“Mama,” Mei cried, seizing her mother’s bony hand and raising her voice to make sure her mother could hear her. “I am here.”
Ling Bai opened her eyes slowly, starting to focus. “Lu,” she muttered weakly but unmistakably. Her lips were blistered and dry—like the wound of a dead animal, Mei thought.
“No, Mama, it’s Mei.” Mei held her mother’s hand and felt the softness of her skin, the warmth of a human being, alive. Mei wanted to pull her close, to hug her, to hold her tightly in her arms.
Presently, a nurse came in to check on the drip and the patient’s pulse. She fixed the oxygen tubes. “Don’t let her move too much,” she told Mei without explaining why. “You—” She turned to look severely at the crowd around the neighboring bed, “be quiet. This patient needs rest.” Without another word to Mei, she left the room.
Ling Bai slipped in and out of consciousness as Mei stroked the hand she was holding.
“Mei,” she heard her mother call.
“Yes, Mama. I am here.”
Ling Bai opened her eyes. This time they were more focused. She looked at Mei. “Where is Lu?” she asked.
“She is on her way, Mama. Would you like some water?” Mei wiped sweat from her mother’s forehead.
Ling Bai seemed to nod and then closed her eyes again.
Mei took half a spoonful of cooled boiled water from the aluminum mug and brought it to her mother’s dry lips. It took Ling Bai a long time to take in a little bit of water.
“Enough?” Mei asked when she saw her mother’s mouth twitching. She thought Ling Bai said, “Yes,” but she could not be sure. She moved her ear closer to those dried-out lips, but speaking appeared to have exhausted her mother.
Mei put the hospital mug and spoon back on the nightstand and marched over to the increasingly raucous crowd around the old woman’s bed. “Please be quiet! My mother has just had a stroke. She needs rest. Don’t you even care?” She had to raise her voice against the noise they were making.
But Mei knew they didn’t care. She couldn’t stand people who had no respect for others. Her mother had always said that she was too hard and had too many edges. “Either you don’t talk at all or you talk too harshly, offending people either way. No wonder you have no people luck.”
No, no luck at all, thought Mei. Not in life nor in love.
Suddenly, the door opened and Lu came in. She looked exquisite with her beige skirt suit, long arched eyebrows, and flawless makeup. Her hair had been dyed honey brown, and there was a hint of golden highlights around her face. Following closely behind was her personal assistant, the one with whom Mei had spoken earlier. He wore a black suit, had neatly trimmed razor-sharp hair, and was young and handsome.
“Mama, it’s Lu.” Lu went straight to the small stool by the side of the bed and took her mother’s hand, pressing it to her rosy cheek. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
“It’s my turn now.” Ling Bai sighed. A single tear appeared at the corner of her eye. She did not want to die after all.
“No, Mama. Don’t worry. I am going to take care of you.” Lu instructed her assistant to find the chief doctor and head nurse. The young man went out. Mei gave her sister another update, mentioning the noisy crowd around the other bed. Ten minutes later, the chief doctor came in person to invite Lu to his office.
After the meeting, Lu pulled Mei to the window and said, “The doctors think Mama’s chances of recovering are small. You know Mama, she’s had plenty of health problems. Now the doctor is saying that her liver and kidneys are deteriorating. They don’t understand why. It’s as if there’s a general shutdown.” She paused. “The chief doctor suggests that we contact all the relatives and Mama’s friends, which I will ask my assistant to do. We need to be prepared.”
Mei did not know what to say. She wondered whether you could ever be prepared for the death of your mother.
The head nurse came in shortly and advised them to hire a worker-help. “My niece has been doing this for quite a few years,” she said. “She knows about things such as where to go for help and what to do to ease pain. And she can come and get me at any time.”
It was agreed that they would hire the head nurse’s niece. Her duties would include fetching food for Mei and Lu, bringing hot water from the boiler room, and massaging Ling Bai’s arms and legs. She would stay for overnight shifts.
The old woman in the next bed checked out around six o’clock that evening. Whether she was due to leave anyway, or whether Lu had used her influence, Mei didn’t know.
