Most days Suyin longed to be back at home, wedged in a bunk bed below her two brothers in their hot, small apartment, the voices of their neighbors seeping through the thin walls as if they were right there in the room with them. Or even back in school, the noisy, damp-smelling classroom where she had been almost invisible, except during the week before she left school. Suyin had made the mistake of telling a girl she thought she could trust that she might be pregnant. The next day at school, her classmates followed her every move and taunted her relentlessly with Suyin has come down with the nine-month flu. While school had become intolerable, she knew now the world was an even uglier place.
* * *
Suyin almost didn’t go to the marketplace that morning, but her hunger finally outweighed her discomfort. She stood amongst the crowd and glanced back to see the woman had turned around, as if remembering something too late. Was she looking for her? Suyin felt a shiver up her back. She watched the woman through the swarm of pushing bodies when she felt a sudden, sharp kick from the baby again. It was a good omen. The woman hesitated before she turned around and walked away. I’m here, Suyin wanted to call out. I’m right here. Instead, she waited a moment longer before she followed the woman from a safe distance.
Wei
Wei paused on the brick path that led back to Song’s rooms, deciding whether to continue. Kai Ying had come home from the market and was preparing Tao for his return to the hospital. Wei hadn’t planned on visiting Song; he’d stepped out to the courtyard and found himself moving naturally toward the path, just as he had done so many times in the past. Before Sheng was taken away, he and Song often sat together reminiscing about Liang and the old days. She never minced words and he enjoyed spending time with her. As different as they were, Song was the only one who understood that the past was still very much present for him.
Wei missed their conversations, but he couldn’t bring himself to confide in her about his part in Sheng’s arrest. His shame still felt like an open wound. But even more so, Wei knew if he looked directly into Song’s eyes, she would know something was terribly wrong and ask questions. And then what would he say? It seemed much easier for him to avoid her.
But something had changed since Tao’s fall—his loneliness had gradually come to outweigh his shame. He awoke this morning from a disturbed sleep with the sudden need to talk to Song. He had no idea what he was going to say to her. She would never forgive his deception, but she might understand how something like this could have happened. It was all he hoped for.
Wei knew he would find her in or around her garden, and there she was.
“Just in time,” Song called out, waving him over to where she stood near a cleared patch of earth.
As he approached, Wei smelled the bucket of manure before he saw it sitting beside her, waiting to be worked into the soil. No one could make vegetables grow like Song did.
“I don’t have the time to help right now,” he said. “We’re on our way to the hospital. I just came over to see how you’re doing.” And then he added, “It seems like a long time.”
“You never did like to get your hands dirty,” Song said, and then laughed.
She was still the strongest, most productive person he knew. All the years when he’d been hiding within the university walls cataloguing artifacts, she had been living through life’s everyday struggles.
“And if it seems like a long time since you’ve visited, it’s because it has been a long time,” she added.
Wei smiled and reached out for her arm as Song walked toward him. Her height always surprised him; she was a good half a head taller than Liang.
“Time at least for a cup of tea?” she asked.
He nodded and followed her.
Song looked up at the sky. “It looks like the weather’s changing.”
* * *
Song had put on a little weight during the past few years, but Wei thought it suited her, softened her hard edges now that she was older. Song couldn’t have been more opposite in appearance and in manner from Liang. Her emotions rose to the surface at a moment’s notice, whereas his wife was always calm and steady. Right after Liang passed away, Wei couldn’t walk down the street without seeing women his wife’s age who were alive and well. Inwardly, he despised them. Why were they alive while Liang wasn’t? It was a spitefulness he hadn’t known he possessed. And yet, he never felt that way about Song. It wasn’t until Liang had died that Wei realized how similar Song and his wife were in heart and mind, and how their mutual grief had opened the door to their friendship.
Wei looked down at his clothes and couldn’t imagine how he must look to Song now. When he was teaching, he always kept up his appearance as a professor and scholar. Now, he saw it all as just one more weakness. Wasn’t it because of his vanity that Sheng had been arrested? During the past year, Wei had lost weight, his flesh fallen away so that his clothes hung loosely on his stooped shoulders. His cheekbones protruded, leaving dark hollows under his eyes that made him appear constantly exhausted. Anyone who hadn’t seen him in a while would take one look and think he was in the midst of battling some great illness. And Wei supposed he was.
He followed Song through the doorway of her dim apartment. He closed his eyes for a moment, allowing them to adjust. During the hot summer days, Wei always found her back rooms cooler than the main house. In winter, she always wore two padded jackets against the cold, damp air. And in March and April, during the misty, wet season of the plum rains, he thought of her apartment as a warm, dark cave. In any season, there was no direct sunlight until the sun set in the late afternoon, which meant her door was almost always open, a plume of daylight leading to the kitchen. If his daughter-in-law’s kitchen smelled of medicinal herbs, Song’s kitchen was filled with the rich aromas of food that never failed to make his mouth water.
Wei stepped inside.
