She climbed onto the bed and pulled the blanket over her lap. She started to peel the orange, but the juice from the skin got into her eyes and stung. She tossed the orange onto the floor and watched it roll toward the corner of the room stopping next to the stove. She pulled the blanket over her head. She wanted to block off the light of the day and the loneliness inside her, but she did not know how. Closing her eyes, she continued to pray, her hands pressing against each other next to her forehead. How she missed her grandmother, and how she wished that her father was around. She did not belong here, or anywhere else. Silver Pearl is going to be having a baby, a baby that will also be her father’s-- a baby that will have both a mother and a father. Little Jade’s thought slowed as she squeezed her eyes shut, and squeezed herself smaller, smaller, into the shape of a baby, an infant. She was trying to remember her mother. She thought of how her mother had carried her inside her belly, and of how she must have held her after she was born. She pictured herself in the arms of her mother. She could imagine her mother looking at her, cooing at her. Little Jade drifted off to sleep thinking of how safe she would have been and felt in her mother’s arms.
***
“The window will bring light into the house,” said Silver Pearl. She leaned against the wall, her arms folded over her barely protruding belly. She watched the carpenter squatting on the floor, taking out his tools from a wooden box. After finding out that the carpenter had opened his own shop, Silver Pearl had asked her father to hire him to build a glass window in her parents’ house.
The carpenter looked up at her and smiled. “Yes, Mistress, there will be plenty of light. This is the best quality glass. Look—clear and smooth like still water.” He picked up a small piece of glass and held it in front of his face.
Silver Pearl glanced at the carpenter’s face through the glass pane. His smile was distorted by the glass. She said, “They say that glass is made of sand. I can’t believe it. Wouldn’t you say that modern science is like magic?”
“Yes, Mistress, maybe one day they can make a house out of only glass,” the carpenter said, and stood up. He was a full head taller than Silver Pearl.
Feeling uncomfortable, Silver Pearl turned and walked away, saying: “Nonsense, who would want to live in a glass house? You may as well not have a house at all.”
Silver Pearl smiled to herself, musing over the idea of a glass house. Then she felt a stark coldness as she imagined her life being played out like an opera for everyone to see. The carpenter was hammering to break open a hole in the wall. Silver Pearl imagined his muscled arm tensing and relaxing as each stroke of the hammer fell. Dong! Dong! Dong! Dong! The sound of the hammer echoed in the quiet house.
***
Clank! Crash!
“Aiya, I broke one.” The carpenter shook his head nervously.
“It’s only a small piece, not worth much,” Silver Pearl said lightly, lifting one eyebrow. She glanced sideways at the carpenter.
“Only you can say that, Mistress. This small piece of pane is worth enough to feed my wife and children for days.” The carpenter wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Don’t worry. I’ll pay for this one too. How many children do you have?” Silver Pearl sat down on a chair and crossed her legs.
“Thank you, Mistress. I have two sons and my wife is pregnant with another one. Looks like you are expecting one yourself. I hope it’s going to be a fat son.” Bowing, the carpenter smiled warmly, the veins on his forehead bulging.
“Why don’t you clean up this mess?” Silver Pearl’s right foot dangled in the air, and she glanced at the embroidered flowers on her red silk shoe.
“Yes, yes, I’ll get a broom. Be careful not to touch them. They cut like knives.”
“How long will it take you to finish this?” Silver Pearl asked as she looked up.
“I’ll try to finish it today. You can’t leave a hole in the wall overnight. The weather’s too cold.”
The carpenter was cleaning up the broken glass pieces. Suddenly, Silver Pearl was tired of the carpenter. His breath reeked of garlic and his bald head was tinged green, like a duck’s egg. His eyes were downcast when he talked to her, and he smiled and bowed, constantly showing his yellow teeth.
