The Language of Threads

  “I feel sick,” the child whispered, breaking the dark silence.

  “No, you’re fine,” the mother whispered back. “Think of happy times,” she said encouragingly.

  Li closed her eyes and tried to think of happier times. Her leg burned and felt numb. Happiness was always a word just beyond her reach. She thought of scant moments with Kaige and Yuan when they were small, then had to travel all the way back to her childhood, to afternoons when she and Pei were finished with their chores and could run outside to play.

  “This way, this way!” Pei would call. “Come see the babies.”

  Li followed without question. They wandered way down into the mulberry groves, farther than their parents had ever allowed them to go.

  “It’s too far,” she said.

  Pei didn’t pay any attention. “When you see the birds, you’ll know it was worth it.”

  Li wasn’t sure it would be worth Baba’s strap, but she kept walking. At the very edge of the grove, Pei cleared away some tall brush to expose a nest of twigs and grass, two chirping baby birds peeking out.

  Li fell to her knees. “How did you know they were here?”

  “I heard them calling for their mother. She always goes away at this time of the day to find them food.”

  She wanted to touch them, but Pei stopped her. “The mother will know we were here and she might not love them anymore.”

  Li’s hand stopped in midair. She couldn’t imagine a mother not loving such tiny, helpless creatures. They watched the little birds reach out toward them, their beaks opening and closing, opening and closing.

  The sound of the child throwing up woke Li. A sour smell filled the thick air. Li felt something in her own stomach turn again, a bitterness rising up to her mouth even as she tried in vain to swallow it back down again.

  Six or seven hours later, when the blessed stupor of half-sleep finally came to Li, she was abruptly awakened. The wooden cover scraped open and a sudden flow of fresh air and daylight entered the hole. It took a few minutes for the fresh air to revive the passengers. Their slow, lethargic movements made Li realize how close to being dead they really were.

  “Everyone out!” the man yelled down to them.

  Li blinked against the light. For the first time, she was able to see the people with whom she’d made the journey. There were two men, an older woman, two younger women, and the little girl, who appeared only semiconscious. Her mother was patting her cheeks. “Up, up, we’re here, we’re here,” she repeated. One by one they climbed up the ladder into the daylight.

  Once on deck, Li saw that they weren’t there: no tall buildings, no Pei waiting for her. The boat had pulled close to shore, where another boat waited. Li looked just bewildered enough for the bearded man who had saved her life last night to point to it and explain: “That boat will take you on to Hong Kong. Still a good two hours away.” He poured a mouthful of water into a tin cup and let her drink from it.

  Li looked up and tried to smile, to give him some small sign of gratitude, but he had already turned away.

  The last leg of the voyage was luxurious compared to what they had endured earlier. They gulped down mouthfuls of fresh air as if to store it for later, before descending into another small, dark hole. But this one was dry, and they were given a lantern to see the extent of their exhaustion as they sat squeezed side by side. The child had fallen asleep again on her mother’s lap. The old woman pointed to Li’s leg and said, “You’d better have that taken care of.”

  Li smiled at her concern, then finally dared to look down in the flickering light to see the swollen wound. A jagged line, not like the puckered curve that ran across her cheek. There was only a slight throbbing now to remind her of it. Li was too tired to think about anything but sleep.

  The dull thuds of footsteps on deck and muffled voices yelling from above let them know that Hong Kong was in sight. They were told they would be released near the beach village of Shek O, on the other side of the island. Li’s heart raced. She wished she still had her cloth sack with some clean clothes to change into. Her white tunic was soiled and her trousers torn. Pei wouldn’t recognize her—or worse, wouldn’t want to.

  Again, they were hurried up on deck. The mountains of Hong Kong rose before them, greener than Li had expected. In the distance she saw a group of people gathered together at the edge of the rocks, waiting. She paused for just a moment, balancing herself against the side of the boat, wondering if Pei was among them, and how would Pei recognize her after so many years? The unkindness of life was etched so deeply into her face.

  The fishing boat anchored offshore, only this time Li didn’t hesitate to enter the cold water. She leaped in and thrust herself through the water, arms and legs working with all the strength she had left. The waves pushed her back then forward, until her feet touched the rock and sand bottom. She wiped the water from her eyes, the glare of the sun burning. Li heard the splashing of the others behind her and in front of her as she struggled to walk the last heavy steps onto the beach. Every muscle in her body hurt as she stumbled and fell to her knees. From the corner of her eye, Li saw a woman running into the water toward her, a tall shadow lifting her by the arms and holding her against the warmth of her own body. Li looked up into the woman’s eyes and knew instantly it was Pei.

  “You’re here,” Pei whispered just once, her fingers touching the scar on Li’s cheek so gently it felt like a flutter of small kisses.

  Chapter Fifteen

  1951–52

  Pei

  “There will be illness, but she will survive”: The fortune-teller’s prediction for Li didn’t come true until she arrived in Hong Kong. The years of being battered and bruised had toughened her body and spirit to fight for each day of survival. The moment she relaxed into the warmth and comfort of family, she fell ill. And after so many hours aboard the cramped fishing boat, wet and exhausted, a terrible infection developed from the cut on her leg.

