Daughter of the Bamboo Forest
Page 9
Little Jade heard him sigh. Then, as if he had made a decision, he straightened up silently, and began to build a fire just outside the back yard. The wind swept the flames from side to side and black smoke rose up to heaven, blending into the darkening sky. The old man rolled up his sleeves and took the chickens out again, one by one, to wrench their necks. Little Jade watched him through the flames. She covered her face, overwhelmed by a disturbing mixture of terror and fascination. His features blurred as he grasped a panicking, fighting bird. The wings flapped, the feathers flew. The chicken argued loudly and hopelessly until its broken neck was folded under its wing.
The sky had gone dark. The moon, large as a silver pan, rose from behind the mountains and stared down at them. Dogs were barking from the other end of the village. The bodies of the dead birds were piling up at the old man’s feet. Feathers stuck to his bare arms. Sweat glistened all over his face and drenched his shirt. He carried the dead birds to the fire four at a time and threw them into the flames. The flames died down for a moment and then shot up fiercely. The air smelled of burnt feathers and roasted meat. The dogs were howling again. They had picked up the scent and were coming in packs, running noiselessly like shadows, tongues hanging and dripping with saliva, eyes burning red.
Little Jade looked up at the moon and remembered the story of the moon goddess her grandma had told her so long ago.
One night, the roosters crowed at midnight. When people came out of their huts, they saw a sky brighter than ever before. There were ten suns in the sky. The fierce light and heat humbled the people, and they dropped to their knees. After that, the night never returned. People toiled under the evil sky to tend their crops. Their sweat dropped like rain on the ground and was absorbed by the cracking earth. The suns kept on blazing. The rivers were drying, and the trees were dying. Lizards and snakes were trapped in the hardened mud. Birds’ wings were burnt, and they dropped from the sky to rot on the parched earth. The only living beings that roamed freely were the green-headed flies with red wings that stung people and animals. People retreated back into their huts and waited for the next sign from heaven.
The emperor selected the fattest animals from the royal stable and sacrificed them to beg heaven for help. Heaven was closer to the earth then, and the Heavenly Emperor sent the god Yi to help the people. Yi descended to earth with his wife Chang Er. He asked the ten suns to take turns and come out to light up the world, one at a time. But the suns refused. They were brothers. They wanted to frolic together. In anger, Yi pulled out his black bow and white arrows and shot down nine suns one by one, leaving only one to fulfill the duty of brightening the days. The heat subsided and people sang and praised Yi, but the Heavenly Emperor was enraged. The suns were his sons. Nine of them had perished under Yi’s powerful arrows. He banished Yi to earth to age and die like other mortals.
The moon was glowing quietly, a giant silver pan silently turning in mid-sky as Little Jade thought about the legend of god Yi and his wife Chang Er. Banished to earth, Yi tried to win back the favor of the Heavenly Emperor by helping people to kill off monsters. He sacrificed giant snakes, wild boars, and elephants to heaven, but the Heavenly Emperor ignored him.
Grandma had said that Chang Er did not want to stay on earth to farm and weave like other mortal women. Most of all, she was afraid to grow old and die. Yi went to a Taoist monk to ask for help. The monk gave him a magical pill. If half of the pill was taken, one could live forever young. If the entire pill was taken, one could fly to heaven. Yi took the pill home and showed it to his wife. He wanted to share the pill with Chang Er on a chosen day. But the next day, when Yi was out hunting, Chang Er swallowed the entire pill and flew to heaven alone. The guards at the gate of heaven pushed her away because she had betrayed her husband. Having no other place to go, she went to live on the moon, a cold and lonely place. Yi, also lonely, died on earth.
When grandma told this story she did not say that it was sad for Yi to die alone on earth or that Chang Er had been a bad wife for betraying and leaving her husband. From her sad expression, Little Jade guessed that it must have been what she was thinking. Little Jade had kept quiet back then. She remembered sitting on her grandma’s lap. She remembered the feel of having one of her grandmother’s arms encircle her while the other arm pointed to the moon as she told the story. Her grandma had been like all other grandmothers telling their grandchildren the same story and looking at the same moon.
