Beautiful as Yesterday

by Fan Wu

  “It turned out that I had little work,” Mary says.

  “Mary, I heard that! May I join your company?” JG teases. “I’ve been thinking about selling my business for a long while. It’s much easier to work for someone else. I’m just waiting for God’s blessing.”

  “Hasn’t God given you a lot of blessings already? Your business is getting bigger and bigger every day.” Wang Fang laughs, stopping her vegetable chopping momentarily. “Mary, I’m glad you are here. Earlier, JG asked me to cook Guilin fried noodles. How can I, a northerner, know how to cook a southern dish? It’s like asking a chicken to fly.”

  “Now you can relax,” Mingyi says. “Our guests are lucky, and we are lucky too, to be able to eat Mary’s famous fried noodles.”

  Qiu You, the Taiwanese, chimes in. “Last time a few people ate nothing but the fried noodles Mary cooked. One man, I’d say he was at least fifty, ate five plates. I worried that he wouldn’t be able to stand after the lunch.”

  While all doing their assigned work, they begin to tell jokes. Ar Chan, the Cantonese, mentions something he experienced as a criminal lawyer in a small city in Hebei Province in the early nineties. He says that he was hired to defend a convict who had been sentenced to life for murder. As he was speaking on his client’s behalf, the judge stood suddenly, pounded the table, and ordered him evicted from the courtroom. Ar Chan mimics the judge, his hand trembling, his voice fuming with anger: “The Party and the country sent you to college and granted you a diploma. How could you side with a murderer? Where’s your education? Where is your conscience? You’ve wasted the country’s money. Get out of my court!” Everyone laughs at the story.

  Before Mary starts to cook, Mingyi asks her if she wants to pick her mother up from home. “She is alone. Maybe she won’t mind coming to the church.”

  “I’ve tried many times, but she doesn’t want to come. She says churches are for Westerners.” Mary smiles helplessly. “But she has begun to do morning exercises with some old people in the park. Sometimes she even plays mah-jongg or goes grocery shopping with them. I didn’t realize that she knew how to play mah-jongg. She said that she learned it from my grandma. It was more than half a century ago and she still remembers it.”

  After eleven a.m. homeless people begin to show up. Some have come to the church before and walk directly to the yard outside the kitchen, sitting on the stone benches chatting or minding their own business. Mary and two other people take out water, juice, milk, and plastic knives and forks. After the food is served on three wooden tables placed end to end, a line is formed. Though most of the homeless wear shabby clothes, they look clean—they have probably shaved or washed before coming to the church—and are polite, staying in line. A few talk with the church people, thanking them for the food.

  A bearded man in his fifties comes to shake hands with Mary. He hangs about near the Safeway in Mary’s neighborhood, often pushing a rusty shopping cart that he found somewhere, in which he has stored all his possessions: a cotton blanket, an unlidded stainless-steel pot, empty Coke bottles, and used bike tires and other nondescript objects. He wears a tattered jacket year round, a pair of muddy hiking boots, and a red hat embroidered with “Peace” in the front. Mary had given him a few jackets and several pairs of shoes, but the next time she saw him he was still wearing the same old jacket and shoes. He never asks for change. As he pushes his cart around, he raises his head high, sniffing constantly, as if seeking something in the air. He once told Mary when she brought him clothes that he was looking for birds through his nose. “There ain’t no birds around in this world. Cars and people killed them all,” he said. When he isn’t pushing his cart around, he likes to lie down in a hidden place, usually under a tree, smoking and playing with a wildflower.

  “God bless you. God bless America. God bless China,” he says after shaking hands with Mary. Then he bends, taking off his hat and placing it elegantly over his chest, saluting like a gentleman from the old times.

  “Thanks. God bless you too,” Mary says, happy to see him, then adds, “John, you look very good today.” Though she has participated in her church’s soup kitchen many times before, she somehow feels closer to John and the other homeless today.

  A few steps away from Mary, Mingyi is chatting with a woman who has a face as wrinkled as a walnut and lacks two upper front teeth. The woman rolls up her pants to show Mingyi the cut on her right calf, telling her that a young man hit her with a brick when she was sleeping on a street in Mountain View last night. Mingyi squats to check her wound, and asks her if it hurts. No, the woman says, hissing through her teeth, she’s been sleeping on the street for more than ten years and doesn’t know what pain is like. Then she says that she hates to have such an ugly cut on her leg because she likes to wear skirts in summer.

