by Zoë S. Roy
“What is this?” Yan asked, delicately holding her glass and staring into it. “The green looks so pretty and the cherry inside is inviting.”
“You mean the drink? This is a Grasshopper. It’s a cocktail.” Han winked and smiled. “I bet you’ll want another one.”
“I do like it,” she said, smiling at her husband.
An older man who had been watching them from across the room approached the table and invited Yan to dance. Han patted her hand and encouraged her to accept. “Have fun,” he said, his smile broad. “I’ll find another partner.”
Yan followed the man onto the dance floor and moved in time with the music. She looked at her dancing partner, who was in his late forties and in a good shape. He was an excellent dancer and Yan did her best to follow him gracefully. After several dances, she felt dizzy and sweaty. The man’s hand had caressed her back, and his moustache sometimes touched her face. This made her uncomfortable, and she shivered, goose bumps spreading all over her body.
“Let’s take a break,” said Yan, “I’m tired.”
As soon as she left him, another man appeared before her. “Yan, how about dancing with me?” he asked, his arm outstretched, inviting her.
“How do you know my name?” she asked, puzzled by his seeming familiarity.
“I’m your husband’s friend, so I know your name.”
Oh, it’s Wu, she thought, remembering what Han had told her about him earlier. He was one of her husband’s business associates. Han had mentioned they might run into him. She touched his hands with a tentative smile. He looked like he was in his mid-forties. His many wrinkles made his face look like petals when he smiled. Pulling her up towards him, his large hands then encircled her waist with ease. “So, you’re Han’s woman –”
“Pardon me?”
“I mean, you’re Han’s wife.”
They waltzed. Wu held her gently. His breath blew a little on her face as he said, “You’re a great dancer. Do you dance often?”
“Often? No,” she answered. “I used to dance as a student.” She had accepted another drink and now felt excited, not herself. Her feet moved to the rhythm of the music as though she were walking on clouds.
“If you like, you can come here to dance anytime.”
“Anytime? I don’t know if I have the time,” replied Yan. Her forehead was almost resting on his chin. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that several dancing couples were kissing each other. She was shaken and tried to keep a certain distance from Wu, but he kept pulling her closer, so that their cheeks almost touched.
“What are you afraid of?” Wu tilted his head and chuckled. “It’s a cheek-to-cheek dance. Don’t you like it?”
“Yes, yes, I do,” she said, her body relaxing against his, ignoring the warning signals firing off in her mind.
“Oh! You’re graceful,” he said, his lips lightly brushing her face and then her lips.
A few minutes later, Yan was being dragged into a room.
When she awoke, she was naked in a strange bed. A hand was draped across her breasts. It took some time before she realized that it was Wu who lay next to her. Suddenly she remembered the dance they shared earlier that evening. She bolted upright and scanned the room for her clothes. Wu must have heard her because he woke up abruptly and pulled her forcefully back down to the bed. “Don’t dash off. You’re mine tonight,” he said, his lips stretched in an unsettling leer.
“Go to hell!” she screamed, trying desperately to push him away. But he was stronger than she was. With a callous laugh, he easily pinned her down. “I’ll call the police!” she shouted, the dread in her voice palpable.
“Call the police? I didn’t force you to join me.”
“Han will beat you,” she gasped, trying to control the panic that was welling up inside her.
“Ha!” Wu’s breath was shallow and fast. His body pushed up against hers, forcing her open. “He consented!”
Shocked and numb, she felt herself droop in Wu’s arms.
“Han has lots of women,” Wu snickered, his mouth finding her neck.
“Lots of women? Impossible. He loves me.” Yan felt a knife slice through her heart.
“I’m sure he does. But he likes to hang out with other women whenever he goes on a trip, and sometimes even when he’s home.” Wu’s weight against her was unbearable.
“Leave me alone! Please,” she pleaded, tears coursing down her cheeks.
“No, no. We are part of the sexual revolution.” Wu maintained control over her body, pushing harder, hurting her. “Let yourself go. Have some fun. Han’s doing the same thing I am now.”
When he finally spent himself inside her, Yan felt as though she had fallen through the earth, buried under mounds of dirt, struggling to breathe. She crawled into herself, small and insignificant.
The next morning, Wu finally let her go, and she returned home, uncertain of what to expect. When she entered the living room, she was surprised to find Han relaxing on the couch and sipping tea as though nothing had happened.
“Did you have a good time?”
“Good time? How dare you?” she screamed. “So, this is your disgusting secret?”
“So? You did the same thing I did. We’re a modern couple,” he said, his smile mocking her.
“I was drugged; you’re corrupted. I can’t believe you did this to me. I’m leaving! I want a divorce. I want out right now,” she stammered, unable to hold back the flood of tears that scalded her cheeks.
“Why?” he asked, looking up at her. “Didn’t you enjoy it? Come on, admit it,” he said, pulling her toward him, his hands running over her breasts.
“You’re disgusting,” she said, pushing him away with a vehemence she didn’t know she had.
“Disgusting? You just don’t know how to enjoy sexual freedom. Everybody around the world wants this, and you can have it. And your husband doesn’t mind.”
