Rebellion

by Molly Patterson

  Their mother narrows her eyes. She is ready to be angry, it seems. “In two months, Zhuo’er, your wife is going to have a baby. A little, tiny baby.” She holds out her cupped hands; between them, a basketball would just fit. “A baby, and right now I don’t trust her even to take care of herself. I try to help, and she won’t take it. I’ve seen the way she looks at me. I’m her mother-in-law, and when I talk to her she wrinkles up her nose like she’s just smelled spoiled meat. Either that or: nothing.” She draws a hand across her face, and her features freeze. Eyes glassy, mouth slightly open. Despite herself, Juanlan almost laughs at the impression. “Do you trust her to care for your baby? No, you’re having fun, going out every night to gamble with your friends.”

  He begins to protest, but their mother isn’t finished.

  “And you,” she says, turning to Juanlan. “You’re the only one Xiao Lu agrees to spend time with right now, but instead of giving her your attention, you’re tutoring that boy, you’re running around with that foreigner. Xiao Lu is your family, do you understand? What is Director Wei to us? What business do we have with a laowai who comes to Heng’an and then leaves again?”

  “The hotel—,” Zhuo Ge begins.

  “The hotel is doing just fine.” Their mother glances at the door to the bedroom and lowers her voice. “You think he’s ready for some big change? He can’t even make it down three steps without falling. Nothing is easy for him anymore. Nothing.” She presses her lips together and shakes her head. Then she leans back into the sofa. “It’s late,” she says. “Lan’er, go check to see if the guests are all back yet.” Her face is drawn, tired; she looks older than she is. Or maybe not. Maybe she looks exactly her age. Soon she will have a grandchild, she will be a nainai. And Juanlan’s father, in the other room—the baby, when it is old enough to speak, will call him yeye.

  She, Juanlan corrects herself. When she is old enough to speak. The baby is no longer a thing, but a little girl curled up inside Lulu’s body, waiting to come out into the world and give them all new names.

  The next morning she wakes early, an hour before her usual time. It’s still dark in the tiny room, with its single small window that faces onto the alley. Four stories up, the sky might be navy, turquoise, headed toward dawn or already past it. Down here on the ground level, it takes longer for the light to arrive.

  Even so, she knows the time before glancing at the clock. Upon waking, she can always predict the hour. At the university, it bewildered her roommates, who sometimes tested her on it. Hualing, who had the bunk below hers, would appear as a presence beside her, sensed through closed eyes. She would shake her awake, clock in hand, and ask what time it was. Juanlan always got it right, within five minutes. Then Hualing would reply, laughing, “No, benzi, it’s time to go to breakfast.”

  The university seems as far away as the moon. It’s impossible to think that her friends from those four years will this morning wake up somewhere perhaps not very different from Heng’an. Preparing for the new school year, their first as teachers. One of her friends got a job at a travel agency in Chengdu. A few, like Juanlan, are not yet employed.

  Do they feel as she does? The presence of something in the chest, burning cold. Not dread, but a kind of anxiousness that fuels itself and keeps on burning. It is the feeling of waiting when you don’t know what you’re waiting for. You could do something dangerous; you could act without thinking.

  She swings her legs down over the edge of the mattress. The tile floor is cool beneath her feet. It is August and sticky, and eight blocks away the Duoyu Jiang is rising higher. It is in the air now, too; the whole world is soaked. Heng’an is the world, as much as any place is.

  In the kitchen, her mother is scooping tea leaves into a glass jar. Her father carries the jar with him all day, adding water to the same leaves again and again, so that by nighttime what he is drinking is clear, the flavor leached out. The tea they buy is not expensive. Juanlan has tried to convince him that a new scoop of leaves might be added at some point. This is an indulgence he can’t bring himself to attempt. “When I was young,” he reminds her, “there were times we were so hungry we ate the bark off the trees.”

  “You’re up early,” Juanlan’s mother says, giving her a quick glance as she folds up the foil bag and places it back on the shelf.

  “Just restless.” At the sink, she washes her face while her mother takes her father his tea. When she returns, she takes the towel from the hook on the wall and hands it to Juanlan. “You’re going to Director Wei’s, I guess.”

