Song of the Silk Road

by Mingmei Yip

  Under the table, I pinched him hard on his thigh to no avail.

  But Frank and Donna didn’t seem to be shocked at all by this unexpected piece of news. Bleary-eyed, Frank patted Alex on the shoulder and yelled above the din, “Good for you, son!” while Donna smiled her sharp-toothed, tipsy smile.

  “Just let us know when you’ve picked a date,” the father added. After that, both parents leaned to hug and peck their son’s cheek, then mine. Alex pulled me into his arms and kissed me on my lips.

  Abruptly Frank stood up, lifted his glass, and hit it with a knife. “Quiet. Please be quiet, everyone. I have something very important to announce!”

  A silence fell over the hall as all eyes found their way to our table.

  Frank said in his booming, drunken voice, “Tonight I’m very happy to tell you that my handsome son will soon marry this lovely Chinese lady.”

  A round of applause exploded in the hall.

  He continued, “Let’s have a toast to the future bride and groom!”

  Another round of alcohol-enhanced applause burst out. People drank in big gulps after that, upending their glasses.

  Congratulations rose and fell in a raucous heterophony from all corners of the packed hall.

  After the commotion subsided, Frank sat down and asked his son, “Alex, how do you want to be married?”

  Alex lifted my hand to plant a kiss. “Something simple, maybe in the desert here.”

  The father said, “You know, son, you can have something very fancy if you want. St. Regis or the Plaza. Just let us or my assistant know, OK?”

  After observing this drama in disbelief, I turned to ask my young lover, “Wait a minute, Alex, did I say I’d like to be engaged, even married?”

  I could not tell if Frank or Donna heard what I’d said or, if so, were disturbed. I had not noticed any sign that they cared how long Alex and I had been dating, if we were suited for each other, or even if I truly loved and cared for him.

  Alex leaned close to me and spoke in a heated whisper, “Please, Lily, say yes if you truly love me. This is a rare chance to get approval from my parents. I hardly see them, let alone when they are both in such a good mood!”

  I remained silent for a moment, then whispered into his ear, “Can’t you tell they’re not in a good mood, but an alcoholic one?”

  He ignored my remark but hissed, “Please, we’ll be leaving tomorrow. Can’t you just say yes?”

  But I couldn’t.

  That night, Alex was upset. He didn’t touch me, and we had zero communication—emotional, intellectual, or sexual.

  What I really wanted was to be left alone, to think things through, especially my goal in life, which for sure was not to get married, have children, move to the suburbs, and live boringly ever after. I felt sad that not only was our last night together sexless, but it ended on a sour note.

  The next morning Alex and I showered and dressed in silence. He still acted hurt and angry, and I did not know what to say to smooth things over.

  After a quick breakfast, I politely shook hands with his parents before they crawled inside the waiting car. Then, under his parents’ watchful eyes and to my surprise, Alex pulled me to him and kissed me deeply.

  After the long kiss, Alex looked at me with his sad eyes. “Lily, I’m sorry that we quarreled. I really don’t want to go back and leave you here.”

  “Alex, you’ll probably forget me once you’re back home.” Though I hoped he wouldn’t.

  “Why do you say that?” It was the first time he raised his voice at me.

  “I just think…”

  “Don’t I matter to you?”

  “Alex, you’re too young to…”

  He cut me off again. “I’m not the child you think I am, and I know what I want. If you don’t want me, just say so!”

  I stood there, speechless. I didn’t know if I was too stunned by his outburst or because it was true that I didn’t want him—at least until I got my three million dollars.

  He pushed a step further. “Say you love me.”

  I couldn’t—although I did love him. If things didn’t work out, I wouldn’t have the heart to break his heart.

  So I just stood there like a dummy—under my lover’s sad-eyed inquisition and his parents’ puzzled scrutiny.

  “Then please sort out your feelings first before you say yes or no. I can wait. I’m still very young, remember?”