After dinnertime, Ling Bai dozed off again, and Lu went home. Her husband was waiting. Mei decided to stay. It might be irrational, she thought, but she feared that if she weren’t around, her mother would slip away into the night, like her father, and be lost forever.
Besides, no one was waiting for Mei elsewhere.
FOURTEEN
FOR MOST OF THE NEXT DAY, Ling Bai remained the same, drifting in and out of consciousness. She lay in bed like an empty, abandoned house.
Sometimes she opened her eyes. Mei wondered what she saw. A ceiling fan hung idly. A fly hopped from the nightstand to the wall, up to the ceiling, to the window, and then back again. It soon grew bored of the routine and attached itself to the ceiling like a permanent stain.
Mei fed her mother water with a spoon. The worker-help had bought new spoons from the hospital shop, along with a white porcelain teacup, two face towels, and a cream-colored washbasin decorated with red and yellow peonies; the peony was the national flower. Mei used to have a similar washbasin in her dorm room at university. Every morning and evening, she would take it to the communal washroom to wash her face and sometimes her long silky hair. Though she could not recall its exact color or flower pattern, she remembered how shiny it had been when her mother brought it home. It had the smell of something brand-new, as fresh as her own young life.
Next to the bed, the worker-help poured hot water from a thermos into the new washbasin, raising clouds of steam.
Mei watched the steam ascend and evaporate. Her thoughts returned again to her time at university. She remembered sitting at Weiming Lake with Yaping. They had stopped on their way to the boiler room to fill up her thermos. The evening had tinted the air with blue mist and the fragrance of sweet clove. There was a perfect reflection of the pagoda on the water. They had talked about poetry, love, and eternity, holding hands.
Mei’s eyes teared up. She turned and looked at her mother. Death was coming. Nothing lasted forever, especially not love.
When the water had cooled, the worker-help soaked the towel in it. Then she squeezed out the water, folded the towel a few times, and handed it to Mei. Mei laid the towel on her mother’s forehead and leaned over her. “Are you in pain?” she asked.
“Leg,” Ling Bai answered in a hoarse voice.
At the bottom of the bed, Mei lifted the quilt. There was a smell of old sweat. Ling Bai’s feet were swollen, her toenails thick and black. She had lost all feeling in the left side of her body. Mei gently massaged the calf, knee, and thigh of her mother’s right leg. “Better?” she asked.
Ling Bai nodded and sighed silently.
At eleven o’clock, the nurse did her rounds again. She followed the same procedure each time. First, she counted the number of drops by her wristwatch and made an adjustment to the drip. Then she checked the tubes and the patient’s temperature. Finally, she shone a flashlight into her patient’s eyes and shouted, “Ling Bai!” She appeared satisfied when Ling Bai responded.
After the nurse had left, Ling Bai slept. The worker-help suggested that Mei have lunch, but Mei said she was not hungry.
“Big Sister…” The worker-help was clearly older than Mei, but she insisted on calling her Big Sister to show respect. “I’ve been around hospitals for twelve years. One thing I do know is that you eat when you can. You don’t know which way the wind might blow and when you might eat again.”
She was a likable woman with cropped hair, a faded dark blue Mao
jacket, and a square face. Mei smiled and gave her some money.
“I won’t go to the hospital canteen, their food isn’t good. I go to the vendor outside the front gate,” said the worker-help. She tucked the money carefully in her pocket and left. A while later, she came back with three palm-sized meat buns and a bottle of mineral water. Mei ate everything.
Shortly after lunch, Mei went for a walk around the hospital premises. Convalescing patients moved slowly in the warm sunshine like toy figures with broken springs, accompanied by family and friends. A heavily bandaged man limped along, his steps hesitant; he stopped often. Two middle-aged peasant women helped a heavy man in a military winter coat to recover the use of his legs; he was spitting in frustration. Everything seemed to be moving at a different pace, everything had its own rhythm. Minutes and hours stretched seemingly forever.
Depressed, Mei turned and headed toward the main entry, passing the emergency entrance. Drivers kept pulling up, pleading special needs, as two uniformed guards shouted and cursed, trying to keep the driveway clear for ambulances.