  “In a little while.” Juanlan blots the towel on her cheeks. “But I can call Teacher Cao and tell her I can’t come today if you want me to sit at the desk instead of Ba.”

  Her mother makes a vague gesture, then shakes her head. “Why don’t you go buy some mantou for breakfast. You can get some money from my purse.” She nods at the other room, where her purse hangs from one of the hooks on the wall.

  Money in hand, Juanlan goes out through the lobby and pauses at the door. This is where her father fell. She pictures him standing and looking out at the leaves in the sunshine, with a mournful expression tugging down one corner of his mouth. He has his birdcage in hand—if only he could hang the cage closer to the door, he wouldn’t have to attempt the steps.

  Such a stupid problem.

  She makes her way down the street to the mantou seller and a few minutes later returns with the bag of steamed buns. The lobby is empty as before, though she can hear the slap-slap of plastic sandals on the floor overhead: one of the guests making his way to the bathroom down the hall. His, always his. She remembers Lulu’s suggestion that Du Xian come and stay as a guest. He could come without her parents ever knowing that she was the reason. There is a certain appeal in the idea, the secret of it.

  She stands in the lobby, looking out through the open door. There are two trees in front of the hotel, edging the street. The wire where her father hangs the birdcage runs between them. If they could only run a wire up to the door of the hotel, her father could hang the birdcage there. But then people on the sidewalk would run into it. Crossing to the doorway to take a closer look, she runs her hand over the tile on the front of the building. It’s smooth—nowhere to hook a wire, even if it wouldn’t dip down. Juanlan looks up, but there are only the windows on the second floor.

  She retrieves the master key and then climbs the stairs, her shoes squeaking on the linoleum. The hallway on the second floor is empty, though a sliver of light under the bathroom door confirms that someone is inside. At the door of one of the unoccupied rooms she puts the key in the lock. Inside, the bed is flat and tightly made, a pair of plastic sandals tucked beneath it. A musty scent hangs in the air. She crosses to the window and pulls it open on its track. Feels along the outside. But there is no way to attach anything to the outside of the building.

  She slides the window shut and turns back to the door. How easily this problem defeats her. As it has defeated her parents, she supposes. But no: they haven’t thought to change their ways to accommodate her father’s new condition.

  She is halfway out the door when her eyes are drawn to the corner of the room, where a coatrack stands empty. She picks it up and leaves the room. In the hall, she is preparing to lock the door when the bathroom door opens and a man comes out, dressed only in a towel. He has a large belly that hangs over it. His hair is wet and sticking up in patches. His eyes take in the coatrack and then move back to Juanlan. “Xiao mei,” he says, “there are cockroaches in the shower. You really need to clean better.” And having said his piece, he opens the door to his room and disappears inside.

  She does not lock the empty bedroom. She does not inspect the bathroom. A wet smell, a smell of mildew, wafts out into the hall. She picks up the coatrack and goes back downstairs, and when she plants it beside the front door, it looks like what it is, a place to hang coats. But she will explain its purpose to her father and maybe it will mean something to him, that she’s thought of his comfort. She stan
ds back to consider it and imagines that the coatrack will stay here, serving its purpose, long after she has left the hotel, left home, left Heng’an for good.

  A few nights later, she is just leaving her brother and Lulu’s flat when Zhuo Ge stops her. “Do you have to get home right now?”

  She has plans to watch television with their father, she tells him.

  “Ba would rather you went out and enjoyed yourself.” He glances over at Lulu, who is seated heavily on the sofa, her feet up on the table before her. The television is on, but her eyes are closed and her chin rests on her collarbone. “We’re a very exciting household here, don’t you think?”

  “Lulu can’t go out and be crazy in her state,” Juanlan says.

  “Well, I’m headed out, and I thought you might want to come with me, get some fun out of this night.”

  Before Zhuo Ge arrived home, Lulu had been walking her fingers over her belly and humming a song that did not sound like any lullaby Juanlan has ever heard. Then the baby started kicking, and the skin on her belly rose like a sea creature underwater. She pushed back with her fingers—not hard, but without any tenderness, either. “It likes to hurt me,” she said without looking at Juanlan. “It isn’t even born yet, and already it’s being a pest.”