  After a long, silent look, Alex crawled inside the car beside his parents and pulled the door shut with a bang. Then the car sped away, leaving a trail of dust to blind my teary vision.

  Back in my little cottage, I spent most of my time sitting on my tire sofa and staring out the window, watching the sun’s glorious rise and its spectacular descent. While birds glided over the golden sand, my heart ached with a pain I hadn’t known existed. The desert, with its forever shifting dunes, sometimes appeared to me like a meditating giant, sometimes a voluptuous mantra-chanting goddess. But now in all its guises, this whooping sand saddened me, especially in the twilight, when Lop Nor’s sad face emerged, followed by Chris’s not-quite-forgotten one, and, most painful of all, Alex’s face, sometimes eager, sometimes angry, sometimes hurt.

  As Alex called me the “desert enchantress,” I hoped my life was destined to be exciting and adventurous, not a nine-to-five existence—or nonexistence—to make the rich boss even richer, or that of a high-society housewife busy planning parties and private school board meetings, squeezing out time in between for hairstyling, manicure, pedicure, facial, spa, massage, and Paris–London–Fifth Avenue shopping.

  I sighed. What a mess this desert trip had turned out to be.

  PART TWO

  12

  Falling in Love Is Easy

  Every night in my solitary bed I fidgeted and desired Alex’s warm body, trying to re-create the feeling of his hands searching my face, breasts, and between my thighs. I missed him terribly, but I was also relieved, in a way, that he was gone—so I could focus on my three-million-dollar mission.

  Life would move on. Always.

  My next stop would have to be visiting the monk, which I’d been dreading for a long time—especially the “hanging-upside-down-lotus.” Although I’d lost my virginity at seventeen to a neighbor nerd just to be rebellious and allowed a few men to share my bed in my twenty-nine-year existence—for love (a need), sexual pleasure (a bonus), filling up my loneliness (a desperation), and asserting my female power (a challenge), I’d never considered myself loose. I was but a victim of my own weakness, not that of my yielding vagina but of my vulnerable heart. I told myself that I fell for men so easily because I possessed a rare ability to see past their exterior to discover something special, or even mysterious, within.

  This had first been pointed out to me by one of my high school classmates who’d always disapproved of the boys I fell for. One time she looked at me with disapproval. “Lily! What do you see in that assless ass? Is it because you feel sorry for him? I don’t even want to breathe the same air that he breathes. Yuk!”

  When I was in my teens, my mother would sometimes ask me to go to the market to pick a fresh red snapper for dinner. I’d always hated the crowded, noisy, filthy place, especially the slippery floor and the stench like a homeless person’s armpits. Working my way between the haggling housewives, I’d hold my breath while pushing through to look for my mother’s dream snapper. With disgust, I’d quickly flip the pile of fish, then pay without bargaining so I could leave the place as quickly as possible.

  But one time something magical happened. When I was looking for the right fish, I saw a beefy chunk of a man kneeling with one leg beside a huge block of ice. With his large hands, this gigantic flesh slab was attacking the other, frozen slab with an ice pick, shattering it to pieces.

  I could never explain how I felt at that moment. Somehow, eyes glued to this testosterone-filled chunk, my whole being seemed to merge with his pounding, muscular arms and fierce concentration. I watched him in a sta
te of ecstasy, completely forgetting my own existence, not to mention the filthy market and my mother’s dream fish.

  When the slicing was finally done, he tossed some of the crushed ice into a plastic bucket, then stood up to hand it to a woman—his wife, I guessed. It was then that I noticed he was unusually tall, at least six feet if not more. His blood-stained, blue overalls, black gloves, and plastic booties gave him an intimidating yet detached look, far more imposing than the trying-to-look-tough-and-rough models in a men’s fashion magazine.

  My feet remained rooted in this place I’d always hated as I continued to ogle this man, mesmerized by his street performance.

