by Patti Lacy
What sound tickled her ears? Had a strange bird coasted on the wind current to attend the festival? She jumped off the porch, threw back her head, and searched a blue sky. Lazy clouds floated by, but no bird.
Chee, chee.
Kai stepped into grass, tilted her head, and peered into a tree. A mother bird flapped into a nest and settled wings about bald chicks whose beaks were closed. Silent.
Chee, chee.
Kai pricked her ears to follow the sound, scrambled onto her hands and knees, and crawled to a flowering jasmine.
The bush shuddered. Out popped a tiny creature, plucked-chicken pink. Beady eyes studied her. Wings flapped like broken fans.
Kai clapped her hands and cooed. What a funny-looking thing!
The chick staggered forward and crashed into a gnarly branch. “Chee, chee.”
“Chee, chee,” Kai whispered. “Greetings, little one.”
Silent, the chick stared back, lifted one foot, and toppled over.
Had spring intoxicated the chick? Kai spied an angry red knot on the chick’s leg joint. Below the knot, the leg bent like a discarded pipe cleaner. Useless for walking. Flying. Living.
Poor thing! As Kai reached for the chick, her right hand radiated heat to match her sympathy-warmed heart. Fate had cursed this chick! She must try to repair its poor crooked leg. Old Grandfather had taught her to mend broken chairs. Was the principle not similar? “Chee, chee,” she whispered, and scooped up the chick.
The bird struggled, then lay still . . . except for a thump, thump against Kai’s fingers. Thump. Thump. Such a strong little heart! Kai tingled with pleasure. A coo escaped her mouth. She had found the chick’s life rhythms!
“Chee, chee.” Speaking the chick’s language, Kai folded her legs underneath her and sat on the ground. “Be still, little one.” Kai balanced the chick between her knees and dug in her pocket for the knife and string. Moving slowly, so as not to scare the chick, she slashed the string in two. Her fingers tickled the grass and inched caterpillar-like to a stick. Still whispering, “Chee, chee,” she stripped bark from the stick and made a splint for her little friend.
Except for its heartbeat, the chick was silent.
Kai scooped up the chick, used her pulsating right hand to straighten the bent leg against the splint, then looped string round and round until the splint and the leg became one. The chick never struggled, as if it understood exactly what Kai was doing.
“Chee, chee,” the chick said in thanks.
Kai transferred the chick into her left hand and spread the fingers of her right hand, half expecting to see steam rising as from a boiling pot. She opened her hand, closed it. Opened it, closed it.
Warmth spread to the funny looped ridges on the back of her fingers that Old Grandfather said made her hand different from everyone else’s. The warmth soothed like the kang bed on a winter night. Mesmerized, she stretched her fingers and studied her hand’s every pore, every crease.
Of its own accord, the right hand moved to massage the chick’s fluffy breast.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The chick’s heartbeats matched the heat pulsating through Kai’s hand. The hand was magic! Kai, Second Daughter of the Chang family, possessed a Healing Right Hand that somehow connected with hurt creatures!
Kai’s heart pattered in a wild rhythm. If the fates allowed, this tiny creature could now hop. Dared she hope it might one day soar high as the festival kites? She stroked the chick’s breast in thanks for such a momentous Spring Festival beginning. Perhaps she could help other birds! Oh, never had she dreamed of such a connection with the creatures that she loved! She must tell Old Grandfather! She must—
“What are you doing?” A shrill voice shattered the magic.
Old Ling has found us.
The cranky wife of the shop owner always tottered away on swollen stubs of feet and refused to wait on the Chang daughters. Old Ling had hated Kai since her first moon. Though Kai had asked Mother why, Mother never responded.
“Stupid girl!” Old Ling plunked down the shop steps. Her jaw gaped to expose the black holes and yellow crags of a filthy cave mouth. She shook a broom at Kai. Bits of straw and mouse dung fluttered in the air. “Why waste time on such frivolity?”
Kai cupped her hand about her new feathered friend to shield it from Old Ling’s poor feng shui.
“Why do you not cook and scrub and weed?” Again Old Ling swung the broom, barely missing Kai’s head. “And you, devil bird!” Curse words and spit soiled the air. “We should have finished you off when we had the chance! Both of you, scoot!”
