Rebellion

by Molly Patterson

  “I don’t know—”

  “Lili,” Poppy interrupted, turning to the other woman, “let me introduce you to Mrs. Bell.” She spoke in Chinese.

  Addie saw that the woman had a long rosy bruise along her cheek. She shook Addie’s hand and looked her in the eye, as if she didn’t know that it was something to feel ashamed of.

  “Lili’s a runaway,” Poppy said cheerfully in English. “She has decided that she no longer cares to live in the home of a good-for-nothing man.”

  “Your husband did this?” Addie asked. She was sorry, but not surprised.

  The woman shook her head. “My husband’s first wife did.”

  “She’s been taking beatings like this one for the past several years. Who knows how many bones she’s broke. I gave her husband some money, though, so he won’t come looking for her.” Poppy turned slowly in the middle of the room as if seeing it for the first time. “Lili’s going to help out at the mission for a while, and I thought the classroom might be a good place to start.”

  As it turned out, the Chinese woman didn’t know how to read or write, yet Addie found her useful helping to teach the history lessons and Bible verses. That day, she stood in the center of the place they’d cleared and turned around and around, drawing shapes in the air with her fingers. The girls were all riveted, their spines pressed flat against the wall, their drawing slates tipping unsteadily on their laps.

  Addie liked her. The Riddells, on the other hand, were not at all pleased that Poppy had returned from a trip into the mountains with a strange woman in tow, a woman whose bruised face was evidence that she had difficult relationships of some kind. “We can’t go stealing women from their homes,” Mr. Riddell argued. “That’s only feeding into the false stories they tell about us.”

  “It’s not stealing,” Addie protested. “She was beaten badly in her home—”

  “As they all are,” Julia interrupted.

  “—and she willingly left it.” Addie clamped her mouth shut, afraid that in her defense of the new missionary, she might speak more sharply to the Riddells than she intended to do. In such a small community, alliances might be as dangerous as enmities. And she would really prefer that they all got along.

  “The point,” Mr. Riddell said, “is that the young woman wouldn’t have had the chance to leave without our friend assisting—some might say pushing—her to do it.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t look good.”

  Owen agreed. At night, in their room, Addie listened as he tallied up the offenses Poppy had committed in the short time she’d been a part of their mission. She was unwomanly. She preached a lax version of religious doctrine. She had no community spirit. She resisted the leadership of men.

  “She’s unorthodox,” Addie said, pulling back the blanket and settling on her side of the mattress. In their marital bed, symbol of unity, again she thought of alliances—it was pointless, she realized, to try to prevent them from growing. Clearly, Owen and the Riddells had already made their judgments of the new missionary. It was not a matter of everyone getting along, then, but a question of which side Addie wanted to choose.

  “You may call it unorthodox,” Owen said without looking over at her, “only if you define orthodoxy as being the right behavior of Christians everywhere.” He folded his pants and shirt and replaced them in the bureau. Addie felt her skin grow hot, while she forced herself to stay silent. A moment later, Owen knelt beside the bed to say his prayers, and she turned her face to the wall. They didn’t talk any more that night.

  When did it happen? When was the moment she realized that she would follow Poppy anywhere, that she would willingly give up every other association she had in order not to lose that one? Was it the day Poppy told her she was leaving the mission?

  They were alone in the chapel room, flies drawing figure eights in the light around them. It was midafternoon, and the others were all gone away somewhere. Addie plucked the hat off her friend’s head. Her face was tipped upward, the hat grasped nervously between her fingers. “Take me with you,” she said, and Poppy put a hand to Addie’s forehead as if delivering a benediction. “I do believe,” she said, “that you’re as remarkable a little woman as I thought.” She leaned down and kissed her on the cheek before taking back her hat and settling it again on her head.

  But that wasn’t it; that wasn’t the moment. Because by then the lines had already been drawn, and it was already impossible to imagine her life without Poppy.

  When was it, then? she wondered. As they made their slow way up through the mountain passes, their mules looking forward and Addie trying to do the same—the drop-off was precipitous and not far from the path—she tried to find the instant her whole world had changed.

  They had a few days now before anyone would wonder about their absence. She had written a letter to Owen and given instructions to Lili to put it into his hands three days after they had gone. The letter would explain that she and Poppy had not gone on another short trip into the mountains. This would have been their third such trip—Owen thought it was their third—but in fact it was the first of its kind. Because this time she would be gone for many months, perhaps as long as a year. “Let Lili help,” she’d written. The Chinese woman spent a good part of every day at their home. The boys had come to like her, and Owen had grudgingly come to accept her. She could fill the role that Addie was absenting—not wife and mother, exactly, but a female presence. She would comfort Henry when he needed it, and remind Freddie to wash his hair. As for the running of the household, Li K’ang and Wei-p’eng needed no instruction. Owen would find his home more or less as comfortable as before. Addie was not that important to his happiness, when it came down to it.

  Of course, she was not only leaving her husband. She was leaving her boys, too. It was all temporary; there was nothing that couldn’t be mended. And she trusted that Owen would put on a good face for the boys, and for the sake of the Riddells as well. He would not want people to think that his own wife had defied him. He would tell them that he had sent her on the journey in good faith, that she had heard the call and he had urged her to follow it.

