The Language of Threads

  Since Chen Ling and Ming’s visit, Li had received two more letters from Pei through old man Sai, who was also the uncle of a high-ranking Party official. He had made it possible for Pei and Li’s letters to go back and forth unimpeded for the time being. A red stamp of approval marked the front of each envelope. She marveled at how her life could suddenly change after so many years of stagnation.

  Li set the three envelopes down on the scarred wooden table and gazed at them in disbelief. Their lightness surprised her; how could thirty years of questions and answers feel so weightless? Her trembling fingers pulled out the sheets once again. Ma Ma had taught her and Pei to read and write when they were young, but she’d had little time to make use of her skills working on the farm. Now, in the fading light of day, Li stared at the careful lines and felt like a child again. It took the longest time before some of the characters revealed a familiar shape and meaning. What she couldn’t read herself, Li had asked old man Sai to read to her so many times, she had each sentence of Pei’s letters memorized.

  “Tell me about your life. I’ve prayed for your happiness.”

  The old farmer she had married at the age of fifteen had stolen her youth, then tried his best to squeeze the remaining life out of her. Li’s days consisted of cooking, cleaning, and working in the groves; at night, she lay under him while he took his pleasure. During the first year of her marriage, Li had thought daily about ending her life. It would be as easy as throwing herself down the well, or slicing her wrists with the kitchen knife.

  Even now, with the old farmer dead and buried, Li still winced at the thought of him and of their life together. There wasn’t a day that he’d been kind to her. When he didn’t beat her or force himself on her, he ignored her completely. His two children by his first wife gave her little respect. How could they think of her as their mother, when she was roughly the same age as they? At least the farmer’s daughter had helped her with the household duties, until two years later, when the farmer gave her away in marriage. Li could still see the fear in the girl’s eyes the day she rode off to join her new husband’s family. Li wanted to say something to her, but knew she felt like an animal caught in a trap, wanting to gnaw off her own limb in order to get away.

  But it was the old farmer’s son Hun who became the real source of Li’s misery. Even the worst beating the farmer could give her wouldn’t have been as bad as the constant torment Hun inflicted on her mind and body. It began on the first day of her arrival, when the sixteen-year-old sneered at her and said, “You’re nothing but a little whore. Don’t think you’ll ever replace my mother!” He hated her until he died, twenty years later, at the hands of a Japanese soldier. Li could never really call the Japanese “devils”; as she saw it, they had killed the real devil.

  In the last days of his life, the old farmer lay screaming in pain and dribbling like a baby. Even then, he couldn’t let go of his cruelty; it burned in his eyes as they followed her around the room. Li did what she could to make him comfortable, then watched as he clung to his pitiful life, afraid to let go.

  “Do you have children? Am I an aunt?”

  Li might have ended her life, if she hadn’t soon become pregnant with her first son, Kaige. The idea that a new life could grow inside her, no matter how barren and desolate the life of the outside, renewed her spirit. Two years later, she gave birth to Yuan. The lives of her sons took precedence, while hers no longer mattered. Kaige and Yuan became the thin threads that kept Li alive.

  Kaige was quiet and sensitive, though a hard worker and as good to her as he could be. As a boy, he could do little but hide when his father became enraged and beat Li. As a young man of eighteen, he worked quietly in the groves, but one night begged her and Yuan to go away with him, away from the beatings. Where? How? Li had asked. They had no money and nowhere to hide. The next morning, Kaige was gone. She saw his empty bed in the corner and heard a great howl surge through her body. After two months, though, she received word through a friend of Kaige’s that he was fine. A year later, he’d joined the Communist Party, in which men and women were equal, and he’d found a new family of his own.

  Her younger son, Yuan, was a happy, outgoing child. Li often thought it was her only compensation that a child conceived under such terrible circumstances could find such ease in life. She swallowed and remembered that terrible day as if it were just yesterday. She had come in from the fields to begin cooking their evening meal, dribbling cool water from the well down her neck; out of nowhere, Hun grabbed her from behind and dragged her into the barn. He’d still been angry with her from the night before. The old farmer had been berating him for not having fed the cow, and Li, who tried to calm little Kaige’s squealing, began to sing softly to him. Hun had thought they were making fun of him and stormed out of the house.