Little Jade watched the hunched over silhouette of her step-grandfather against the roaring flames behind her. The tributes to the cruel heaven were a pile of the dead birds with twisted necks. The Jade Emperor would not be pleased.
***
Little Jade and the step-grandfather were eating dinner of tofu cooked with soy sauce and scallion. Little Jade was hungry for roast chicken, but step-grandfather said that the chicken was sick and could not be eaten. The fat of the chicken skin boosted the fire and gave out a mouth-watering aroma that lingered in the air.
Someone knocked urgently. The old man got up to open the door, letting in a neighbor who lived three doors down. The neighbor announced that young Chen who lived in the house at the back of the village with his elderly parents was dead. The step-grandfather said, “I saw him by the river on my way to collect firewood just this afternoon,” he said, “We greeted each other. I guess it was the last time we spoke.”
Little Jade almost interrupted the old man. No, he did not speak to you, he only waved, she thought. But she kept quiet, listening to the neighbor describe how Chen carried the water back to his house, but before he could cross the threshold, he fell face down and died.
The neighbor conversed with the step-grandfather loudly. He wore a cotton shirt, opened in the front, showing a strip of yellow skin underneath. His neck was marked with reddish purple lines where he had used a coin to scrape up and down all around his neck to let out the fire inside his body. The horizontal creases under his chin were black with mud and formed a crisscross pattern with the scrape marks on his neck. He talked cheerfully, his spit flying. He said, “This weather, you know. It’s the imbalance between fire and water. Too much fire inside people can burn us to death.”
The step-grandfather made an approving sound. The neighbor continued, “We have to let the fire out by drinking grass root soup. I drink a whole lot of grass root soup these days. Say, why did you kill and burn those chickens? The entire village smells of roast chicken. Are you making sacrifices to heaven in your own back yard?” He laughed, masking uneasiness, and looked over the dinner table to see what were in the dishes.
The step-grandfather frowned and said gravely, “The chickens were sick and I had to kill and burn them to stop the disease from spreading. I would not sacrifice sick chicken to heaven.” The neighbor nodded knowingly, blinking his eyes as if to remember every word in order to later repeat them to others.
***
The step-grandfather left the next morning to pay condolences to the family of the dead. He told Little Jade to stay home and not to go outside to play. She spent the morning looking at the red dots that blossomed all over her legs. Little Jade scratched them as hard as she could and squeezed them one by one with her fingernails. But only a sticky transparent liquid came out. She put her fingers under her nose and smelled a faint odor like the fish stench in the market place.
Little Jade was feeling nauseous, and didn’t want to stay inside anymore. She stepped out of the house and sat underneath a big tree. It was a pine tree, the only kind that hadn’t lost its leaves at this time of year. The sunlight fought to penetrate its needles, tossing light dots into the shadow under the tree. Little Jade sat on the thick twisted roots of the pine, feeling a flow of sweat traveling down her back. She looked out in front of her. Sunshine, a dusty yellow color, filmed over the sky—like an oil stain over a deep blue porcelain bowl.
Chapter 10: A New Beginning, Tianjin 1943
Silver Pearl felt suspended by the line that connected her and the unborn child.
With her lower body elevated and the inside of her legs feeling sticky, blood dried slowly and caked on her skin. She could feel her own heartbeats so well, drumming in the same rhythm with another vibration, weaker but distinct, and in her nauseous helplessness, Silver Pearl felt her belly jumping. The child’s fists were pushing from inside her. He could not wait to separate himself, but it was too early. He would not survive if he came out. Silver Pearl would not let go of him. The child had turned into an enemy. They wrestled their bodies and their wills against each other, pushing and pulling throughout the long journey to the city hospital.
When the wagon approached the hospital, the child finally quieted down. Silver Pearl felt calm as she was carried into the hospital ward and lowered in the disinfected air. Her sweating hands rested on the cool iron bed railings.
