Green Island

by Shawna Yang Ryan

  The bookseller rises from his perch. He’s younger than his gray hair indicates, and his shirt is clean. He reaches into a box beneath one of the tables and pulls out three clothbound volumes for her.

  “Pour la belle dame.”

  “Mais, vous parlez français? C’est inattendu.” She blushes. She has not spoken since college. Most of her classmates had studied German.

  “I’ve been to Paris. It’s a lovely city. I learned French reading Proust,” he says.

  “I haven’t spoken in such a long time.”

  “Your accent is perfect.”

  My mother modestly deflects his compliment. The flutter in her stomach surprises her; she has felt nothing like it for years. Guilt quickly replaces the moment of flirtatious joy. Her husband, she reminds herself. Her poor husband. She quickly asks how much the books cost.

  “No one else will buy these. I’m not even sure how I came across them. So, please, take them. Un cadeau.”

  My mother protests. She must pay. She rummages through her purse and finds a few bills, probably much more than the books are worth.

  “I insist. Please, mademoiselle.” He begins to bundle the books with string.

  “Take the money.” She is frantic now. She thrusts the bills at him, and when he ignores her, she drops them on the table.

  He looks up at her. Is he perceptive enough to see that this is more than mere manners? Does he notice the alarm in her gestures?

  The thought will not leave her head. Desire counterbalanced by shame. The bookseller is determined to win her over. He tucks the money into the knot of string that binds the books and presents the package to her.

  “No,” she says. The gift feels like a promise and an obligation.

  What happens next is childish but imperative. She runs. She leaves behind both the books and the money and turns her back to the bookseller’s shouts and runs out of the alley and through the market until she is sure that he will not follow.

  She must be vigilant against forgetting, she tells herself.

  She stops in front of the sundries stand, beside stacks of chairs and hanging brooms, and composes herself, worrying at the talisman of memory as if her pain will lessen her husband’s.

  —

  She was still young. She felt young as well, but was also aware that a certain phase of life had irretrievably passed. She had four children to remind her every day that she once had a husband. At the same time, my sister, Ah Zhay, could not walk down the street without men stopping her to ask the time or her name.

  —

  Before I began school, I had to memorize the rules. My sister lectured me on these as I helped her scrub the kitchen floor or as we tossed peelings to the pigs. My brothers reminded me of them when we waded in the creek and tried to catch pollywogs.

  “No Taiwanese” was the first rule, which Zhee Hyan, my second brother, had learned slowly and painfully. Under the government’s plan to unify the people with a national language, every syllable of Taiwanese spoken at school brought punishment from the teacher. Taiwanese was for home; Mandarin was for the world. My brother’s hands turned purple with beatings until he finally learned to reflexively clench his mouth before a Taiwanese word slipped out.

  The second rule I knew already. “Our business is our business,” Ah Zhay said, dipping a rag into a bucket. “Do you understand? Whatever we say here, you can’t tell anyone. Or they might come take Mama away. Do you want Mama to go away?” She pushed the rag across the floor and did not look at me.

  I did not want Mama to go away. I promised to be silent.

  For school, my mother cut my hair to my ears and declared me a big girl. I proudly wriggled in my seat. I wore a navy skirt and a white shirt. She tucked rough brown paper in my pocket for the school outhouse. I rode to class on the back of my sister’s bicycle. My classmates lined up outside to salute the flag and practice our morning calisthenics. I carried my lunch in a metal bento box, which the class captain collected each morning and returned to us at lunchtime, warmed in a large steamer. I learned to write “mountain,” “fire,” and “water.” I learned the history of our country, the Republic of China, which carried on a five-thousand-year legacy. One day, according to Chiang Kai-shek, we would “recover” the mainland and the nation would again live happily united. Cheerful, obedient, I was shaped into a good girl and a good citizen.

  When I began school, Zhee Hyan was nine years old: good-natured, prone to practical jokes, and grinning his way through our mother’s scoldings like an idiot. On the other hand, Dua Hyan and Ah Zhay were solemn—even grim—teenagers. I feared both of them. Every afternoon, they waited for me at the school gate, aloof amid the chaos of the street and the tumultuous blur of small children scrambling out of the school.

