Quan nodded shyly.
At the top of the stairs, Pei peered down to see Ji Shen once again talking quietly to Quan, her hands folded lightly over the full moon of her stomach.
Pei usually closed the shop around six each evening and walked slowly back to the boardinghouse with Ji Shen, where Song Lee had dinner waiting for them. That night, she quickly finished mending a pair of silk stockings, then decided to close the shop a half-hour early.
As if Song Lee knew they were bringing Quan home, she had prepared soup, rice, pork with lotus roots, and chicken with long beans. The usually quiet boardinghouse took on a festive air. Quan ate heartily long after all the women had put down their chopsticks. “You don’t know how sick I am of eating fish,” he said, finally putting down his bowl.
Ji Shen laughed. “I can see.”
Quan blushed.
“Nonsense, he’s a growing young man. He should eat!” Song Lee filled his bowl again with rice.
Pei hadn’t seen Ji Shen so happy in a long time, smiling and teasing. When Quan leaned forward and reached out for his rice bowl, Pei also noticed how little difference there was between a sha boy’s hand and a fisherman’s hand—they had the same largeknuckled strength. Quan had moved gracefully from the secrets of the streets to the secrets of the sea.
When they’d finished dinner, Quan left to spend some time with his family, promising to return soon. Still in a joyful mood, Pei and Ji Shen adjourned to the sitting room with Song Lee. Pei sat by the window, and as was her habit, began some mending—a cheongsam, tonight—that would be picked up the next morning. She threaded a needle with silver-gray, a wise and calm color. There was always too much work now not to do it late into most evenings. More than once, Song Lee had told her to employ an assistant, but Pei had shrugged off the suggestion. Her business was just getting on its feet, and every cent was needed. Not to mention that very soon there would be one more mouth to feed.
Ji Shen waddled back and forth, her small frame still slim except for her belly, where the baby rode high and round. Song Lee had said to herself over and over again, “The baby sits high, so it should be a boy.”
Ji Shen suddenly turned to them from the window and said, “I’ve been thinking of names.”
“For the baby?” Song Lee asked.
Ji Shen laughed. “For the shop.”
Pei looked up from her mending. “We’ve been doing all right without one.”
“Ho Yung thinks it’s bad business not to have a name,” Ji Shen continued. “How will people identify us?”
Pei smiled and continued to sew. Ho Yung came to the shop at least once or twice a week with a new idea to improve business: chairs for customers to sit on while they waited, flowers to brighten up the counter, ways to make each customer feel important.
“Let them chose the shade of thread they want you to use,” he said one afternoon, fingering a flat of threads in a rainbow of colors.
Pei remembered stopping for a moment at Ho Yung’s idea. She always felt that each color had a personality, a language all its own. After so many years of reeling the pale white threads of the cocoons, and salvaging hidden threads during the occupation, it was a pleasure to have such a multitude of colors to work with. Perhaps some kind of dialogue with her customers was important. That, and a name.
“The Invisible Thread,” Song Lee suddenly suggested.
“The Needle and Thread!” was Ji Shen’s idea.
It didn’t take Pei long to agree on one. The Invisible Thread, it would be. She liked the sound of it. Simple and clear.
“And now what about a name for the baby?” Song Lee continued.
By the smile on Song Lee’s face, Pei knew her friend was pleased that they’d chosen a name for her shop so quickly. She saw it as a good omen, like so much else lately.
“I was thinking if the baby’s a girl, we should call her Lin,” Ji Shen said.
Pei was startled to hear Lin’s name ring so calmly through the room. “She would be honored,” Pei said, mostly to herself and not looking up from her sewing. She’d have to get used to saying the name aloud every day again. But how could the child be anything but fortunate in carrying the name of her beloved Lin?
“And if it’s a boy?” Pei finally looked up and asked.
“I’d like him to have a prosperous name. My father’s name was Gong.”
“ ‘Gong’ means bright,” Song Lee said. “A good name for a boy. It’s important to start a child off right in the world. His name will define who he is in this life.”
