Ten minutes pass. It might be an hour; it might be two. There is no time here inside the anger of the mob. There is only shouting and pushing, shoulder blades and elbows, sweat glistening and dripping and lying thick on the skin. There is the press of bodies, the smell of them, and then the turning of heads toward some new strange event.
The odor hits her nose as it hits those around her, and yet it takes a moment for anyone to understand what it is. And in that same instant, the crowd is alive with the news: they’re burning it down. The sun has set, but the sky is a rusty color—streetlights and clouds—and when Juanlan looks up, she sees the black smoke clear against it, spreading ugly and beautiful like an oil spill. People are running away from the smoke; others are running toward it. She doesn’t stop to consider which way to go. She sets her eyes on the column of smoke and starts fighting her way toward it. She’ll find a bottle to toss, a rock to fling. Anything she can put her hands around.
Addie
27
She hadn’t written her family back home to let them know where she was. How was she to explain it? Dear Louisa—she imagined the pen tracing lines on the page—I’m no longer in Lu-cho Fu. I’ve left my husband and children to be with the woman I love. No, she would not write what she couldn’t bring herself to say aloud. It was too strange to be believed. She would wait until she knew when she was going back, and then she would give her explanations for having left.
One night in December she went to sleep and awoke some time later to find that she couldn’t move or speak. Her limbs were paralyzed, and a heavy weight pressed down on her chest—a creature was lying there, though she couldn’t get a look at it because she wasn’t able to lift her eyelids to see. The creature’s evil was odorless and it made no sound, but it lay atop her like a great hand slowly crushing her. With all her strength, she tried to open her mouth and scream, but her lips wouldn’t part and the scream got caught in her throat, where it made only a weak hum. And she kept on screaming inside herself, while on her chest the creature didn’t shift position, didn’t speak, didn’t move, but was terror itself, and darkness, and not death but something worse than death . . .
Poppy had her hand on Addie’s arm, shaking her. “Dear, you’re having a nightmare,” she said as Addie moved obscurely through the sludge of dreams and into waking. “You’ve been moaning and crying. There, now, hush.” It was cold in the room but snug under the woolen blankets, though the warming stone by their feet had lost its heat. Poppy pulled Addie toward her, and after a time they both returned to sleep.
The next morning, as they were getting dressed to go down for breakfast, Addie said, “That was no nightmare, Poppy, what I experienced last night.”
Poppy looked up from the buttons she was fastening up the front of her padded coat. Since the weather had turned cold, they’d taken to adding layers over the ones they wore to sleep, and then they went out into the world that way. They only changed this bottom layer once a week. December was not as cold in Chungking as it had been in Lu-cho Fu, where the temperatures dipped well below freezing and the wind shot volleys of snow down the narrow streets, but there they’d had stoves in every room to keep warm, and those who lived in the laotung stoked the k’ang to spend their days sitting upon it, eating meals and entertaining and sleeping there, too. Here, it was only in the kitchen that one could ever get warm. And then the oily smoke clung for days in one’s clothes and hair, and with the wet climate, it was impossible to get the heavier clothing to dry after being washed. And so, like the natives, Addie and Poppy simply wore coats and gloves at all times, inside as well as out, and learned to imagine that they were not as cold as they felt.
“What are you talking about?” Poppy said. “I don’t suppose you mean to say that you were having a pleasant dream.”
“Not a dream,” Addie said, “but not a nightmare, either. It was something wilder than that, Poppy. It was real, what I felt.”
“What was real?”
“The thing that visited me. I was lying on my back, and it sat on my chest and kept me from moving. I felt it there, I’m telling you. I was wide awake.”
“That was a nightmare, Addie.”
“No.” She shook her head.
Poppy sat on the bench at the end of the bed to put on her shoes. “All right. And why do you suppose it came? Where did it come from?”
“You don’t believe me. But I know what I felt, and I know what is real, even if I can’t explain it. As for why it came, I can only think—” But she left off abruptly, not sure that she wanted to continue. To hide her confusion, she began folding the sheets back over the bed.
“Think what?”
Addie smoothed the blankets over the mattress and plumped the pillows at the head. They were lumpy things that made her neck ache. She put a hand to the top of her spine now and pressed her fingers deep into the skin. “That I’ve made a wrong turn,” she replied.
Finished lacing her boots, Poppy stood from the bench. “That’s nonsense.”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Tell me, Addie, what do you think you would be doing in Lu-cho Fu right now if you had stayed? Would you be washing your husband’s clothes, or waiting for Julia Riddell to give you your marching orders for the day?”
“That’s not fair.” Addie folded her hands in front of her. She was only a few feet away from Poppy, yet she felt as if she were staring at her friend from a distance. She thought of their first trip into the mountains, when they’d hollered out into the void and their voices had come back to them in echoes.