  Now Juanlan glances at Lulu sleeping on the sofa and then turns back to her brother. “Okay,” she says at last, “you can take your sister out. As long as you’re paying.”

  The Two Brothers is like every other teahouse along Jiangnan Lu: a storefront with tables set up on the patio overlooking the river, and several private rooms inside. The road runs beside the river, but it is elevated enough here that it is in no danger of being subsumed by the flood. Still, the Duoyu Jiang makes its subtle roar beneath the voices and laughter coming from the people gathered above it.

  Zhuo Ge leads the way inside, to one of the back rooms where his friends are already assembled around a mah-jongg table. Juanlan has met all but one of them before, though she doesn’t remember every name. Three are friends of Zhuo Ge’s from high school. Another is a fellow policeman, part of his danwei, one of the men who met her at the bus station back in June when she first came back from Chengdu. He nods at her, asks how she is. The last man is unfamiliar, but is introduced as a friend from the Tourism Department named Guo Jun. He tips his chin at the other table in the room. “We’ll start another one,” he says, rising from his chair, “as soon as our leader gets here.”

  “Director Wei may be your leader,” Zhuo Ge says, “but he isn’t mine. If I saw him speeding down the road, I wouldn’t think twice about slapping him with a fine.”

  “Sure, sure, you’re a real independent thinker. And you”—Guo Jun turns to Juanlan—“do you know Director Wei?”

  “I tutor his son.”

  Zhuo Ge explains that she’s recently graduated in English and that Director Wei called in the favor. “By now, my sister probably knows more about him than any of us do. She’s at his house every day.”

  “So you know his wife, too,” Guo Jun says.

  “Teacher Cao is often there in the mornings when I get there,” she replies, ignoring the invitation to say something more. She may resent Teacher Cao’s wealth and the ease it affords, but she knows more than to let this show to a stranger.

  Yet Guo Jun presses her to say more. “We like to joke with Director Wei because sometimes he won’t come out with us, or he’ll go home early. I think it’s because he’s afraid of angering his wife.”

  “Maybe he enjoys spending time with her,” one of the other men puts in, without looking up from the mah-jongg tiles moving rapidly over the table. “He’s a happily married man.”

  “No such thing!” Zhuo Ge proclaims. “You can be married and a man. You can be happily married, but then that means you aren’t a man, because of what you had to give up to make your marriage happy.”

  “What about happy and a man?”

  “Then you must not be married.”

  “Hao fan,” the woman at the table snaps. For a moment, Juanlan is unsure whether she’s talking about the move just played or responding to Zhuo Ge’s joke. Then: “It would have been better if your parents had just taken a walk,” she declares, getting a laugh from all the men. She glances around, her eyes dancing. “You all wish it was the old China, when this meimei and I would have no other choice but Wife Number One and Wife Number Two.”

  “You would have been Wife Number Seven,” one of the men says to her, “if you were lucky!”

  “And you would have been a eunuch,” the woman shoots back. She is a real la meizi, full of biting humor, able to give it as well as she gets. The kind of woman who goes out to play mah-jongg every night. One of Juanlan’s university classmates was this type of girl, always visiting barbecue places, drinking beer with a big group of boys, telling jokes at a quick pace, delivering insults. Out with the boys, though never in a way that got her a bad reputation. It was more like she was a man herself, somehow able to play multiple roles at once.

  The waitress comes, and Juanlan orders chrysanthemum tea. She sits at the empty table, and when the tea comes she stirs the dried flowers in the glass, watching the goji berries dance. The two red dates settle heavily at the bottom. If she stays long enough at the teahouse to refill the glass three or four times, she will be glad for their flavor—unlike her father, she disdains the weak tea that comes with too many steepings. If he were here, he’d order cheap eagle tea and be glad enough to drink it. Juanlan knows he wouldn’t begrudge her the flavorful chrysanthemum, which is not even expensive. But he would never order it himself.

  She scoops out one of the dates and pops it into her mouth, just as Director Wei appears in the doorway. He’s standing a little back from the door, at an angle that blocks him from those sitting at the other table, and for a moment she is the only one to see his arrival. He sees her, too—leaning over the glass, spitting the date seed back into it—and the corners of his mouth turn upward, a grudging smile. Then he steps forward and is seen, celebrated, welcomed into the room. Within a few minutes, he is seated next to her.