“After our divorce, you can enjoy your sexual freedom,” she sputtered, her heart pounding wildly. She could not believe what she was hearing. Her head was spinning.
“But I don’t want a divorce,” he said, his voice cold.
“Why not?” she asked, trying not to shudder.
“You’re a good wife. I need you, and you need me, too. I don’t think you can find a husband more capable than me. And you will do as I say.”
That’s when she slapped him across the face, hard.
In her diary, she wrote: “I will never forget or forgive Han for what he has done to me. There are no herbs that can heal a bleeding heart.” Then she tore the page into pieces. She did not have anywhere to go.
***
A bunch of green shrubs grew in a small garden in the yard of Saigon Village. The wife of the storeowner called them a “soup vegetable.” One day, she handed Yan a basket and a pair of scissors and asked, “Can you cut off some soup vegetable for me?”
“How do you want me to do it?”
“Just snip off the leaves. No stems.”
Yan went to the shrubs in the corner of the yard and gently fingered the shrub’s shiny, oval leaves that smelled of a familiar herb – the wolfberry. She remembered the large wolfberry shrub in her grandmother’s backyard. In the early fall, the shrub would be full of wolfberries that she called “doggy teeth.” She would eat the shrub’s tiny golden-orange fruit, savouring their sweet and sour taste. She had not known that its leaves were also edible.
She felt homesick as she cut the leaves off the thorny branches. She hadn’t written to her parents, sister, or brother because she did not want Han to trace her. Do they think I’m dead? she asked herself. Maybe I am dead.
When she returned the basket full of wolfberry leaves to the store-owner’s wife, Yan asked politely, “Is this an American wolfberry shrub?”
“Wolfberry?” the woman repeated. “I have
no idea. This shrub originally came from China.”
“When did you go to China?”
“Not me,” sighed the woman. “It’s a long story.”
“Who brought it here?” Yan pressed, wanting to get to the bottom of the story.
“The wife of my husband’s granduncle took it with her when she joined her husband in America. She died just after her arrival, but the shrub survived. My granduncle and his son always used its leaves to make their favourite soup. The shrub became like a family member, following them wherever and whenever they moved.”
Yan imagined the wolfberry’s new branches spreading as they moved with the family from California to New York, then to Rhode Island, to finally take root in the soil of New Orleans. The story of the shrub made her think about her situation. That night she wrote in her diary: “I know now I will never go back to Han. I came to America at his suggestion, to improve my English. Now I am here and free. Perhaps, I should plant my own roots in this country, just like the store owner’s wolfberry shrub.”
Weeks later, when she scanned The World Journal, another note caught her eye: “Yan, please contact me at (602) 555-4000. Heng.”
That was the one name that could stir in her feelings of happiness, sadness, and longing. She had tried to forget him a long time ago, but any thought of him still made her weak, despite their many years apart. As she remembered her cousin, memories came flooding back.
***
After they went fishing for the last time, Heng seldom visited her home. Yan always found some excuse to go to her aunt’s apartment. Whenever she saw him, her spirits soared. When she could not see him, she was lost, bereft. He always seemed happy to see her, but kept his distance.
After graduation, Heng found a job as a researcher in a law institute. From her aunt, Yan heard that many girls were interested in him, but he did not seem interested in anyone in particular, and that made his mother worry about him.
Yan became a university student a few years later but was never attracted to any of the young men she met there. Only the thought of Heng could rouse butterflies in her stomach. She knew that their families, their friends, and all of society, would not accept a romantic relationship between cousins. Yet, she could not stop herself from wondering whether he felt the same affection for her.
Two years slipped away. She heard one day that he intended to pursue further education in the United States. She felt as though her heart had become a dead weight inside her. Knowing he would be far away and difficult to see again, Yan decided she needed to see him for one last time to say farewell.
She arrived at his dormitory room on a grey and rainy afternoon. Cardboard boxes and suitcases cluttered the floor. He led her into the only armchair in the room, and he sat on his bed.
“All done?”
“Yes.” He sounded tired.
“So, you are leaving,” was the only thing she managed to say, her eyes fixed on the dandelions that decorated a mug on the table. Her thoughts wafted in the air like the dandelion’s seeds. She had a lot to say, but said nothing. Not able to hold back her tears, she turned her face aside. She did not want him to see her cry.
“Please, don’t cry,” he said, coming over to her. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, then knelt down. He wiped her tears away.
She grasped his hand and asked, “Why do you ignore me? What are you afraid of?”
“Aren’t you afraid?” he answered, folding the handkerchief into a tiny square that he placed carefully on the coffee table behind him. “We’re cousins.”
“What if we don’t want a child,” she finally uttered.
“Don’t be silly.” Heng gently touched her hair and said, “We can’t ignore our parents, and we can’t ignore the laws or society. Can we?”
“Why not? We can live somewhere far away…”
“Yeah. Eat grass roots, wear bark and sleep in trees…”
“Don’t be a chicken.” She knew she was being childish.
“Don’t be a scaredy-cat,” he shot back.
She burst out laughing.
That night she stayed with him. But they did not cross that boundary to intimacy, even though every fibre in their being wanted to. Their guilt was stronger.