Kai wobbled to her feet, the chick still in her hands. She pigeon-toed away from Old Ling. The shop door slammed. Old Ling and her ill temper disappeared, though her strange words lingered.
Kai tiptoed to the chick’s nest home. “You will grow strong, little friend.” She settled the chick by its brothers and sisters and tried to ignore the flapping and cawing mother trembling a nearby limb. “Good-bye for now.”
Thank-you cheeps streamed from the nest.
Wind gusts caught Kai’s bubbling laughter and spun it into music. The frog lantern croaked, the elephant lantern trumpeted, the dragon lantern snorted fire. Kai sprinted for home. The alleyways blurred into browns, greens, and slivers of red. Barks, meows, grunts, and mumbles rose from the yards. Animal creatures, all cheering for the work of her healing hand!
When Kai’s heart threatened to explode within her chest, she slowed to a walk. Her heart stopped its punishment, but a question hammered her mind.
She entered her house, which was fragrant with the aroma of garlic and tea.
“Hello, Second Daughter.” Wiping her hands on her apron, Mother turned from a simmering pot. Mother balanced cooking, lesson-preparing, and caring for Third Daughter on her shapely shoulders. What harmony she brought to their home! “The Party has called a special meeting,” Mother continued. “There will be no kite-flying.”
Kites? Because of her adventure with the bird, Kai had forgotten to buy kite twine, had forgotten about kite-flying with Father. She had not forgotten Old Ling’s strange, hate-tinged words. She held out her arm, as if guiding a kite, but fixed her eyes on the Healing Right Hand. “Old Grandfather?”
Old Grandfather nodded and puffed his pipe. Smoke ringed his head and drifted to his rounded belly.
Kai beamed. What honor Old Grandfather brought their family! Could she bring honor, too, with her discovery of a most unusual gift?
Musty tobacco leaves joined kitchen scents and obliterated the last of Old Ling’s sourness. “Mother! Old Grandfather!” Kai waved her arm. “I have a magic right hand!”
Mother frowned. “If it is so magic, have it assemble these dumplings.”
“Daughter, let the little one be. She will work soon enough.” Old Grandfather patted his knees, held out his arms.
Mother, usually so cheerful, picked up her pot and huffed to the courtyard, most likely to let the stuffing mixture cool.
Ignoring Mother, Kai shrieked. To be coddled by Old Grandfather, a thing rarely allowed? The right hand had brought not only magic, but good fortune. She would ask Old Grandfather the question flapping about in her mind. She eased into Old Grandfather’s lap, mindful of his fragile bones.
“Tell me, Second Daughter, what has put dragon fire in your eyes?”
Kai breathed Old Grandfather’s cornstarch-and-smoke smell. “I met a baby bird. With a hurt leg.” As she talked, she spread her fingers to show what she had done, then had to poke Old Grandfather twice to open his heavy eyelids. How could a storyteller like Old Grandfather drift away as she recounted such adventure . . . and before her question?
“Old Grandfather!” She raised her voice, clapped her hands.
Life stirred between the folds and creases surrounding his marble eyes.
Kai sat straight, determined to ask the question before Old Grandfather again left for the dream world.
“Old Ling cursed my bird friend. Why?” Questions made Kai rustle
about. “She spoke of old days. What did she mean by ‘finishing off’ birds?”
Her questions hovered in the air, though Kai begged them to vanish since they sagged and shadowed Old Grandfather’s seventy-year-old eyelids.
The questions refused to leave. They were stubborn things, just like her.
Pale lips gripped the pipe. Smoke puffs encircled Old Grandfather’s nose. “In famine years, Chairman Mao decreed that sparrows gobbled up our crops. A campaign was launched to exterminate the wasteful creatures.”
“Exterminate?” Kai’s teeth chattered at such an awful-sounding word.
“Rock-hurling peasants stormed the fields. Teachers ordered students to beat washbasins, clang pot lids.”
“Why?”
“To disturb the birds’ feng shui.”
“Just to . . . scare them away?”
Old Grandfather puffed his pipe and shook his head.
Her hand swelled as if ten hornets had attacked. “To . . . kill them?”