“It’s a good name,” Pei seconded. Both of them were. She held the dress she’d been mending up to the light, barely able to tell where it had been ripped.
Two days later, Ji Shen’s water broke. Pei held her hand tightly, although Ji Shen’s nails dug into her skin with each new spasm of pain. It was going to be a long labor; hours had already passed since her first contraction. They were all in the sitting room talking and making plans for the baby’s arrival. Ji Shen had just picked up her teacup, only to double over, grabbing her stomach as if she’d been punched. She screamed aloud as warm water rushed from between her legs to the floor. It was followed by a series of prolonged contractions.
While Pei helped Ji Shen up the stairs to bed, Song Lee rushed to get the midwife. The wizened old lady finally sauntered in, saying, “Relax, relax, the first one never comes so quickly!”
Almost eleven hours later, the midwife cut an incision that lengthened all the way to Ji Shen’s rectum. Only then did the baby finally arrive. Ji Shen tried to lift her head, smiling weakly when she saw her newborn son. “A boy,” she whispered, her eyes looking up and finding Pei’s.
“A boy,” Pei echoed, placing the baby next to the exhausted young woman.
Pei couldn’t help but remember her own mother, and the births Yu-sung had suffered through. All that pain, only to have five daughters and no sons to carry on her husband’s name and help with the groves and ponds. In the end, she and Li had been the only two to survive. Pei’s heart filled with yearning to know if her sister Li was still alive and well.
Ji Shen’s moans brought her thoughts back to their cramped, warm room. Pei looked down to see the midwife frantically trying to stop the flow of blood from the incision. Song Lee had disappeared to fetch more clean towels. Pei’s heart quickened to see how pale Ji Shen was and how her grip was weakening.
“What’s wrong?” Pei screamed, wide-eyed with fear. “Do something! Do something!”
The midwife made a coughing sound as if something were stuck in her throat, but didn’t answer. In the next moment it seemed as if she were trying to do a hundred things at once, mumbling to herself. Finally, she said the words aloud: “The bleeding won’t stop.” She removed a bloody towel from between Ji Shen’s legs and replaced it with the last clean one.
Pei bent down to Ji Shen’s ear. “You have to live through this,” she pleaded. “There’s still so much you have to do. You have to see your son grow into a man.” The heat of the room was stifling with the sour smell of sweat and blood. “Ji Shen, can you hear me?”
The slightest whisper of a moan.
“Ji Shen! Ji Shen!” Pei’s distraught cry filled the room.
Very slowly Ji Shen opened her eyes and smiled calmly at Pei, her head rising just a bit. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed.
A last breath of words before her lids suddenly fluttered and her eyes rolled to the back of her head; the last of her spirit rose from her parted lips. Pei clutched Ji Shen tighter, refusing to let death take her. “Live! Live! Live!” The frantic chant, willing Ji Shen to return to life, as the baby squirmed beside her, making small gurgling sounds that sounded faintly like laughter.
The funeral was small and spare, the sky as clear as glass. Pei and the baby, Song Lee, Quan, and Ho Yung stood on the graveyard hill. Pei had borrowed money from Ho Yung to secure a plot and marble headstone for Ji Shen in a Chinese cemetery. It stood before them, soft gray swirls in hard white rock. A life—a loving
mother who wasn’t given the chance to love her son—reduced to an engraved name, the years of birth and death. Song Lee cried aloud as Ho Yung held gently onto her arm. Quan stood stone still, tears streaming down his face.
On this gloriously bright day, Pei held on tightly to baby Gong and said her final good-byes to Ji Shen, who for the last eight years had been the sole remaining member of her Yung Kee family. Pei kowtowed three times in front of the grave and felt the squirming bundle press against her. A hot sting of tears burned inside her but wouldn’t emerge. Grief had numbed her. Nothing could have prepared her for Ji Shen’s death. Now she felt the shadows of both Lin and Ji Shen hovering over her. Pei looked up quickly and thought she saw a thin woman in a red scarf watching from a distance, but when she looked again, the woman had disappeared into the bright sunlight.
