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When the new missionary arrived, it was as if she had snuck into town. They had known she was coming for months, and had received word in their last letter from T’ien-chin that it would probably be sometime in the middle of April. She had actually been in the area for over a week—though not in the town—before they knew that she had arrived.
Addie was the one to discover her. She had gone down to the market in search of fruit. The mountains were still gray with winter, yet there was a sense of melt in the air, a certain buoyancy, an added thickness rather than the dry air of winter, which felt too thin sometimes to be breathed. Addie wanted to make a dessert because they were having the Chinese deacon, Mr. Yang, and his wife to dinner. She knew they would spend most of the meal speculating about what the new missionary would be like. Mrs. McBride’s own mission had recently closed after a large family stationed there left to return to the States. She herself was a widow with no children. Alone, in other words, though it was unclear how long ago she had lost her husband. Addie imagined a stern woman, stoic in her grief.
Owen had left up to Addie the arrangement of this dinner. It was assumed that she could most effectively perform a missionary’s duties by presenting to anyone who cared to witness it the example of a civilized American household. Having clean napkins, fresh candles in the candlesticks, and a dessert that she had made with her own hands became the test of whether Christianity would ultimately prevail in the land. And though the napkins might not matter, Addie did find herself wanting to provide for the deacon’s wife the example of a capable woman who could join in intelligent conversation. Her husband had, from the first, been exactly the kind of Christian they hoped to make of the Chinese. He was active and capable; he deferred to them on questions of religion but was a sort of cultural guide even now, after nearly a decade in the area. He was not, perhaps, universally beloved in the area—he spent far too much time in their company to avoid suspicion among those who viewed the foreigners’ presence with alarm. However, he had a variety of connections that had proved helpful over the years. And he was not like some of the congregants, whom Addie sometimes didn’t quite trust. Mr. Luo, for example—there was something suspect about him, a chicken-hawk look, and eyes that were always fixing on objects behind you, barely out of sight.
Mr. Yang was a trim man with graying hair and a calm, low voice. He had a great command of English, and perhaps this was why Addie felt more comfortable with him than with any of the women she had met. She could speak English with him whenever she felt too tired to converse in Chinese, and even speaking the latter, she could count on him to supply the blank spaces in her vocabulary, filling in the missing words, handing them to her one by one as if they were playing a hand of cards. He was an envoy who ferried back and forth between the mission and the rest of Lu-cho Fu, and he was seemingly as comfortable in one world as he was in the other.
His wife, on the other hand, still seemed after all these years to be uneasy in their company. Addie knew this as well as Owen did—more so, because she had been alone with Yang Taitai, attempted to speak with her woman to woman, as mothers and wives, and received nothing but a placid smile in return. Was she like this at home, too? Did she move about in her own house on her tiny slippered feet, reaching for every surface to prevent herself from falling? That she continued this way even with a husband who had long ago adopted foreign ways was a mystery to Addie. But Yang Taitai was like one of those eggs that had had the white and the yolk drained from an invisible hole and was then painted and set on a little stand as an ornament. There was nothing inside. She was delicate in a way that made you want to smash her. Or if there was some sort of depth to her character, Addie had never yet figured out how to reach it. Every time the two families met, she found herself constructing an image of herself that was in direct opposition to the Chinese woman. It reassured her; she was not like that woman at all. She could cook and clean, and lead the women’s group meetings, and write letters to be published in the missionaries’ reports back home, and go out into town to go shopping, and ride mules or horses, and patch up a dress that had a rip in its sleeve. Though still uncertain of their overall mission in Lu-cho Fu, with the deacon’s wife Addie could at least imagine herself an icon of the capable woman, though sometimes she found Owen staring at her across the table with something like disapproval in his eyes.
She made her way through the maze of streets, taking the long way to avoid having to go down the alleys that were only three or four feet wide. She had begun to develop a fear of those areas, though violent events in China seemed mostly to take place out of the way of other people, on lonely mountain paths. Only a month or two earlier, two local men had failed to return from their journey into Chi-li, and rumor attributed their disappearance to thieves. “Do you think there’s any truth in it?” she’d asked Owen, and he had looked grave and said he thought it was possible. “These are the risks we live with,” he said. “The Lord’s will be done.”
As soon as she turned into the market, she felt an energy buzzing out of proportion to the number of people there. A pair of vendors looked up as she approached and seemed more than usually surprised to see her. One of them, lifting his chin in her direction, said, “Look, it’s the other one,” and his friend, watching her, turned and spat.
She walked quickly past them. Down the street was a knot of people, several men standing with their arms folded behind their backs, turning their faces to one another as they spoke. Addie couldn’t see what they were looking at, but the group erupted in laughter, and at the same moment moved apart enough to give her a glimpse of a tall white woman in animated conversation with a man holding a birdcage. Inside it, a small bird was skipping back and forth on a slender bar.
