As they stood next to each other, Kai Ying was glad she couldn’t see her father-in-law’s face. She wanted the old Wei back, the man who commanded respect just by walking into a classroom, the man who had sat by the side of his dying wife day after day reading quietly to her, the man who spent hours talking and laughing with his grandson. Instead, she felt only the looming presence of the kapok tree rising above, and the sense that they, too, had fallen.
The Falling Boy
August 1958
Tao
All Tao remembered after climbing the kapok tree was waking up in the hospital and crying out for his mother. When he moved, an unbearable pain shot up through his leg into his body. A nurse held him still and spoke kindly to calm him, though he couldn’t remember later anything she said. Tao slept most of the time and felt groggy when he awoke, but whenever he peered around the hot and airless room, he glimpsed his mother or his grandfather at his bedside. Then he closed his eyes again.
He hated the hard, heavy cast on his leg. The stone-faced doctor was concerned about the broken bone and its healing process. Now his mother and grandfather were standing out in the hallway and he heard them talking to the doctor about his having a limp for the rest of his life if his bone didn’t fuse together correctly. The doctor’s voice sounded fuzzy and far away. Tao pretended he was asleep. All he wanted was to go home. And somewhere amidst all the murmuring voices, he wondered whether his ba ba knew he’d been hurt and if that might bring him home again.
Song
Auntie Song sat on a wooden stool beside a neatly planted row of gai lan, their glossy blue-green leaves hiding the thick, crisp stems of Chinese broccoli she loved. This vegetable garden was Song’s favorite place to think, half-hidden by the plants she nurtured from the ground up. With a sharp knife, Song quickly cut at the bottom of the thick stems until a bundle of gai lan lay beside her. After almost two weeks in the hospital, Tao was coming home today and she was joining the Lees for dinner that evening.
Song relished the last of her summer crops. Just beyond the gai lan rose the bitter melon and her prized long beans, some stalks two feet high and ready to be picked. They grew wildly in the warm, humid climate. It was already August, and next month, she would plant her fall crops of yu choy, choy sum, and bak choy, the green leafy vegetables she enjoyed throughout the winter. But if Tao’s leg hadn’t healed by then, Song could delay the planting a few weeks. From the time Tao was a toddler, he delighted in watching the vegetables grow, many of the stalks taller than he was. Song had promised him he could help her plant and she wasn’t about to go back on her word. What better way for him to heal and gain back his strength?
At sixty-eight, Song still worked in the garden for hours each day. She loved the morning hours, the way the cool earth felt sliding between her fingers as she dug deep into it. She was certain the soil must have some healing powers, and she swore it relieved the arthritis pain in her fingers. Song straightened up, flexed her fingers, and smiled. Even with all the herbs Kai Ying gave her to help alleviate her arthritis pain, or to lower her blood pressure, it was working in the garden that made her feel the healthiest and most alive. Song looked up at the sky and saw the clouds thickening. Neighbor Lau’s rooster crowed again and she shook her head. The noisy bird was nothing but a nuisance. She surveyed her thriving garden and felt a flood of joy, recalling a time when such a miracle, this abundance of food, was only a dream.
It was a far cry from the bustling Old Guangzhou district, her home for over fifty-five years; the blocks of weather-beaten three- and four-story Cantonese-style Qilou buildings with shops and restaurants on the street level, known for their arcade-style covered sidewalks that kept out the summer heat and the fierce monsoon rains. She heard once again the high, frantic voices bargaining at the stores downstairs, felt the crowds of people pushing her forward through the cool, dark walkway, breathed in the oily aromas tinged with smoke and sweat, even though just beyond it all, the stink of garbage and urine arose from the narrow alleyways. Upstairs in each Qilou building, several generations of families shared overcrowded quarters. That was where she had spent her childhood, followed by forty years of marriage to Old Hing, her life confined to a small, stifling apartment, a two-story walkup above a fish market and the dim sum restaurant she had worked at as a girl. She smiled to think Old Hing would turn over in his grave to see her now.