“Isn’t it fair?” Poppy shook her head. Then, all at once, something soft came into her expression. “Perhaps this is about your boys. I can understand that—I’m not a mother, Addie, but I had one, once.” Poppy’s mother had died when she was four or five years old. Her father had never remarried, never found her a replacement, and so Poppy had been raised by her hard Irish pa and her three older brothers, all of them rough and brash and loud, and she claimed not to have missed the maternal element in her upbringing all that much. “Your boys,” she said, “have not been thrown out to fend for themselves in the world. They are surrounded by those who will care for and help them. They are not alone. You haven’t left them treading water, you know.” She took a step toward Addie, and then another, until she had closed the space between them and was standing close. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”
Addie blinked rapidly and fixed her gaze ahead, refusing to meet Poppy’s eye. “I’m not sure.”
“Do you miss them, Addie? Your boys?” She put her hand to Addie’s chin and lifted it. “Well, they might miss you also. That is not such a bad thing, however. A boy doesn’t die of missing his mother, or a mother of missing her son.”
“It’s not missing them,” Addie said slowly. She was looking Poppy in the eye now, and figuring out what she wanted to say at the same moment that she was saying it. “I don’t miss them, really, not beyond what you’d imagine. Not as much as I thought I would. I’d like to see them, Poppy, but I would almost prefer—I’d just like to see them from down the road. Freddie and Henry, walking together, hand in hand. If I could only see them like that and know they’re all right, that would be enough, I think.”
Poppy took her hat from a hook on the wall. “This hat makes me feel invincible,” she said, “for it has taken me through some frightening times.” She pressed her lips together, and Addie figured she must have been remembering the episode on the boat a few months before. “Perhaps if you find yourself a similar talisman, you’ll keep the nightmares at bay.”
Addie took the hat from Poppy’s hand and placed it on her own head. She stepped in front of the mirror, thinking she might make a joke about how it didn’t suit her. She was stopped, however, by her reflection, which was both her and not-her. Her square face had taken on a masculine look under the wide leather brim. She straightened her shoulders, raised them an inch. She set her feet wider apart on the floor.
“Look at you,” Popp
y said wryly, meeting her eye in the glass, “a regular desperado.”
Addie pulled the hat off her head and handed it back to her friend. No, it wasn’t a desperado she’d seen in the mirror. It was herself made into a stranger. It was what she would look like if she wasn’t her.
“You are in an unusual position,” Widow Liu said to her later that afternoon.
“In what way?”
“As a widow with no children. You have neither sons nor daughters, and you say you haven’t met your dead husband’s parents for many years. You’re an orphan, then. It is a fact.”
Addie blanched at the mention of her dead husband. Though she maintained in Chungking the lie that she was a widow, it was sometimes necessary to refer to the past, and so the imaginary Mr. Baker was, in her construction, simply Owen with a different name. This meant that she was perpetually referring to him as having been dead for years, rather than still living a thousand miles to the north, with her sons, without her. And this only reminded her of the guilt she carried under her skin like a splinter. “But my parents are alive,” she protested.
“That doesn’t matter. A wife leaves her family and joins her husband’s. His parents must have no concern for you if they don’t call you to their home. In my view, this makes you an orphan.”
Addie was generally intrigued by her conversations with the widow, who was both very traditional in her views while also very modern, a strange sort of anomaly—a Chinese woman with both wealth and power, who took certain customs as undisputed truths rather than cultural practices. She was not a Christian, but she enjoyed discussing Christian beliefs. She never left her home, yet seemed to know more about what was happening on the global stage than anyone Addie had met in China, either foreign or native. “Widow Liu,” Addie said, wanting to challenge her, “you’ve lost your husband, too, and you don’t live with his parents. Doesn’t that make you an orphan, the same as me?”
“My husband’s parents have both been lying in their graves for many years. And you forget that I have my sons.” The older woman frowned. “You understand that in China, your situation is pitiful. You failed to establish a family before your husband died, and when he left this earth, from that moment on you didn’t have a home anymore. You see? An orphan.” She stuck a finger in her tea and stirred it around. Often Addie would sit with her for an hour or longer and never see her take a single sip. For a woman whose business was tea, she seemed to drink less of it than any other person Addie had met. On the other hand, as far as Addie knew, she didn’t smoke opium, either, and that made up a good part of her business. “Do you know the term chaiku?” the widow asked suddenly.
Addie shook her head.
“It’s a type of woman—sometimes she is divorced, more pity on her—or she is not married for some other reason. She has nowhere to go except to the monastery.”
“So a chaiku is a nun?”
“Not exactly.” She made a movement that reminded Addie, strangely, of the photographer who had taken her family’s portrait back in Marietta years before; he’d moved his hand through the air in just such a way, something in between direction and contemplation. “No,” the widow went on, “such a woman is not a nun—more like a servant. She doesn’t leave her monastery to go anywhere else. She’s—”
“—trapped?”
Widow Liu batted a hand in her direction again, this time as if she were swatting away a fly. “No, she is given a home. For an unwanted woman, this is a kindness.”
Addie hugged herself, the chill from the room seeping in through her legs, which were not wrapped as thickly as her chest and arms. “You should drink some more tea,” the widow said, gazing at her levelly. “You need a refreshment of hot water, perhaps.”
“No, thank you,” Addie said.
Widow Liu nodded. Many women would have called in their servants regardless of the answer, but this was another of her oddities: she seemed capable of letting a person enjoy her own discomfort, if that’s what was preferred.