The woman’s face was flushed along the cheekbones, her eyes bright. Her hands wove through the air in wild gestures as she spoke. From what Addie could hear, her Chinese was boldly inflected. If she closed her eyes, Addie might have been hearing a town native talking.
The woman wore a long dress and ankle boots and a patched cotton jacket, and on her head was a large-brimmed hat. She glanced at Addie with something laughing in her eyes, also a certain sharpness. Addie felt that the woman knew exactly who she was—not only her name or the fact that she was a missionary here, but what she had been doing that morning, and thinking of, and failing to understand. The woman nodded slightly and went on speaking, but many in the crowd glanced over, and suddenly Addie found herself herded into the circle. “You must be one of the missionaries here,” the woman said in English.
“I’m Addie Bell,” she replied, the blood rushing to her cheeks. “Are you Mrs. McBride?”
“Poppy.” The woman glanced around at the circle gathered around them and said in Chinese, “Come, haven’t you ever seen two foreign ghosts talking before?” The crowd laughed at her use of the term, rarely heard from the mouth of a foreigner. To Addie, in English, she added, “It doesn’t matter what language you speak in, you’re bound to shock them one way or another.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
The woman gazed at her, and Addie felt embarrassed. Her own words sounded too proper; they broke against the other woman’s speech like water on a rocky shore. After a moment, however, Poppy smiled. “It’s good fun to shock them sometimes. Keeps things interesting. I’ve certainly shocked my friend with the bird here, and a moment ago we were simply haggling over the price of the thing.”
The man with the birdcage was saying to his friend, “There’s a ghost for you. This one looks like a white person, but speaks like a Han.”
“Uncle, I’m no ghost,” Poppy interrupted. “Ghosts and birds don’t get along.” She tipped her hat at him and winked. The hat was of worn leather and had a wide brim, like what Addie had seen men out the train window in Kansas and Colorado wearing. They were the hats of men who spent their lives outside, the leather tinted by sweat and sun. On the train years before, she and Owen had encountered a man with the same hat, but h
e wasn’t wearing it. He was dressed uncomfortably in a woolen suit, and the hat rested on the table beside him like a pet. He’d glowered at his plate like it might get up and attack him, and Owen had given him worried glances from time to time as the man’s glass of whiskey was emptied and refilled again and again.
She had never seen a woman wearing a hat like that, and she had certainly never seen a missionary with one. It was pushed back on her head, allowing her to see out under it easily. She was a full head taller than anyone else in the vicinity, and Addie thought it must simply be the style to which she’d grown accustomed. It lent her an additional air of ease, of casual command. When she tipped the hat at the man with the birdcage, he gave her a surprised look that quickly dissolved into practiced detachment. “One chiao,” he said. “That’s the lowest price I can offer you for such a beautiful and elegant bird.”
“I haven’t even heard it sing. It’s probably sick or lazy. I’ll pay eight fen or not take it.” The man met her gaze and, after a moment’s hesitation, lifted his chin to indicate the sale. The crowd standing around murmured their satisfaction.
Poppy dropped a few coins in his hand and took the birdcage. She peered in at the creature, which had ceased hopping back and forth on the little rod and now peered back at her, its head turned at a quizzical angle. It was small and mud-colored, with short brown legs and a tuft of white on its head. It did not look particularly elegant, but it had small bright eyes like jet beads that made it seem intelligent.
The woman made a noise with her teeth and tapped the edge of the cage with her finger. She had short, blunt nails with a line of dirt around the edges, the hands of a peasant or a farmer. No telling how they had gotten that way, what kind of work she had been doing before she came to Lu-cho Fu. The letters from T’ien-chin had described Mrs. McBride as “a highly capable lady educator and nurse,” and Addie had imagined high-buttoned collars and starched shirts, an efficient manner, a whiff of ink. It was not that she would have preferred this type of character, but she would have known what she was about. Such a woman would stand with her hands folded behind her as she walked. She would be primly disapproving of everything Chinese. She would be stern and unyielding—like Mrs. Riddell.
Such a woman would pay attention to her hands, too, keeping the nails clean and well trimmed, rubbing jojoba oil into them at night to keep them soft. Addie always did this after laundry day to keep her hands from chapping too badly. Now, seeing Poppy’s—tapping the thin rails of the cage with a fingernail edged with dirt, the skin at the knuckles red and rough—and how she made no effort to hide them, Addie felt embarrassed by her own appearance. She was dressed in a neat gray dress, her hair pulled back with two clips that kept the stray hairs in place. The clips were painted with little flowers, and she wore a gold cross at her neck. Altogether, her attire was not exactly grand, but she saw all of a sudden how different she looked from the two Chinese women standing in the shadows of a shop nearby, who looked like every woman she ever glimpsed on the street. They wore straw shoes and layers of cotton with no particular cut to them. And their hands were mostly lined with dirt like Poppy’s were, the lines in their palms darkened like roads on a map. She’d been told that Chinese women wore jade because they believed it kept them healthy; the poorest of them had a bracelet, even if it was of low quality. The way they wore the jade was not at all as she wore the clips in her hair. There was something frivolous about her, the same as the wealthy ladies who were carried through town in litters. She wondered whether that was how she had always been seen. How did they feel about her, all these strangers whose faces shifted around like a kaleidoscope as she moved through a crowd? If she were to fall to the ground at this moment, would they merely step over her as they went about their business?