Once outside of the hospital grounds, Mei turned left, fending off the hustling of illegal taxi drivers. A hundred yards down the road was a small restaurant, the only one within miles. It had dirty plastic tables and a mean-looking waitress. Mei went around to the back and saw her little red Mitsubishi still parked there. Judging by the number of cars, the restaurant was doing a brisk business off the sick and dying.
The worker-help had suggested that Mei park her car here overnight, which turned out to be more expensive than parking at the Beijing Theater. But the alternative was to leave it by the roadside, which meant for sure that someone would throw a brick at it in the night. Such is capitalism, Mei thought: Supply and demand, anything justified. She walked into the restaurant and paid for another night’s parking.
When she got back to Room 206, two men were waiting by the door. Mei recognized Uncle Chen at once: He was wearing a short beige sport jacket that had shrunk to reveal a worn belt. Mei did not know the other man. He was tall, Mei guessed six feet; he wore a smooth gray suit and a pair of rimless glasses. He was clean-shaven, sober, and looked like a bookish man who’d never put a foot wrong in his life.
“Lu called me. I am so sorry,” Uncle Chen said.
“Sorry to hear about your mother.” The bookish man shook Mei’s hand. “We went in to see her, but she was sleeping. We didn’t want to disturb her rest.” He spoke in a warm voice. Mei put him at about her mother’s age. He continued to hold her hand, firm and sincere. She thought he was probably a deputy Party secretary at her mother’s work unit, or maybe a director for Elderly Comrade Affairs—they were the usual types sent on hospital rounds. “We’ve spoken to the doctor,” the man went on. “Don’t worry. The Party has not forgotten. We’ll take care of things.”
Bookish finally released his clasp. It was not hard to see that he had been handsome in his youth. “Mr. Song Kaishan is an old comrade who used to work with your mother and me—” Uncle Chen started.
Mr. Song interrupted. “Old Chen, we must leave now.” To Mei, he said, “Please give your mother my best wishes.” He shook her hand again, this time briefly.
“Give me a call if you need anything,” Uncle Chen murmured to Mei. She felt he wanted to say more. He hesitated, turned, and quietly followed Mr. Song’s long, striding steps. Mei watched them fade into the dark corridor. A strange sensation came over her. She felt as if cold air had risen from nowhere and, like a ghost, had tapped her with its invisible hand.
Lu came in the afternoon, bringing Little Auntie, who had flown in from Shanghai. Little Auntie carried a small leather overnight bag with her. Her eyes were red.
Mei brought a plastic stool for Little Auntie to sit on and took the bag from her.
“Sister, I’ve come.” Little Auntie broke into Shanghai dialect and took her sister’s hand, which lay motionless on the bed.
“Not this one. All the drips are in this arm.” Mei directed Little Auntie to Ling Bai’s right hand, the one that still had feeling. She then checked the needles on the left arm to make sure they were still taped and working. The arm looked bruised and swollen.
Little Auntie gently stroked her sister’s hand. “Don’t give up, Sister. You will get better, and when you do, we will go back to Shanghai. We will go to the New World for big wonton soup. We will go back to the home village to visit Ma’s grave.” As she spoke, her silent tears began to choke her.
Ling Bai slowly opened her eyes. “Little Third,” she murmured. Her mouth moved again, but no more sound came.
“Sister, I’ve come to look after you, as you’ve done for me for so long. You will get better,” Little Auntie said determinedly. She released her sister’s hand. She took her black bag and stood up. All three women moved to the patient’s locker near the door.
“Thank you for coming,” said Mei. “Is this okay with your work unit?”
“It’s not busy in the lab at the moment. A week should be no problem.” Little Auntie was a lab engineer at the Shanghai Institute for Biological Research.
At that moment, Lu’s assistant came in and told her that he had booked a room for Little Auntie at the hospital hotel for one week. “It’s basic but decent,” he said in a matter-of-fact way, handing Lu a tagged key. “This is the key, and the luggage is already in the room.”
