Daughter of the Bamboo Forest

by Sheng-Shih Lin;Julia Lin

  “When you have children, you should take good care of them, so they will grow up properly. Don’t be like your father. He did not stay around to watch you grow up.”

  She had succeeded in educating her son. Her son was not like his father. He did not desert his wife. His wife deserted him.

  It was a cruel joke. Sometime she wondered if the gods had purposely arranged all this to punish her. She had wanted to find her son a wife who could read the classical texts and therefore understand the proper roles of different people. Who would have suspected that the “woman scholar” would turn out wanting to be like a man, wanting more than a woman could ever ask? Her dream of having a daughter-in-law to share her burden was gone. Instead of enjoying her old age, cared for by her daughter-in-law, she ended up taking care of her granddaughter alone in this big house. It’s all fate. Everything is like clouds and smoke that pass before the eyes, the grandmother thought. What do I have left now? No husband, son, daughter-in-law. There is only Little Jade to keep me company.

  She smiled, turning her head to see Little Jade. The girl was sleeping soundly, her face calm and without a care. She saw the red string with the jade next to the Little Jade’s face on the pillow. It was better that the necklace was made of string and not gold. She was too young to bear the weight of both gold and jade, not to mention the pearl, a memento from the island nation of Japan. It would only invite envy and trouble. May Kwan Yin look after Little Jade, my son and his young wife. She prayed silently. When did the rain stop, she wondered, and the moon grow so bright that it lit up the window?

  Chapter 5: The Great Grandfather

  Little Jade surveyed the land in front of her from the hillside of the Su family cemetery. The countryside extended from the foot of the mountain that was shaped like a sitting ox. She could see the bamboo forest that was swathed in a deeper shade of green than the wheat fields surrounding it. The wheat was tall and swayed in the fields in rhythm with the sweeping of the wind. In the fields, she could see farmers hunching over weeding in the field. She could see a gathering of oxen grazing at the edge of the pond. The oxen splashed water on their backs with their tails, chasing away flies. She could see the gray-tiled roofs and earth-colored wall of her house and other houses in the village. She imagined Orchid feeding the animals in the barn, the pigs’ snouts trashing in the feeding tray, flocks of chickens and ducks following her about, their wings flapping. She imagined her great-grandfather pointing and telling her, “Look, all this land belongs to our family.” Little Jade imagined turning to see him leaning against a tombstone, smiling at her, fingering his long white beard. But Little Jade’s great-grandfather was dead, buried next to his own father beneath this wet earth.

  Little Jade’s great-grandfather had liked to tell her stories. She was his only great-grandchild. There were no boys to steal his affection from her. He was lonely in his old age. His concubines preferred playing Mahjong together and his sons were afraid of him. By the time Little Jade was five years old, he took long walks with her, and he told her stories endlessly. Little Jade remembered the stories as his voice slowly flew into her memory. “Our ancestors were poor peasants from the north. Driven by famine and drought, they put their only son in a basket and carried him on one end of a yoke. On the other end, they carried a sack of grain.

  “It was a chaotic time. There were bandits on the road and many travelers were killed. There were girls sitting by the roadside with long grass tied across their foreheads. They were for sale. Their families watched from behind, inspecting the passersby for prospective buyers.

  “The girls would look down at the ground, listening to their fates being bargained. Some would be sold to brothels and some would be slaves for wealthy families. The lucky ones were bought by men looking for wives to carry on their lines.

  “The land was dry and would grow only dry yellow weeds and no grains. People were reduced to eating roots, mice, and insects from the fields. The only fat ones were ravens, which fed on the carcasses of animals and people. Your ancestors had to harden themselves with hearts of stone and guts of iron. If they shared their food, there would not be enough left to feed themselves.

  “After they finally reached Kai Yuan county, they bought a small plot of land at the foot of a mountain that was shaped like a sitting ox. They worked hard on the land and built up their household gradually. They painted the front door red to welcome good fortune and keep evil away. It was the beginning of the Su village.

