Songs of Willow Frost: A Novel

by Jamie Ford

  Liu Song’s routine of domestic drudgery and the late-night visits from Uncle Leo lasted only a few days. Then she followed Auntie Eng and her family to the King Street Station, porting their luggage. She didn’t linger at the train terminal to say goodbye. Instead she went home and found Uncle Leo, half-drunk, sprinkling talcum powder on the wooden floor. It had been seven days since her ah-ma’s burial. Old-world superstition dictated that they would go to bed and remain in their rooms until the passing of her mother’s spirit was complete—until her ah-ma had departed on her final journey. Liu Song accepted this tradition. She embraced it. In fact, she had been counting on it all week.

  Alone in her room, she found the valise beneath her bed and dug out her mother’s belongings. Liu Song stared solemnly at the opera mask. She had carefully repainted it. The greens, which represented poor judgment, and the blues, which denoted astuteness and loyalty, were now covered by shimmering metallics—silver and gold—the colors of mystery, the colors of an angry god, or a demon, or a vengeful spirit.

  Liu Song stared at the mask and waited for Auntie Eng to return and go to bed. She bit her tongue as she heard her stepparents’ drunken laughter. They joked as they finished the last of her father’s barley wine, the bottles he’d hidden to be uncorked during each New Year’s celebration.

  When she was certain that Uncle Leo and Auntie Eng were asleep, Liu Song took out her mother’s shimmering white gown, with its long, flowing water sleeves and dramatic red embroidery. She dressed slowly, carefully, reverently, paying attention to every detail as though donning armor for battle. She piled her long hair up high in the style of a married woman. She outlined her eyes with black grease and wrapped a strip of leather around her temple, pulling the cord tight the way she’d seen her father do it, tying the strip in the back so her eyes were held wide open. She covered the cord with her mother’s jeweled headpiece, pinning the crown to the leather. Then she tied on the demon mask. She was certain she would laugh when she looked in her vanity mirror. Instead she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She didn’t see her own reflection. She didn’t recognize the red eyes that stared back, flickering in the lamplight. She wasn’t Liu Song anymore. Nor was she Yeh-Shen, Cinderella. She wasn’t merely her mother’s daughter playing a child’s dress-up game. She was her mother now, if only for one night. And her mother was a very angry spirit.

  In the living room she opened the door of the cast-iron stove and stoked the fire. Then she burned a stick of incense and lit all the candles in the room. Finally, she went to the kitchen and found the longest, sharpest carving knife—the one her mother had used for deboning shanks of pork. Liu Song noticed the colors of her gown reflected in the blade. They looked like blood and fire.

  Carefully, Liu Song draped a long sleeve over the knife. Then she walked along the wall to the front door. From there she stepped carefully with her bare feet in the talcum, leaving a trail of ghostly footprints from the entrance directly to her stepparents’ bedroom. She took a deep breath, heard the popping and hissing of the newly lit candles, and opened the bedroom door. She didn’t knock.

  Liu Song surrendered to her performance as they walked into the room, mother and daughter together as one, the incarnation of the Widow of Zhuangzi. She let the firelight flood the darkness, casting a spidery shadow over the bed as her long sleeves swept across the floor. Auntie Eng woke first and made an inhuman sound, a squeal like that of a frightened, trapped pig. Then Liu Song, her mother, the Widow, floated to the brass railing at the foot of the bed. She smelled the alcohol on Uncle Leo’s breath as he bolted upright, as though waking from an unpleasant dream to a nightmare. His face became a riot of fear, his mouth contorted as his drunken, superstitious mind struggled to reconcile what he was seeing. The Widow slowly pulled back her long sleeve, revealing the blade. She pointed the knife at Auntie Eng’s soft belly, then glided around to Uncle Leo. Bulging eyes stared into his. The Widow twirled her sleeve until her hand emerged and grabbed a fistful of hair, lifting his head as the cold edge of the carving knife kissed the soft tissue just below his chin. His face grew pale as he held his breath.

