Inheritance

by Lan Samantha Chang

  Your children and I look forward to being with you.

  Your wife,

  Junan

  He sat holding Junan’s letter in his hand. The black ink characters marched up and down before his eyes. He went to Yinan’s bedroom, where she was reading at her desk. The light from the lamp fell on her profile and outlined her forehead, eyelashes, and nose. The sight of her was so familiar and so charged he didn’t dare go any closer.

  “Why don’t you come in?” she asked. She looked up. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s a letter from Junan.”

  She set down the book and turned to face him. He understood that somehow she was ready for this, more than he had been.

  There could be no avoiding it. When he spoke, his voice cracked and he was forced to stop. “Something must be done.”

  “I must go away.”

  “You can’t do that, Yinan.”

  “I can’t live with her anymore. I won’t. She doesn’t know it yet.”

  “I don’t want to see your life ruined because of what we’ve done.”

  “You don’t understand. It doesn’t matter. I love you.”

  She held his gaze quietly and looked into him. He had the sensation he was falling. He cleared his throat and said again, “Something must be done.”

  ON THEIR LAST NIGHT together, they ate as usual in the kitchen. With the sirens their meals had grown haphazard. Li Ang didn’t want Yinan to go to the market by herself, so he usually picked up something on the way home. When there was fruit in the market, they ate fruit. Sometimes they feasted on roasted sweet potatoes he had bought on the street. Although Li Ang missed his savory meals and often made up for them at lunch, Yinan ate whatever was set in front of her. On this night, it was plums. He watched as she peeled the loose skins and ate the soggy fruit, which had ripened almost to rot. He had not bothered to light the gas lamps. Soon it was dusk. Her face, pale and narrow with juice-stained lips, floated before him like a specter.

  He had believed each morning would bring a change. Every night he closed his eyes believing that when he opened them what they had done would be undone. Living with Junan had been that easy. She had straightened out his life for him, so that he only had to step into the order as if it were a clean set of clothes. When he did something to make her angry, she quickly made her face smooth again. So powerful was she that she could swallow her own anger; likewise she took on all their problems and made them disappear. But her sister, it seemed, had not that talent. Or perhaps it was more that the two of them, he and Yinan, were unable to undo what they had done together. No word, no act, no breath they breathed in sleep together could ever be taken back. He should have known this about her. He should have known it from the mess she had always left around her room: the paper clippings, the inkblots, and scattered piles of paper. He should have known it from the spills and dirty dishes in her messy kitchen. She was unable to forget, and this inability had rubbed off on him.

  Yinan rose and opened the drawer for the box of matches.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Wouldn’t it be more pleasant with light?”

  The flame shook in her hand. He leaned over and blew it out, then took her hand and led her to bed.

  The siren began a moment later. He pulled at her arm. “Come, come on. We need to go.”

  “No,” she said. “I want to stay here.”

  It would be a local bombing; this was lunacy. “All right,” he said. He put his arms around her and tried to lose himself in the touch of her skin.

  Later he became aware of the dark flutter of an engine. The flutter grew louder and louder until it was unbearable. There was a pause while this awful sound hung in the air; then a boom shook the house and everything inside.

  “Oh!” she cried.

  He held her and she struggled away. Her terror lent fierce strength to her thin arms.

  “Come down!” she cried. “Come down!” He understood that she was calling to the bombs. Her cries were muffled by a second boom that seemed to come from all around them, enclosing them. His ears rang and he could not tell if there were more bombs, or only echoes. The room shook. Somewhere nearby, there came the shrieking sounds of wood tearing apart, nails bending, glass breaking in a sudden breathless wind. He smelled the stink of his own fear and bent his head into her neck to seek his customary solace. It was there.

  Hours later, he awoke amid damp sheets to find the house miraculously standing. He wanted to go outside and see what else had survived. Yinan lay sleeping under him. He raised his head and looked at her, the column of her throat, the gentle bones and tendons in her arms and shoulders. She slept exhausted, with her head tipped back and her mouth open. Watching her, he grew afraid. He peeled his body away and laid her back against the bed. There was a mark on her bare shoulder, the imprint of his hand.