  “The Su’s were peasants, Little Jade. Your ancestors established the family on a sack of grain and hard work. You must remember this and never take this land for granted. Maybe you are too young to understand, but someone has to teach you this. Just remember what I say and someday you’ll understand.

  “The world is strange to me now. I can no longer understand how things work and this new idea of a Republic is confusing. There has always been chaos before a great turn in history. I’m old, and I won’t live to see what will come out of all the changes. Without an emperor, everything will be different.

  “Little Jade, when I die, tell them to bury me deep down next to my father. In a famine, the wild dogs dig into the earth to find food. I want to sleep without being disturbed.”

  Little Jade did not respond. She did not want her great-grandfather to die. She grasped his bony hand in hers, and held it tightly.

  ***

  The wind blew the wheat field into waves of a green sea. Little Jade remembered visiting the family cemetery with her great-grandfather last year and the year before. This year she was paying a visit to him, seeing his name carved in stone among the other names of her ancestors.

  The grandmother was calling. Little Jade turned around and walked between the two stone lions that guarded the cemetery gate. The grandmother had already lit the incense, and the smoke blew quickly away in the wind as if the dead were anxious for a visit from the living.

  The grandmother instructed Little Jade to kneel in front of the new tomb covered with yellow earth. A thin layer of grass was already growing on its surface. Soon the grass would cover the great-grandfather’s grave, and it would be as green as the rest of the mountain.

  Little Jade kowtowed three times and mumbled what she could remember the Buddhist chant her grandmother had taught her. Silently, the grandmother burned gold foil and silver foil, folded in shape of ingots. The stone lions looked on fiercely, their teeth showing. But without pupils in their eyes, they were blind.

  ***

  Why doesn’t grandma sleep anymore? Why does she keep the windows open at night when the air is cold? Little Jade thought to herself as she watched her grandmother from the bed. It was no longer summer and the autumn moonlight flowed through the windows and poured onto the floor like white frost. Lately, the grandmother would stand in front of the window every night before Little Jade fell asleep and every morning before she awoke. It was getting harder and harder for Little Jade to sleep, knowing that her grandmother didn’t sleep anymore.

  Little Jade used to hold her grandmother’s hand as she fell asleep. She knew every rough spot along her grandmother’s fingers and every line on her palms. She remembered how her grandmother once read her palm. She showed her the lifeline, the marriage line, and where the wealth line met the marriage line and where the travel line crossed the lifeline. But when she asked what they meant, the grandmother told her that she was too young to know her fate, and wouldn’t tell her any more. Little Jade used to open her grandmother’s hand, comparing it with her own. The old woman’s palm was a deep cut of branches under a web of fine lines—like the veins of an autumn maple leaf, dry to the touch and fragile, as if it could be broken with a grasp.

  Little Jade missed the touch of her grandmother’s hands and the smell of her hair mixed with the fragrance of her favorite cream. When her grandmother lay next to her, Little Jade felt safe as she listened to the night wind shook the flaming maple tree in the courtyard. But for days the grandmother kept the windows open, allowing the evil
spirits of the night to enter the room. Little Jade hugged the quilt closely and tightly closed her eyes. She was chilled by the night wind blowing through her ears—knowing her grandmother was standing in front of the open window, her long, loose hair flying like a gray cloud in the wind.

  ***

  The grandmother was time traveling, and her life came floating by. Don't cry, my son. Your little face turned red like beets when you screamed. Don’t wave your fists in the air. And don’t come pulling on my breasts, my hands, my hair. It was hard to raise you, my son. You were always sick, needy, demanding. There were times I felt that I had stolen you from the Buddha and was not allowed to keep you for too long. But now you are as tall as your father and far away from me.

  Where are you, my son? Do you travel by airplanes or do you ride the train? Maybe you would pass by your father on the street in a big city and not recognize him. Maybe he had already forgotten you. Your father, he used to fly an airplane, but he never took me anywhere. You are your father's son, the flying kind. But I am tired of waiting. I have been trying to fly for years. I had been gathering feathers, but they fell off my body like leaves in autumn. Nobody can stop me now that the old are buried, and the young too restless to care. I have been waiting for years. And my husband, why is your ghost standing outside my window, blocking my view of the sky?

