Beautiful as Yesterday

by Fan Wu

  “San Mao?” Ingrid asks.

  “Mother has been telling him San Mao’s story,” Mary explains. She breaks a few eggs into a bowl and stirs them clockwise with chopsticks.

  “How interesting! That was my favorite story when I was little.” Ingrid puts Alex down. “Mary, I think you read me the story.”

  “I surely did. You bugged me every day to tell you more.”

  “And you made up a lot of stuff. I remember you once spent the whole evening describing a duck dish San Mao and another homeless kid cooked. The same duck was broiled, fried, roasted, baked, and smoked at least ten times.”

  “I must have been hungry.” Mary laughs.

  “You liked San Mao too?” Alex tugs Ingrid’s shirt. “Aunt, let’s go to Shanghai to see San Mao this Christmas. I have a lot of gifts for him. Do you think he wants to learn how to play the piano? I can teach him, and I won’t hit him if he doesn’t do well.”

  Ingrid squats to hold Alex’s hands. “Yeah, let’s go to Shanghai someday to visit him. Now you speak Mandarin so well, you can talk with him in it.”

  Alex leans forward and whispers in English, eyeing his grandma, “Aunt, you won’t leave Mom and me again, right?”

  She looks at his twinkling eyes. How fast Alex has grown in the past three years! When she left California for New York, he had just learned how to dress himself and started to speak in sentences. She nods hard. He smiles and gives her a high five.

  She turns to look at Mary and their mother, who are chatting intimately at the sink, and feels a new appreciation for both of them.

  “Oh, Ingrid,” Mary suddenly says. “You have a letter. It’s been here for a while. I forgot to give it to you. It’s on the living room coffee table. From someone called Bing’er. Is she Chinese?”

  “Yeah. I met her in New York.” Ingrid goes to the living room to fetch the letter. “This girl dreams of traveling the world. Now, she’s planning to drive across the U.S. alone. Amazing, isn’t it? Also, she’s a very good painter.”

  “I didn’t know you had Chinese friends.” Mary’s voice is low.

  “Mary, I heard that.” Ingrid returns to the kitchen with the letter. “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

  Mary smiles, not wanting to contradict her in front of their mother, and continues with her chores.

  Ingrid opens the letter. Bing’er says she just purchased a 1988 Jeep Cherokee for eight hundred Canadian dollars. She lists the U.S. cities and towns she wants to visit. She has also enclosed a sketch she drew on a trip to Niagara Falls: a pointed-roofed farmhouse against the setting sun. The “grand journey” will begin in mid-March, she wrote.

  Since their encounter in Bryant Park, Ingrid and Bing’er have kept in touch through e-mail and letters. The week before Ingrid left New York for San Francisco, Bing’er showed up at her apartment. She stayed with her for four days, rising early to tour the city; in the late afternoons she drew portraits for five dollars each in different parts of the city—that was how she planned to fund her road trip when she ran out of money. Once, she was almost arrested for not having a license to perform on the street.

  Thinking of Bing’er cheers Ingrid up. That girl has the spirit of a free bird! Ingrid liked to hear her talk about how she had traveled to Guangdong Province to purchase the latest fashions at evening markets teeming with vendors, and the people she had met in the government and while doing business. (“Do you believe that some factories in Guangdong limit how many times workers can go to bathroom during work hours? If they exceeded the limit, they have to pay a fine.” “I once went to a small merchandise market that sold Chairman Mao souvenirs. All kinds of them. Pictures, badges, calendars, posters, mugs, vases, coins, sculptures. Just about everything. It was said that Chairman Mao could bless your safety and keep away disasters and ghosts, and if his picture was hung inside a car, you’d never have an accident. Who would dare to bump into Chairman Mao’s car?” Bing’er had so much to tell, and Ingrid listened and asked questions as if she had never set foot in China. Though this girl is her junior by a decade, Ingrid somehow feels that through her she has reconnected with China.

  Ingrid notices that there is a basket of fresh flowers in the kitchen’s bay window.

  “Mary, where did you get the flowers?” She walks over to take a better look. “The arrangement looks odd. So many on this side, so few on the other. And this leaf…hmm…Is this some kind of modern style?”