  This was what she told herself as they rode the first day, and the second, and the third and the fourth. It was July, and travel was easy, though hot. Their Chinese guides laughed and joked among themselves, while she and Poppy talked very little. Addie felt that her silence and her friend’s did not come from the same source. For Poppy, it was, perhaps, a matter of contemplation. For Addie, it was wonder and fear at her own boldness; it was gratitude; it was a thrill that kept her stomach turning in knots. It was a search through her memory for that particular moment when the line was cast out and everything changed.

  For some time after Poppy came back from the trip that brought them Lili, she didn’t go off traveling again. Her relationship with the Riddells continued to cool. Julia had arranged for Lili to move in with a Chinese family living near Owen and Addie, and though Lili herself preferred the arrangement, to Poppy it was an affront. The Riddells treated the mission house like their own personal kingdom, she said. It was not right.

  Afternoons, Addie met up with Poppy, and they would walk the streets for an hour or longer. They stopped to knock on the doors at those houses where they knew they were welcome: the handful of congregants they’d amassed in the town. Poppy had given over all her teaching duties to Lili, and now she had taken on the role of the mission’s doctor. She often spent the day tending children with swollen stomachs or congested lungs, which meant sitting and talking with the mothers in their homes. She had little real doctoring knowledge; the mission relied on infrequent deliveries of medicines for most of its authority.

  For a time, it was enough to keep her busy and interested and away from the mission without leaving the town. Then she left without warning and was gone for five days. Addie was angry the whole time she was away. Why should her friend go off without telling her? Why should Poppy see new places while she stayed behind? Wasn’t Addie just as intrepid? Or wouldn’
t she like to be?

  Poppy returned, her face tanned from long hours spent riding in the sun. She was tired but ebullient, and when Addie asked with some bitterness if she had spent her time pleasantly among so many strangers, Poppy replied that she had. “Why don’t you come with me next time?”

  Addie’s hand flew to her chest. “I couldn’t.”

  “Why ever not?”

  Why not, indeed. Because she had her boys to take care of. Because it was dangerous traveling through the mountains with only a Chinese guide. Because Owen would never allow it.

  A few days later, Addie and Lili were cleaning up after the morning class when Poppy came in with her big doctor’s bag swinging from the crook of her arm. “I’m going out again very soon,” she said, “and I thought you might want to come with me.”

  Poppy spoke in English, and Addie knew she was addressing her. Still, she glanced at Lili as if there might have been a mistake. Turning to Lili, too, Poppy described her mission: “I’m going up west,” she said in Chinese. “And I want to take Mrs. Bell with me.”

  Lili replied, “It can be dangerous to travel into unknown areas. But maybe not for you.” And to Addie she explained that when Poppy arrived in their village, they hadn’t known what to make of her; they hadn’t been certain she was human at all.

  “There, now,” Poppy said, laughing, “I’m a magical creature. You heard it from Lili herself. So you have my assurance of safety, and if that’s not enough, then you know I always take Mr. Wang with me, and he’s capable of fighting off tigers if required. I’ve no doubt he has fought off tigers. Though he’s not one to brag.”

  “How long will you be gone?” Addie asked.

  “Three days, I think.”

  Lili, who had been studying English with them at the mission, repeated, “Three days,” and then translated it into Chinese.

  “That’s right,” Poppy said.

  “Do you want to go?” Lili asked.

  Addie reached her arms back over her head and stretched. She suddenly felt achy and restless, confined. “I am curious—,” she began.

  “—but she’s afraid of her husband.”

  Lili acknowledged Poppy’s interruption with a nod. She had finished cleaning the slates and stacked them neatly on the table at the front of the room. “This is reasonable,” she said shortly.

  “I have a duty to my family. I have”—Addie searched for the vocabulary in Chinese to express her thoughts—“responsibilities.”

  “I had responsibilities,” Lili said. “And then I left them.”

  “My situation is not the same.”

  “True. You are your husband’s only wife, and in your household you have servants to help. In my home, I was just a second wife, and no more than a slave.” Lili shrugged, as if none of this mattered anymore. She had shed her old life, her old skin. She wore the same clothes as before, but they hung on her differently and she looked now, to Addie, somehow less Chinese. “I could help,” she said, “both here and at your home. If you go, I can teach the classes for you.”

  She could, Addie knew. The girls would probably learn more from Lili than they did from her. But she said she wasn’t sure.

  “Nonsense,” Poppy said. “It’s a settled thing.”

  Of course it wasn’t, not yet. If she were to go on this trip, Addie had to ask Owen for permission, and the idea made her feel ill. He would never grant his blessing for her to travel alone. She would remind him that Mr. Wang was to go with them, but this wouldn’t matter. Owen didn’t know Mr. Wang; he was not a member of their congregation. And besides, Owen would argue, Addie was not like Poppy: she was married, and a married woman didn’t travel without her husband, no matter where in the world they were. Never mind that he had taken trips on his own from time to time and left Addie at home with the boys and the servants. This was as it should be. Such an arrangement made sense.