* * *
Song poured him a cup of tea and he glanced up and nodded in thanks. When she parted her lips and smiled, he glimpsed the dark space where one of her teeth had been. He once mentioned to her that she could have her tooth replaced if she wanted to. Song shook her head and had said, “What for? I’m too old for it to matter anymore. At least this way, it’s a reminder of all the battles I’ve fought to get here.” She made it a point then to part her lips, showing the empty space like a badge of honor. Song never told him how she lost the tooth, and if Liang had, it was just one more thing he hadn’t heard or didn’t remember, lost in his own world.
“What have you been doing with yourself?” Song asked. She put a plate of custard tarts down on the table and sat down across from him.
“Telling stories to Tao,” he answered. He stared down at his cup of tea.
“He’s going to be just fine,” she said.
“Yes, he will be.”
“And so will Sheng,” she added.
Wei remained silent. “What makes you so sure?” he finally asked. He could feel her gaze upon him.
She reached over and patted his hand, her touch warm and dry. “He’s a strong young man,” she said. “And he has all of you to return to.”
The words rose to the tip of his tongue and this time, he didn’t swallow them back down. “I’ve been a foolish old man. I’ve made a terrible mistake,” he said quietly.
“What mistake?” Song asked. She inhaled. Her voice had softened to a quiet, serious tone, one a mother would use with a child when she knew something was wrong.
He heard the steam rising from a pot she had on the burner, the soft whistle of air flowing upward, the lid clattering. What was she cooking? he wondered. The sound filled his head and made everything around him feel cloudy and far away. The soft whistling sound in his head grew stronger and louder. Wei brought the teacup up to his lips and drank down his tea. He looked up and into her eyes. It was the least he could do: accept responsibility with what little dignity he had left. The hot liquid burned his tongue all the way down his throat. It wasn’t enough to make up for what he had done, b
ut it was a start.
“What mistake?” he heard Song ask again.
He looked up and he was there in her kitchen as she refilled his teacup and set it down on the table in front of him. Nothing had changed. He was still an old fool. Song had no idea what was going on with him and he didn’t have the energy to start at the beginning.
“Are you feeling all right?” Song asked. He saw the look of concern that now clouded her face. “You haven’t been yourself for the longest time.”
Song didn’t know how wrong she was. He was exactly himself, a coward who didn’t deserve her friendship. Instead, Wei cleared his throat and glanced up at her.
“I’m fine,” he said.
Tao
Tao smelled smoke. Just like after a string of firecrackers had gone off during New Year’s, the smoke rising, the burning scent lingering in the air. His mother stood to the side of the hospital table where he lay and squeezed his hand tighter as the high shrill of the saw sheared through the length of the cast. He glanced down at his leg to see the white powdery residue of the plaster spring up and float through the air. The room was small and his grandfather had to wait outside for them in the hallway. The doctor told him to relax and they would have the cast off in a short time. Tao held tightly on to his mother’s hand.
Tao closed his eyes for a moment, his thoughts drifting elsewhere. The sound of the saw blurred into the buzzing of a thousand bees. His mother’s thumb stroked the back of his hand, telling him everything was all right. It’s almost over. He would never forget the time his hand slipped from his mother’s in a busy downtown area. He was four years old and was suddenly lost in a crowd of people with his ma ma nowhere in sight. He remembered feeling as if he’d fallen into a well, looking up and seeing only a small piece of the sky as he struggled to catch his breath and keep up the pace. Soon, he felt as if he couldn’t breathe. “No, no, no!” He suddenly stopped and screamed at the top of his lungs. Bodies jostled him to and fro, until a hand grabbed him by the back of the collar and pulled him to the side. His mother had backtracked and was calling his name over and over again when the man waved her over. Tao was crying by then, and when he saw her hurrying toward him, he began to cry even harder until she had picked him up and he was in her arms again. “I’m here, I’m here,” she repeated, stroking his back. It was a memory that still haunted him.
* * *
The buzzing stopped. Tao opened his eyes and his mother was still there holding on to his hand.
“There we are,” the doctor said. He looked up and smiled for the very first time.
The cast was split open like a perfectly divided pea pod, but instead of peas, his pale, thin leg wrapped in gauze was the prize in the middle. The doctor lifted his leg carefully, slowly unwinding the gauze to unleash the sourness of the enclosed plaster and unwashed leg, examining it thoroughly. “I want you to be careful,” he added, looking at Tao and addressing him for the very first time. “No more climbing trees.”
Tao nodded. No climbing the kapok or getting lost in a big crowd, he thought, where he wouldn’t be able to keep up with his weak leg. He imagined struggling against the wave of people pushing him forward, only this time he could see himself pushing back.
“You’ll need to make sure he doesn’t exert himself when he gets home. The leg is still weak and he needs to take it slowly,” the doctor said to his mother. “We’ll get him a pair of crutches to use until his leg gains back its strength.”
Tao watched as she moistened her lips with her tongue. His ma ma took care of people every day, he wanted to tell the doctor. She knew what to do.
“Yes, of course,” his mother said, still holding tightly on to his hand.
* * *
It began to rain on the afternoon of Moon Festival; the clapping sound of water falling from the branches of the kapok tree and off the tiles of the courtyard wall filled the house. That evening at dinner, Tao stood up from the table, and without using his crutches, slowly limped to the window. His leg felt weak and naked and he was afraid to put too much weight on it. Why couldn’t he walk like before, he thought, after all those weeks trapped in a cast? At the window, he stared out at the darkness, the moon completely obscured by the clouds.