  “Now I’ll teach you a lesson,” he hissed.

  Before Li had time to scream, he was on top of her, tearing at her cotton trousers and forcing her legs apart with one hand, while his other hand gripped her neck, choking the breath out of her. He rammed himself inside her with such force, Li wished his choking would kill her. She felt his grip tighten, her lungs losing their fight for air, but she scratched wildly at him when she thought of having to leave little Kaige. She choked red, then blue, giving up the struggle as her arms felt as heavy as lead. The world spun dark around her, and except for leaving Kaige, she couldn’t imagine not being happier in the other world.

  Then, suddenly, Hun let go. Li gulped air and began to revive. She coughed, alive again. Hun pulled away from her, then stood up and started laughing. “That’ll teach you to laugh at me, you cow!” He yanked up his pants and glared down at her. The next time she opened her eyes he was gone from the barn.

  Li lay gasping for air, unable to move; her desire to live slowly returned with each breath. When she heard the old farmer walking up from the mulberry groves, she forced her aching body up from the ground and into the house before he saw her. Another breath. Another beating. He never paid attention to the red prints around her neck, which days later turned to black and blue. Even to her, one bruise resembled any other.

  Yuan was the child she gave birth to nine months later. During her pregnancy, Li thought she would hate the baby. How could she love the son of a devil? But his birth had been as easy as his temperament. As soon as Li saw his smiling eyes, she knew it was impossible for her not to love him. Yuan was the child that even the old farmer came to adore; Hun never realized the boy he hated so much was his own son.

  “I can’t imagine what you must look like. You were the one who had Ma Ma’s beautiful hair.”

  Li touched her short gray hair. Ma Ma’s beautiful hair was a distant memory. Li had worn hers short for more years than she could remember, since just after Yuan’s birth. Her long hair felt heavy and hot during the hot summer when she carried the baby strapped to her back and worked in the mulberry groves. She went back inside the dark farmhouse and quickly cut her hair off with a kitchen knife. “What have you done to yourself?” the old farmer roared, and slapped her so hard she fell, cutting her cheek against the edge of the table. It bled for hours and she heard a ringing in her ear for days after. “If I wanted a boy, I would have married one!” Still, in Li’s one open act of defiance, her hair remained short from that day on.

  “I hope Baba died in peace. I was able to see Ma Ma one time before she died, when I was still doing the silk work.”

  Li never saw her parents again after her customary visit home after three days of marriage. Ma Ma knew the farmer had beaten her, and had quietly told her to stay home. “It’s not too late,” she said. “It will bring us no shame.” Li had wanted to run and hold her mother, tell her how frightened she’d been and how the farmer had hurt her, but she couldn’t move and the words froze on her tongue. It broke her heart to have to leave home again, but Li had refused to be a “return bride,” to dishonor her family.

  The news of her father’s death came a lifetime later.

  One m
orning after the farmer’s death, Li had awakened to the realization that everyone in her life had died or drifted far away. Even Yuan had followed his brother and joined the Communist Party after the Japanese surrender; he now lived far away, near Chungking. She rarely saw him or Kaige anymore, though they sent her messages and small packages of food when they could.

  At forty-one years old, Li was finally free to do as she pleased. As if some strange voice were calling to her, she was summoned to return to her childhood home. The next morning she borrowed an ox and cart to make the day’s journey. As she approached her father’s farm, a flood of memories returned. She saw again the two little girls running down to the fish ponds. Pei would lie in the red dirt, sucking on sugar candy and questioning Li as to what the fish were thinking about. Pei was always seeking answers to the unknown. Li had snapped back at her, but secretly wanted to see life just the way she did.