Old Grandfather did not say a word. He did not need to.
Chills zipped along Kai’s spine. “Our village? They did this here in our village?”
Smoke seeped from Old Grandfather’s mouth as he slowly nodded.
“No!” Kai’s heart throbbed pain. She struggled out of Old Grandfather’s lap.
Though Old Grandfather’s lips moved, wings beat so violently against Kai’s heart that she could not hear him. The pipe smoke she had once loved swirled to choke her. Images of limp wings and bloodied feathers swooped in to join the attack.
Free from Old Grandfather’s lap, Kai tore out of the house, past Mother, still working in the courtyard, through the garden, and to the ladder that leaned against the shed. She had to join her feathered friends in their sky home and leave the horrid ground behind! Sobs shook her body. Who would hurl sticks and stones at innocent birds? Her bare toes curled about ladder rungs as she climbed toward a world where nature’s creatures achieved perfect harmony. Her fingers dug into splintery wood. Higher! Higher! With each step she left the nasty killing world of men.
Bird chatter began when she reached the top rung. Huffing, she collapsed onto the shed roof. “Chee, chee!” she cried as she wiped away her tears and pivoted enough to shove the ladder to the ground. “I, Chang Kai,” she shouted to the sparrows and gulls and bulbuls and ducks from her shed-top kingdom, “will never threaten your life.”
Shouts rose from the yard, but Kai paid them no mind. She twirled to create a wind that would block the low world’s sounds. “I, Chang Kai, will honor you as long as the fates allow!”
Oh, what chirping! What singing! The shed roof became her roost. Kai flapped her arms and hopped like the injured chick to show the birds what was in her heart. She hopped as the little bird had. Twirled. Hopped—
Something whooshed, like kite tails battling an angry wind. Kai felt herself falling. She opened her mouth to scream, but the breeze captured her voice.
For the span of two wing flaps, Kai hung in the air. Then she banged against the cold hard ground. The Healing Right Hand clawed the dirt.
Dark descended. Heavy weights pinned her limbs. Someone called from far, far away. Kai tried to talk, but pain allowed only groans.
“Little Kai! Little Kai!” finally penetrated the void.
She pried open heavy lids.
Light streamed in and stabbed her eyes. She shut them tight.
“Second Daughter!”
It was Old Grandfather, out in the light. To avoid stabbing pain to her eyes, she must stay in the dark. But she would signal that she heard. She tried to smile, to shake her limbs, but pain halted even a toe wiggle. Oh, what had happened?
“Second Daughter, get up.”
“You must keep her conscious!”
Someone—Father?—slapped her cheeks.
Someone—Mother?—wailed like little Third Daughter.
“Get the doctor!” Father cried.
Feet—Mother’s?—scurried away.
“Second Daughter? Little Dragon?”
It was Old Grandfather, his smoky smell near her head.
“Nod if you can hear me.”
Though the movement of her neck birthed three groans, she obeyed.
“You will not leave us. Do you understand? You and your Healing Right Hand are destined to journey to a faraway land. You will save many people. Are you listening, Second Daughter? It is your fate to embark on an extraordinary quest and bring honor to the family name.”
Fingers probed her head, chest, stomach, limbs, even the Healing Right Hand. Every touch throbbed pain; to battle it, she clung to Old Grandfather’s strange words.
“You must wake up,” Old Grandfather spoke so naturally, so calmly, Kai imagined that she could see pipe smoke. But she could not see anything.
Shouts and rustles began to drown out the strange prophecy.
“Bruises.”
“Maybe a broken arm.”
“It is no matter.” Old Grandfather’s voice soared above the others. Like swallows, conquering rooftops. She tilted her head toward Old Grandfather and his soothing voice.
“She has a Healing Right Hand that will save others . . . and save herself.”
Old Grandfather was magic, like her right hand! Though Kai had not explained its powers, Old Grandfather knew. It birthed four groans for Kai to smile. With an ancestor like Old Grandfather, the fates would heal her. Somehow a Healing Right Hand would be involved. She smiled at her good fortune and slipped into darkness.