  “These are people,” Addie said when at last she got up the courage to broach the topic (and here was Owen, staring severely at her from across the small table in the courtyard), “who have never received the good word. The women in these villages—you know they can’t talk to you or Mr. Riddell, if either of you were to go. How will such women ever be converted?”

  “In all likelihood, they won’t.”

  So she had found it at last: the limits of his belief. She turned away to hide her disappointment.

  “In a land of many millions, Addie, it’s not strange to consider the fact that we can’t reach them all.”

  From the back courtyard came the sound of Henry shouting gleefully. It was a Saturday and the boys’ bath day, and Addie had left Freddie to see to his younger brother’s washing. She would take her bath after the boys, and Owen would go next, and when the family was done, Li K’ang would take his. In times of drought, they had gone without a full bath for months sometimes, but now there was plenty of water in the river.

  “Of course you’re right,” Addie said at last. “There are a great many Chinese who will die unbelievers because they were never given the chance to come to belief. But Owen, is this an argument for attempting nothing? Because we can’t reach every soul, we shouldn’t try for those we can?”

  He gazed at her steadily and was silent for a time. Even after he looked away, he didn’t speak. Addie was unsure whether she should continue or wait to see whether he would take up the topic again. At last, he cleared his throat and said, “I don’t want you to think that I haven’t considered your words seriously. What you speak of is nothing short of our mission here, Addie—our mission together. We’ve spent the last decade of our lives trying to bring the Chinese to God, and if I’ve heard you correctly, I believe what you’re expressing is that we would do better to bring Him to them instead. They will not come down out of the mountains to hear the good word. They don’t even know that the good word exists.” He shook his head. “You’re eager, Addie, because you don’t understand. I’ve taken trips like this. You haven’t. I’ve ridden up into some tiny village on the edge of a cliff where there’s only one family and none of them has ever been farther than a mile from the place. You haven’t done this. You haven’t seen these people. They have a few goats if they’re lucky, and they’ve chopped a few square feet of land out of the mountain to plant things on, and every few years nothing grows and half of them die from hunger or sickness.”

  His face clouded over, and Addie thought that perhaps he had lost his train of thought. But she didn’t prod him to continue. She knew that this was not what he wanted. “The women stay back when I come,” he went on, “though they don’t hide themselves away as they do here in town. They are not so impossible to reach as you seem to think. But it’s no use anyway, Addie. I’ve sat down with the old men in the villages and explained that I’m not some mythical creature, that I have no magical powers, that the only magic in this world is the benevolence and grace of God. I’ve kept it as simple as possible. Only introduce them to God, and you will have planted the seed. And a seed can grow—that’s the idea, isn’t it?”

  Addie nodded. The sky had begun to darken, and she wondered if the boys would be finished bathing soon.

  “A seed only grows when it gets water, Addie. It does no good to plant a seed if you won’t be back to water it.”

  He fell silent, and this time she was certain that he had finished speaking. He folded his hands on his knee. The expression on his face said that he had made his point and it was time for her to agree with him. But she felt a dangerous sensation tickling her chest, a dance of knives tracing her skin. “I know you’ve done all you can,” she said, “but what if I do something else, and that something else makes the difference?”

  Owen frowned. “You’re suggesting that I don’t know how to speak to these people.”

  “No,” she said quickly, “I’m saying that I’m a woman. This is why the mission wants us all here, Owen. They know we have different roles to fill.”

  “Your role is to look after the boys and to run the house.”
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  “What if that’s not enough?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Enough for whom? Addie, what are you saying? You weren’t called here by God to pursue your own satisfaction. You were called here to do His work.”

  “Yes, and I might do His work better.”

  “By going off on your own?”

  “For three days, Owen. And with a Chinese guide.”

  Just then, Freddie came through the narrow corridor dividing the front courtyard from the back. “Henry’s splashing,” he said. “I told him not to waste.”

  Addie stood and followed Freddie to the back. In the rear courtyard, Henry was standing in the tub, his hair dripping down onto his shoulders. A wet puddle stretched out around him on the stone floor. He was trying not to grin. “Out,” Addie said. “Don’t you know we’re all waiting on you?”

  She stayed long enough to dry his thin body. Freddie was in and out of the tub in two minutes, and then it was her turn. The boys left and she stripped off her dress and climbed into the water. A wedge of brown soap sat on a stool beside the tub, and she used it to wipe away a week’s worth of sweat and dust. It had been monstrously hot for several days, and it felt good to be able to get clean. She would wash her hair tomorrow or the day after. This she always did in the morning. Sleeping on wet hair was asking for sickness.

  The stars were winking down on her by the time she finished. She had forgotten to get her towel from the bureau, so she used the one that Freddie had left behind. For an instant, she pictured the house from above: all the men gathered on one side, and her on the other.

  When she went out into the front courtyard, she found only the boys and Li K’ang. “Daddy’s gone out,” Freddie said. He had an edge in his voice, as if he knew she were to blame.