by Isabelle Li
* ‘Upside down’ in Chinese is pronounced the same as ‘Arrive’. Hence people like to hang ‘Fortune’ upside down, to augur its arrival.
The Floating Fragrance
I open a wooden door with faded green paint. It creaks. On the bed is a plastic box with broken toy cars, odd-shaped blocks, parts of an alarm clock and wax crayons. Opposite the bed is a black desk with locked drawers. I walk between the bed and the desk towards the window, which is covered by dust, filtering dim light. I open a small pane.
It is dusk outside, cloudy and humid. Dark shadows dance around the old willow. Large migrating birds fly by the white chimney, flapping their wings slowly and singing in high-pitched female voices. Their heavy bodies cruise through the blue space like whales through the ocean, ripples expanding.
The Red Villa
My mother was pregnant with me when my family moved into the red villa. My brother was eight and my sister four. There were two villas in the compound, joined by a set of low stone stairs. Each villa had four apartments. My mother was very proud of my father, who had successfully applied for our new home through the School of the Communist Party, and moved the family away from our former residence with its communal kitchen and public washroom. At the new place, we lived in the apartment with only one other family. We shared the entrance, the stairs, the balcony, the toilet, the washing basin and the kitchen.
There were six people in my family, including Grandma, and we lived in the two rooms to the right. Grandma, whom my parents addressed as Aunty Chen, had no children of her own. My mother told me that many years ago, one morning Grandma’s niece got her earring caught in a sweater and yelled out. Grandma’s husband jumped up to help her. Grandma didn’t say a word, but the next day she left home. Later she took the job as my mother’s nanny, and followed her for the rest of her life. She brought up my brother and sister but was too old to look after me. Her hearing had deteriorated by then.
Little Third’s family lived in the two rooms to the left. His two brothers were from Uncle Feng’s first wife, who had passed away. Aunty Yang, the second wife, was Little Third’s mother. She was thin, with a bit of a humpback, walking slowly as if she had forgotten where she wanted to go. She spent a long time cooking and cleaning up. A few sizes smaller than my mother, she seemed to recoil into a corner of the kitchen. The light bulb was covered by smoke from the cooking oil. The bench was greasy and sticky and the window no longer transparent.
One day Little Third and I came home from school for lunch. As usual, I ran up the stairs ahead of him, my plaits jumping on my shoulders. I looked back and told him to hurry. Little Third was shorter than me. His face was perfectly round, with a button nose right in the middle that was perpetually blocked. His small eyes disappeared behind his chubby cheeks as he smiled. He had his mouth half open to catch his breath. His clumsy steps made me laugh.
We parted at the glass door. People used to call Little Third my little tail. So I expected him to join me shortly to watch Grandma making pancakes.
Grandma sat cross-legged on the bed in her blue blouse. She owned a blue blouse and a grey one, both with buttons made of cloth down the left side from neck to hip. She used a rolling pin to flatten the dough on a wooden board, spread oil, salt, shallots and pepper, and rolled the dough into a rod. Then she cut it into chunks and twisted and flattened each chunk into a pancake. Her body moved rhythmically.
Little Third did not come.
At his side of the apartment, the southern room door was open. Nobody was there. The northern room door was ajar. I called him and peeped through the gap. He was not near the window or the desk, and nor was he on the bed.
I looked behind the door.
Little Third was standing against the wall, looking up, holding his mother’s feet in front of his chest. Aunty Yang was facing the wall, like a set of clothes dangling from a hook. Her right hand was in front of my eyes, small, smooth, yellowish, as if she was wearing a rubber glove.
I called Little Third’s name and told him about the pancakes. I prised away his fingers, which were clawing his mother’s black pants, grabbed a red toy car from the bed and placed it in his hands. Then I led him to Grandma and sat him on the bed.
I whispered to Grandma but she could not hear me. I took her hand, which was rough, caked with dough and covered with flour. When we were out of the room my tears started to pour. I signalled to her what had happened before letting her see the body. Then I ran to get help.