China . . . so far from . . . Fort Worth. This luxury hotel conference room. Kai blinked away images priceless as Dynasty relics and found her bearings, yet her body trembled, remembering that long-ago fall. Summoning strength, she poured a glass of water and assessed the Powells’ reaction to her story.
Reverend Powell drummed the table. His wife pushed back her chair and hugged her arms. A shield from my story? Do not worry, mother of Joy. I will say no more. Intuitively, she refrained from overloading these Christians by recounting the atrocities that had plagued their village in the years after her fall. These Christians would close their ears to how she, aged eleven, and First Daughter, aged fifteen, had salved the bloody wounds Father had received in prison, how she had massaged Father’s stroke-damaged limbs until he could again walk. These Christians would close their eyes to her shampooing of Mother’s yin-yang haircut—half her hair shaved, the other half tangled and thick with lice.
Kai managed to set down her glass without spilling water. She would not tell them that at the ripe old age of eleven, in the shadow of a banyan tree, she had sworn to become a doctor, a profession that seemed best suited to reclaim Chang dignity and provide for Mother and Father.
She gripped Lily’s file until her hands ached. She would not tell them about sleepless nights on the kang, sleepless nights in the dormitory, sleepless nights in the study carrel, sleepless weekends on call. They had not opened their ears to hear about her ordeals, her journeys . . . her life. Using every ounce of control she possessed, she smiled sweetly at the Americans. She would tell them no more, for if she saw another smattering of disgust, disbelief, or disinterest on their picture-window American faces, she might shatter into a million pieces. That would not help Lily. No, that would not help Lily at all.
3
Gloria fisted her hands to keep from biting already chewed fingernails. This healing hand tale proved that Joy’s sister lived in the outer limits of bizarre. She was supposed to trust the life of her only child with a complete stranger who trusted the fates? “I just don’t see . . .” A lifetime of acting with social grace spluttered to a halt . . . what this has to do with Joy . . . if she even is your sister. This woman couldn’t be in God’s plan to save Joy. This woman—
Andrew cupped her hand with familiar reassurance, unfamiliar restraint. In her role as a pastor’s wife, she’d never dared such bluntness . . . except after the church fire. But this woman threatened their Joy, their peace. What if Joy, still in a snit about getting groun
ded over the graffiti incident, decided to run off with this woman?
“Thanks for sharing your, um, history,” Andrew finally said. “Don’t get the wrong idea, Kai. We’re not questioning your calling as a physician.”
“What is it, then, you question?” A maddening calm coated the doctor’s tone.
“We’re just wondering, with all Joy’s been through, how she’d react to another upheaval. I mean, seventeen’s a pretty rough age—”
“To have your world turned upside down.” Gloria felt her lips curl into a frown. “Your family torn apart.”
“Now, Gloria—”
“Mrs. Powell, I do not intend to tear apart your family.” The woman’s deep-set eyes burned with intensity. Did sisterly love spark that fire? Doubtful. Vengeance? Perhaps. A physician’s passion to heal? I don’t think so.
“I would like to partner with you and Reverend Powell,” the woman continued.
“We have partners. More partners than we can handle.” Counselors. Teachers. Doctors. Believers. For heaven’s sake, the Lord Jesus himself.
“I can understand why you might not trust me.”
Gloria’s vision focused on the doctor’s smiling bow lips that revealed nothing of the heart. Another woman had once “partnered” with Daddy to destroy Gloria’s world . . . and her ability to trust. That scar had knitted together nicely, thanks to Andrew, who’d proved that not all men cheated on their family. Andrew, who had shared her passion to adopt Joy. This woman won’t destroy what Andrew and I have built.
Gloria rested her elbows on her chair arms and searched the doctor’s face as if to discern the motivations of her heart in the flutter of lashes, the narrowing of almond-shaped eyes. How had this woman even managed to find them? Surely laws had been broken, privacy acts had been breached . . .
Gloria twisted her wedding ring, desperate to transfer hostility somewhere besides this doctor. Yet she found she could not stop herself as resentment and fear surged. “Tell me, Doctor. Has your life disintegrated in one day? One hour?” Words escaped in a hiss as Gloria visualized blood-red lipstick smeared all over Daddy’s face and neck. “One moment?”