February Flowers

by Fan Wu

  Standing on Pearl River beach, Miao Yan executed a few graceful pirouettes. “I’ll buy a house here someday.” She laughed.

  We found a patch of newly planted lawn and lay down side by side. A pallid full moon hung in the sky like a curious eye watching us. Near the bronze statue of “Beauty of the Century,” which showed three women of different generations, an artist was playing gu zheng. The music was Fisherman’s Evening Song, slow and expressive. I was glad the music was not intrusive; it was even romantic.

  “Your dissertation—” I thought she would like to know about its progress. I had written more than fifty pages already. I had spent so much time in the library’s archive room that the librarian had reserved a seat for me.

  “Boring,” Miao Yan yawned. “Can we talk about something else?”

  I looked at her sleepy eyes and realized that I had always wanted to know why she was interested in being friends with me in the first place. So I asked.

  She was amused. “You play the violin and you read books.”

  “A lot of girls play the violin and read books.”

  “You write poems. You know how to write.”

  “Were you thinking about asking me to write your dissertation from the very beginning?”

  She laughed. “What a clever guess!” She patted the back of my head. “I feel safe being with you. I know you won’t hurt me.”

  “No one will hurt you.”

  “You don’t know. This world’s more complicated than you think,” she said. “But I can always trust you, right?”

  “Of course you can. You’re my best friend. Actually you’re the only friend I have in Guangzhou,” I said eagerly.

  “Really? That’s too much responsibility for me. You should meet other people.”

  “Responsibility? What are you talking about? I can take care of myself perfectly well.”

  “Wonderful. You know what people would say? They’d say our being together is like a white daisy in a black dye vat.” She played with the grass that grew around the rock next to her. “You’re a top student, a published poet, a violinist, a person with a lot of talent and ambition. Who am I? I hate studying, I do things no teachers or parents would like to see their kids do. Aren’t you afraid that you’ll become a bad girl under my influence? You know, sometimes I think it’d be better for you if you didn’t know me.”

  “That’s nonsense! You’re not a dye vat. I’m no white daisy, either.” I squeezed her arm gently and leaned over to whisper in her ear, “I like being with you. We’re like sisters.”

  “Well, that’s nice,” she said absentmindedly, not looking at me, her face as blank as a mask.

  I sighed. Apparently she was not in a good mood tonight. I figured she must have been having problems with the company in Shenzhen. “Let’s talk about colors,” I said, trying to cheer her up. “What’s your favorite color?”

  “Black? Red? Dark purple? I don’t know. I used to like white, but not anymore. Dramatic colors suit me better.” After a pause, she said, “I think we were connected in a previous life. It’s our destiny to be each other’s best friend.”

  “Don’t be so superstitious.”

  “I’m a non-practicing Buddhist. I believe in fate.” She picked up a small stone and hurled it into the darkness. “Ming, do you know how much I admire you?”

  “Admire me? Why?”

  She buried her head in her arms, her hair spreading over her back like a small blanket. At that moment the moon moved behind a thin veil of cloud and was obscured, cut into patches of different sizes. I felt a cool breeze brush my face. Against the soft light of the moon, Miao Yan’s silhouette was curvaceous and graceful, like a scene from a dream world.

  “I just do. Not growing up is a good thing sometimes.”

  “Well, you’re the one who’s always telling me that every girl will grow into a woman sooner or later.”

  “Do you love your parents?” she said, changing the subject.

  “Of course. They’re my parents.”

  “You love your ba?”

  “I guess so, though sometimes he’s annoying. He treats me like a ten-year-old. Do this, don’t do that. Stuff like that.”

  “Tell me more about him.” She propped her chin on her folded hands, looking at me intently.

  “After being a teacher for so many years, he talks like a teacher even at home. All we talk about is school and books. We seldom talk about other things. When he talks with me, he leans back in his chair, holding a cup of oolong tea with both hands while I sit across from him. He stays in his study a lot, not always reading or writing. Sometimes he just sits there, eyes closed. Whenever I see him like that I wonder what’s on his mind. He’s probably thinking of the tough years on the farm, or books that he never got published. I don’t know. But overall he isn’t bad. He buys me all the books I want and he cares about me.” Then I realized where her question might have come from. I quickly added, “Just like your ba, my ba would spank or scold me if I did something wrong. He isn’t perfect. No father is perfect.”