  Mary raises her head from the cutting board and jerks her chin at their mother, chuckling. “Believe it or not, Ma did it!”

  “Wow, Ma, when did you start to be interested in arranging flowers?” Ingrid asks.

  “Your sister forced me to take a class offered by one of her church friends.” Her mother looks embarrassed. “I told her I couldn’t learn this kind of fancy stuff. It’s Japanese, isn’t it? I can’t even hold my hands steady.”

  “But you can do beautiful paper cutting,” Mary disagrees. “That requires a lot more work.”

  “Your grandma taught me that when I was little. You should see what she could do. She didn’t even need to draw a pattern on the paper first. It was all in her mind. She just used a pair of scissors to cut here and there, and when she opened the folded paper, it was a nice image. On holidays, the neighbors always asked her to cut something for them to paste on the windows.”

  “I didn’t know Grandma was an artist,” Ingrid says.

  “She was just interested in many things,” her mother says, placing two plates of cold dishes on the dining table. Then she calls Alex to set the table with her.

  “What other things did Grandma like to do?” Ingrid asks.

  “She could paint, sew, play music, make dolls, crochet, and she was good with flowers.”

  “She sounds like a talented heroine in one of the classic novels,” Ingrid remarks.

  “If she could have lived to see you and your sister growing up…” Her mother’s voice trails off. Then she switches the topic. “I think I should drop the flower-arranging class. The other day, the teacher asked me if I could differentiate red from orange and blue from green. I don’t think she’s happy with me.”

  “Ma, don’t think too much,” Mary says. “Mrs. Liu is very nice and patient. She’ll never be unhappy with you. Oh, also, another church friend, Mrs. Zhou, a retired doctor, asked me if you’d be interested in taking an advanced tai ji class with her at a private studio. The teacher speaks Mandarin. She can pick you up and give you a ride home.”

  “I know you want me to have something to do here. But if I go back to China now, you won’t have to trouble yourself so much to send me to this class and that class.”

  “Ma!” Mary looks at her mother. “Didn’t you say yesterday that we wouldn’t talk about it until next month?”

  “Wai po, you can’t go back to China. I won’t let you.” Alex grips his grandma’s arm. “Promise you’re not leaving or I won’t let go of your arm.”

  “I won’t leave you, I promise,” his grandma says. “Now, let’s take these plates to the table.”

  “No. I want to play on the swings now. Let’s go out in the yard and play.”

  “Ma,” Ingrid says. “Why don’t you take a rest? I’ll set the table.”

  After her mother and Alex leave, Ingrid asks Mary, “Is Bob still so busy?”

  Mary nods. “Worse than before. His company recently laid off fifteen people, a few from his team. He has to do two people’s work now. Last week his boss told him that he needed to visit clients every other week. His traveling schedule is grueling. The day before yesterday he was in Phoenix, yesterday in Atlanta, today in Boston. I hope he can get enough sleep. The economy is quite bad right now. An Internet stock Julia bought last year at $150 a share has dropped to below $5. It once reached $250 a share. She didn’t sell at that time, thinking it’d go higher. Isn’t it crazy? In fact, my company will have a staff meeting next week. The rumor is that our CEO will announce layoffs. At least a twenty percent reduction.
”

  “Are you worried?”

  “Worrying doesn’t help. I pray every day, though,” Mary says, without looking up from the cutting board, where her knife is making rhythmic chopping sounds. In no time, a few stems of green onions turn into a small pile of pulp. She pushes the pulp with her knife to a corner of the board, then picks up a Chinese squash from a plate on the counter. She cuts it into thin slices so that they stack together evenly, then slices them into thin strips—while her right hand does the chopping, her left hand moves the slices. Her hands coordinate harmoniously, as if they were dancing. After placing the strips in a bowl Ingrid has handed her, Mary starts to work on the fish, a silver cod. She scrapes the scales off and guts it. After washing it, she makes several diagonal slices along both sides of the fish so that the sauce can seep into the meat. She looks absorbed, a faint smile at the corners of her mouth, as if she were preparing a work of art.