* * *
When Hing finally died almost twelve years ago, Song’s friend Liang had persuaded her to move out of Old Guangzhou and to the villa. “There’s plenty of room,” she urged. “And you’ll have complete privacy.” Liang had been her closest friend since elementary school, and was the one person Song would do anything for without question. She felt certain they must have been sisters in a past life. How else could she explain their friendship? Liang was educated and from a good family, while Song had grown up poor and been married off before she finished high school. At sixteen, her father sold her into a marriage with Hing, who was already forty years old and had been married twice before. There were rumors that his first wife had died of fright, so terrorized by Hing that her heart gave out, while his second wife had simply disappeared one night. He told neighbors she had returned to her ancestral village with his blessings, never to be seen again. Six months later, Hing saw Song making dumplings at the restaurant below his apartment and talked her alcoholic father into selling her to him. For a meager sum that would have bought no more than a hundred dumplings, Song became his “hundred dumplings bride,” and had remained a virtual prisoner in her marriage to the mean-spirited monster.
After Hing’s death, Song had hesitated about moving to the villa, afraid she couldn’t adjust to the quiet, once lofty Dongshan area. It was before the Communists came into power, when all the villas in the area were taken over by the government and divided up among families. She’d visited several times before, but never ventured beyond the kitchen and courtyard. But when Liang led her along the brick path from the courtyard to what used to be the old servants’ quarters at the back of the villa, Song stopped short at the sight of the neglected yard. Ever since she was a little girl, she had wished for a garden, which meant freedom to her. To have a garden meant that she’d escaped crowded Old Guangzhou. With her own piece of land, she could plant her seeds and watch them grow. Song couldn’t imagine any greater wealth. Within the first month of moving to the villa, Song had cleared most of the yard and readied it for planting.
* * *
The Lees were her family now. Song had promised Liang, when her end was near, that she’d watch over Wei, Sheng, and Kai Ying. From that moment on, she treated Wei as a brother, and Sheng and Kai Ying as she would her own children. Tao was their added happiness. The years since she moved to the villa had been kind to her. Even now, it was hard to believe Liang had been gone for nine years. All the joys she had missed in knowing Tao and in seeing what a good daughter-in-law and mother Kai Ying turned out to be were left for Song.
Tao will be all right, Song thought to herself. His fall from the kapok tree had been frightening, and the thought of losing him was a tragedy too great for any of them to bear, especially after Sheng’s arrest. Every day she lit incense and prayed to Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, that Sheng would return home soon. It was still hard for her to believe he’d written that letter to the Premier. She had known Sheng since the day he was born: the long-awaited child who wouldn’t have jeopardized his family for any cause.
* * *
Song looked up when she heard the front gate whine open, followed by voices in the courtyard. Tao had arrived! From the corner of her eye, she saw that her Chinese chives were also ready to be harvested. She hurried to gather together the vegetables, stood up, and dusted the dirt from her cotton pants. Along with her long beans and leek flowers, the stir-fried vegetables would provide several tasty additions to their dinner that evening. She carried an armful of vegetables as she made her way to the courtyard to welcome Tao home. There were so many lifetimes in one life
, Song thought, as she paused to look back at her beloved garden.
Tao
Tao had been home from the hospital for two days now, and even though he lay in his own bed in his small bedroom, everything felt different to him. In the early-morning light seeping through the thin cotton curtains, all his favorite possessions appeared worn and distant. His faded stuffed tiger flopped on a chair in the corner of the room. The light blue blanket he had slept with as a baby was draped across the foot of the bed untouched. Even his grandfather’s wood desk, pushed against the wall just below the window, where Tao sat drawing or practicing his Chinese characters, looked like an old relic. He tried to remember the last time he’d sat down at the desk, and out of habit, run his fingers along the jagged characters of his name, Lee Tao, which he had carved just underneath the right-hand drawer of the battered desk with his penknife. It was his secret. He looked around the room, and it felt as if he’d been away for a very long time and since he had returned, he’d outgrown his childhood.