  “Did he ever spank you?”

  “You bet. When I was little he spanked me a few times with bamboo rods because I couldn’t recite the ancient poems he’d asked me to learn. He was strict. Those bamboo rods were thin but hurt like crazy. They ’d leave red marks on my skin for a week. Whenever he spanked me he’d feel guilty afterward and buy me sweets and books to make up for it. He never said sorry to me, though. I guess it never occurred to him that a father needs to say sorry to his own children.”

  She smiled slightly. “Isn’t that true?” she said. “When was the last time he spanked you?”

  “Hmm, I don’t remember. Maybe when I was eight or ten? After we returned to the city he never spanked me again. Well, perhaps the isolated life on the farm made him get depressed and angry more easily.”

  “So you don’t hate him anymore?”

  “I don’t think I ever hated him. I guess no one is perfect and one must learn how to forgive.” I looked at her and hoped she would agree with me.

  But she didn’t respond immediately. She stared at the road for a while before saying, “You’re lucky. Do you know that?”

  I thought she was talking about my father, so I nodded.

  “After all, you’re not from Yunnan and you’re not a minority.”

  “What’s wrong with Yunnan? What’s wrong with being a Miao? You have the world-famous Stone Forest and the Dali Butterfly Spring. The Miao costumes are so beautiful. Oh, also, Shen Congwen, the contemporary writer who wrote Border Town and Long River, isn’t he a Miao? I’ve always wanted to visit Yunnan. You can be my guide—” I was about to tell her that I had saved enough money for a trip to Yunnan.

  “Forget about it! They have nothing to do with me. I hate Yunnan, I hate everything about it.” She turned her back to me. “We live in different worlds.”

  I knew that the best way to comfort her when she was moody was to leave her alone for a while. Lying on my back, I stretched my legs and arms a few times and clasped my hands behind my head. The pale, round moon was still covered by wispy clouds. I stared at it and its dark craters and thought about all the fairy tales I had read about the moon when I was little. I felt safe, relaxed, happy. My eyes started to get blurry, then I sensed a light drizzle. I opened my eyes. A dark cloud was moving slowly over the sky. It approached the moon, cut its edge, floated over it, and moved away. I tilted my head and saw Miao Yan lying beside me with her knees up against her chest. She looked slender and curvy; her waist and upper body formed a smooth half-circle. Her hips were narrower than her shoulders and were tightly wrapped by a pair of well-fitting low-cut black jeans—I could see her skin at her waist. It surprised me that she looked so small and vulnerable—I had always thought of her as much bigger and more muscular since she was half a head taller than me.

  Ten minutes later I got up and squatted in front of Miao Yan, thinking about asking her what was wrong. Then I realized she had fallen asleep. I sat down besi
de her, my legs crossed, listening to her even breathing. She wore a black embroidered cardigan over a white shirt, the top two buttons undone. Half of her face was exposed in the moonlight and her skin was as delicate as fresh wax. Her lips were slightly parted as though she had fallen asleep when she was speaking. The lipstick on her lower lip was smeared and went slightly beyond the lip line—she must have been biting her lip with her teeth, as I remembered her doing before. I stared at her lips and suddenly wanted to kiss them. I brushed a few strands of loose hair from her forehead and moved my hand near her nostrils to feel the warmth in her breath. Then I lowered my head toward her lips. I jumped up with a start when I saw her tightly closed eyelids twitch slightly. But she didn’t wake up; she just murmured and moved her hands from her side to her chest, as if she was cold.

  It was the first time that I had ever felt the urge to kiss a girl. But at that moment it seemed so natural, so pure, like I wanted to kiss a beautiful flower or a white snowflake falling on my hand from the sky. Afterward, when I went back to my room and lay down on the bed, I began to wonder why I’d had the desire to kiss her. I didn’t panic or anything like that; I just thought it was odd that I had wanted to kiss her.