  Ingrid has wanted to tease Mary, asking her when she stopped buying live fish—Mary used to say that the trick to a good fish dish was to start with a live fish. But seeing how immersed her sister is in her cooking, Ingrid refrains from asking; she even feels the need to remain silent. When she is alone with Mary, silence doesn’t make her uncomfortable, and she knows that it doesn’t bother Mary, either. Because of their age difference, as they grew up, silence between them was more usual than chitchat. When Ingrid started primary school, Mary was already in middle school; when Ingrid entered middle school, Mary was preparing for the college entrance test. By the time Ingrid went to college, Mary had graduated and left China. Before high school, Mary used to tell Ingrid stories and play with her, but still, most days, they read different books, hung out with different friends, and played different games.

  Before Mary went abroad, Ingrid had never seen her cook, not even so much as help their mother in the kitchen. Mary would accompany their mother to the market, but it was Ingrid, when she was old enough, who helped their mother with chopping and cleaning. Mary disliked being in the kitchen, and as soon as she put the grocery basket on the floor there, she would go to her room, leaving their mother to unpack the contents. What a miracle that Mary is now so into cooking! Ingrid thinks, while she herself has not the slightest interest in it.

  In Ingrid’s eyes, Mary has certainly changed since she left China: she is quieter, more withdrawn, and has developed such an enthusiasm for housework that no matter whether she is cooking, vacuuming, cleaning the windows, or tending the garden, she does it contentedly and joyfully, the way someone sinks into meditation, freeing herself from the bondage of earthbound souls.

  Ingrid regards her sister’s profile—slightly bent, head lowered—with both curiosity and sadness. What has changed her so much? Her marriage, her religion, her being a mother, or just the simple fact of growing older? If only she could be as peaceful as Mary. And if she could just understand what was on her mind. But Mary looks the most beautiful and gracious when she’s in her own world, with an intense femininity, like their mother when she was young and still pretty.

  The dinner is a feast. Apart from the soup and cold dishes, there are six main courses, including fried crabs with ginger and green onions. After dinner, they move to the family room, and Mary serves a chestnut-flavored birthday cake, Ingrid’s favorite, that she has bought from a Hongkongese bakery. While eating the cake, Ingrid unwraps her gifts, which include a cashmere hat her mother crocheted.

  After helping clean the kitchen, Ingrid walks to the backyard to smoke. Mary soon joins her, after starting a Chinese cartoon movie for their mother and Alex. In a short while, their mother comes to the back door. Wearing indoor slippers, she stays inside.

  “It’s so cold outside. What are you doing here?” She looks anxious.

  “Ma, it’s not that cold,” Ingrid says. “Why don’t you go and watch the movie with Dongdong? We won’t stay out for long.”

  “Oh, Guo-Mei.” Their mother turns to Mary: her lips move, but nothing comes out.

  “Ma.” Mary walks over to the door and puts her hands on their mother’s shoulders. “There’s nothing to worry about. Okay? Guo-Ying and I just wanted to chat a little.” Their mother nods after a brief hesitation and returns to the family room, but a minute later, she appears at the door with two thick jackets.

  “Guo-Mei,” she addresses Mary, handing her the jackets. “It’s your sister’s birthday. Why don’t we watch the movie together?” she pleads.

  “We’ll join you later,” Ingrid says.

  “Mary, what’s going on?” Ingrid asks after their mother leaves. “Ma’s acting weird.”

  Mary gives one jacket to Ingrid and puts on the other. “Ma was just afraid that we’d catch cold. You’d better put on your jacket now.”

  They sit on the bench facing the wisteria trellis.

  “Do you mind?” Ingrid gestures with her chin at the half-smoked cigarette between her fingers.

  “No, not at all. Go ahead,” Mary says, almost too quickly, as if to prove that she is not as conservative as her sister thinks. She goes inside the house and brings out an ashtray. “Bob smokes sometimes.”

  Ingrid smiles, remembering Mary’s vehement disapproval the first time she saw her smoking. It was shortly after she came to the United States—in fact, she had smoked in high school and college but never in front of Mary. She draws a long drag and extinguishes the cigarette in the ashtray.