The curtains were parted just enough for Tao to glimpse the branches of the kapok tree. Already the sky was turning a hazy gray, which meant more thunderstorms by afternoon. When he returned from the hospital and his grandfather carried him into the courtyard, he looked up at the old kapok tree and felt immediately comforted. It was still there. Several times, when he had wakened in the hospital in the middle of the night, it frightened him to think they might have cut it down, leaving a gaping hole where it once stood, all because of him. Tao didn’t dare mention his fears to his mother or grandfather. But when he saw the tree still standing in the courtyard, he wrapped his arms tighter around his ye ye’s neck. Tao would never blame the kapok for his fall; he’d been the one at fault.
When his ba ba returned, Tao would tell him all about his dream and he would understand. He wondered again if his father knew he had fallen, but he hesitated to ask his mother when he saw how happy she was to have him home. Since his ba ba left, he’d rarely seen her smile. But, if his father knew he had been hurt, wouldn’t he have already rushed home to him? Tao didn’t want to think about it.
What Tao would never tell anyone, including his father, was what he really felt the day he fell from the kapok, how for just a moment he was flying instead of falling, and how happy it made him feel. Even now, he envisioned soaring through the gates and beyond the Ming garden wall, high above the narrow, crowded alleyways where he used to run and over the wide, tree-lined streets that led to far-off places he’d never seen. Tao felt so certain that if he had just kept on flying, he’d have reached White Cloud Mountain.
* * *
Tao had been having a hard time sleeping since he’d returned home. He dozed in brief spurts and woke up hot and sticky, pushing away the cotton sheet that loosely covered him. August was a month of relentless heat, broken by afternoon thunderstorms and humid, still nights. No matter which way he shifted his body, he wasn’t comfortable. His right leg was immobile, cocooned in a heavy, plaster cast that was elevated on a mountain of pillows. His leg itched. He imagined it would look mummified by the time the cast finally came off, like one of his ye ye’s artifacts. If he had his penknife with him now, he’d carve what he was really feeling right into the hard plaster. He was miserable, tired of lying in bed all the time, staring up at the water stains on the ceiling, imagining they were far-off constellations. The only good thing to happen the day before he left the hospital was that the bandages had been taken off his arm, so that he could see the raw scrapes had become ugly, drying scabs, but now he could move his arm back and forth with relative ease.
Tao assumed his leg was also getting better each day. The doctor said they would know more when the cast came off. Meanwhile, he would have to spend most of his time in bed. “Try not to move your leg,” his mother said over and over, repeating the doctor’s instructions. She said it again last night, standing in the doorway. “You told me already,” he snapped back, then immediately felt bad. It was the first full sentence he had spoken since returning home. What upset him more was that his ma ma looked at him differently now, with the same sadness in her eyes as when his ba ba went away.
But Tao wasn’t going anywhere.
* * *
Plates clattered in the kitchen downstairs. Both his mother and grandfather were early risers. On his bedside table, his mother had left him a piece of buttered toast, sprinkled with sugar on top, along with a glass of soy milk for breakfast. Tao imagined them sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea, his mother eating wedges of orange or papaya, his ye ye sipping from a bowl of jook, the rice porridge he ate every morning. He heard the voices of neighbors dropping by to see how he was doing. Tao wished he could be downstairs with them, but, while his mother was busy with her patients, his grandfather kept him company, playing card games or reading to him or telling him stories. He wondered if there’d ever come a time when his ye ye would run out of stories to tell.