  A homeless man nearby says to Mingyi, “Don’t listen to her. She’s crazy. She did it herself. She just wants attention.”

  Mingyi walks into the kitchen and comes out with a basin, a small towel, and a first-aid kit. She asks the woman to sit and cleans the mud off her cut with the towel. After drying the cut with a cotton pad, she applies antibiotic ointment. Meanwhile, the woman hums and shakes her head, eyes half closed. Twice she utters a bright laugh, a little bit like the call of a magpie.

  “Betty, come back here next Monday and I’ll check you again,” Mingyi says, pulling down the woman’s pant leg and tying her shoelace.

  Betty nods obediently like a little girl, then goes back to the line to get more food.

  The leftovers are boxed for takeaway. As usual, Mary’s fried noodles are all gone.

  After the homeless people leave, Mary and Mingyi volunteer to clean the yard and the kitchen, telling the other church people to go home.

  As Mingyi scrubs the pots and pans, she begins to sing a hymn whose beautiful melody quickly attracts Mary to join her. Both are good at housework, so the kitchen and the backyard look tidy in no time. Mingyi cuts a stem of bird of paradise from the yard and puts it in a vase on the kitchen table.

  Mary boils a kettle and takes out a set of dark brown clay teaware, including a pot, a tray, and six matching tiny cups. She also fetches a package of tea from a drawer next to the fridge. After washing the pot and two cups with hot water, she puts them on the tray.

  “I brought them in last week,” Mary says, moving the tray from the countertop to the table. They both sit.

  “Wow, we’re drinking Gong Fu tea! Mary, you’re more and more capable,” Mingyi says, watching Mary drop tea leaves into the pot and, after a while, pour tea into the two cups as if she were watering flowers.

  “Don’t flatter me. It’s my first time making Gong Fu tea. I know only a little about it. A friend of mine bought this set and the tea for me a few months ago, and I’d never had a chance to use them. You know, Bob doesn’t drink tea and I’m too busy to think of drinking tea at home unless you, Yaya, and Julia come over. This tea is said to be very good oolong. I thought I’d just bring it to the church and share it with people who know how to appreciate tea. Gong Fu tea is meant to be drunk when you have time. But look at me! Where do I find the leisure to sit down to drink tea?” Mary lifts the cup to her lips and blows on it lightly to cool it. She downs it in one gulp. “Hmm, it’s good.”

  Mingyi does the same thing, and after emptying her cup, she pours more for them both. “You’re right about us being so busy here. It seems our countrymen in China know how to enjoy life better. Restaurants, teahouses, and bars are everywhere, packed from Monday to Sunday. Some restaurants open until four a.m. People seem to have a lot of time to hang out.”

  “Eating is always a big thing in China, isn’t it?” Mary offers. “My friends there keep telling me that Americans don’t know how to enjoy life. ‘What do Americans eat?’ they ask me. ‘Burgers? Steaks? Italian pastas and pizzas?’ Then they launch into long lists of dishes in China: eight major cuisines and local foods in each province and city. When my mother saw me eating salads, she said, ‘Why do you eat raw
vegetables? They can’t be tasty. In China, they’re for rabbits and pigs.’”

  Mingyi laughs. “Your mother was quite right. I thought the same thing when I first lived in the U.S. Now we eat salads and pizzas, just like Americans.” Mingyi drinks more tea. “Whenever I go back to China, I’m amazed at the changes and feel that my five senses are not enough to take in all the attractions and distractions. People who know that we’ve been living overseas say we haven’t gotten used to the changes in China, but people who don’t know we live abroad probably think we’re peasants who are confused in the city. At my age, I’m probably more nostalgic than you. I sometimes wonder if young people care about China’s history and culture at all, or if they’d rather be surrounded by McDonald’s, KFC, Starbucks, and Nintendo games.”

  “I worry about Alex,” Mary says. “What will become of him? Though he’s learning Mandarin, he doesn’t care about China. Once I told him about the Four Great Inventions. He looked uninterested, asking me why China didn’t invent cars, submarines, or space shuttles.”