  Pingping had a boyfriend! One Friday night around seven o’clock, I heard Dama’s voice from the speaker: “301, Wang Pingping. Shu Zhong is waiting for you in the duty room.”

  Pingping was putting on makeup near the window. She jumped up from her chair, one hand holding a lipstick, the other her mascara. “It’s him! It’s him! He’s here!” she screamed at Donghua and me.

  “When did you start seeing him? How come I didn’t know? Who is this guy?” Donghua dropped her knitting and sat up on the bed.

  “We met on the train to my hometown during the summer break. He was on his way to Harbin to visit relatives and happened to sit across from me. He ’s in law school. You ’d have seen him. He ’s everything I want in a man. He said he’d come to see me after school started and here he is! What should I do?” Her voice was so eager and nervous that I was afraid her vocal cords would jump out of her throat.

  “You’d better change your clothes now,” Donghua said.

  “I am!” Pingping jumped onto her bed and began to take off her T-shirt.

  “Wow!” Donghua looked away. “What about putting down your net first?”

  Pingping slipped into a blue dress with puffy sleeves and little white flowers printed all over it. She twisted her body a few times to zip it up at the back. “How do you like this dress?”

  It wasn’t a nice dress but she looked slender and delicate. Her bony face shone with pink patches on her cheeks; her whole frame trembled with excitement. For the first time, her scrawny body looked pretty to me.

  Both Donghua and I nodded our approval. Pingping smiled shyly. After quickly combing her short hair and checking her makeup in the mirror, she said, “Wish me luck!” and disappeared out the door.

  Pingping returned a few minutes after curfew. I was lying on my bed listening to Mozart through headphones. Donghua was knitting by the light of her torch. She was half done with a green wool sweater for her mother. For over two weeks she had eaten only instant noodles to save money for the yarn. “It’ll be a New Year’s gift for her,” she had told me. “She’s never had a wool sweater in her life.”

  Though it was dark I could see the happiness in Pingping’s face. She tossed her handbag on her desk, then threw herself on the bed. “You know what? We held hands today!” I heard her whisper to Donghua.

  The next evening the speaker crackled again, asking for Pingping. She returned around midnight. Under Donghua’s relentless interrogation, Pingping finally admitted that she and the law student had kissed.

  “You two were fast! It doesn’t sound right to me to kiss the second time you meet,” Donghua said, spreading out the wool sweater on the bed.

  “What’s wrong with kissing on the second date? Passion’s what matters. I’ve known him since the summer break. He even called me while he was in Harbin. We’re not little kids. Some of the girls I know who didn’t go to college have already done it with their boyfriends. They’re about our age.”

  I knew what “it” meant.

  Maybe because it was dark or because the music I was listening to was soothing, I felt like asking Pingping and Donghua about men. Oddly, though Miao Yan often bragged about her love life she never talked about her physical involvement with men, apart from the single time that she mentioned the teacher kissing her when she was thirteen. Once we went to see a movie together and she laughed at a scene in which the male and female protagonists kissed passionately. She said the acting was fake but wouldn’t tell me how they should have kissed. “You’ll know when the time comes,” she said.

  Another time, when she told me that she’d lost her virginity at fifteen, I asked her what she meant by losing her virginity and how it had happened, but she became angry and made me promise that I would never ask her such questions again. She acted as if she didn’t want me to know what goes on between men and women, as if she was trying to protect me from some kind of danger that perhaps she herself wasn’t even sure about.

  I thought of what she had said to me on Shamian Island about her being a black dye vat and me being a white daisy. Did she view herself as a danger to me, as a black dye vat might be to a white daisy? Did she secretly admire my innocence and ignorance of men, knowing she could never return to that period of her own life?

  “Pingping, what was it like when he kissed you?” I finally mustered the courage to ask.

  “Was he a good kisser?” Donghua added.

  We all laughed.