Neighbours soon came.
That evening Little Third and I sat on the balcony to watch the sunset. The sky was red, with purple clouds. The five poplars in front of the house rustled in the gentle breeze. Flocks of sparrows came from nowhere and darted between the branches. My ears were filled with their chirping.
Little Third said he was going to throw up. His face turned white and his hands were icy. He said he was scared of birds, but he did not cry.
The Changing Seasons
In the spring Little Third and I climbed the elms to pick the new buds. Grandma made soup, with the fresh greens floating on top, but it tasted slightly bitter. We dug holes in the ground to bury our treasures, arranged candy wraps, broken china and colourful fabrics, and covered them with glass shards on top. We used loose dirt to hide our flower pits and visited them when noone else was around.
In the summer we sucked nectar from flowers. We caught bees by their wings, wet the corners of our shirt-tails with saliva, and dipped the bees’ tails on the damp cloth to pull out the stingers, watching the attached intestines wriggle. We caught dragonflies pivoting on the rusty barbed wire around the yard, their wings glinting in the sunlight. We put them face to face with each other. The Red Chillies curled their tails and fought until one took the other’s head off. Then we fed the dead dragonflies to our two pet frogs.
To the north of the two villas was a huge yard with an old willow in the middle. Sometimes, Black More, one of the neighbours, brought back the projector from the School of the Communist Party, and put up the screen to play a movie for all the residents. Little Third and I always sat on the cooking bench and watched from the open window. Before the movie was a documentary about rice, the water in the green paddy fields reflecting the blue sky. The female narrator’s voice was so convincing about the frogs that we freed ours so they could be out catching pests. The movie was about the Korean War. The hero pounded his own chest and shouted at other soldiers, ‘Fire the cannon at me!’ Little Third and I shovelled roasted soybeans into our mouths to disguise our tears. We watched the same movie again and again that summer.
Black More belonged to a minority ethnic group from the south-west. In an accident some years ago, he saved the factory and all the other workers, but was himself badly injured. He was in the newspaper and on the radio. My parents talked about him with hushed sympathy. It seemed that some injury from his heroic deed had resulted in his not being able to marry and have a family. He lived at the far west side of the two villas. The entrance to his apartment was forever shaded by trees, as if there was less sunlight in his part of the world.
In the morning mist, a figure emerged, walking backwards. Little Third and I held our breath and squeezed together behind a poplar, its bark damp against our cheeks. Black More passed by, eyes half shut, a peaceful smile at the corner of his lips.
‘Do you know why I am walking backwards?’ He stopped and opened his eyes, his voice gentle and calming.
We came out from behind the tree.
Black More had beautiful eyes, shiny dark skin, white teeth and a pale scar that ran across his upper lip. His fingers were in the shape of deformed carrots, with unrecognisable nails, three digits missing. ‘Walking backwards reverses time and stops ageing. At the end of my practice is myself at your age.’ He lowered his eyelids and continued his walk, turning skilfully at the corners.
In the autumn we collected fallen leaves and used the stalks to play tug-of-war. We found a yellow cat with an eye infection. I asked Little Third to hold it
down while I applied eye drops. It struggled, and Little Third ended up with two deep scratches on the back of his hand.
When it snowed, the staircase was brightened by the reflected light. We hopped in the snowfield with our heels together and the front of our feet separated to imitate the marks of a bulldozer. On fine winter days, the temperature could go down to minus thirty degrees. We wore coats stuffed with layers of cotton. Little Third’s was so thick on the sides that his arms spread out in the air. Wet clothes were hung outside to dry. When Grandma collected them in the evening, they were frozen. A pair of pants could stand by itself. When being folded, they gave out a sound like toasted bread being pressed down. Grandma laid them on top of the heater. The next morning they would be warm and dry, with the smell of cleanliness.