  LATER HE STOOD high over the river fork, watching as the China National plane descended past eye level, past the huts and stairs and stony streets, down through the shroud of fog that hid the narrow island runway. He peered into the haze below, waiting for the passengers to leave the plane, to board the sampan that would ferry them to the river bank, where they would collect their luggage and ride sedan chairs up the steep path to the gate. It was some time before Junan’s small figure emerged from the fog. He recognized her instantly. She sat upright in the bucking sedan chair. She didn’t lean back to gaze at the city atop the cliff; she didn’t seem to notice when the forward bearer leaped quickly upward, jouncing her; she didn’t go to pieces at the steepness of the path, although their daughters in the following chair cringed to see the frightening drop. Behind them struggled six or seven coolies under her boxes, trunks, and bundles. The wail of their work song floated to his ears. Junan was like a civilized woman from a faraway land, traveling into savagery to save him. For this reason, she had bribed her way, and their daughters’ way, out of occupied territory, past the front, through gorges, over the mountains, to land on that narrow island.

  As her chair drew closer, he waited for her to show she suspected or even knew what he had done. But her perfect features held the confidence of old. Eyes level, chin raised, she rode toward him as pure as if she were seated in a bridal palanquin. She reached the gate. There was an expectant pause before he jumped forward to help her from the chair. Standing, they faced each other at a proper distance. The sunlight broke against her black hair and ivory face. A wave of terror prompted him, and he pushed toward her as if against a wind.

  Flight

  Chongqing 1940

  EARLY ONE EVENING, JUST AT THE HOUR WHEN THE TERRIBLE heat of the late summer day was at its worst, Hu Mudan stepped off the ferry over the Jialingjiang and began the long climb up the steps of the city toward the streets where the Nationalist officials lived. A native to the province, she had dressed against the heat, wearing a broad straw hat and loose cotton clothes that hid her body. Since the birth of her son, she had grown thinner. With her narrow hips and casual stride, she could have been a small man, moving up the stairs with a certain wary lightness to avoid prolonged contact between his cloth-soled sandals and the sharp heat of the stones. But Hu Mudan was on a woman’s errand. Despite the steepness of her path, despite the baking heat, she felt compelled—by curiosity, anxiety, and another emotion that hovered between love and duty—to find the house that she was searching for.

  The day before, while marketing, she had become aware of someone near the string beans watching her. She looked up into a woman’s face, weary and no longer young. She’d known this woman before. She knew those eyes, which had a pleasing shape but a somewhat petty and ill-tempered expression. The woman wasn’t thin as much as slack, and Hu Mudan recalled the bones when they had carried flesh sweetly. She remembered the glazed green tiles and the mulberry tree; and for a moment she could almost see the delicate, slightly crumbling lines of the
Wang house, and smell the overblown roses in Chanyi’s garden.

  “Weiwei.”

  “You recognized me,” said the woman, and a coquettish curl flickered in the corner of her mouth.

  “I would recognize you anywhere,” Hu Mudan assured her.

  “I haven’t changed much.” Then she added, with less confidence, “These have been hard years.”

  “Do you still work for the family? Where are they living?”

  “On the hill.”

  There was a shade of caution in Weiwei’s voice. Hu Mudan felt the sun grow cold at her back. “And the others?” she asked.

  “Gongdi started off with me, but he died in the gorges.”

  The skin of Weiwei’s face strained into tiny lines. What had happened? Hu Mudan took a deep breath. “And the young miss? How is Yinan?”

  Weiwei glanced down at the pile of beans. “She’s no longer with us.”

  “Yinan married?”

  “No. She’s left the house.”

  “Where is she? How is she getting by?”

  Weiwei shrugged.