While Silver Pearl settled into the hospital, her mother went to the grand hotels in the city and looked for An Ling. It was fortunate that An Ling had just returned from a rent collection expedition. It was strange to see An Ling in the hospital setting. Silver Pearl woke one afternoon to find him sitting beside her bed, his hands holding his head. Silver Pearl felt as if they were seeing each other in a different lifetime. She knew she did not look so well. She had her feet elevated and was told to stay in bed as much as possible for fear of losing the baby. An Ling tried to cheer her with a box of chocolate candies and a bundle of red roses. It was comforting for Silver Pearl to see An Ling. For the first time, she felt that he cared for her. When her mother went looking for a glass vase for the roses, An Ling sat next to the hospital bed, holding Silver Pearl’s hand and asking her how she was feeling. He opened the box of chocolate and took out a piece to place it in her mouth. Silver Pearl let the richly sweet candy melt in her mouth slowly, savoring the luxury of An Ling’s attention. She asked An Ling about the rents collection, but he just shook his head and waved off her questions. He told her just focus on resting and taking care of herself and the baby inside her. Nothing else mattered. He also told her that he would find a place to settle everyone as soon as the baby was born. An Ling told Silver Pearl not to worry about a thing.
After visiting Silver Pearl at the hospital, An Ling quickly rented a house so that Silver Pearl’s mother could set up care for her. Each day, Silver Pearl’s mother cooked her daughter rich soup made of fatty pork’s knuckles and peanuts. In a matter of weeks, Silver Pearl was gaining weight and had better color. An Ling was furnishing a nursery in the rented house. Silver Pearl’s mother was asking around for a wet nurse in anticipation of the birth of her grandson in another month or so.
But all were deceived. The newborn pushed his way into the world one night at the hospital when Silver Pearl was too tired and her guard was down—when she thought he had given in and would bide his time until he was ready. Feeling him slipping loose from her, Silver Pearl cried out with fear. His blood-marred body was pulled out of her under harsh hospital light. He was alive, crying loudly for such a small baby.
And there was her son, clutching at her breasts, his mouth fitted tightly around her nipple while she rested in that very bed. She was happy those first few days after she left the hospital with her son. He was a feisty bundle of red, almost translucent, flesh and skin. Silver Pearl looked at him, at his lash less eyes shut close as his tiny fingers held firmly onto her breasts and his mouth suckled greedily. A tingling sensation traveled from Silver Pearl’s nipples down to between her thighs as she nursed.
Silver Pearl’s mother came into the bedroom and covered the dressing mirror hastily with a red cloth, to prevent the child’s spirit from escaping into the world that the mirror duplicated so well. Often, An Ling came to look at his son peering at him gently and smiling at his wife. An Ling had yet to consult the ancestral book of names which is why the child had not yet been given a proper name.
As things turned out, the infant left the world before the goldsmith could forge an elaborate gold locket with the inscription “longevity to one hundred years.” The locket would have been worn around his neck to bind him to this world.
One morning Silver Pearl woke before dawn from a terrifying dream in which she had watched herself explode open like a balloon. Pieces of her shot across the room, sticking to the walls and scattering on the floor. Silver Pearl woke with a start, frightened, and feeling her breasts hurting from too much milk. The infant was quiet. Not wanting to wake him and unable to sleep, she sat in bed, squeezing her nipples in the dark. Fine sprays of milk sprouted out of her breasts, wetting her hands. She sniffed and licked her palms. The milk was faintly sweet. Silver Pearl wanted her son to wake with his hunger and cry for her, so she could hug him close and let him drink away the abundance within her. She leaned over to examine his still, tiny figure under the blanket—and let out the scream she had been unable to utter in her nightmare. Her son’s body was already cold.
***
An Ling watched the hired hand dig deeply into the earth under a sky heavy with dark clouds. The man shoveled swiftly. The air was cold, and his quickened breath merged with the fog. The dry top layer of earth had been removed, and the man’s shovel was reaching for darker, softer soil beneath. This was a corner of the local cemetery. An Ling gave the gatekeeper some money for this plot of land where he would bury his infant son. An Ling watched as snow fell gently over the land before him, vast and open, naked after the harvest. The snow was a promise of water for spring farming in the coming year. He looked for the gray outline of the distant mountains. Every winter, the snow gathered on the mountaintop and melted into a stream when spring came—a delicate balance that the people living in this valley relied on for their livelihood. The snow was coming down thickly. An Ling could not see the mountains anymore. A few flakes of snow fell on his lashes and melted from the warmth of his skin. When the pit was large enough, the hired hand threw the shovel away and climbed out as snow accumulated on the ground.