They talked of other things for a time, and then Addie took her leave. “You’ll come see me again in a few days?” the widow asked with a roll of her neck.
“If you wish.”
She responded with a fluttering of her fingers that sent Addie toward the door. Widow Liu didn’t like to appear eager—others came to see her, and she saw them if it pleased her. She would never beg.
Addie had been going to see the widow for two or three months by then. After the first visit with Poppy, they’d gone back together one more time, and the hostility Widow Liu seemed to have for Poppy was even more pronounced on that second visit. She’d frowned whenever the American woman spoke, and frequently interrupted to keep her from finishing a thought. It might have been entertaining if the widow argued with her, Poppy said, but in fact she acted almost as if she weren’t there. After they left, Poppy declared that she didn’t think there was much purpose in returning to see her again. “It’s clear she’s not really interested in converting,” she said, “and I don’t believe she’s ever going to give us any money for the school.”
Then, several days after that second visit, a messenger had arrived at the mission house with a summons for Addie. “Do you think I should go?” she’d asked Poppy. She really did feel unsure. It was awkward that the invitation was for her alone, but then she was curious as to why she had been chosen over her friend. In every other situation, she was undoubtedly the less compelling figure of the two.
“You should do whatever you like. I just wouldn’t expect much from the relationship.” When Addie still looked uncertain, Poppy had slapped her arm affectionately. “Oh, go on. The old woman will probably be the source of some very good gossip.”
So she’d gone. Addie was interested in the widow, and it didn’t matter that she wasn’t a Christian and seemed intent on remaining unconverted. She was intrigued by Widow Liu’s combination of confidence and diffidence, and too, there was the appeal of being able to communicate: she could understand Addie’s Chinese.
She had gone back to see the widow once, and then again, and then a third time. Soon, it became a regular part of her schedule: every three or four days she would stop by the house. She was always welcomed. It seemed she had established for the first time a friendship with a Chinese woman who was staunchly Chinese. It was something quite different to speak with a person who had no interest in becoming Christian or adopting foreign ways; it made Addie imagine that she herself was somehow more Chinese, and this was gratifying, in its way.
The widow was also well informed. She read the Chinese papers and received a constant stream of visitors, including all the foreign merchants in Chungking, to keep herself educated in global affairs. Talking to her, Addie felt more connected to the outside world than she had been for some time. The British were fighting the Boers in South Africa. US forces had defeated the Spanish in the Philippines and were now fighting the natives. “I find you to be a harmless person,” Widow Liu said one day when they were discussing the Americans’ pursuit of the Filipino president through the mountains of his country, “despite being a foreigner. I have no illusions, however, about your nation’s government. It is clear what they are about.”
“What’s that?”
“Extending power. In Europe, they have been collecting colonies for a long time. But America—America was a colony itself only a little over a century ago, and now it feels itself to be the peer of Europe. It wants its own colonies, and so it is looking around the world for opportunities.”
“I believe you have a better understanding of the situation than I do, Widow Liu.”
“Yes, that is true,” the widow said without irony. She blinked at Addie in the semidarkness. “Look here: America suddenly finds itself in possession of several islands in the Caribbean and also in the Pacific. This makes it think that it is moving toward the center of power. Clearly this is a false belief. You understand that this is incorrect?”
“I’m not sure,” Addie said. Since she wasn’t in touch wi
th Louisa or her parents, she felt less qualified to speak now on the American perspective than in former times. All the same, a year earlier letters from home had made frequent mention of “those murderous Spanish” and “our brave boys”—wasn’t it clear how one should feel about that? The war pitted an old corrupt empire against a brave young nation. In that context, an American victory was the obvious right outcome. “I don’t know that my countrymen think very much about where they stand in the world,” she ventured. “It is difficult to imagine America acting anything like one of the colonial powers, in any case.”
“Your country thinks it is moving toward the center of the world,” the widow repeated as if she hadn’t heard her, “but in fact, this is false. And do you know why? Because China has always been the center. America is just a little dog scratching at the door.”
“But surely Britain is more powerful than either America or China. If you’re looking for the center, then that must be it.”
“Britain possesses its colonies. It does not possess the whole world.”
“If China is so important,” Addie said, “then why doesn’t it have its own colonies?”
“Because nothing outside the boundaries of the empire is worth having. It’s a lot of trouble to maintain control over such places, and what do we need that we can’t produce here? It is the rest of the world that needs something from us.” The widow gave a harsh laugh. “Of course, this makes all you foreigners unhappy. ‘Unfair trade practices,’ you cry. You have your president’s adviser who’s put out a document charging all of Europe to play fair. ‘Maintain China’s sovereignty’—however, I am not fooled. This has nothing to do with China’s good and everything to do with what is good for you. But don’t misunderstand me,” she added after a moment’s pause. “China is not as powerful as it should be, and it hasn’t been given the recognition it deserves by the world. We have been run over by foreign powers for decades, and this is certainly a disgrace.” She squinted at Addie, as if considering the exact shape and scale of the indignities visited upon China by those who looked similar to her.
Rebellion Page 49