She had wanted to see him, but he was no longer that tall man with sweaty arms and earnest eyes who had held her hands across the counter and wouldn’t let go. Now she didn’t know why she ever insisted on having a glass window installed in this house. Her father said that the window would look odd in such a modest house. She argued that the house was too dark for her parents’ eyes. But Silver Pearl knew that her parents would have preferred to have the money instead-- to worry about eyesight is frivolous in a poor family. She looked at the big hole in the wall. It looked like a punishment for Silver Pearl’s headlong pursuit of her own wishes.
Cold wind poured into the house, slapping her face until her cheeks burned. Through the hole she could see the villagers gathering to gawk. She turned around, knowing that they were pointing at the window—some smiling and some frowning to themselves and to each other, all talking and joking about her. The window seemed enormous. The carpenter used up all the glass panes in his shop to build it. During the day, the window was filled with the villagers’ watchful eyes, and there were always a few neighborhood children knocking on it, pressing their faces against the glass panes. Day and night, chilling wind leaked through the gaps between the window and the wall, rushing into the house. Silver Pearl’s mother put a red cloth over the window as a makeshift curtain. No one ever opened it, not even to let light in during the day. The curtain was like a cover over the cage of a wild animal. There was an animal breathing and walking restlessly behind the curtain, waiting to emerge.
The sunlight entered the house through the curtained window and imbued the room with a shimmering red glow, casting waves of light on the walls and ceiling. The waves rose and fell like tides as the wind blew the rippling curtain.
From inside the house, the world beyond the curtain appeared as a shadow theater. Behind the curtain, Little Jade could see silhouettes of neighborhood children waving their arms, fighting with each other to enter into the house. She could hear their chattering voices as they elbowed one another. Someone in the back was crying: “I want to see! I want to see!”
It was a pointed, dry, insistent voice rising above all other noises, pushing into the room by the gushing frigid wind. It was a small girl shorter than Little Jade, with two stiff braids sticking out from behind her neck, her nose running, her fingers balled into fists, looking hot-eyed at the backs of the tall boys pushing each other beside the window. “I want to see,” she cried again, “I want to see!”
Her voice drove Little Jade toward the window. She lifted the curtain. Abruptly, Little Jade stood face to face with five boys. There was a moment of silence as their breath and her breath clouded the glass pane between them. The boys’ startled faces yielded to uncertain smiles, eyes squinting and mouths hanging open, as if they could not decide whether to stay or to run away. Maybe it was the troubling red light that compelled Little Jade to pound on the window, twisting her face at the boys, as she shouted, “Go away, go away, go away!”
The faces behind the glass started to twist, mimicking her. The older boys began to pound on the window from the outside, and the small ones followed. The window became cloudy as Little Jade breathed harder and faster, pounding and pounding. The window was shaking under her fists. Scared, Little Jade stopped pounding, and she backed away from the window, but it continued to vibrate on its own. Pieces of glass broke off, making shattering sounds. As each piece fell off, it caught the sunlight and shone brilliantly for an instant until it crashed to the ground, raising a splash of light dust that slowly dispersed.
Chapter 9: Step-Grandfather
The carpenter came back and mended the window. Little Jade’s fingers had been cut by small pieces of glass caught in the cuffs of her pants that she had tried to pick out, one by one. The shini
ng grains of glass got stuck under her fingernails; blood oozed from the tips of her fingers.
Nothing seemed to go right in the step-grandparents house. One night, Silver Pearl woke up in the middle of the night, hungry. She went to the kitchen to look for something to eat and tripped over a small wooden stool by the kitchen door. Little Jade had left the stool there, after using it earlier in the day when she sat on it as she helped her step-grandmother shell peas.
Awakened by noises, Little Jade climbed out of her bed and watched Silver Pearl from behind the shadows of the people huddling around her outside the kitchen—the neighbor women, the maid, the herbal doctor, and the step-grandmother. The quivering flame in the oil lamp lit up Silver Pearl’s face. It was white as a sheet of blank paper. The expression on her face was like meaningless words scratched by a desperate illiterate. The bloodstain beneath her was growing.