A madwoman came every morning to look for valuable garbage. She was said to be in her nineties or even over a hundred. She had a tiny head and a wrinkled face. She wore the same torn clothes every day, exposing her long neck and part of her red chest to the cold wind. We hid behind the coal piles near the chimney to observe her.
We ventured further out. A group of boys from the neighbouring street threw snowballs at us. Little Third was bruised and lost one shoe. I coughed for the rest of the winter. When we saw those boys again, we ducked behind trees and retreated to our own territory.
At home I fought with my brother. He liked to slap the back of my head. Once he kicked me and I landed on the other side of the room. Another time I had two handprints on my thighs for three weeks. Little Third and I watched the colour changing from black to blue to purple to yellowish. I took revenge by kicking my brother’s shinbones with my steel-capped army shoes. I threw chopsticks and pencils at his face, targeting his eyes.
My sister was always out, popular among her friends.
At school we tucked our hands behind our back and sat upright for forty-five minute classes. The teacher had high cheekbones and hollow cheeks. She hung an abacus with green beads on the blackboard to teach us maths. Little Third was often told to stand in the corner of the classroom because he talked during class.
We learned characters. The homework was to write the new characters twenty times on the checked notepads. Every square was divided into four quadrants by dotted lines so that we could plant the strokes in the right field with the right proportion. We sat on a bench side by side in front of a black study desk with locked drawers, our legs swinging in the air. I was on the left, my head tilting to the left. Little Third was on the right, his head tilting to the right. Sometimes our elbows touched in the middle and we moved away to allow each other more room.
A hand came between us and snatched Little Third’s pencil.
‘Use your right hand! How many times do I have to tell you?’
Uncle Feng was a stocky man. He had a square head covered by short and spiky hair, thick lips and buckteeth.
He lifted Little Third from the bench and stood him in the middle of the room. He held Little Third’s left hand, turned it upwards and smacked it with an iron ruler. He was shaking so much that, for a few times, he hit his own wrist. He hit even harder.
Scarlet welts appeared immediately on Little Third’s palm and arm.
I closed my eyes and blocked my ears.
Butterfly Longs for Flower
He walks through the yard and opens the gate. He comes up the stairs. I hear him breathing. He opens the glass door at the top of the staircase. I hear his clothes brushing against the loose doorframes. I pull open the balcony door and close it quietly behind me. But there is no lock on the inside. Darkness. The sky is full of shooting stars. Their long tails interweave into a net of light, fading slowly. The earth is lit up by huge candles, their red flare almost too bright for my eyes. I hear him stepping on peanut shells on the floor. He is walking casually towards the balcony.
The cherry tree bloomed in October, not with the abundance of spring but with the desperation of autumn, like a farewell, the last dance before a permanent departure from the stage. I looked into the blue sky through the flowered branches and saw the swallows still lingering around the roof, late for their migration.
Tap water turned blue one day and red another, and sometimes contained the bodies of small silver fish, their tiny spines transparent under the sunlight, their scales the colours of the rainbow. Black More thought the fish had long been extinct. He showed us fossils with their body imprints. Grandma’s nephew visited from the country. He said a spring had erupted in their pigpen, with lukewarm water.
Under the cherry blossom, Black More had one hand in front of his chest, the remaining fingers pointing to the sky, his other hand behind his back at the same level. His eyes shut and opened again. ‘Be prepared,’ he said in his deep, musical voice.
My father was at that time the head of the provincial Peking Opera troupe. He took me to work occasionally, where I got to watch the actors practise their movements in costume. Underneath their opulent gowns, they trotted in small steps so their bodies remained still, as though they were gliding on water, steady and graceful. Some had flags sticking out from their shoulders; others, peacock tails from their hats.
I did not learn their steps or gestures. Instead I studied their elocution. I soon stood out in my school, attending reading competitions and reading out manifestos at the memorial park where the fallen soldiers had been buried. I loved reciting a poem about a visit to a sculpture exhibition that depicted the landlords’ cruelty towards the peasants. I injected so much emotion into the lines, my brother impersonated me for years afterwards.