  It took Li three months to recover fully, with Pei at her side day and night. Song Lee watched her like a hawk and rushed down to the old herbalist every week for blood-strengthening teas. Each day, she made sure Li drank down the dark, muddy-looking liquid. When she saw the color begin to return to her cheeks, Song Lee clapped her hands in triumph and said, “You can see her energy returning gradually, a good sign that it will stay with her. If it comes too fast, it can be deceiving.”

  And slowly Pei and Li began to know each other again, catching each sigh and gesture, trying to remember what they were like as girls and learn who they’d become as women. The words came haltingly at first, and then they wouldn’t stop. Like water, they filled two thirsty throats. In between the discoveries were pockets of stillness, memories that stayed silent and secret, along with the curiosities and wonder that didn’t.

  Li smiled and sat up in bed a month after she’d arrived. “You were always tall.”

  “And you still have Ma Ma’s fine hair.”

  Li shyly touched her short gray hair and shook her head. “I feel too old. Like something broken.”

  Pei sat down on the side of her bed. “Then it’s time for you to mend,” she said, placing her hand on top of Li’s.

  Li leaned back against the wall, her scar almost translucent in the white sunlight. “When I awoke that morning and you had already gone with Baba to the silk village, it was as if I’d lost a part of myself.”

  “I thought you would be happy to have me out of your hair!” Pei teased.

  “Yes”—Li smiled—“you were a handful. But you were the one who helped me to judge my own worth. If you were naughty, I was obedient, if you ran too fast, I slowed down. With you gone, I was alone. Ma Ma was burdened with everyday life, Baba had his pond and groves. The quiet in our house was deafening.”

  Pei swallowed. She hadn’t known. She’d always thought their lives would be easier without her. “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “At first I thought I was being punished. Given away because I never listened.”


  “And I believed I was being left behind,” Li said sadly.

  “Is that why you married the farmer?” Pei asked. She unconsciously moved to touch the back of her chignon.

  Li paused for a moment and closed her eyes. “There weren’t many choices left for me.” She opened her eyes and turned her head so that the smooth edge of her scar showed.

  Pei stood up and opened a window. She didn’t want Li to see the tears brimming in her eyes. “It’s milder today.” She cleared her throat.

  “I’ve always wondered, Pei . . .” Li began; then she leaned forward and waited for her sister to come close again. “What was your life like, doing the silk work?”

  Pei answered thoughtfully, “It was lonely at first and very hard.” She walked back to the bed. “Then the girls’ house and the sisterhood became the home I no longer had, and the family in which I learned about life’s injustices and love’s kindness.”

  Pei reached for Li’s hand and looked into her sister’s familiar eyes, dark brown and knowing that a life was filled with many stories—myriad of parts that made up the whole. She would tell Li all of her stories one at a time, and each day from that moment on, they would create new ones together.

  Li

  It was as if she’d awakened from a long, endless nightmare to finally be in Hong Kong with Pei. After she’d recovered from her illness, Li walked slowly forward into her new life, taking tentative, careful steps. It took a good week for Pei to persuade her to go downstairs and venture into the Invisible Thread. She sat quietly behind the counter with Song Lee, seeing more people in one day than she’d seen in months back on the farm. Li was amazed at how efficiently her sister ran the business. Including Song Lee, she had four women working for her. The seamstresses worked upstairs and laughed and talked as they mended. Whenever Li offered to help, Pei insisted she take it easy for a little while longer.

  Each day was a new adventure, and Li was like a child again, learning the simplest tasks with all the modern conveniences that only served to confuse her. Water flowed right into the house, then could be boiled without starting a fire. Light filled a room from a small bulb in the middle of the ceiling. And the first time she went to the market with Pei and Song Lee, the automobiles and crowds terrified her. Unlike her small village market, where a few stallholders sold chickens and vegetables, this market was as large as the entire village. It sold everything Li could imagine, from fresh beef and pork to vegetables and fruits, and even a slithery snakelike fish called an eel.

  But nothing puzzled and intrigued Li as much as the din wa, the telephone. The voice that floated out without a body made her think a spirit was trapped inside. The first time Pei talked to Li on the telephone, Song Lee had to promise her Pei was all right and just calling from Central to see if she needed anything. “Talk to her, talk to her!” Song Lee pushed the black receiver into Li’s hand, and showed her which end to press against her ear and which to speak into.

  Although Li gradually began to understand the fast-paced Hong Kong way of life, she was like a spooked horse that could never stand still—always nervous and cautious. She didn’t go far from the Invisible Thread, except to walk the three blocks to pick up seven-year-old Gong from school. She had eagerly volunteered one afternoon, when Song Lee was too busy at the shop. Fetching Gong gave Li a chance to make herself useful, as well as to get to know the boy. From then on, it became her afternoon task.

  She would stand several feet away from the front entrance where a crowd of amahs and well-dressed Hong Kong mothers waited to pick up their children. Li felt awkward and embarrassed among them, with her scarred face and plain clothes. She didn’t quite fit in either category.