  “I don’t mind,” Mary says.

  “It’s fine.”

  “I guess smoking relaxes you. Bob only smokes when he’s stressed out at work.”

  “It does help.”

  “I read somewhere that more and more women have begun to smoke, especially in developing countries. Maybe it’s a modern thing for women to do.”

  “Maybe. I like the feeling, though. It quiets me down.”

  “Oh, but—” Mary stops. “You know what I’m going to say anyway.”

  “No worries. I’m just a recreational smoker.” Ingrid looks up. “You don’t see such a dark sky in New York and San Francisco. There are too many lights in cities.”

  Mary raises her head too. “I wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t mentioned it. When you were little, you liked watching the sky and sometimes would sit outside for a long time after dinner. Once, you were holding a cookie in your hand while watching the sky, and when our hen took it away from you, you didn’t even realize it. The neighbors said you’d become an astronaut someday. I got jealous and warned you, ‘If you kept bending your neck backward, you’ll grow up having a crooked neck.’”

  “Did you say that? I don’t remember.” Ingrid laughs.

  “Oh, yeah. When we were little, though I was much older than you, I always envied you. If the neighbors said that your smiles were cute, I’d say to myself, ‘She smiles so much that she’ll lose all her teeth by the time she’s eighteen.’ If the neighbors said that you sang beautifully, I’d say, ‘Just let her sing until she ruins her voice and speaks like a male duck.’ If the neighbors said that you grew fast and could reach five foot six someday, I’d say, ‘When there’s lightning, she’ll be the first to get struck.’”

  “No kidding! I didn’t know that you were so mean! No wonder I have bad teeth and my throat is always itchy.” Ingrid gives Mary a playful punch on the arm.

  “I did a lot more. Several times, I spread dirt inside your rice bowl and coaxed you to eat it. ‘The dirt is from a fairy lady. You’ll be able to fly if you eat it,’ I told you.”

  “That part I do remember. My goodness, I believed you! I was quite dumb, wasn’t I? But I was also jealous of you. You were the top student in your class and were praised by teachers and even the headmaster all the time. Our parents asked me to learn from you. All my friends’ parents knew about you. They didn’t remember my name but knew me as Guo-Mei’s little sister. They said that we two were so different. I was naughty and quite a troublemaker, while you were polite and well-behaved. We didn’t even look alike. If we stood next to each other together, people wouldn’
t think that we’re from the same parents.”

  “I guess not,” Mary says after a delay.

  “But I had my revenge,” Ingrid says excitedly. “Once, after a teacher reprimanded me for not finishing my homework, using you as a model for me to learn from, I stole your textbooks, spread bread crumbs between the pages, and threw them outside a rat hole in the kitchen. Next morning, when you saw the destroyed books, you thought rats had dragged them out there. For a long while you cursed the rats and swore to skin them live.”

  “You did that? I should have guessed! You were so happy those days.”

  “Mary, I don’t know if you remember or not, but you were a bully. You gave me your cast-off clothes and told our parents that I didn’t need new clothes.”

  “That’s not true! You just loved my clothes. Remember that sky blue sweater that our parents bought for me for my fourteenth or fifteenth birthday? I only wore it once before you stole it and wore it. You were quite tall for your age. You wore it every day, refusing to take it off, and even wore it to sleep.”

  “Of course I remember that sweater. There was a yellow bee on the chest. The first time you wore it, I was madly jealous. Our parents said that they’d buy one for me too, when it was my birthday, but I only wanted yours.”

  “You loved my toys as well. It wasn’t like I had many. Just a few. You got obsessed with my rubber swan. Whenever you played with mud, you wiped your hands on the swan. Though I washed it each time you did that, it quickly turned from a white swan into a black swan. At last I had to give it to you. But the day you got it you weren’t interested in it anymore and stuffed it under your bed.”

  They recall more childhood stories and laugh over them. Ingrid feels an intense happiness. It has been a long time since they talked like this, since she saw her sister so relaxed. Though Ingrid wishes that they would continue their conversation in this cheerful mood, Mary begins to ask about her life after their falling-out.