Poppy lowered the birdcage to her side and turned to Addie. “Are you ill, Mrs. Bell? You look pale all of a sudden.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m fine, quite fine.” She took a step backward and felt the people open up a path to let her through. “It’s only that it’s a bit close here. I’ll go on, I think.”
“Shall I join you in your shopping? I assume that’s why you’re here.” Poppy nodded at the empty basket in Addie’s hand. “And by the looks of it, you haven’t gotten very far yet. What are you shopping for?”
“Fruit,” Addie said. “I’m here to buy fruit.”
“You want to buy plums, I bet, but I’m going to talk you out of it,” Poppy said as they set off down the street in the opposite direction from which Addie had come. “It’s still two weeks too early for them. The ones they’ve got on offer are going to be as hard as walnuts. Not worth your money or your teeth.”
“What should I buy, then?”
“Dried persimmons. There’s a man selling them down around the corner. Boil them for a few minutes, and they’ll be as sweet and flavorful as you could wish.”
Addie told her she was making a dessert and then invited her to dinner. She explained it would be a small party, and told her who was invited. “Mr. Yang is the deacon here,” Addie explained. “He’s been the backbone of the Chinese Christians in Lu-cho Fu since the mission was begun.”
“Oh, well, in that case, I most certainly won’t come. That would spoil everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“Only that it’s Mr. Yang whose ideas I’m most going to upset. He knows it, of course, and I’m sure he’s counting on this private dinner to guard you against me.” She arched one eyebrow and twisted her mouth into a wry smile. “It’d be a terrible joke to surprise him like that, and rob him of the chance to speak ill of me.”
“That can’t be right. I’m not sure he even knows who you are.”
“Oh, he knows, all right. The Chinese deacons always know more about what’s happening than any of the missionaries, and they know that a change is no good because it will challenge whatever systems they’ve put into place. This is the first I’ve heard Mr. Yang’s name, but I’d bet you he’s known about me for the past six months, and been planning how to overthrow me just as soon as I came.”
They walked on in silence. Several times, Addie opened her mouth to ask when her companion had arrived in Lu-cho Fu, and where she had been staying, and how it had come to be that none of them knew of her arrival. But before she could begin, Poppy turned to her and said, “You’re not one of those married women who doesn’t speak the language, are you?” She didn’t wait for an answer before adding, “Because if you are, then I don’t know what you’ve spent all your time doing.”
Addie bristled at the assumption. “I speak as well as possible, I think, for one who didn’t grow up speaking it.” Then she stopped, remembering how easily Poppy had conversed with the bird seller. After a pause, she asked, “How have you managed to do it?”
“Oh, I don’t know that I’m any good. I speak like a peasant. Put me in a room with a magistrate, and they’ll give me a look that could turn your blood to ice.” She glanced around as if to ensure that none were standing nearby. “I don’t speak perfectly, not at all. And the accent here is something else.”
“Where did you learn to speak, then?”
Poppy tossed her hand in the direction of the mountains to the west. “Not awfully far from here, but you know how China is. Every valley has its own language. Makes provincialism in America seem like nothing.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Where I’m from, you go a few miles east and it’s a whole different world. Language, religion, everything.”
“Where’s that?”
“Ohio, the southeastern part. East is Appalachia.”
“The mountains start rolling upward and the people get odder, is that it?”
“Exactly,” Addie said. “Or at least, that’s how we always felt about it. But then, that’s probably what the people in Peking and T’ien-chin say about this place.”
Poppy laughed loudly, revealing teeth crammed too closely together, each turned at an angle to make room for itself. “You’re right
about that. We’re living among the country bumpkins, according to those in the east. But the joke’s on them, because this is where it’s at, Mrs. Bell. This is where it matters.”
“Do you mean that the people here are more accepting of the Gospel?”
“Not in my experience. I only meant to say that the people in these parts are far more interesting to talk to. City folk and country folk, they’re not of the same breed.” She paused and then asked what kind of people the Riddells were.
Was it possible that they hadn’t yet met? Addie knew the new missionary was supposed to be living with them, and had even seen the room they had got ready for her. The old organ, never assembled, had been cleared away.
“I came down into town this morning,” Poppy explained, “and I haven’t been over to meet my hosts just yet. I wanted to get a sense of Lu-cho Fu untainted, so to speak.” She glanced quickly at Addie and said, “Don’t take any offense. I find missionary folks sometimes have such a fixed idea of the place they live in, and it tends to be contagious.”
Addie assured her that she was not offended at all, though she wondered at the way the other woman excluded herself from the category of missionaries.
Rebellion Page 22