  They remembered Baba’s destroyed clinic; they dreamed of our mother’s admonishments for silence. The government warned against the communist spies who lurked among one’s family and neighbors, in the marketplace, in the theater and temple—for which the only antidote was to be a spy oneself. Dua Hyan and Ah Zhay lived in fear of all these watchers. Dua Hyan, already thirteen, still wet the bed.

  In the fog of my early memories, my gaze is often on my sister: she is the luminous figure negotiating a crowded street, picking her way among the sidewalks teeming with displaced bachelor soldiers from the mainland under the wary eye of her younger brother. She was fifteen. Like me, she wore her hair in an ear-length bob, standard for schoolgirls. Her navy skirt and white blouse gave her away as a student, despite her height. Like my mother, she was tall and slim. She walked as if she had nothing in mind but her destination—or something beyond it—staring ahead with Mama’s elongated black eyes, glossy with a kind of circumspect longing.

  —

  On the island, late May is thick with heat and every gesture is a chore. I fidgeted in the classroom, yearning for the fan to swing back toward my side of the room. We’d made little paper fans as well, but mine, damp from my hands, collapsed limply. I waggled it at my best friend, Hsiao Yen. She giggled and the teacher snapped at us. Finally, we were dismissed, and, arm in arm, Hsiao Yen and I trudged out into the early summer glare.

  Ah Zhay waited at the school gate, shielding the sun from her eyes with her arm. Dua Hyan and Zhee Hyan had gone to cram school to continue their studies after regular school hours, and Ah Zhay had promised me shaved ice before we rode home. I said good-bye to my friend and took my sister’s hand.

  The shop was a tiny, dark place, its walls packed with shadowed jars of candy and tins of crackers, sucking light and smelling of candy haw flakes and powdered ginseng and burned mosquito punk, the proprietor lounging behind the counter listening to Taiwanese opera and chewing an old toothpick. A huge, hulking iron ice shaver sat behind the glass counter, barely illuminated by the light drifting in through the open storefront.

  At a tiny rattan table on the sidewalk in front, we dug into red bean shaved ice topped with condensed milk and tried to eat faster than the ice could melt. I danced in my seat as the ice cooled my mouth and the sugar bathed my teeth. I decided there was no food I liked better and declared that when I grew up, I would eat this every day. The sun burned the top of my head. I prattled on about school, retelling each of Hsiao Yen’s silly jokes, while my sister nodded and hummed. The other tables filled. Three soldiers took the table next to us.

  At that time, every soldier was also a refugee. Most of them had come to the island owning only what they carried. Fleeing made them orphans and bachelors. In the panic of the end of the war, when the Nationalists retreated hastily from China, they had been separated from their families—their children, their wives—and the chilled cross-strait relations meant that they could not send even a letter home. Though homesickness lingered among them, in 1952, a flutter of optimism still ran through the island, some hope that the Nationalists would again rule the mainland, in fact and not just in name.

  Our mother had warned us about these bright-faced men. Among the horrors of the castrated sc
hoolboys left for dead on the mountain roads and the bodies in the Keelung port during the ’47 massacre were the misfortunate women, caught in the streets or home alone. Even at five years old, I was leery when one of the soldiers dragged his stool toward our table.

  “Can you finish that, little sister?” In the heat, he had unbuttoned his shirt, exposing a white undershirt. I dropped my gaze.

  “Don’t be rude,” Ah Zhay urged me. A minute twitch of fear flashed across her face, and she tried to assuage the soldier with a smile. “She’s shy.”

  I refused to lift my head and watched his feet shift. His white laces glowed against his black boots. The leather was shiny and looked like licorice.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t eat your ice.” He wasn’t the monster I was expecting. Ah Zhay saw it too. She cast a sideward glance at him and smiled again, not to pacify him, but out of genuine friendliness.

  Then Ah Zhay snapped her eyes toward me. “Don’t be rude. Answer him.”

  Her reprimand embarrassed me, and it seemed purposeful, as if she could shame me into courteousness. My chagrin quickly flashed into anger. I elbowed her and stomped my foot. “I’m not worried!”

  When I glared at them, Ah Zhay and the soldier laughed. I didn’t understand what was so funny. Couldn’t they see how cross I was? Shouldn’t they care?