  “You will not touch my daughter ever again,” the Widow whispered in Cantonese through clenched teeth and the demon’s mask. “You will not speak to her. You will not look upon her,” she hissed. “You will give her everything that is owed to her—and more. And you will leave … my … home before the next moon, or I will tie you to this bed and pour oil down your throat every night until you join me in the spirit world. And I promise, on your blood and the blood of your family, that I will never leave this place until you are gone.”

  The Widow looked at the whimpering mass that was Auntie Eng and sang in a high, shrill voice, “I’m only second wife.” She reached out, touching the frightened woman’s lips with the point of the knife. “But you will call me Big Mother.”

  LIU SONG’S HEART raced as she undressed and sat on the edge of her bed, struggling to collect herself. She lingered on the image of Uncle Leo and Auntie Eng huddled together as she’d left the room. Her bravery had been an act, a put-on that she found exhilarating but emotionally exhausting. She’d removed the mask, which now felt suffocating. She stared at its hollows, which echoed the emptiness she felt, and she gazed forlornly into the darkened corners of her bedroom, half-expecting to see her mother and father, or her brothers, standing there, silently clapping or nodding their approval. Through the walls she could hear Uncle Leo arguing and Auntie Eng crying.

  “Well done, Liu Song,” her father would have whispered.

  Her mother might have gushed, “Encore,” while wiping away tears.

  As Liu Song lay down and pressed her face into the fabric of the dress she’d worn, she could smell her mother’s skin, her lotion, her perfume—her essence. She missed her so much. She clawed at her pillow, wanting to cry, but the tears never came, just a swirling riptide of feeling—anger, abandonment, the fear of being alone, and the weight of the emotional millstone still tied around her neck, submerging her further into the murky depths of stinging, biting solitude. She wished she could wail all night. Instead she curled up in the darkness of her bedroom, listening to her racing heartbeat, which eventually slowed, like the ticking of a clock unwound.

  Pitch and Toss

  (1921)

  When Liu Song woke, Uncle Leo and Auntie Eng were nowhere to be found. Their belongings remained, untouched as far as she could tell. She walked around her apartment barefoot, delighted by her stepparents’ absence, finding strange comfort in her solitude. She didn’t know if her ruse had actually worked. Her stepparents might attribute the whole thing to bad alcohol. Or in the sobering light of day, they might know what she’d done. It didn’t matter. They were gone for now, and the respite was welcome and hard earned. She wistfully hoped that her mother’s ghost had actually returned and taken them to the spirit world, kicking and screaming all the way.

  Liu Song smiled as she ate a leftover hum bau for breakfast. A cold pork bun never tasted better. She drank a cup of hot black tea and then went to work, where she sang such happy tunes for the bedazzled crowds that Mr. Butterfield finally sold a pianola to a wealthy couple—the first sale of many, he hoped. She didn’t even have to shorten her skirt. The store owner was so excited and grateful that he paid Liu Song directly, in cash, and sent her home an hour early. As she walked back to her parents’ tiny apartment, she imagined a confrontation with Uncle Leo; perhaps he’d kick her out altogether. She half-hoped to find her belongings waiting by the garbage dump, which would be fine by her. Instead, Canton Alley looked the same. The apartment was dark, and the clothesline hung curiously empty of all but a starling that hopped along the wire, flapping its wings and whistling. Liu Song found the front door slightly ajar. As she stepped inside, it was clear that Auntie Eng and Uncle Leo were still gone. Unfortunately, so was everything else—the new radio; the dishes, pots, and pans; most of the bedding; the carpets; and all of the furniture. Everything except for Liu Son
g’s bed had been carted away. Her stepparents had cleaned out the pantry and the cupboards as well. The only food that remained (which wasn’t scattered on the floor like garbage) was a half-empty tin of stale saltines. Liu Song stood in the apartment and shook her head, stepping over and around the few empty boxes and crates that remained. She was surprised they didn’t take the light fixtures and the wallpaper, or tear out the copper piping beneath the sink.

  I got what I wished for, Uncle, she thought. And you got everything else.