  “Auntie Li, why do you always wait out here?” Gong asked, wide-eyed and serious, one day.

  “I was afraid you might not see me in the crowd,” Li answered.

  Gong looked up at her. She knew he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off the puckered scar since the day they’d met.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked.

  Li smiled. “Not anymore. Do you want to touch it?” She leaned down to him.

  Gong raised his index finger and followed the curved road along her cheek. “Is that why you stand so far away?”

  Li hesitated, thinking it was because of so many things, including the scar. She wasn’t sure how to explain such complicated feelings to a little boy, who was not unlike her Yuan. Then, before Li said anything, Gong had his own answer.

  “Because it’s how I could always tell it was you in a crowd,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her down the busy street.

  The Letter Writer

  That night, after Gong was put to bed, Pei was quietly working on the last panel of her embroidery, the panel detailing their reunion. Li sat down at the table across from her with some paper. Pei looked up to see her sister troubled about something.

  “Is anything wrong?” she asked.

  Li cleared her throat. “I need to ask you a favor.”

  “Of course, anything.” Pei stopped embroidering.

  “Will you teach me to write, the way you told me Lin and Mrs. Finch once taught you? Like Ma Ma once taught us? There was never any time on the farm. . . .”

  Pei smiled. “Yes, I’d be happy to teach you,” she said, thinking how Ma Ma would have been surprised to see her teaching Li. Pei reached for the paper.

  “Thank you,” Li said softly.

  “Let’s begin with your name.” Pei wrote the quick lines and dashes, like a dance on the white paper, and then she numbered each stroke so Li could follow in the right sequence. “Now you try,” she said, and pushed the sheet back to Li.

  She watched Li press attentively down on the page, her face set hard in concentration. In neat, careful rows her name filled page after page, late into the night.

  Pei taught Li five to ten characters at the beginning of each week. Every day she sat down with Gong and they both practiced, an old student and a young one side by side. By the end of each week, Li had written each character hundreds of times, committing it to heart and memory. Pei had never seen anyone work so hard.

  After three months, Li began to recognize some simple characters on street and shop signs—“Stop,” “Go,” “Enter,” “Gold Mountain,” “Silver Palace.” Sometimes Pei would turn around to find Li had stopped in the middle of the block, trying to read a menu or sign on a door. Pei knew that each time Li recognized a word, she was seeing the world in a new way.

  After six months, Li could compose very simple lines. One morning she came to Pei with a neatly folded piece of paper in her hand.

  “Will you look at this?” Li asked. “Just to see if it makes any sense.”

  Pei was on her way down to the Invisible Thread, after dropping Gong off at school. She was already late, though she knew Mai and Song Lee would have everything under control.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “A letter long overdue,” Li answered.

  When Pei read the spare lines her sister had meticulously written, her eyes clouded with tears.

  Dear Old Man Sai,

  I have found my way home safely.

  Thank you,

  Li

  Chapter Sixteen

  1973

  Pei

  Pei stared out the train window and watched as a scattering of last-minute passengers rushed to find their cars. Moments later, the train jerked to a start, then maintained the same rhythmic rocking and rattling for the almost three hours to Sumzhun, where she would walk across a short bridge separating the Hong Kong and Chinese borders. Then Pei would take another train to Canton. After an overnight stay, she would catch a bus that would take her the rest of the way to Yung Kee.

  Since the American president Nixon had visited China a year ago and met Mao Tse-tung, China had opened her doors a crack, just enough for Pei to return to Yung Kee one last time. Pei couldn’t imagine what the village must be like after thirty-five years, or what remnants of her past she hoped to find, but the desi
re to return had begun to bloom inside her like a flower that had long been dormant. As far back as Pei could remember, her past had always been inextricably tied to her present, and the future was what followed. There were so many threads that she could never really sever, even with Lin long dead and Li in Hong Kong helping her run the Invisible Thread.

  She had hoped to see Chen Ling, and had written to her several times, but hadn’t heard from her since Ming’s death. Li had also planned to go, wanting desperately to see her sons and grandchildren, but Kaige and Yuan couldn’t make the journey from Chungking because of their work, and then Li’s rheumatism flared up, making it difficult for her to walk. Song Lee had then volunteered to accompany Pei—but, already in her mid-seventies, soon realized that she was too old to make the long trip. She mumbled to Pei over and over again, as if angry with herself, “The mind’s willing, but the body isn’t.”

  That left Pei to make the journey alone.

  A few days before she’d left, Ho Yung had come by to see her. She could tell by the heavy step on the stairs that he was coming. He had never married and was a priceless friend. When she counted her good fortunes, Ho Yung stood out. He had walked with her through life, never pulling ahead or falling behind, but keeping in perfect pace.

  “Are you sure you want to make the trip alone?” Ho Yung asked, always her protector.

  “I’ll be fine,” she reassured him.

  “If you wait until next month, I’ll rearrange my schedule and go with you.”

  Pei put her hand on top of his, gave a warm squeeze. “I need to do this now, and alone.”