  Fifteen minutes later, when he stood up to deliver his umpteenth bucket of ice, his gaze shot in my direction and our eyes met. My already-accelerated heartbeat instantly doubled in tempo, followed by a tightening throat. I was struck by a passion so intense that I felt I would just collapse into his arms on the spot amidst the bleary-eyed fishes.

  Since I didn’t know how to properly react to our fleeting eye contact, I simply smiled like an idiot struck delirious by some unnameable, mighty force. But alas, this moving mass of muscle didn’t seem to acknowledge my existence at all. Instead, I was cruelly jilted by his disdainful gaze, which quickly shifted to glower at the woman beside him. “Hey, bitch! How many times have I told you not to spill ice on the ground? Eh? Stupid!”

  Just then there was a loud Thuuummmp! It was a bloody fish head flying off a nearby chopping board, unwittingly killing my burgeoning lust, right then and there.

  On my way home holding the plastic bag with the fish squirming inside, I realized it was my love of literature that had turned the man into an object of romance and had transformed him from a fish vendor into a knight striding on his plastic boots to rescue me from the chaotic piles of smelly fish. In reality, he was probably an illiterate scoundrel whose wife-abusing, child-beating addictions were the only entertainments in his miserable, stinking life.

  The next day after I told my classmate about this incident, she laughed so hard that she had to squat on the floor, knees trembling.

  “Lily,” she blubbered, “you’re amazing! You read too many novels! Instead of inventing attractive traits for men, from now on you should dig out everything disgusting about them so your appetite for love will be smothered instantly!”

  I did listen to her, and by doing my best not to let my passion run loose like a wild dog chased by a drunk, I saved myself a lot of wasteful emotions. Until I met Chris and then Alex. And maybe Lop Nor.

  I had only myself to blame for all my messy relationships. No matter how much I’d tried to suppress my feelings, I love men and love falling in love with them. Because, with different men, I become a different woman. For Chris, I was a diversion from his duty-filled, boring, married life, and I felt flattered that I could provide the excitement—in life and in bed—that his wife could not. For Alex, maybe I was an exotic dish on the remote Silk Road, a feminine comfort in the masculine desert, and a solace for his loveless childhood. That, too, I was happy to provide. With Lop Nor— although nothing had happened between us—if he was really in love with me as I might be with him, I’d be a cool shower in the hot desert and a glimmer of light in his dark, tragic life.

  With all the men in my life, there was only one in whose eyes I was but worthless and good-for-nothing—my father.

  I’d been my mother’s only child growing up in the British Colony of Hong Kong. But not for my father; he had four boys with his other wife, whom I had only met a few times.

  My mother lost her parents, both factory workers in Canton, when she was only fifteen. Out of sympathy, her aunt, who worked as a janitor and could barely feed her own three kids, took my mother in. But when she heard that an uncle had planned to escape by sea from China to Hong Kong at the next full moon, she dragged my mother to the pier to send her on the uncle’s boat.

  When my mother arrived in Hong Kong, she was hungry, penniless, and bitterly hated by the adult relatives. The treacherous sea had engulfed three of them, and the survivors, all blaming my mother for bringing bad luck, abandoned her at an orphanage the following day. For two years, while working as a janitor in exchange for lodgings and meals, Mother was often beaten and starved by a sadistic attendant. One day after a severe beating, she ran away and wandered the streets for hours. Then she spotted a church and her tired feet carried her in.

  My mother cleaned for the church in exchange for meals and lodging. Considered a beauty because of her slim figure, oval-shaped face, and silky, waist-length, ink black hair, Mother was soon noticed by a middle-aged man. He came to the church to atone for his sinful nature—dishonest merchant, negligent father, philanderer. The sinner then seduced Mother, got her pregnant, and took her as his mistress. That man was my father, and the to-be-born baby was me. According to Mother, after my father had taken a look at my face and then my lower body, he exclaimed, “A crack! Money losing stuff!” then left without a word. In old China, girls were called “money losing stuff” since they only grow up to marry and adopt another family name. A crack is, of course, where the fortune leaks.