  “You like chrysanthemum tea?”

  They are all busy pulling mah-jongg tiles from the drawers on the sides of the table. Zhuo Ge and Guo Jun are engaged in conversation with the others, weighing in on the last round, which the woman squarely won. She has a pile of money before her and is grinning like a fox.

  “I don’t know,” Juanlan replies. “I guess I do.”

  “Young women always like flower tea,” Director Wei says in a decided tone. Some element in his voice is different, strange. Perhaps it is only that they are meeting under different circumstances than usual. He takes off his jacket and rolls up his sleeves. Then he reaches his hand into the drawer in front of him, searching for any tiles he’s missed. “And children, too. They like it above other teas because of the sugar.”

  Maybe, she thinks, she is a child trying to act grown-up.

  “Are we ready?” Zhuo Ge asks, turning back to the table. “I’m ready to earn some money from all of you. I’ve got a baby coming, I have responsibilities.”

  “I’ll send you a gift when it comes,” Guo Jun says, “but you’re not getting any money from me tonight.”

  “Sure I will. You and Director Wei, too. Now you”—Zhuo Ge cocks his thumb at Juanlan—“you don’t have to lose so much, Mei, since you’re playing with my money.” He pulls out his wallet and begins to peel off one- and five-yuan notes. When he’s finished counting, he hands Juanlan the small stack of bills. “There, a rich man like me doesn’t have to mind the loss. But don’t go losing it to these jokers, either.”

  “I’ll try to make you proud,” Juanlan says drily.

  The game begins and she is not as quick as the others; she isn’t as used to playing. During the New Year holiday, her family always goes out to the countryside to stay with her father’s relatives, and they spend hours every day at the mah-jongg table. Then, too, she is often outmatched. Her aunt and uncle like to play in the
cold winter air from morning until noon, and then again after lunch, and after dinner, too.

  Zhuo Ge wins the round, and Director Wei, who was East Wind, must pay him double. Zhuo Ge sweeps the money from the center of the table with an exaggerated motion. “What did I tell you?” he says, thrusting the money into the drawer. “I’m not leaving here tonight until I’ve emptied all your wallets. I’m off to a good start with you, Director Wei.”

  “How much did you lose yesterday?” asks the other policeman.

  “Who can remember? That was yesterday. Today is a different day.”

  Director Wei smiles and leans toward Juanlan. “Your brother is eager to make up what he lost.” To Zhuo Ge, a little louder, he says, “Another night like that, and you’ll pay for my son’s first year of gaozhong.”

  In response, Zhuo Ge pulls open the drawer he’s just closed. “What’s that?” he says, leaning down so his ear is close to the drawer. “Wait, these yuan are trying to tell me something. What is it? Speak a little louder. I think they’re saying, ‘Zhuo Ge, you’re our master now.’” He points his finger at Director Wei. “Maybe you should practice saying that, too, old man.”

  “Don’t get too sure of yourself. An arrogant army is sure to lose.”

  “Please,” Zhuo Ge says, putting his hands up in front of him, “don’t quote chengyu at me.” He pushes the drawer closed amid laughter from both tables. “Now let’s go. You’re East Wind, Mei,” he says to Juanlan. “Go easy on your brother, okay?”

  They play on for an hour, then two. Bills are tossed back and forth with each round, the amounts tallied up so quickly by the others that Juanlan doesn’t even bother trying to calculate how much she owes. Only rarely is she the one to collect money from the others. She is not a terrible player, but she’s not as fast or nimble. She has to concentrate, has trouble keeping up with the conversation as they play.

  It is easy to tell that they all love Zhuo Ge. He is the heart of their group, the one who has brought them all together. And so they tease him more than anyone else and turn to Juanlan for fresh ammunition. When she calls him “Frog” during one of the rounds, they’re all eager to learn where this nickname came from. “He looked like one when we were young. Big eyes far apart.” She raises her hands to her head and flicks a finger out from each temple. “Our mother was afraid he would never grow into a face like that.”