  I remember how, long ago, I slept next to you and knew that I could never have you. And you knew that I wanted you, as you watched me falter with your cold eyes. But this heart is like a spider’s web. In every knot is tangled a look, a silence, a sigh. Full of dust, your heart is a harp I never learned to play. But I never ceased loving you.

  ***

  Little Jade’s body trembled as she woke up. Her soul was scattered about in the house, in the courtyard, in the garden. She closed her eyes, closed her fingers into fists, and clenched her toes. She opened her eyes and things fell into place in the room. The mosquito netting clouded her vision like the morning fog. The windows were wide open. Little Jade looked at the light outside the windows, guessing the time of the day. She could see the white porcelain Kwan Yin statue in the shadowy side of the room. “Grandma,” she whispered, feeling her grandmother next to her, and waited for a response.

  Little Jade turned to see her grandmother. Her lips were closed in a tight thin line. Her brows were thickly knotted. Her hair was spread on the pillow. She looked disturbed, as though she was having a bad dream. Little Jade pulled on her grandmother’s sleeve and called again, “Grandma! Grandma!”

  She did not answer.

  The mosquito netting flapped in the morning breeze. The first crows of a rooster from the other side of the courtyard tore open the quiet of the morning. It was getting brighter in the room. Little Jade knelt beside her grandmother. She pulled and tugged at her arms, but could not wake her. She had drifted away in a bad dream to an unknown place, from where she could not find her way back to the Su village. Maybe her soul was flying over the continent, lost between the mountains in a province thousands of miles from home. She would ask for directions from the local spirits, but would not understand their dialect. She has never traveled outside her village, and without a guide, she is forever lost.

  Enclosed in the mosquito netting, Little Jade tried to wake her grandmother. The bed was an island; the mosquito netting was the smoke and mist of the early morning. A day was ahead and much needed to be done. The porcelain Kwan Yin smiled in the shadow as if she knew a secret that no one else had yet discovered. Yesterday’s sandalwood incense ash lay in the green copper pot. The smell of sandalwood hung faintly in the air--a memory of what was no longer there.

  Chapter 6: An Ling

  The servants carried Little Jade from her bedroom. She did not struggle, and she did not say a word. She could hear the old nanny crying and talking to herself as she washed the grandmother’s body in the bedroom. The curtains were drawn , and the door was closed. She could hear Orchid’s footsteps running back and forth, carrying water for the wash. Why? They told Little Jade that her grandmother had gone to the Western Heaven to be with Buddha. Little Jade wanted to stay with her in the bedroom, but they sent her to the library. How could she be dead? Little Jade thought. She was just sleeping. The bed is still warm.

  The maids spent the day decorating the house with white cloth. Yards of white fabric draped around the ancestor altar in the family hall. A newly carved wooden tablet with Little Jade’s grandmother’s name was added to the altar. A pair of tall white pillar candles burned on either side of the altar. Long strips of white hemp hung from the ceiling beams of the family hall. A pair of paper dolls stood on either side of the family altar—the grandmother’s servants in the underworld. The maids were making mourning robes out of white hemp for everyone. All the servants tied a white sash around their heads and waists to show respect for the dead.

  The old nanny had asked the letter-writer to inform all the relatives. Little Jade wondered if her father would come back. Maybe her father didn’t want to come back.

  In the evening, the grandmother was placed in the family hall in a coffin. She was wearing her best silk gown, a shimmering royal blue fabric trimmed with gold with matching slippers. Death did not remove the furrow between her brows. It was as if she was still enduring painful thoughts. The rich gown covered her slight body. Her thin fingers folded across her chest. Her face was the color of incense ash, and her hair was neatly oiled and combed smoothly. Two monks in yellow robes chanted in unison beside her. Without a family member present to make decisions, the accountant allocated minimum funds for a bare-bones funeral for the matriarch of the house. She would be there for seven days and nights. A full funeral would have taken forty-nine days, as was the funeral for Little Jade’s great-grandfather.