  After that, my father rarely came home. When he did, he would first eat my mother’s cooking, then fuck her hard—as if she’d not already been fucked hard enough. Even though my parents tried very hard—my mother suppressing her scream and my father pressing down the thin bed’s violent shakings—it sounded as if they were right underneath me, as in fact they were, because the tiny, rented apartment had room for only the one bunk bed where I slept on the upper level and my mother the lower one.

  But each time after my father’s departure, there was a small pile of money left on our multifunctional table (eating meals, doing my homework, doing chores, ironing clothes)—his only redeeming act.

  Gradually my father stopped his visits completely. While he was busy enjoying his other woman’s wifely favors, feeding both his mouth and his lust, my mother wore herself down cleaning and running errands to support us. She never missed a day of work, never took a vacation, never asked for a raise, and never complained. This may be considered stupid, but it also generated good karma. Because of her sacrifice I was able to fulfill my dream of studying creative writing in New York. The church, to reward Mother’s hard work, gave her a small pension after she completed her thirty years’ service keeping the church as immaculate as the virgin birth.

  No matter how hard I tried to persuade her, Mother refused to spend any of her savings but insisted that I should use it for my study in the United States.

  When I told her that she should at least splurge on something she really wanted, her answer was always, “I don’t need anything.”

  This reminded me of a saying I read somewhere: “Most people don’t get what they want because they forget what they want.”

  How very sad. That was my dear mother, whose dreams had, day by day, leaked through the windows she cleaned, between the planks she mopped, the sinks she washed, and the toilets she flushed after other people’s business. Now she’d completely forgotten that she, a maid, had once had dreams. However, she never forgot mine, and that really touched my heart.

  That was why I loved my mother but never felt I was my father’s daughter. I was sure that the feeling was mutual. I wondered sometimes, was my infatuation with men compensation for my “fatherless” childhood?

  I had no answer for that.

  Right then, I only wanted to continue my journey and collect my three-million-dollar fortune.

  After that, que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be.

  13

  Visiting a Monk

  A stranger who suddenly claimed to be my only relative on earth wanted me to have strange sex with a man I had never met who, worse, was a monk.

  Of course, I thought, I might not mind it if the monk was young and handsome, but what if he was ugly to death, or if he wanted to tie me up before sex and beat me up after? But if he was indeed young and handsome, then why would he have chosen to
be a monk who has to take the vow of celibacy?

  If I did have sex with the monk, would this be considered betraying Alex, or even Chris? But hadn’t they already become my exes? Nonetheless, I was willing to face the challenge, of course for the pending fortune, but also to satisfy my dying-to-be-relieved itching curiosity. And on top of that, to prove that I was not a wimp and that I was different.

  Anyway, maybe I could think of a way to get out of the situation while still managing to achieve my mission.

  So one day, I took a donkey cart to the next village and asked the coolie to drop me first at Lop Nor’s store—in case my healer friend had returned. But his store was still tightly closed. Disappointed, I shouldered my heavy backpack and boarded a bus that took me to Urumqi, and from there a minibus, then a car to another part of the Mountains of Heaven, this one more remote than the Heavenly Lake.

  It was already late afternoon when I arrived. However, to reach my destination I still had to ride a special “sedan chair”—a hammock attached to two poles—up a narrow, zigzag path. After a half hour the two coolies who had been carrying me, one middle-aged and the other in his twenties, put me down.

  Wiping big beads of perspiration from his face with a rag, the older one said, “Here you are, miss.”

  I got off the hammock and paid him. Then I saw a cliff of sandstone soaring up about three hundred feet. “How am I supposed to go up there?” My question came out high-pitched and angry sounding.

  The older coolie’s twiglike finger pointed to a weathered path. “Miss, from here you have to climb all the way up to the top.”

  “Isn’t there an easier way to get there? Like…”

  He laughed, revealing a few yellowish, broken teeth. “You mean an elevator? Miss, where are you from?”