  “He’s only six. He has a lot of time ahead of him.” Mingyi pats Mary’s back consolingly. “Let’s talk about something cheerful. We sound like two hollow-cheeked, silver-haired old ladies with walking sticks, crying over lost glory.” She licks her lips and smiles. “Hmm, you know what I’m craving right now? A piece of homemade sesame candy. Crispy and fragrant, perfect with the tea.”

  “My mother used to make them for the new year. Both my sister and I would help stir the sugar paste and then cut it into small squares. That was probably one of the happiest times for me in the entire year.” Mary props her chin on her hands, eyes distant, thinking.

  “Just the other day, Yaya talked about her hometown stinking tofu. This woman surely knows how to make your mouth water.” Mingyi imitates Yaya’s voice: “That smell, so strong that it seeps into your nostrils and brain and blood, turns into the most memorable aroma. Your stomach begins to ache from the craving, and before you know it, you are standing in front of the stinking tofu vendor’s big vat.”

  Mary frowns to show her disapproval. “That Yaya! I was cheated by her once. Last year I was in Changsha briefly on business, and I begged a friend to sneak out of work to take me to eat stinking tofu. She said, ‘Are you sure?’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’ So she took me to a well-known vendor. Honestly, I smelled the tofu half a mile away, and instantly, I wanted to throw up. The smell was worse than from decayed meat on a scorching summer day. But I wasn’t going to give up after such a long journey, so I bought a piece. I had to hold my breath before taking a small bite. I managed to swallow it, but threw away the rest.”

  “Aha, good you told me this, at least I’ll be better prepared if I want to try it someday. I don’t think Yaya is really so much into stinking tofu, though. She must be homesick. I always long for my hometown Tianjin’s ma hua. It’s so crunchy and tasty. I’m not kidding you. I spent my whole childhood dreaming of ma hua, my mouth watering even in my dreams. My biggest ambition used to be marrying a ma hua vendor. Whenever I go back home, the first thing I do is visit the best ma hua vendor in town and get a box. But as soon as I put a ma hua in my mouth, I’m disappointed with the taste: it’s just not what I have been imagining day in and day out. Ironically, I buy it every time I visit Tianjin.”

  “I’m just like you. Sometimes I crave the soft, sticky rice cake and spicy river snails I liked so much when I was little. Even now, mentioning them makes my mouth moist. I buy them every time I return to my hometown, but they never taste the same as I remember. Maybe it is because my family was too poor when I grew up and we’d just be happy if we could have enough rice on the table. When you’re hungry, everything tastes good. It’s an illusion, more from your brain than from your mouth or your stomach. When I was a child, I spent a lot of time looking for food, and I ate weird stuff, like cicadas. They tasted like paradise. Now I can eat whatever I want, but nothing tastes like the stuff I ate when I was little.”

  The two friends toast to their health, their families, their faith, and their friendship, lifting their teacups and smiling.

  “Do you know that my belief in God has something to do with food?” says Mingyi, beaming thoughtfully.

  Mary shakes her head, awaiting the story.

  “It was a long time ago,” Mingyi starts, looking out the window as if struggling to recall everything here and now for Mary. “One day I was very hungry, so I went with a few kids in my neighborhood to a village nearby to steal yams. Those few yam fields, after the harvest, must have been scavenged many times by hungry people like us. After we searched for more than an hour, kneeling to dig the soil with our hands, almost fainting with hunger and exhaustion, we each had got only a few finger-size baby yams. But that was enough to cheer us up. Have you eaten raw yams?”

  “Yes, of course. Sometimes I couldn’t wait and just rubbed the yams against my clothes to get rid of the soil and crunched them like that. To this day I recall clearly the sweetness under the yams’ dirty skins.”

  Mingyi nods. “We ate like that too.”

  “Did you find more food later?”