  Hu Mudan moved closer. She wanted to shake Weiwei with both hands until she gave up information, but she was holding a basket. In the years since she had left the family, she had worried about Junan, but especially about Yinan. And now here was Weiwei telling her this shocking news, but carefully, as if she felt the truth would be a loss of face. Hu Mudan was an outsider now. She had been sent away. Hu Mudan sensed Weiwei backing off from her. She smiled, backing off herself, and asked Weiwei where on the hill the family was living. This question seemed innocuous enough. Then she said that she would visit soon, and described how much, and in what way, Weiwei resembled the girl she had once been. She said goodbye to Weiwei and watched her disappear into the crowd.

  That evening, her thoughts returned over and over to Chanyi’s daughters. She remembered the long nights after Chanyi’s death, when she had paced through the house and come upon them asleep in Yinan’s room, their dark heads close together, their hair strewn across the pillow like lines of ink. Yinan suffered the worst; she was frail, like their mother. In the months following Chanyi’s death, Hu Mudan spent hours rocking her, sheltering and soothing her. But Junan was unwilling to ask for help. Even as a child she’d held Hu Mudan at arm’s length, wanting her mother only, as if the solace of any other person was beneath her dignity. After her mother was gone, she strengthened herself against the death and did without.

  On Junan’s wedding day, she was tall and pale, with her high-arched nose and pomegranate mouth, so cool toward her handsome husband that a casual observer would have assumed that she cared nothing. But Hu Mudan knew better. She had long known that beneath Junan’s aloof exterior lay a susceptibility to obsession. And now, hearing that Yinan lived apart, Hu Mudan was seized by the need to know what had come between them.

  Hu Mudan considered herself a skeptic of Li Ang. When she had first met him, she was pregnant, needing nothing he could give. She sensed that what he could give would best be given in bed. She had looked over his body, hard and lithe, his blunt, dark face and gleaming eyes, and sensed a prodigious vitality. Oh, he was generous to women, and often kind, but his kindness was the worst sort, based as it was on thoughtlessness rather than calculation or even lust. Now, as she made her way up the steps toward the military neighborhood, Hu Mudan expected he would suffer for his thoughtlessness. Careless kindness had its price, and careless generosity.

  The stench of those suffering in hot weather thickened the air. In these past three years the city had bloated like a tumor with the new people, their soldiers, their bureaucrats, and their refugees. It was almost unrecognizable. At night more bombs fell and more buildings were destroyed, more people sent into the streets. Now the city was filled with the hungry, sitting and lying on the steps, sleeping, begging, wasting away. A girl clutched a child with flies in its eyes. Hu Mudan placed a copper in her hand. She couldn’t help them all. Fate had abandoned them. She picked her way into the military neighborhood and asked the women at the well for directions to the house of the officer Li Ang.

  Yes, Junan had sent her away. But Hu Mudan’s responsibility to the family reached to the days when Junan had been only a ball in Chanyi’s belly. She was still responsible, a witness to Chanyi’s daughters’ lives on the earth.

  FROM MY WINDOW on the hill, I could see her coming. I watched her climb the stairs, moving wearily and resolutely through the heat. At the gate, she stopped and faced the house, her face unreadable in the shadow of her hat. She let herself in. I left my room and hurried to the door. I was so excited that I almost ran into my mother and my sister. My mother stood as straight as a porcelain vase. Every part of her—the long, straight body, the slender hands, the vivid smile—was absolutely under control.

  “Hu Mudan. Welcome.”

  “I came to check on you,” said Hu Mudan.

  “Of course,” my mother said. “Thank you for doing that.”

  Her magnamimous smile sought to hide a juggling of emotions—irritation and confusion and, just possibly, gratitude. She held herself like a queen, albeit a queen struggling to live in an impossible flat, cramped and ugly—and beneath her, although she wouldn’t admit to it.

  “Xiao Hong,” my mother said, and put her hand upon my shoulder, “say hello to Hu Mudan. You remember Hu Mudan?”

  I said nothing, stopped by sudden happiness and shame.

  “Hello, Xiao Hong. You’ve grown so tall! You know, Hu Ran is here in Chongqing. I’m sure he’d like to see you.” Hu Mudan examined me. “She looks just like you,” she said to my mother. This remark was wrong, I knew even then. Everyone said I took after my father.