The Language of Threads
During the nights that followed Ji Shen’s death, Pei hardly slept. The heaviness of grief pressed against her and left her breathless every time she closed her eyes. Whenever she stepped out of the warmth of her bed to check on Gong, he, too, was awake in the dark silence, waiting. It was as if the memory of Ji Shen kept pulling them both awake. Pei understood her own deep longing, but how was it possible that a newborn child could already know that he had no mother to love him and no father to give him a name he’d be proud to carry on?
Pei watched the baby intently for any small resemblance to Ji Shen. The thick black down that covered his fragile skull. His pale, soft skin, and the tiny hands that reached out for Pei every time she came near. His small, dark eyes, which already seemed to know her from long ago. They were all a part of Ji Shen, and Pei felt a hot knot of tears pushing from behind her eyes every time she looked at him.
Every morning Pei wrapped the baby up in a blanket and took him with her to the Invisible Thread. Keeping busy was the only thing she could do. She sleepwalked through her days at the shop and occasionally even stuck herself with a needle in her daze. Ji Shen’s death had been too unexpected, like a suddenly missed step. Hard and surprising. But every time Pei thought she couldn’t pick herself up again, she watched Gong and saw how one life had unexpectedly taken the place of another.
Usually the baby stayed upstairs in his bassinet while Pei quietly mended beside him and Song Lee temporarily worked the counter. Pei was grateful for Song Lee’s devotion, for all the sympathy she hadn’t voiced, but simply showed by remaining with them. She felt Song Lee’s sadness in the sighs that floated up from downstairs, as if each breath were too heavy. “Leave it, leave it,” she heard Song Lee’s indifference with a customer. The air no longer rang out with the music of Ji Shen’s patient small talk. Pei swallowed and tried to fill the hollowness that threatened to overtake her. She peeked at the baby, watching for the slight rise and fall of his chest, always fearful that he, too, could be snatched away from her.
Each week Ho Yung and Quan came to the shop and visited the baby. As the days passed, Pei saw how each one brought a special gift of strength and character that would enrich Gong’s life. He reached up to them, flailing his tiny arms, asking to be picked up; both men were careful and attentive to the delicate package they held.
One day, Pei left the baby in his bassinet behind the counter with Song Lee. “He has a high forehead,” remarked the first customer to come in that afternoon. “A sign of great intelligence!”
“Don’t let the gods hear you say such things,” Song Lee snapped. “Anything can still happen with a child so young.” Then she quickly added in a loud, clear voice so the gods would hear her, “This one’s a scrawny little thing. Nothing much to look at!”
For the first time since Ji Shen’s death, Pei wanted to laugh. She knew it was one thing to read a face and see its good fortune, another to say that fortune aloud and bring bad luck. It hadn’t been five minutes since she’d brought Gong downstairs, and already this new addition to their family had made his presence felt in the shop.
Sometimes Pei was surprised that the Invisible Thread kept flourishing, even when so much else around her seemed to have wilted. She reached into a pile of clothing that needed to be mended and pulled out a piece of bright blue silk, startled by its sudden rich color. It opened up to reveal a banner of embroidered flowers representing the four seasons. Pei fingered the worn threads of each flower.
A peony rising in spring.
The lotus of summer.
Autumn’s chrysanthemum.
The plum in winter.
What once must have been a beautiful array of colors had faded and frayed over the years. Pei examined the pale bouquet against the bright blue sky. It would require a great deal of work to replace the intricate embroidery with new threads. Pei stood up and made her way downstairs.
“Who brought this in?” Pei asked, placing the blue silk banner on the counter.
“An older woman who was in a hurry,” Song Lee remembered. “She wanted to know if you could replace each flower with new threads.”
“I only mend clothing. This work would be too time-consuming, not to mention the cost.”
Song Lee shrugged. “She said never mind the cost. She was willing to pay whatever you charged because she’d heard you did good work. She also said she wasn’t in any hurry to get it back, so you could take your time.” Song Lee glanced up at Pei. “Was I wrong to accept it?”