  “More than just good. I almost suffocated.” Pingping chuckled.

  Her answer drew boos and hoots from Donghua and me. Donghua recited a line she had just penned dramatically, “You! You! Like fire, melted my lonely heart.” She sat up on her knees, both hands on her chest, and let her body fall heavily on the bed. I ’d never seen her be so funny.

  “How did you feel when his tongue…his tongue touched yours?” I asked.

  “My goodness, what an embarrassing question! I can’t tell you that.”

  “Come on, Pingping, we’re roommates and you should just tell us what it’s like to kiss a man,” Donghua said.

  “Okay, I guess there’s nothing I can do but sacrifice my privacy and tell you something about romance.” Pingping moved her chair to the middle of the room, halfway between my bed and Donghua’s.

  “Shoot!” Donghua and I both chanted.

  “What I’ll tell you isn’t suitable for kids. You either stop me right now or you have to let me finish. Neither of you is allowed to cover your ears, understand?”

  Donghua and I nodded eagerly.

  “Before his lips touched mine my heart was beating so madly that I thought it was going to jump out of my chest. I was surrounded by heated airwaves and I had nowhere to escape. The moment his lips touched mine I felt like a match had been lit on my lips. You wouldn’t mistake this moment for any other moment in your life. In fact, not just my lips, my whole face, my whole body felt like it was on fire.

  “Then he forced his tongue into my mouth. I resisted at first but the feeling was so good that I soon accepted his tongue and kissed back fiercely and wholeheartedly. Our tongues were intertwined, darting desperately in and out of each other’s mouths. Our bodies were pressed against each other’s and I could hear his heart beating. I thought I was going to faint from suffocation. All my thoughts and feelings were evaporating and fading away. Time and space didn’t exist anymore. I was like a candle burning from both ends and I was melting quickly, melting into a patch of liquid wax…”

  Her voice was getting quieter and quieter as the narration continued. By the time she was finished she was whispering. I couldn’t see her eyes but I imagined that they must have been clear and shining like diamonds. After she finished talking, none of us spoke or moved for a minute.

  “Wow, the irresistible power of love,” Donghua sai
d.

  “I wish I could live in that moment for the rest of my life. It was so sweet, like a poem,” Pingping said.

  At that moment Donghua blurted out, “Pingping, you won’t get pregnant, will you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m worried for you since you two kissed so much,” Donghua said indignantly.

  “Haha, you’re worried that kissing could make a person pregnant? You stupid girl! My stomach’s hurting. Haha…” She covered her head with a pillow.

  I laughed as well. What a ridiculous question Donghua had asked! Of course kissing wouldn’t make a person pregnant. A man and a woman would have to sleep together to get pregnant. I kept laughing until two questions I had never thought about before came to me. Why would sleeping together result in pregnancy? What do a man and a woman do when they sleep together? I didn’t have the answers. In middle school, I took physiology classes but girls and boys took the class separately. In the girls’ class, the teacher only taught the chapters about a female’s physiological structure, such as how her breasts would grow and how her hips would widen during puberty. The remaining chapters were for after-class reading. Since the class was optional and we didn’t have exams, I never bothered to read the rest of the chapters. I thought it was time to solve my puzzle. “Pingping, how does a woman get pregnant?”

  “You’re kidding, right? Don’t tease me like this.”

  Pingping stopped laughing—she realized that Donghua and I weren’t joking. She cleared her throat and announced, “Pregnancy is the process of a male’s sperm and a female’s egg merging.”

  “How do they merge?” Donghua asked.

  “I don’t know what to say.” Pingping breathed a long sigh. “Making love means that the guy takes his thing, you know, and puts it into the girl, between her legs. Then the guy’s sperm travels to the egg and fertilizes it and the sperm and the egg merge. After that you won’t be a virgin anymore. Losing your virginity means you’ve made love with a man. Don’t ask me any more questions. I ’m still a virgin, I swear. I’ve learned all of this from magazines. I also overheard my older girlfriends talk about how to make love to men. They said it’s a lot of fun.”