobiles shared the road with carriages and handbarrows, and then the rickshaw entered a street lined with tall plane trees. I caught glimpses of grand mansions behind wrought-iron gates and smaller villas enclosed by low brick walls.
The gatekeeper was expecting me, and when I walked up the gravel path, the same young manservant who had greeted me last time hurried from the house to carry my bag.
“Mrs. Ellis is entertaining guests for lunch,” he said. “I’ve been told to show you to your room. She’ll come up to see you when the ladies are gone.”
On the lawn, the croquet set had been put away. The flower beds were newly weeded, the hedges trimmed. Under a canvas canopy a dozen foreign women sat around a long table draped in white linen. Wide-brimmed hats framed their pale faces, and servants stood behind chairs plying palm-leaf fans.
Mrs. Ellis looked up and saw me. She smiled and gave me a small wave. The woman beside her looked up and smiled. It was Miss Morris. Beside her, another face I knew but didn’t welcome, Mrs. Burns. I dropped them a curtsy in the foreign style and continued up the path. Today, not even the sight of Mrs. Burns could ruin my happiness.
It took only a few minutes to put away my clothing in the chest of drawers. I placed my notebooks and pencils on the desk. Then I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. The bathroom was a marvel of white tiles and porcelain, white towels neatly draped on a rack. Tentatively, I pulled the chain hanging from the tank above the toilet and jumped back, laughing as water splashed in the bowl.
Back in my room, I looked out the window to the small grassy playground below. I couldn’t wait to meet the Ellis children. A light knock made me turn to the door.
Mrs. Ellis entered, Miss Morris behind her.
“Miss Morris,” I cried, rushing to take her hands.
“Please, sit down, Jialing,” Mrs. Ellis said, indicating the chair by the desk. “Miss Morris, perhaps we could sit on the bed?”
It was all strangely awkward. Something tightened at the base of my neck. Mrs. Ellis looked away for a moment, then cleared her throat.
“I understand you’ve met Mrs. Burns. You applied for a position there.”
“Yes, but she found me . . . unsuitable,” I replied. A small tendril of d
read curled in the pit of my stomach.
“I can’t hire you, Jialing,” she said. “It would upset Mrs. Burns. She’s very disappointed that I’d hired a governess of . . . mixed blood.”
Tears filled my eyes. I couldn’t speak. How could this be happening?
“I’m so sorry, my dear,” Mrs. Ellis said. “Do try and understand. My husband works for Mr. Burns. I can’t afford to offend his wife. Please, take this money.” She pushed a small bag of coins into my hands.
She stood up. “I must get back to my guests. I am so, so sorry.”
Miss Morris reached her hand out to me, but I flinched. Without a word, I pulled open the drawers and put my clothing back into my bag.
“If there’s anything I can do to help you, my dear, I will,” Miss Morris said.
But we both knew there was nothing she could do. Not anymore.
IT WAS A long walk back to Dragon Springs Road, and the strap of my bag hung heavy on my shoulders. I cursed Mrs. Burns and her lecherous husband. I cursed my tainted blood. I even cursed Mrs. Ellis even though I understood her reasons.
Reluctant to face Anjuin’s helpless sympathy, I took my time. For a while I stood outside the gates of Jessfield Park, watching foreign families promenade in and out. They were so privileged and so heedless of their privilege. When I finally trudged along Chung San Road, it was late afternoon. The fields of cabbage and mustard greens were empty now, the farm women gone home to cook supper for their families. Stores were closing, and the street echoed with good-natured shouts between shopkeepers as they locked their doors.
For the next few nights I would have a roof over my head, but what would I do afterward, when Dajuin and Anjuin moved to their new home in Shanghai? Anjuin had said it was quite small, just an apartment with two rooms. I could squat at Dragon Springs Road with my mother and Fox, but for how long? If Liu Sanmu bought the property, the houses would come down. And how would I live? Go begging? Work in a factory? I shuddered, remembering Mary’s auntie.