Pei fingered the faded threads and could already see the bright colors that would replace them. “No, you weren’t,” she smiled.
A month after Ji Shen’s death, Pei still struggled with sleepless nights and a suffocating grief. During the day she threw herself into her work. At night, she sometimes fell asleep long enough to dream of Ji Shen alive again—sitting behind the counter at the Invisible Thread, talking and laughing with customers—only to be startled awake by the knowledge that Ji Shen was gone. “I won’t let anything happen to either of you,” she had promised; the words turned over and over in her mind. The bed beside hers was empty, the dark house full of night cries.
Pei rose in the coolness to check on the baby, who had now fallen into regular sleeping habits. Pei’s hands moved away from the soft baby skin to the smooth silk of the blue banner. She sat down beside the table lamp and quietly began to snip away the faded threads; they fell to her lap like blades of grass. Pei was determined to replace each flower, one thread at a time, as if she could control the flow of seasons. Gradually, all the colors lit up her dark nights—red, the summer of life; white the color of autumn; black of winter; blue of springtime; yellow that rose from the center of the earth.
Eventually, Ji Shen’s death no longer kept Pei from sleeping, and even more slowly the language of threads spoke loud and clear against the bright blue sky.
Chapter Twelve
1949
Song Lee
Song Lee knocked lightly on Pei’s door. Night after night she saw a slice of muted light coming from underneath that door. She knew Gong had been fast asleep for hours, knew Pei was trying to catch up with all the mending, which multiplied with each passing day. Song Lee held the cup of hot tea steady, and tapped again. When she heard Pei’s voice whisper a response, she turned the doorknob and quietly entered.
“You’re up late,” Song Lee said. “Again.” Even in a whisper, the last word echoed through the room.
“There’s so much . . .” Pei answered, without glancing up, without finishing her sentence.
“I brought you a cup of tea.”
Pei looked up and smiled. “Thank you.”
In the flickering light Song Lee saw the fatigue that clouded her eyes, the grief still etched along the rims.
“You know . . .” Song Lee paused, then peeked at the sleeping Gong, who at two years old was a constant reminder of Ji Shen. He had the same full lips, and a slightly flat nose that Song Lee lovingly pinched together to give it height. She knew he was still young enough to change the fates. “It’s time you found someone to help you with all the mending.”
“Yes,” Pei agreed.
> Song Lee looked at her in surprise. They’d had the same conversation for almost two years now, with always a hesitant response emerging from Pei’s lips. “Not just yet . . . Maybe later . . . I’ll think about it.” In the quiet room Song Lee heard Gong’s even breathing. On the wall above his bed hung the blue silk banner with the flowers of the four seasons. The old woman had never returned to the Invisible Thread for it. Another abandoned child. Song Lee knew the hours Pei had worked on it, the colors carefully chosen to bring each flower back to life.
After a year’s time, when Gong had begun to wobble and walk, Pei hung the banner on the wall of their room to keep him from grabbing at the bright material. It was a sign of renewal, a testament of their passage through a most difficult time.
“I’ll begin looking for someone tomorrow,” Song Lee quietly offered.
Pei nodded, then closed her eyes for a moment, her hand still pulling the thread through the silk jacket in her lap.
It didn’t take long for Song Lee to get the word out that the Invisible Thread was looking for another seamstress: “Efficient, fast worker with a mild, easy personality. Bring a sample of your work.” Song Lee interviewed each woman who stepped through the door to apply for the job. She had prided herself on finding the right domestic positions for her sisters; now she would do no less for Pei. Again she implemented her face-reading skills; she dismissed those with demanding, down-turned mouths, and the obviously devious ones who wouldn’t look her directly in the eyes. Less than a week later, Song Lee had happily found the perfect seamstress to work alongside Pei.
Pei
“She’ll be here any minute!” Song Lee’s voice rang high in her excitement. She moved the clothes waiting on the counter into a tidy stack.