  The morning young Li had awakened to find Baba and Pei gone, she knew her sister wouldn’t be returning. She leaned over to find Pei’s side of the bed already cold. Her mother sat by herself and could barely look at her when Li asked where Pei was. “She won’t be back,” her mother had said, her eyes red and filling with tears. “She has another life as a silk worker now.” Li had been stunned. She hadn’t even gotten to say good-bye, or to give her playful sister one last piece of sugar candy. Li distinctly remembered her silent mother putting a bowl of jook on the table for her, the soft crackling of the fire under the iron pot, and the hard realization of how quiet it would be with Pei gone.

  Now, Li continued down the dirt road, and saw strangers moving about her father’s land. They sadly told her of her father’s lonely death six months earlier. But the good of it—they smiled up to her—was that her father’s farm was now being used as a Communist collective. The following week Li went in search of Pei in the village of Yung Kee.

  “I have a small sewing business here in Hong Kong, and a four-year-old adopted son named Gong.”

  Li smiled. She would never have expected Pei to have a business or a child. She saw once again the little girl with pigtails, who rolled in the dirt and moved quickly from one thing to the next, never settling down except to sleep. Li could never catch up, and simply took to scolding Pei instead: “You’ll get in trouble if you dirty yourself! Ma Ma wants us back at the house for our lessons!” Pei listening and not listening.

  For years Li had wondered why she wasn’t the one given to the silk work. She was the elder daughter, the one who should have gone first, but was left behind. When she awoke alone in their bed that morning, she somehow knew that Pei had raced ahead of her again. Li was too slow, too cautious to ever catch up.

  Li took a deep breath. She was happy that her younger sister had found such a good life in Hong Kong. Pei had her own business and a life Li could only dream about. And now, after so many years, Pei had stopped long enough to wait for her.

  “Could life be so kind as to grant us another chance to see each other again? Now that you’re alone, you could come to Hong Kong.”

  Li had grown so old and hard in the years since the sugar candy, fish ponds, and mulberry groves of their childhood. How would Pei recognize her? What would they have to say to each other after the novelty had worn off? She took a deep breath. Besides, the Communists had sealed all the borders since they’d come to power. She’d have to be smuggled by boat across the sea to Hong Kong.

  In all her adult life Li had never been farther than the village of Kum San. At first, the idea of being smuggled on a boat and going to a large city with tall buildings and people from all over the world terrified her. Then she realized this might be the first time in her life she felt really alive. The numbness of the past years lessened with each letter. Li closed her eyes and could almost feel the warm blood rushing through her body. It was no longer an extravagant wish to think of seeing Pei again.

  Li smiled to herself. She would not let the fates guide her through the rest of her life. Now there was Pei. She carefully put each letter back into its thin blue envelope, then stood up and lit an oil lamp. The dark room was suddenly awash in a flickering of light and shadows, though Li no longer felt afraid.

  Ho Yung

  Ho Yung watched Pei pace back and forth across the crowded room, moving in and out of the late-afternoon shadows. He knew she was more determined than ever to get her sister Li out of China and bring her to Hong Kong. She still held the pale pink blouse she had been mending when he bounded up the stairs to speak to her. He could see the tiredness around her eyes, the lines of her forehead wrinkling in thought.

  Ho Yung sipped his tea and looked around the small upstairs room that still functioned as Pei’s office and workroom. He had come to like the room as much as she did. Over the years, both business and personal discussions had taken place in the small, cramped room, surrounded by clothes, spools of thread, pins, needles, and jars filled with buttons, sequins, and beads. On another table was a piece of embroidery she’d begun and worked on religiously every time she had a spare moment.

  By a stroke of luck and good timing, Ho Yung had been able to purchase the building next door. They’d simply torn down the common walls to expand the Invisible Thread, without ever having to displace Pei. In the new, larger building, Pei had living quarters upstairs as well as an expanded downstairs storefront. Pei had since hired two other seamstresses besides Mai and herself.

  “I should go and get Li myself,” Pei suddenly said.