The Peking Opera troupe was about to be disbanded. The actors came to our place and spent hours talking about their future and their last show, Butterfly Longs for Flower. It was a contemporary piece about Chairman Mao’s first wife Yang, who was imprisoned, tortured and executed. The music was based on folk songs from around Mao and Yang’s hometown. A high-pitched female chorus appeared repetitively in the background, singing ‘Liuyang River’. One scene was Yang’s solo in her prison cell in front of the window with a rising moon. She lamented her longing for Mao, wished him good health and affirmed her faith in the success of the Revolution. She called Mao’s name tenderly.
The title of the opera was in reference to Mao’s poem in a traditional lyric format, ‘Butterfly Longs for Flower’, written in response to a poet who had lost his wife to the civil war as well. ‘Yang’ is the character for ‘poplar’ and the name of Mao’s wife, ‘Liu’ is the character for ‘willow’ and the name of the poet’s wife. So Mao’s opening line reads, ‘I lost my handsome poplar and you lost your willow.’
Little Third listened to my readings. He cupped his chin in his hands and looked out the window at the falling leaves. He told me that Black More could read words written inside folded paper. He was learning left-hand calligraphy with him and practising walking backwards. We spent less time together now. The time for play had passed.
Grandma was having liver problems. She lay on her back in the north room, her tummy bloated like a balloon. We were told to keep away from her. The three of us were now living with our parents in one room. There were discussions about whether to send Grandma back to her hometown in the country, which usually ended with my father angry and my mother crying.
The first snow came in late November. It started in the morning and lasted the whole day. The winter night was long and we went to bed early. I must have had a nightmare and was woken up by a sound as if a train was approaching. Then the floor sprang up and sank down and shook sideways. My sister’s voice broke the moment of shock and confusion: ‘Earthquake!’
The whole building started to move. I sensed commotion from downstairs and on the other side of the wall. Lights were turned on. My mother put clothes on me. My father shouted at everyone to get out. My sister was the quickest, but she stopped when my brother asked, ‘What about Grandma?’
My father shoved my brother’s shoulder and said that there was no time for sentimentality.
My brother rushed
away and came back with a kitchen knife. He pressed the blade against his own wrist. ‘Both of us or neither of us.’ He kicked open the north room door.
The air inside was warm, with a stale sweetness. Grandma was lying next to the heater under a blue and white floral blanket heaped up in the middle, as if she was hiding a watermelon. She opened her yellow eyes briefly when the light was turned on. There were many crimson patches on her face, like a chrysanthemum.
Grandma had always been doing something. She rarely looked at anyone’s face, since she had my sister’s skirt to sew, a wok of boiling noodles to attend to, or my brother’s soccer shoes to scrub. Whenever asked to join us for a meal, she would wave her hands in the air and bow her head low as if she was embarrassed and quickly get back to whatever she was doing. Now she tried to wave us away again, but her hand flapped and she was breathing rapidly. She shut her eyes and turned away.
My father looked weary. He was forty-four and had started to lose his hair, and what was left was turning grey. ‘Just you wait!’ he said to my brother, and pulled my sister and me towards the stairs.
It was a black and white world outside. No wind. Neighbours were already in the distance, away from the villas. It was so quiet that I thought I heard snowflakes falling.
A shriek erupted from upstairs like lightning, piercing the muffled stillness of the night. It was my thirteen-year-old brother, half boy and half man, crying out for Grandma.
He came through the gate, his face as white as the snow. He ran straight to my father, swung his arm in the air and slapped him in the face. My father twisted his arm and asked if he was crazy. My brother called my father an old bastard, and choked himself in tears.
Neighbours gathered around us. Some came to ask about Grandma’s death; others took away my brother, who had stopped fighting and lay on the snow like a broken chair.
My mother came. When we were safe in her arms, we all began to cry.