A neighborhood woman told her to go back to sleep. Little Jade went back to her room and climbed into the bed. But for a long time, she could not sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, the same image appeared—a circle of whispering shadows surrounding a fire, and next to the fire a bleeding woman, eyes closed, moaning weakly in her own darkness. It was a primitive ritual that could only happen in ghost stories during long dark nights.
Fearing a miscarriage, Silver Pearl left her parent’s house before daybreak, accompanied by the maid and her mother. They traveled on a hired wagon, and then they boarded a train for the hospital in the city of Tianjin where An Ling had gone weeks earlier.
***
The next morning, Little Jade found her step-grandfather hunched next to the dining table, smoking his pipe. On the table, there was an extra set of chopsticks, an empty bowl, a dish of pickled vegetables, a dish of salted fish, and crumbled peanut shells. He had eaten already. Little Jade went to the kitchen and got some water to wet her face and rinse her mouth. A pot of porridge was warming on top of the stove. She opened the lid and white steam rose from the pot to warm her face.
***
Little Jade walked out the front door, into the sunshine and down the street with a bottle in her hand. She was going to the liquor shop to get her grandfather something to soothe his stomach. A wind of dust hit the her face and filled her mouth. She rubbed her eyes until tears came out. Her mouth tasted of mud. The street was empty. Houses and trees lined the street like shadows from another time. The sunlight beat over her head. The weather was summer-like in the middle of winter. It had been sunny for days. The first few days, people had come out to sit under the sun. They spread their clothes and quilts under the sun to rid them of dampness. They hung their straw mats under the sun to kill the eggs of bugs that nestled in the straw.
The harvest was over, people had nothing to do, and they were grateful for the abnormally warm weather. They gathered in the open space in front of the temple to tell stories and improvise operas. They sat on the wooden benches that they had carried on their backs. Old men played games of chess under the sun.
When the evening came, people brought out tables and benches so they could eat outside, fanning themselves all the while. The sky was clear enough to count the stars. They slept on sun-soaked straw mats. Life went on this way for a while, but then the weather had become hotter and hotter, as if the sun were coming closer and closer to the earth. When people greeted each other on the street, they mumbled, “What a good sun!”
***
Then the winds had come, lifting the dust off the streets and settling it on the rooftops, and blowing into the eyes of people and animals. Almost overnight, the flies came too—green-headed and red-winged, large and humming like bees. They were everywhere, in every kitchen, and every backyard. A big swarm of them over the garbage heaps. There was another swarm over the night soil pond. People stayed inside and slept beneath mosquito netting and covered their food with screens.
In the empty street there was only Little Jade and a yellow dog. The dog sniffed along the base of the walls and then went from one tree to another, leaving its marks. Its tail wagged lazily. Little Jade was sweating under her quilted jacket. Another wind swept up the dust, forcing her eyes to close. When she opened her eyes again, the dog was gone. She saw thousands of shining dust motes spinning in the air, finer than snow, heavier than fog, falling and falling, settling in her hair, on her skin.
It was getting hotter. Little Jade put the bottle on the ground and took off her jacket, feeling her clothes sticking to her back. She shook the jacket, placed it under her arm, and kept on walking. The liquor shop was near.
An old woman came out to fill the bottle with yellow liquor. Her red eyes looked to Little Jade like the eyes of a dead fish. Little Jade paid her, and the woman gave back a few coins of change. “Little girl,” she said, “you shouldn’t be playing outside. Go home now.”
Little Jade muttered that she was not playing. She was getting things for her grandfather.
The old woman said urgently, “Go home! Go home! There’s a plague!” Only then did Little Jade notice that the woman was wearing a small flower made of white strings which marked a death in the family. The shop owner, the man with a garlic-shaped nose, was dead. She must be his widow. Little Jade did not know what a plague was, but she felt the weight of the old woman’s words, uttered from her thin lips with a tremor.