  Ho Yung looked up. “What good would it do if you both get caught by the Communists?” he demanded angrily. If anyone were to go, it would be he.

  “She’ll be too afraid to come out alone,” Pei answered.

  “It’s too dangerous.” His words were flat and final.

  “Then what do you think we should do?” Pei asked.

  Ho Yung took another sip of his tea. “We’ll pay to have her smuggled out.”

  “Isn’t that just as dangerous?” Pei asked.

  Ho Yung had an answer ready. “But then we’d only have to worry about Li, not about both of you. The fewer people involved, the better.”

  Pei paced and stopped, then turned to him. “Just how dangerous would it be?”

  Ho Yung pulled no punches, knowing that Pei needed all the details in order to make up her mind.

  “People are being smuggled out of China every day. The lucky ones make it to Hong Kong and live in the streets or in squatters’ camps. The unlucky ones are caught by the Communists, or drowned at sea. If Li were caught, she’d most likely be sent to a reform camp. Then we might not be able to find her again for years, if ever.”

  Pei sat down in the chair across from him. “I suppose we have no choice but to smuggle her here,” she finally said, accepting the words as she said them.

  “Let me see what I can do,” Ho Yung said. He had already set up a meeting with Quan for the next morning. If anyone might know about hiring a smuggler with a fishing boat, Quan would.

  Pei looked at him with gratitude. “Thank you, Ho Yung. For all these years of taking care of the details.” Her voice had a softness to it that took him by surprise.

  “You don’t have to thank me,” he said, clumsily. He felt his face color, and looked away.

  Ho Yung caught a taxi home. From Pei’s office, they’d joined Song Lee and Gong for dinner. If he wasn’t attending to other family business matters, he usually ate with them at least twice a week.

  The warm September evening was still and calm, showing no signs of the typhoon season that was likely to begin any day now.

  The heavy winds and rain would make it virtually impossible to walk down the street. Ho Yung rolled down the window and breathed in the tranquil night air as the taxi began its uphill climb toward Macdonnell Road.

  As Ho Yung stepped through the iron gate of his old house, he made a mental note of all the repairs he needed to make after the rainy season—replacing the warped window frames, filling the cracks in the front steps, tending to the garden. He had to st
art paying more attention to his own life.

  Once inside, Mui took his jacket, and Ho Yung went into the sitting room and poured himself a brandy. The pale brown liquid tingled, then burned his throat slightly as it went down. Two more sips and he could feel his entire body warming. Reinforced, he moved slowly toward the family photos neatly lined up on the mantel. He had only added a single photo in the past year, one of Pei, Gong, and himself, taken on Gong’s fourth birthday. That same day, Pei had asked him to be the boy’s godfather.

  “I didn’t know you believed in God,” Ho Yung had teased.

  “I believe that you would be a good father, God or no God attached,” Pei answered.

  He smiled at the thought. In the photo, Pei had only a slight, embarrassed smile on her lips, as if she’d been caught off guard. He thought she was still very beautiful; her once-strong features had softened over the years, yet her inquisitive dark eyes had grown even more searching. He’d found Pei striking from the first moment he met her, back in Canton over twenty years ago. Tall and shy, she had accompanied Lin home for his brother Ho Chee’s wedding.

  Ho Yung turned to the photo of the young, smiling Lin. What had she felt upon returning to their opulent house in Canton? Lin had given herself to the silk work so that their family could survive. He remembered how excited she had been, moving through the house like a whirlwind, while Pei stood awkward among all the antiques and dark wood. Ho Yung had felt timid around Lin until she laughed at seeing how tall he’d grown, and said, “What happened to my little brother?” Then she took his hand and held it in hers, and in that instant, he knew how special his sister was.

  And even then, Ho Yung could see that there was extraordinary happiness between Lin and Pei. It had taken him years to realize just how rare it was, this joy, like catching a shooting star or watching a flower just as it blooms. He took another swallow of brandy. Perhaps even from afar, he understood how Pei could cherish one person for a lifetime.