An Ling walked slowly to a black lacquered box, the size of a tool chest, that lay on the ground a few steps away and knelt down next to it. He cleared away the layer of snow that covered this tiny coffin containing the body of his infant son. As soon as he wiped away the snow, another thin dust settled again. An Ling got up and carried the coffin to the pit. With the help of the hired hand, he laid the tiny coffin gently at the bottom. An Ling inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of mist and earth. Finally, An Ling climbed out of the pit. He shoveled snow and earth back into it, burying his son, whose eyes had hardly opened to see the world and who spent his brief life crying with his toothless mouth wide open, protesting against the pain that pushed him in and then out of life.
An Ling had not given his son a name. Being far from home, he could not bury the infant in the family cemetery. He thought of the two stone lions that guarded the cemetery gate, and he remembered the day his mother was buried. Four coolies had carried the heavy marble headstone carved with her name to be erected in front of her grave. An Ling remembered how the white marble reflected the bright sunlight of the day. Now, he patted the earth firm with the shovel and used a rock the size of a human head to mark the grave. He would send for a stone tablet tomorrow.
With snow dusting his shoulders, he climbed into the waiting wagon and sank back into the seat. The driver let out a shout and the wagon began to move. An Ling pulled up a sheepskin blanket to cover his legs. Silence settled in as the wagon rolled quietly in the soft snow.
The wagon stopped abruptly. An Ling climbed down. The driver, dressed in a dog skin coat, grinned at him and drove away. An Ling parted the pink satin and walked through the doorway of the House of Spring Flowers. A middle-aged woman with a red silk peony in her hair came forward and took his hands, gesturing to him to come inside. She led him through a long, dimly lit hallway to a bright noisy room, where men and women mingled and caroused. A maid greeted An Ling with a goblet full of densely sweet liquor. He drank the entire goblet and felt a slow burning sensation from his throat to his groin. An Ling’s head was dizz,y and he closed his eyes, let
ting himself be carried to a bed covered with slippery silk. Soft, nearly boneless hands undressed him. A warm, naked body slid next to him. An Ling could hear her uneven breathing. The air was saturated with perfume and An Ling wondered whether he was drugged. But his thoughts stopped as her lips pressed on his mouth and sucked eagerly. Sweet-tasting saliva sprung from under his tongue and flew from his mouth to hers.
He struggled to move, but her body was firmly on top of him, chest to chest, belly to belly, thighs to thighs. He wanted to speak and he wriggled his tongue and touched the edge of her teeth. He ran his tongue between her lips and teeth. He could feel her long-nailed fingers behind his ears scratching his scalp. Her breathing became heavy and short. His palms were sweating as he thrust his tongue into her mouth to explore her throat. But she had no tongue. And in a flash, her teeth closed in on his tongue and chopped it off like a guillotine slicing off a waiting head…
An Ling woke up as the carriage stopped. His head was pounding. He frowned as the silence around him was pierced by the voice of his mother-in-law. There was a cool wetness in his pants and his face was hot against the cold wind as he dismounted from the wagon. He had not been looking forward to returning to his wife and this rented house.
An Ling wanted to rid himself of the shadows from the past. He thought that after the disintegration of his family and the death of his mother, he could finally be free to live a simple and uncomplicated life within the small unit of himself, a wife and a son. He wanted to start something new, all by himself. He would leave Little Jade with his in-laws. It would have been a good arrangement.
An Ling entered the small house. His mother-in-law fussed around him, scurrying to prepare hot water for his bath. Silver Pearl called out for him from the inner room where she had been bedridden for months since the premature childbirth. An Ling ignored her calls and slumped in a large chair. Much as he yearned to move into the future, he shaded his eyes with one hand and remembered that night at the hospital…