As he lay in bed, Tao worried about missing school when the term began again in early September. What new characters would they learn to write in his absence? And what was his best friend, Little Shan, up to? He had received some get-well cards from a few of his classmates when he was in the hospital. Since then, he’d heard nothing, even though Little Shan had written he would visit soon. What really upset Tao was the certain drop in his class standing if he didn’t return to school at the beginning of the year. He’d always been a bright, attentive student and before his accident, was ranked second in his class. Now, even though they were best friends, it bothered him that Little Shan might jump ahead of him. The only person he knew who was smarter than he was was Ling Ling. She was consistently number one and the prettiest girl in his class. Tao liked her seated first in the class, especially if it meant he was seated behind her and could watch her two pigtails dance back and forth every time she raised her hand to answer a question. Every once in a while, she even turned around and smiled at him when he answered a question correctly. Tao’s face flushed warm at the thought. He wanted to be back at school sitting behind Ling Ling, playing Ping-Pong with Little Shan, even doing morning exercises in the crowded noisy yard full of students.
* * *
Tao heard the clink of the black iron pot on the fire downstairs and knew his mother was beginning her workday. Every morning since he had come home, even before she went out to unlock the front gate for her patients, she brewed a special tea for him. She held great hope that the herbs would help his body recover from the trauma he had suffered. “It’s not just your leg that must heal; your entire body needs to find balance again,” she said. People came to her from all over Dongshan believing the same thing.
Tao grimaced. The teas were harder to swallow, simmered down to a dark, potent essence. He preferred her soups, which were easier to drink, herbs and ginseng boiled with a piece of pork or a whole chicken if they had enough food coupons left at the end of the month.
His mother had to cajole him. “Drink this. I know it’s bitter, but it will strengthen your blood and help you to grow strong,” she urged him each morning as she lifted the bowl to his lips.
The tea tasted acrid all the way down his throat. In the bottom of the bowl, the dark, watery remains resembled a bird’s nest of twigs and leaves.
* * *
Tao had always liked to watch his mother working in the kitchen, wrinkling his nose at the sharp, pungent smells of the herbs that she slipped into boiling water from brown paper packets. A damp, earthy smell like musk arose, tempered by the sweetness of red dates and dried figs she added to the soup. Entering the steamy kitchen was like stepping into another world where his ma ma was a pretty alchemist, a new word he’d just read in a book, someone who had the power to transform and enchant. He watched her with her patients, the way she listened and soothed. She knew each person not only by name, but by ailment. “Here comes Mrs. Yee who suffers from bursitis,” or “Young Tan needs more herbs to warm his blood,” or “Chong’s rheumatism must be flaring up again in this wet weather.” It
felt strange to think that he was now one of her patients.
* * *
Before his fall, Tao’s mother occasionally asked him to deliver herbs to nearby neighbors, which made him feel important. And it was always his job to bring packets of herbs to Auntie Song for her arthritis and high blood pressure. He knew his mother liked Auntie Song for her truthful, no-nonsense ways. If the courtyard was the domain of his grandfather, all he had to do was follow the brick path that led to the backyard vegetable garden, which belonged to Auntie Song. Tao could usually find her in the garden, or in her small kitchen cleaning and cooking the fresh vegetables she’d just picked. For every packet of herbs he brought to Auntie Song, he carried back three times as many vegetables to his mother in return.
Tao once heard his grandfather say Song had lived through many difficulties in her life, and had been married for a long time to a very bad man, but that she was sturdy and could endure, and that’s the way Tao thought of her: someone with strength, not unlike the kapok tree. He liked the way Auntie Song looked. Her face had more wrinkles than he’d ever seen before, but she had only threads of gray in her hair. When she smiled, he could see her missing front tooth, a black hole like a door swung open. She was taller and heavier than his mother, though not fat. Auntie Song liked to keep busy, her hands always in motion, planting or darning or cooking, and he always felt safe around her.
Almost every day after school, Tao helped Auntie Song in her vegetable garden. He pulled weeds, fetched buckets of water, or brought shears and string to tie her long beans together. In early March, she’d taught him to plant his first snow peas, dropping the small seeds into the cool, moist dirt and covering them. “Be careful never to overwater them,” Auntie Song had said, hovering over him. “The seeds will rot if they get too wet.” He checked them every day, thrilled when the first green shoots emerged from the dirt. His ye ye had said they were the best snow peas he’d ever eaten.