Before leaving, Heng embraced Yan, his arms warm around her shoulders. “Forget me. Start a new life.”
“Take care of yourself.” Yan tried to smile.
In the five years since their last meeting, she had tried to start a new life. She had gotten a job as an herbalist in a hospital. That’s where she had met Han. He was persistent and so, a year later, she finally agreed to marry him, convinced that becoming a wife, and eventually a mother, would put an end to her memories of Heng.
***
She hesitated a second, but could not stop herself from writing down Heng’s phone number. He was the only person she might want to talk to.
That night she dreamt that she was mired in a swamp, and overgrown shrubs and hedges were closing in on her. But many of the plants were medicinal herbs: Joe Pye weed, foxglove, lamb’s ear, purple spike, pink-and-white twin lotuses, and marshmallow sprouted among the green bushes over which climbed a bright green Virginia snakeroot. A light blue mist floated above the distant wood like a veil.
To her surprise, Yan spied a giant striding past the marsh. He reached the wood in only two steps and then vanished. She tried to walk but could not take even one step in the long and clinging grass. With every move, she felt herself sink into the marsh. A multicoloured flower beckoned to her from a distance. When she finally managed to stagger toward the flower, the head of an alligator lunged at her unexpectedly. Frightened, she turned around, trying to escape. As she ran away from the alligator, she slammed into the giant’s chest and her hands grabbed a button from his shirt. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
After she woke, her arms still ached. She could not fall back asleep. Instead of tossing in bed, she decided to get up and turn on the light. She wrote about her dream in her diary: “I’m scared by this peculiar dream. I encountered a giant, a multicoloured flower, many other beautiful plants, and an alligator in a swampland. The twin lotuses are a symbol of love, but what do the other plants mean?”
She sighed and looked at her watch. It was midnight, the first time she could not sleep since leaving China. Wordless and melancholy, she doubted she could forget what she should have forgotten long ago.
She opened her notebook and found Heng’s phone number. Her heart racing, she dialled the number. When she heard his voice, she whispered, “Heng,” and then fell silent.
“Yan?” His voice was warm and calm.
“I – I –,” she stuttered, not knowing where to begin, what to say.
“Where are you?” he asked, concerned.
“In New Orleans. Where are you?”
“I’m in Phoenix. How did you end up in New Orleans? You should contact your parents. You know, you’ve scared everyone.”
“How did you know that I had left China?”
“My mother called me.”
“Please don’t tell anyone where I am. I needed to get away from Han.”
“Why? You’re being irrational. Your parents are extremely worried.” Taking a breath, he asked, “Why didn’t you call me earlier?”
“We should forget each other. You said that, didn’t you? You’ve never dropped me a single line.”
“I know.” He was silent for a moment. “I’m working at a law firm. Why don’t you come here? We can talk about this in person. I’ll take a few days off.”
“I’ll come, but first promise me you won’t tell anyone where I am. I’ll explain when I see you.”
Heng agreed. They talked a long time over the phone. Yan’s heart felt suddenly full.
A week later, a Greyhound bus arrived in Phoenix. Yan got off the bus along with throngs of othe
r passengers. Her eyes darted around the station as she searched for a familiar face among those waiting.
“Yan!”
Upon hearing his voice, Yan’s heart skipped a beat. She turned her head and saw him. He had a white patch over his left eye. He was smiling at her. “Heng!” she called out, walking slowly toward him, suddenly not sure of herself or what she was doing. “What’s wrong with your eye?” She asked when she finally reached him.
“I was stung by a wasp while driving yesterday. It’ll be alright in a couple of days.” As he spoke, he covered her hands with his.
“You’re a one-eyed ogre!” she teased, thinking of her favourite childhood fairytale, the one they had read to each other over and over again.
He took her suitcase and teased back, “Sure, and you’re like a puppy at my heels!”
Yan chuckled, pleased that he remembered the nickname he had given her so long ago. She said to Heng, “I can treat your wasp bite with lamb’s ear.” Laughing at Heng’s confused expression, Yan explained, “It has nothing to do with a lamb. It’s the name of an herb.”
They walked out of the bus terminal, hand in hand. Yan was eager to talk to Heng about filing for a legal divorce by proxy in China, but she knew there was plenty of time for that. She also knew that in twenty-six states cousins are allowed to marry. Did Heng know? And as they walked further away from the bus station, she remembered the store-owner’s wolfberry shrub and smiled. She would plant one, too.
A Mandarin Duck
“MOM, IS THIS OUR NEW HOME?” asked Wade who squatted to open a toy box near the window.
“Yeah. Do you like it?” Huidi was unpacking a suitcase in her son’s bedroom.
“I guess it’s okay, but I don’t know any kids here,” said Wade, pushing his toy car across the wooden floor.
“You’ll make some new friends here.”
“Can I go play outside?” The boy eased up, looking out the window. “I see some kids in the yard next door. ”
“Okay. Don’t go far.” Huidi started hanging up Wade’s clothes in the closet. She pulled open the drawers, sorted underwear and socks, putting each in its respective place. Then, she pulled out a set of sheets, made the bed, and placed the toy box in a corner near her son’s bed.