After Lu had talked to her mother—first about Lining, who was about to go on his annual trip to North America, and then about her new TV show—she went with her assistant to find the doctor. Mei introduced the worker-help to Little Auntie and showed Little Auntie how to give Mama water. She also told Little Auntie that her mother had been complaining about pain in her leg and showed her how to give a massage.
Lu returned shortly and said the doctor did not have much more to report. “All they can do is continue to monitor Mama,” she said.
“Go have some rest. You both have to work tomorrow,” said Little Auntie, sitting down on the plastic stool. “I’m here now.”
“If anything happens, call,” Lu told her.
Little Auntie nodded. “Don’t worry.”
“It’s good that Little Auntie could come so quickly,” Mei said to her sister as they walked out of the building.
Lu agreed. “I told Little Auntie that money was no issue for me. I can pay all her expenses, the flight, the hotel, and the meals. The problem for me is time. If she hadn’t come today, either you or I would have had to stay. You may be able to, being your own boss, but I have to keep up with schedules. There are cases to review and people to interview.”
Mei walked Lu to her car. The assistant was already waiting.
“Did Mama ever work with Uncle Chen?” Mei asked.
“No. Why?”
“Uncle Chen seemed to suggest that they used to be colleagues.”
“Impossible,” said Lu firmly. “They would have mentioned it if they had been.”
Mei nodded. Lu was right. Uncle Chen must have made a mistake. But all the way home, she was troubled. The image of the elegant stranger kept coming back to her, casting a dark shadow over her thoughts.
FIFTEEN
MEI SLEPT BADLY. Her mother’s face, shriveled in pain, appeared in her dreams. The next morning, when Mei woke from her nightmare, her body ached, and her head was pounding. She was exhausted.
As soon as she got up, she called Little Auntie at the hospital. They spoke for only a minute. Ling Bai was awake. Little Auntie assured Mei that nothing had changed since the previous afternoon.
Mei made a cup of coffee and drank it while watching the morning news. The coffee did little for her headache. At nine-thirty, she went to work; she was ready for work, and she needed to work. She had to stay busy to keep her mind off her mother. Otherwise, she felt, the weight of her anxiety and fear would simply crush her.
Outside the office, Gupin’s Flying Pigeon was chained to the young aspen in its usual position. The sun was shining, as it had been for the past two days. Mei sat
in her car for a while with the engine off. She thought she heard birds singing, but when she listened again, she heard only the noise of the city, of cars and people. Life was going on as usual; it made Mei want to cry. Would Mama see sunshine and days like this again?
The caretaker had his feet up on the table in the boiler room, listening to the radio. “Your hot water has already been taken up,” he told Mei when she passed. She nodded.
Gupin was sitting at his computer, typing. Seeing Mei, he stood up. “What happened? Is your mother all right?” he asked.
Mei shook her head. “She had a stroke. My aunt is with her now in the hospital.”
“I’ve been really worried. When you didn’t come in yesterday, I thought it must be bad.” Gupin paused, his eyes warming. “But don’t worry. She’ll get better, just you wait and see. You look tired. Let me get you some tea.”
Mei nodded. She tried to smile, but her mood failed her.
She walked into her office. From the window, she could see the top of an oak tree and, fifty meters away, another four-story building identical to hers. The two buildings had been built by the People’s Liberation Army in the early seventies, when intellectuals and their teenage children were sent to labor camps and People’s Collective Communes. They were functional, nothing more. Over the years, they had been defaced by graffiti and pollution. Mei opened the window. A gentle breeze drifted in like a long-forgotten memory.
Gupin brought in tea, mail, and messages. “My ma had a tumor once,” he told her. “It was years ago. She complained about her bad headaches. We took her to see the doctor in the county town, Dr. Yao, who said she had a tumor in her brain. We all thought she wouldn’t make it—the doctor, too. But Ma lived. She lost the use of her legs, and one of her arms is not so good. But she lived. The doctor said it was because she’d been working all her life. Your mother is like my ma. She’s got a strong mind and a good body. She’ll be all right.”
The Eye of Jade Page 8