  Then Liu Song remembered her valise and rushed to her room, dropped to her knees, and peeked under the bed. She sat back, then lay on the cool, dusty wooden floor, her heart pounding as she exhaled a huge sigh of relief. Her mother’s suitcase was still there. Liu Song pulled it out and opened it, realizing that her superstitious stepfather was probably too afraid to touch it. If he or Auntie Eng had opened it and seen the mask …

  Liu Song wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead, then leaned back on her elbows, staring into the void that was her closet. She frowned at her clothes, which lay in a heap on the floor. They had thrown out all of her mother’s personal belongings and now taken everything of value—all of it gone.

  You didn’t even leave me a wire hanger, Liu Song thought as she heard a knock on the door and quickly stood up. She reached into the front of her dress to make sure her money was safely tucked away and dusted herself off as best she could. If it was the landlord, she had just enough money to cover a month’s rent. Though she wasn’t sure how he’d feel about a single girl living alone, which was generally frowned upon. Liu Song was certain the building had a reputation to maintain. It was bad enough that the police regarded any single Chinese woman as a prostitute, but a landlord …

  “Hello?” A familiar voice called out in Cantonese. “Liu Song?”

  She stepped into the living room, ashamed of the terrible mess. “Colin?”

  He opened the door and removed his hat, staring at the floor, the empty tinderbox next to the stove, and the vacant cupboards. “May I … enter?”

  “Please.” Liu Song felt flushed with embarrassment. “I’m so sorry. I wish I had someplace for you to sit down, or a cup of tea to offer. I can explain …”

  “There’s no need …”

  “It’s my uncle and his wife, they took … everything …”

  “It’s quite all right. Honest,” Colin said as he looked around, smiling at the chaos. “I heard all about their sudden departure.”

  “Heard what?”

  Colin turned an old fruit crate up onto its side and offered the wooden box as a seat to Liu Song, who sat down and tried in vain to flatten the wrinkled fabric of her dress. She couldn’t take her eyes off the charming young man who knelt on one knee in front of her. His suit seemed perfectly pressed, his hair, miraculously in place, despite the wind outside. He was so close that their toes almost touched. So close she could smell his aftershave. He picked up an empty tobacco tin, brought it to his nose, and then gently set it aside as he regarded the garbage-strewn apartment as though it were a minor inconvenience—a misstep, unfortunate but easily overcome.

  “I was at the Wah Mee this afternoon when your stepfather came in and grumbled to all who would listen that he no longer wanted to be your uncle.”

  Liu Song touched her lips, trying not to smirk, remembering what the man had done to her, how he had mistreated her mother. “Is that so?”

  Colin nodded his affirmation. “He came in and talked of how young and beautiful you were—though he used a baser vocabulary. He argued that since there are indeed so few single girls in Chinatown, while there are hundreds, if not thousands of single working men, he ventured you’d be worth something, to someone.”

  Liu Song’s smile vanished. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She’d known of parents who sold off their extra sons to families that needed the help, but rarely had a daughter changed families—at least not in America and not in her neighborhood. Except in arranged marriages. She swallowed, then asked reluctantly, hesitantly, the way one asked about a fever during the quarantines, “Did he betroth me …”

  “It was worse than that, I’m afraid.”

  How can it get any worse? Liu Song thought. I’ve been sold like a cow.

  “When no one seemed interested in offering a dowry, he wagered you,” Colin said. The words came out hesitantly, as though the truth were a grave insult. “He bet you on a hand of pitch and toss—and he lost.”

  “Someone won me?” Liu Song asked in stunned disbelief. “In a dice game?”

  She watched in horrified astonishment as Colin hesitated and then nodded again, loosening his scarf and fumbling with his hat.

  “But that’s why I came to see you directly,” he said. “The man who won you was an older gentleman from Kwangtung, a widower who seemed eager to have a new, young bride. He spoke of taking you back to China for a traditional wedding.”