  Relatives sent condolences, but no one came to pay respects because they did not want to travel when the roads were not safe. Many were planning to move south to escape the chaos of the war, and some had left already. The household was in flux, and news from the outside world was not peaceful.

  Little Jade was no longer allowed to sleep in the grandmother’s bedroom. The servants moved her belongings to a guest room.

  Little Jade was awakened by noise outside the windows early in the morning. She opened the windows, and looked out eagerly, thinking that perhaps her father had returned. The morning air was chilly. Little Jade could see Orchid in the near distance, helping the gardener drain water from the goldfish pond. The gardener used a large net to scoop up the fish. Orchid separated the goldfish and put them into terra cotta urns. Little Jade watched Orchid put her hands in the water to play with the goldfish, laughing. Her hands were red from the cold, but she didn’t seem to mind. As Little Jade looked on through the open window, her breath turned into white fog. Her father was still not home.

  Little Jade put on her padded jacket and pants. She had wanted to join Orchid and play with the fish, but she changed her mind. The house was quiet. She tiptoed to the kitchen. On the stove, a pot of porridge was warming over the dying ashes of the coals. Little Jade knew the porridge was for breakfast. She opened the screened food closet, took out a piece of sweet red bean cake and bit into it. The oily sweet cake was chewy and stuck to her teeth.

  The back door opened silently at the touch of her fingertips. Outside, she almost stepped on a chicken. The chickens must have been hungry because they thought someone had come to feed them and were making grumbled noises of approval. Little Jade went over to the barn and took out a basket full of dried corn, scattering kernels over the ground. She watched the chickens busily pecking at the yellow dirt as she finished the last bite of her red beab cake. She rubbed her oily hands on the sides of her pants and squatted down to play with the small yellow chicks, letting them peck at her hands, even though their beaks were sharp. She picked up a yellow chick with black dots on its head and felt the small body. The chick was soft in her palm. She stuck her fingers under the tiny wings for warmth. The downy chick trembled as her cold fingers slid beneath i
ts tender feathers.

  Little Jade felt something tugging at her pants. She turned around and was face-to-face with an old hen. It had pecked through the outer layer of her padded cotton pants. It looked angrily at her with bits of white cotton fiber hanging from its beaks. Little Jade put down the chick, got up and kicked at the flock of chickens, sending them away, flying and screeching.

  She walked into the vegetable garden and looked around. The dried squash vines hung from the arbor. She pulled down a strand of dried leaves and crushed them into small pieces that slipped through her fingers. A few large squashes had rotted through, leaving behind brown fiber in the shapes of the original fruits. The wheat field next to the vegetable garden was naked, no longer green. The farmers had harvested the crop weeks ago. Bundles of hay were piled up in the middle of the wheat field. Stubbles of wheat plants dotted the yellow earth.

  She looked straight ahead and saw the bamboo forest green against the pale purple sky. She walked through the vegetable garden. Crowds of brown sparrows pecked at the overgrown vegetation. The pea pods had popped open, and the seeds had been eaten by birds or carried away by ants. The leaves of the cabbages were blue with dark purple veins and thick like giant seashells. They opened to let out tall stems full of small yellow flowers, rising high from the hearts, luring the last white butterflies of the season.

  Little Jade stopped at the edge of the bamboo forest, standing under the shadow where the dark green moss grew. She could hear the forest—the rustle of bamboo leaves sighing and sighing at the urging of the autumn wind. She remembered her grandmother sighing whenever she stopped in the middle of her needlework. She would look up at her grandmother, questioning her with her eyes.

  She would sigh again, and say, “You don’t understand. In this life, seeds are seeds and fruits are fruits. Little Jade, remember: Plant good seeds in this life and you will harvest good fruits in your next life. Whatever happened to me in my life was already decided before I was born. I must have taken more than I gave in my previous life, and I have tasted bitter fruits this time around.”