“Do you want to hear the story of Houyi and Chang’e now?” his grandfather asked.
Tao turned around and shook his head. “There’s no moon,” he answered.
“There’s still the story.”
“It’s not the same without the moon.”
His grandfather stroked his whiskers. “But we know the moon is still up there, beyond the rain and the clouds.”
What good was the moon if you couldn’t see it? Tao thought. If it wasn’t there to help his ba ba to find his way home again? But, he nodded and limped back to the table and sat down, no longer caring which version of the myth his grandfather was going to tell him.
Kai Ying
It rained throughout the night of Moon Festival and continued into the next morning. The winds increased, howling through the courtyard and rattling around the house. Kai Ying, in the kitchen waiting for her first patient of the day, took down several jars of herbs from the shelf and set them on the counter. She hoped she still had some Teasel root and Eucommia bark to add to the soup she was brewing to help strengthen Tao’s leg. On the burner, steam rose from a boiling pot of water, the kitchen warm and humid.
Kai Ying had had trouble sleeping last night. She could still feel Tao’s disappointment at not glimpsing the full moon. It had been a difficult day for him in other ways. From the moment his cast came off, she felt his frustration at being unable to walk normally. His leg was thin and sickly looking, the muscle slack. The doctor had given him a list of exercises to do every day to regain its strength and flexibility. Tao also disliked using the crutches and she watched how hard he was trying to adjust to walking without them. He was like a toddler again, taking slow, tentative steps while always remaining in close proximity to a wall he could lean against or a chair he could grab. He was too young to understand his leg would take time to heal. Patience came with age and experience, something she herself had been forced to learn in the past year.
Kai Ying wished she could do more to help Tao’s leg heal faster. She wondered what Sheng would say to make him feel better, and suddenly, the realization that she might never know swept over her, as if his voice had slipped away. She remembered it low and calm, punctuated by a strong, deep laugh, but why couldn’t she hear it? And just as unexpectedly, Kai Ying’s cheeks were wet with tears. She never cried during the day. She quickly wiped her tears away with the back of her sleeve.
* * *
“Are you all right?”
Kai Ying looked up to see Auntie Song quickly closing the kitchen door against the wind and the rain. She looked away, embarrassed, and wiped her face again with her sleeve. “The steam,” she said, though sure Song wouldn’t believe her. Her own voice sounded foreign to her. She cleared her throat and pretended to be busy with the herbs. “I’m fine,” she said, wiping her cheek again. She was relieved it was Auntie Song and not an early patient.
“There’s nothing like a good cry to clear the way,” Auntie Song said. She stood there, tall and imposing, wearing a cotton tunic and pants damp from the rain and muddied from her early morning work around the garden. Outside, the rain began to fall harder, playing a concert against the rooftop. “Looks like I made it just in time,” she said.
“I’m just getting your herbs ready,” Kai Ying said. “I was going to bring them over to you when the rain let up.”
“No hurry,” Song said. “Besides, I wanted to come by and see how Tao is doing this morning.”
“He’s still upstairs,” Kai Ying said. She put a pot of water on to boil for tea.
“I’m just beginning to plant. I was hoping Tao could come over and see the garden today,” Auntie Song said, listening to the falling rain. “It looks as if we’ll have to wait for another day.”
“He loves your garden,”
Kai Ying said. “Lo Yeh is upstairs with him now. It’s still difficult for him. The doctor doesn’t want him to put too much stress on his leg for a few more weeks. But now that his cast is off, he doesn’t understand why he can’t simply go back to school and walk and run around like he did before.”
“Any boy his age would think the same thing,” Auntie Song said. She smiled reassuringly and sat down at the table. “My brothers couldn’t sit still for a minute, always getting into mischief. Tao has been laid up for a good two months,” she added. “Don’t worry, in a few weeks his leg will have gained back its strength and he’ll be able to return to school. He’ll get through this.”
Kai Ying nodded. She took a deep breath and kept her hands busy measuring out the herbs. On a square of paper, she divided equal parts of tang-kuei, cinnamon, astragalus, peony, and ginseng for a tea to ease Auntie Song’s arthritis.
“I know it’s a mother’s burden to worry,” Song said. “It doesn’t end with each day, does it?”
“No, no it doesn’t,” Kai Ying answered. “And neither do a wife’s burdens.” She stopped herself and poured a cup of tea for Auntie Song. Sheng’s long silence was a heavy weight on all of them.
“I’m sure there’s a good explanation as to why Sheng hasn’t written,” Song said.
“Yes, I know. It’s just that…”
“What?”
“The only reason he wouldn’t write was if something was wrong … and he couldn’t write.”
“There could be all kinds of explanations,” Auntie Song said. “You know nothing is ever so simple. We can’t begin to guess what he’s going through, so it doesn’t help to second-guess. You’ll just drive yourself crazy with worry. I may not have been blessed with children,” Auntie Song said, and sipped her tea, “but I’ve had my share of a wife’s burdens.”