  “I won’t do it!” Liu Song protested. “I’ll run. He’ll never find me …”

  “You won’t have to,” Colin said with a modest shrug.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because.” Colin cleared his throat and switched to English as his voice cracked. “Another gentleman stepped up and made a better offer. This person offered twice what the winner had wagered, and when that wasn’t enough he offered three, four, and then five times the amount. Until that old lecher relented and took the money. Your uncle seemed quite displeased by having bet you for less than your true worth.”

  My true worth? she wondered. Liu Song wanted to cry, she wanted to scream. She did neither. She stood up, immediately thinking of ways to leave town, but she had so little to her name—even her name now meant nothing. “And who is this”—she spat the word—“gentleman?”

  Colin rose to his feet and covered his heart with his hat. He whispered softly, “That’s why I’m here. I didn’t want you to hear about this on the street and labor under some false apprehension. You’re free to do as you please, I assure you. And you can be with whomever you choose, whenever you choose to be.”

  Liu Song shook her head.

  “Because that foolish gentleman … was me,” Colin said.

  Liu Song stood speechless for a moment. She wasn’t sure what he meant, or to whom she owed what. “I’m … sorry …”

  Colin said, “I couldn’t stand idle and let that happen. So I intervened. I hope you don’t feel this was an untoward gesture. You’re an unmarried girl, and by no means …”

  “I’m …” Liu Song stammered, feeling a rush of gratitude, confusion, and joy hobbled by his hesitant words. “Thank you. I can repay you—I have some money and I’ll keep working. I’ll pay you back every penny …”

  “You don’t owe me anything. I still have money from my father, despite his disapproval of my career choices. And since I had such respect for your lou dou—really, it was the least I could do. I owe him much. Your father gave me my start.”

  Liu Song was still flushed. Still confused. “I’m not ready to get married …”

  Colin smiled, wide-eyed. “And I’m not asking. Not that there’s anything wrong with you. I’m sure you’ll find someone worthy. Speaking of marriage, your uncle sold this along with you.” Colin reached into his pocket and then held out his hand. Her mother’s ring rested in his palm.

  Liu Song felt relieved but also sick to her stomach. She took the ring, grateful to have it but feeling the urge to cleanse it in boiling water. She stared at her muddled reflection in the tarnished gold, then slipped it on the ring finger of her right hand.

  Colin changed the subject by offering to help clean up. He went upstairs to find a janitor’s closet, returned with a broom and dustpan, and began to sweep up the talcum-covered mess on the floor. He laughed and applauded when Liu Song told him how she had painted her mother’s mask and what she’d done to Auntie Eng and Uncle Leo. They joked about Uncle Leo and his old-world superstitions. They talked about music and movies and the families they missed,
the good times, and the moments filled with sorrow and regret. And as sunset approached, Colin looked at his watch and let himself out.

  “I really shouldn’t be here if your stepparents aren’t home anymore,” he said. “This is a small neighborhood, and I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. Will you be okay by yourself for a while? Perhaps you’ll find a roommate.”

  Liu Song nodded, though she wasn’t sure what that wrong idea was exactly. But she understood by his body language that he was reluctant to be here after dark. Then she looked up and understood as she saw the cherry-red embers of cigarettes that dangled from the hands and mouths of the many men who lived upstairs. The top two floors of her building were occupied by the Freeman Hotel, a flophouse filled with bachelors, cannery workers and lumbermen, laundry hands and fry cooks, who lingered on the fire escape in the evening. The men smoked and talked about money and women, longing for both. Liu Song had for so long been so worried about her mother and preoccupied with avoiding her uncle that she rarely gave the men upstairs a passing thought, and when she did she merely thought of them as neighbors—ones who shared a common tongue, like the other families who lived across the alley. Those innocent notions faded as Liu Song realized that these lonely, unbuttoned men looking down on her probably thought about her quite often. The idea sent a chill up her spine, and she shivered in the cool evening air.

  “Does that mean I won’t see you again?” she asked Colin, aching for him to stay but not wanting to sound as desperate as she felt.

  He paused. “It just means that we probably should see each other in public, to avoid the gossipy hens that cluck around here.” He nodded toward the other alleyway apartments and the clotheslines dangling with laundry. “And the vultures.” He didn’t look up, but she knew who he was referring to.