  “We continued searching, hoping for more surprises, but the watchman found us. He ran toward the field with a stick in his hand. We ran away. I was seven or eight years old, the youngest and also the shortest in the group, so of course I fell behind the other kids. The watchman got closer and closer, and I thought I heard the wind from his stick and smelled the blood from its spanking on my buttocks. Then, in my hurry, I tripped over something. I fell, my chest hitting a solid object. Maybe a hungry person always has the sharpest nose. I knew right away it was a yam, a yam bigger than my four fists put together. The moment I realized it, I decided that I would just lie there, covering the yam, letting him spank me with his stick. Compared with eating such a big yam, getting spanked wasn’t a big deal. But I was too excited and too dizzy with hunger to think clearly, so instead of following my plan, I jumped to my feet, holding the yam in front of my chest and exposing it to the watchman, who was now standing right behind me. He was not big, at most fourteen or fifteen, terribly skinny, his face looking like an upside-down triangle, his eyes deep-set, his arms no thicker than his stick. His ghostly white face suddenly turned red, as if lit by some mysterious light. He swallowed hard, staring at the yam.”

  “He took the yam, didn’t he?” Mary cannot hide her disappointment. If she’d been the young Mingyi, she’d have taken a big bite of the yam before surrendering it.

  “He reached for the yam, but I moved back a step; he advanced, I backed more. He moved his eyes from the yam to my face, startled, as if he had just realized my existence. We stared at each other like two tree stumps.

  “I don’t know how long we stood like that—five seconds, ten seconds, maybe longer—though it felt like forever. I saw the light in his eyes fade. Suddenly he turned and left, dragging the stick behind him as if he didn’t even have the strength to lift it. He walked fast, almost running, looking straight ahead. I think he knew that if he turned he’d change his mind and take the yam from my hands. It would have been so easy for him. I didn’t dare move until he disappeared into the darkness, my legs feeling like they could melt any second. It took me a while to walk to a place hidden by trees and bushes; I even took my time to wash the yam in a ditch before I sat against a tree to enjoy my precious food.”

  There is a long silence until Mary asks, “Did you meet him again later?”

  “No, I wish I did. I should have gone back to the village to find him, to thank him. But like any little kid, I quickly forgot this incident, and it was not until much later, when I was almost an adult, that the evening came back to me. That watchman who had let me go must have seen on my face, an orphan’s face, more hunger, more despair, and maybe even more death than he had seen in his own face. He backed off, giving me hope. I don’t know if he’s still alive or if he even remembers the girl holding a yam like it was her heart. Of course, he wouldn’t know that what he did had saved this girl�
�s life again and again in her later days.

  “Whenever I was surrounded by darkness I thought of the yam, of the fading light in the watchman’s eyes; then I knew I had to live, and I had the courage to live. Unlike many people from mainland China, who struggle for years before they abandon their doubts and follow God, I believed in God before I had the chance to read the Bible. My journey couldn’t have been more natural.” Mingyi moves her eyes back to Mary’s face and gives her a faint smile. “Oh, the tea is cold. Let me fix another kettle. I don’t want to waste such good tea.”

  Mingyi carries the kettle to the stove and lights the burner. Mary wants to go to her but instead remains in her chair, captivated by Mingyi’s tale. She knew Mingyi’s parents died a long time ago but didn’t know that she had been orphaned so young. She thinks about herself living in the countryside, away from her parents. She was like an orphan too, during those two years, and she knew what it was to be hungry. She ate new grass roots in the spring; she picked wild fruit and mushrooms without considering whether they might be poisonous; she ate cicadas, grasshoppers, and other insects after baking them on the fire. Her need for food, her certainty that she could find more and better food if she kept looking, had given her hope for the future.

  Mingyi returns with a plate of carrots and cherry tomatoes. “I’m hungry. I don’t know if it’s talking about the past or talking about food that makes me hungry. Want some?”

  Mary lifts a tomato to her mouth and, after a long pause, says, “Mingyi, have you ever thought about getting married?”

  “Hmm, no. I’m turning fifty in two years. It’s not easy to find someone I can get along well with.”

  “But you look young.” Mary hurries her words. “There are quite a few divorced men in the church, and most of them are very nice. I’d say you could easily find a match among them. You should at least try.”

  The kettle is boiling. Mingyi brings it back to the table and pours tea for them both. “My heart already belongs to someone. I haven’t told you about it before because I liked to keep it to myself. I used to have a fiancé who studied architecture. He spent his childhood in southern France but later came to China with his Chinese-born scientist parents. We loved each other deeply and got engaged when I was barely twenty. But he was soon condemned for his research on protecting ancient buildings. He was sentenced to twelve years and sent to a labor farm in Qinghai. I went everywhere to fight for justice for him, but with my family background, I didn’t stand a chance.”