  “Look at me,” the soldier said. “I want to see if you are as pretty as your sister.”

  Ah Zhay coughed in embarrassment. I again flashed him my dirtiest look. Delighted and surprised, he chuckled, but Ah Zhay gasped and kicked me under the table. “Brat! Apologize! How embarrassing.”

  “Don’t worry about it. She’s plucky.” He stood up. “Wait a moment. Don’t leave.” He disappeared into the shop’s shadows.

  “Behave yourself, you little monster.” Ah Zhay withdrew a tiny compact from her book bag and squinted into it. She licked away a fleck of red bean caught on her tooth.

  “You look ugly.”

  “What do you know?” she hissed back.

  The soldier returned and placed a roll of candy next to my plate. “This is for you. You remind me of my little sister.”

  Ah Zhay shrank away and waved her hands. “No, please, we can’t.”

  The colorful wax paper wrapping teased me. I decided I would refuse to eat it, but I could not resist poking at it.

  “Take it. It’s just candy.” His chair leg skipped across the pavement as he pulled closer to Ah Zhay.

  Ah Zhay’s breath warmed my ear. “Say thank you.”

  I moved my mouth but refused to let a sound pass through my lips.

  I despised the soldier even more when he smiled warmly at my ingratitude. “She’s just like my little sister. She was about six when I last saw her. Spunky like her.”

  “She’s a brat,” Ah Zhay said as she pushed the candy out of my reach.

  I saw the red beans spoiling in the sun. I saw my sister give a sideways glance to the soldier, binding herself to him with her betrayal. Her cheeks were flushed and sweat glistened on her upper lip.

  The soldier winked at me. “I doubt that.”

  “She is,” Ah Zhay insisted. She seemed to think throwing me to the dogs would save her face. We fell silent. I slouched and dragged my spoon through the tiny pebbles of ice floating in the milky water. Ah Zhay tucked her hair behind her ear and stroked the back of her neck. An almost imperceptible sigh slipped out of her.

  The soldier’s smile lingered on Ah Zhay too long. My annoyance flared up again. She was my sister. She belonged to me, not this strange man. He touched her arm. His thumb pressed her flesh. She lowered her chin and gazed at him from under her lashes. I jabbed at the bowl, again and again, taking pleasure in the hard, cold clack of metal against ceramic.

  —

  One afternoon, my mother shut me in the bedroom for my nap. I lolled on the bed, tugging at the mosquito net, clapping it in my sweaty hands and blowing on it so I could watch it flutter and billow. Through the hazy cloth, I watched a mosquito land. I was just beyond its bite. A puff of breath sent it buzzing away. Thin voices drifted in from the rest of the house. I resented the loneliness of this part of the day. I raked my nails across the bamboo mat and, humming softly, pretended that I was playing the zither. I pressed my face to the mat and then examined the damp, oily mark left on the wood.

  Finally, I thought of the suitcase in the wardrobe that I had first glimpsed a few days before. As my mother rummaged through, a disturbed hem had revealed it in the shadow. I crept under the mosquito net and hopped down before the wardrobe. It opened without a squeak.

  I tugged the suitcase out and rubbed the taut leather, which glowed with age. A sticker, still firmly glued, shouted a series of English letters that were gibberish to me: TOKYO.

  Inside, I found a small sheaf of stamped papers. These too were indecipherable and I tossed them to the side. Beyond the papers was only a little coin purse of soft, flaking brown leather that sat like a drooping fig in my palm. I unclasped it and was delighted to find a roll of bills and some unfamiliar coins. I flattened out the bills on the floor around me. I’d never seen any money like it.

  I thought of the tempting, beautiful bowls of mitsumame: a rainbow of fruit and sweet red beans and translucent cubes of jelly quavering in the sun. I wouldn’t have to wait for Ah Zhay’s generosity; I could buy my own bowl. I could have it whenever I wanted. I tucked a couple of bills into my waistband and crammed the rest back into the purse. I looked over the papers once more—still, I recognized none of the characters except for our surname—boring and useless to me. After fumbling with the suitcase buckles, I gave up and shoved the suitcase back into the wardrobe.