  “Here is Hwa,” I managed to say.

  “Hello, Meimei.”

  Hwa scowled. She turned her face away and backed into my mother’s legs. “You can’t call me by that name,” she said.

  “What should I call you?”

  “You’re not my family and you have no right to call me by that name.”

  Hu Mudan laughed. “This one is even more like you,” she said. Then it was my mother’s turn to frown.

  “So, where is your meimei, Junan?”

  Her question fell into the room like a stone. My mother shifted in her chair. “Yinan is no longer living with us.”

  “Why not?”

  My mother sighed, lifting one long, white hand in a vague gesture. “She was here alone for a few months,” she said, “keeping house for the colonel. She says it’s something she did. Poor Yinan. She’s very young. I told her not to worry, it’s not important, but she insists on taking herself so seriously.” She smiled as if surely Hu Mudan would understand.

  But Hu Mudan didn’t return her smile. “Where is Yinan?” she asked again.

  “She says she doesn’t want visitors.”

  “What a shame,” said Hu Mudan. “I’ve been thinking of her all this time. It’s too bad if she keeps herself from seeing old friends. It’s really a shame, the two of you living apart. Your mother would not have wanted it.”

  “I wish Yinan could hear you.” My mother leaned toward Hu Mudan as if confiding. “She’s worked herself into a state, and over nothing.”

  “Maybe she needs someone to hear her side of the story.”

  My mother smiled again. “Thank you for coming by,” she said. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”

  “Maybe I should go to see her.”

  “Thank you for stopping by.” The silence thickened. Hu Mudan leaned toward my sister and made a clucking noise; Hwa averted her eyes. My mother stiffened, willing Hu Mudan out of the house. I wished that Hu Mudan would resist. I needed her to stay and help me understand the nature of the confusion that surrounded us. But my mother had made up her mind.

  HU MUDAN WALKED toward the setting sun. She f
elt so tense she couldn’t raise a hand to shield her eyes.

  It wasn’t until she turned down the stairs that she let her joints loosen. She descended slowly, suddenly weary. Around her wheeled the city: beneath her feet, the steep staircase; and down below, the Jialingjiang in shadow. Long orange and red rays glowed against the dusty tiles and patched, stilted houses. It was all that Hu Mudan could do to concentrate upon her walking: resolutely and self-protectively, she minded her feet. She didn’t notice the people sitting on the steps, and she didn’t raise a hand against the mosquito on her arm.

  She had descended a quarter of a mile toward the river when she heard someone running after her. No one hurried in that weather; and not many would risk their safety by running down those crowded stairs. Hu Mudan turned. Above, she glimpsed Weiwei, frightened, her face streaming with sweat.

  “Hu Mudan—” Weiwei fought to catch her breath. “She just sent me to the market—”

  Hu Mudan stood and waited.

  “—and I thought you might have come this way.”

  Weiwei ran out of breath. She pulled at Hu Mudan’s sleeve, wordlessly, and Hu Mudan felt overcome with sadness. She had never been fond of Weiwei, but now she nodded, fixing her eyes upon the woman’s aging face. Weiwei leaned closer and said, “I know where she is. She’s living with Rodale Taitai, an American woman, on the old Well Square Road, near the Dragon Watching Gate. Please visit her. It would make her feel so much better to see someone she knows.”

  THE DRAGON WATCHING GATE was farther down the river. When Hu Mudan reached the square, she asked around for the American, Rodale Taitai. Although no one knew her personally, everyone knew where she lived. They explained that she was a missionary who had married a Chinese man. Although she never caused a fuss, aside from walking arm in arm with her husband on the street, she was notorious in the neighborhood, where she was still known as “Rodale Taitai” because of her maiden name, Kate Rodale. Because she wasn’t a Chinese, she stood apart from the others, and because she’d married a Chinese, she was never quite accepted by the wives of Americans. She lived apart from everyone, although stubbornly among them, a large, somber woman, somewhat stiff and seeming always a little startled.