Little Jade turned and headed back home, walking faster and faster, almost running, holding the bottle with both hands. The sunlight was grazing the back of her neck, as if gnawing with small, sharp teeth, slowly and persistent. It inflicted traces of pain on her skin, seeping into her blood, making her feverish.
***
Her step-grandfather was in the main room. He was sitting on a short stool, bending over, weaving a basket with stalks of bamboo skin. His knees secured the sides of the basket while his hands flipped swiftly in and out. Pale green bamboo stalks scattered around his feet. He put the basket on the ground, stretched his back, and looked up to smile at Little Jade.
“Here’s the bottle.” Little Jade put it on top of the dining table.
He looked down again. His hands went through the stalks on the ground and decided on one. He held a stem in front of his face, trimming it a little here and there with a small knife. Little Jade squatted down to look at the unfinished basket. Thin unwoven stalk ends thrust out along the edge of the basket, arching gracefully.
Little Jade ran her fingers over the surface of the basket, the crisscrossing green bamboo skin felt smooth and familiar. She thought of the bamboo forest back at home and closed her eyes. Waves of green shadows rose and fell in her mind and she felt a coolness climbing up her spine.
“Isn’t bamboo useful?” her step-grandfather said, trimming a stalk. “You can weave it into baskets and curtains, and make it into houses and fans. We eat with bamboo chopsticks and sit on bamboo stools. It’s strong yet flexible. It bends, but does not break. And bamboo shoots are delicious.”
“Just like a gentleman,” Little Jade interrupted, feeling unsettled. She had heard these words before.
“Yes, like a gentleman. Perhaps Confucius said that.” The step-grandfather wove a new stalk into the basket. “But I think bamboo is better than a gentleman,” he said, “Every part of a bamboo tree is useful. A gentleman is worthless, in a time like this.”
His words reminded Little Jade of the old woman at the liquor store. “Grandpa,” she started reluctantly, feeling the words choking at her throat.
“Yes, Little Jade.”
“Old Wong is dead. His widow sold me the liquor. And here’s the change.” Little Jade took the coins from her pocket, squeezing them with her fingers. “She told me there is a plague.”
“There is a plague,” the step-grandfather said. Little Jade stood up, watching him from above, feeling tall. She waited for the old man to say more. But he just kept on nodding, sitting there. She looked around the room. The faces of different gods stared down at her. Their faces were faded in the sunlight. They were powerless, just like her. Kwan Yin smiled down
at her blandly from the altar. Little Jade fingered her jade disk, “keep me safe” she prayed silently, “keep grandpa safe!” The old man stood up slowly, holding the edge of the dining table. Small pieces of bamboo fell off his pants. He said: “Little Jade, let’s go out and gather some firewood.”
They walked against the wind, toward the small forest behind the house. The old man carried a yoke with ropes dangling from both ends and held an ax in one hand. Little Jade followed him closely, stepping on his shadow. They crossed a shallow stream and saw a forlorn man filling buckets with water. The step-grandfather called out to him, but he merely waved back.
She followed her step-grandfather into the forest. She worked side by side with him, picking up small branches for kindling and piling them under a tree. The old man used the ax to chop the larger branches. They worked silently until dusk. The old man tied the firewood into two large bundles and carried them with the yoke. The sky had turned red, a tide of blood rising from the far horizon. The setting sun was like an incubated yolk, throbbing with vessels and veins.
The chicken cackled as they walked into the back yard. Little Jade went into the kitchen to wash her hands while her step-grandfather put away the firewood and chased the chickens into their cages. Pressing her wet hands over her cheeks, She leaned against the doorway, watching the old man chase the chickens with a tree branch, clucking at them. She laughed, clapping her hands. The old man picked up a tree branch and poked a ball of feathers in a corner of the yard, disrupting the swarm of flies circling the body of a dead chick. He shooed all the other chickens into the bamboo cage. Then he opened the lid of the cage and took the chickens out one by one, examining them closely under the fading daylight, and then he returned them to the cage.
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