  Once again under the gauzy mosquito net, I pretended to sleep, and when I awoke, the sun was already low and my mother was pulling my arm, softly calling my name and clicking her tongue in disapproval at the mosquito bites on my face.

  —

  I asked the shop woman for a bag of dried plums. My mouth watered as the lid popped off the jar and the sour-sweet smell of licorice and plum drifted out. Despite the cramped display—the narrow shelves precariously full and more boxes piled on the floor, jars of sundry dried goods taking up every speck of counter until a heavy dusty odor mingling fish, fruit, and wine spilled long ago filled the room—I yearned to spend hours here, perusing every illustration on each cookie tin, memorizing the colors of every box. Ah Zhay and I had come so often that I called the shop woman Aunty. At that moment, I wanted to caress her ruddy wide cheeks like a babe reaching out for its adored mother’s face. Bouncing on my toes, I watched as each wizened plum tumbled from the scoop into the bag.

  “I got money,” I declared, and slapped my stolen money onto the counter.

  As if I’d smacked her, the red in Aunty’s cheeks deepened. “What’s this? Your mother give you this?”

  I wondered how my guilty fingers had marked up the bills. I masked my shame with defiance. “Yes!”

  “Little monster. What kind of trick is this?” She dumped the plums back into the jar. “Take it! Go!”

  I shrank back below the lip of the counter.

  She leaned over. “Bad girl. I’m going to talk to your mother.”

  “Mama gave it to me.”

  Aunty turned her back to me and began some trivial task behind the counter, muttering to herself. I grabbed the bills and crunched them in my fist. The plums, crammed back into the jar, taunted me.

  “Bad Aunty!” I shouted as I left the shop.

  —

  I was lying in bed, telling a story to the moon framed in the window, when I heard footsteps through the courtyard gate. Like dogs sounding an alarm, the pigs in their pen snorted. I stood on the bed and peered out.

  Silvered in moonlight, the shop aunty lumbered across the yard. She called out my mother’s name. I humped into a ball on the bed, squeezed my eyes shut, and prayed to dissolve into darkness. I had hidden the stolen money in a small gap beneath the wardrobe. In the shadows, it grew eyes and watched me. My mothe
r called out Aunty’s name. I gripped the hem of the mosquito net and fiddled with it. The explosion of greetings softened to a low crackle of conversation.

  I had fallen asleep—my fists squeezed and folded beneath me—when my mother brought in the lantern and flipped back the mosquito net. Fleeing the light, I nuzzled my face against the mat.

  “Where did you get the money?”

  I thought she might leave if I kept my eyes closed and didn’t answer.

  Her hand drifted across my back in a thoughtless caress. “Sweetie, I’m not mad. I don’t know why I kept it. It was Baba’s. You don’t remember him, of course. You were just a baby. The money is so old, just junk now; having it makes us look like…” She paused, then said carefully, “Bad people. That’s what scared Aunty. I know you didn’t know. I should toss it but…” She didn’t finish her sentence.

  Baba. My mind snagged on the word. Baba. He was a myth, a legend, just a name that could have any person behind it. His name whispered like a demon we were afraid to conjure. But the purse made him real, not a god or ghost. A man who dealt in earthly matters like money. The crumpled bills glared at me from their exile beneath the wardrobe. I was still afraid. A taboo paralyzed my mouth; “Baba” sat on my tongue like a stone and I could give no comfort to my mother.

  She crawled in beside me and nestled her head against mine. “Your hair stinks,” she said, but her tone was tender. Her fingers raked through the tangles. Every so often, I could feel a knot come loose and hair tearing out with it. I uttered an unhappy grunt of pain.

  “Such a silly thing to keep, isn’t it? A silly little coin purse,” she murmured into the top of my head. “Why didn’t I burn it with everything else?”

  1958

  13

  MAMA SAT BESIDE THE RADIO, her hands fisted in her lap. The announcer repeated the same news he had all morning. His patriotic voice, spirited and cartoonish, billowed.

  “We are prepared to make great sacrifices in this opportunity to reclaim the mainland! Right now, troops fight valiantly as we attempt to liberate our Chinese brothers and sisters. Your families are waiting for your return!”