All the Flowers in Shanghai (6 page)

“Feng, don’t be so stupid! This is very serious . . . it’ll ruin our family name. This is what can happen when a family tries to rise to a different level. It would be better not to have the baby than to bear such shame. Everyone will know.”

He looked so solemn that I was dumbstruck. He got up and left me sitting on the floor in front of his empty chair. The room remained still and silent and I with it, until a servant came in to sweep the floor.

I
seemed to be the only one who was looking forward to seeing this baby. Grandfather and I resumed our walks in the gardens. When I met Bi next, I desperately wanted to tell him everything. But he seemed as calm and serene as he had every other day, and all the thoughts bubbling inside me suddenly seemed much too silly, so I kept silent. I smiled and sat quietly beside him, kneading my toes in the grass. Grandfather looked agitated, mumbling that he was going to see if one of the fig trees had blossomed. As soon as he had left, Bi turned to me and shifted a little closer.

“My father told me that girls like flowers.” As he said this, he shyly produced three pretty peonies with white petals and beautiful yellow centers.

“I
do
like these! Thank you. They are called
Paeonia lactiflora
. They are very pretty.”

“What did you say? Is that Chinese?”

“It’s something my grandfather taught me. He told me it’s an ancient language, as old as Chinese but the people who spoke it have all gone. He said they had huge cities and temples like we do. He told me they were magnificent.”

I held the petals to my face and breathed in their freshness. They smelled of daybreak. I laid them in my lap and caressed the petals between my thumb and first finger. They were soft and delicate.

“I never thought I would find someone in the city who liked flowers. You should come and live in the countryside. In summer there are flowers everywhere. Is living in the city good? It looks very busy and noisy to me.”

“Except for going to school, I am not allowed to go into it without my grandfather . . . and he only likes to come to these gardens.”

“We should go and have a look together.”

He tempted me, but I knew we should stay in the gardens. Even my being with him would make my parents very angry if they found out.

Grandfather returned and stood over us, looking at the flowers that Bi had given me.

“Bi, did you give those to Feng Feng?
Paeonia lactiflora
. . . very pretty. Xiao Feng, I hope you named them correctly?” Grandfather gently asked us, though he was obviously still agitated. “Xiao Feng, remember to cut their stems a little before putting them in water when you get home. Then they will not wilt so quickly.”

“I will, Grandfather,” I replied. “I’ll see you at home.”

We watched him walk away.

When I went back to the house later I saw Grandfather speaking to Ba. They stood close together, Grandfather straight-backed and Ba looking down, his hands by his sides. They talked slowly and erratically. They talked as father and son, Grandfather speaking and Ba listening respectfully. When Ba tried to interrupt, Grandfather held up his hand, signaling that he must wait. When Grandfather had finished speaking, Ba told him something that obviously stunned him. They stood together in silence for a moment before Grandfather retreated to his room.

I don’t know what they said but everyone in the house began to work even more feverishly, as if sheer haste and activity could bring the wedding day upon us more quickly. Each separate task had to be accomplished perfectly: a misplaced stitch or poorly wrapped present might upset the gods and bring a curse upon us, ruining the day. Grandfather lost all interest in the gardens and sat in his chair, pale and anxious. I had not yet seen any of the doctors Ma had mentioned during her argument with Ba, but after Grandfather spoke to him I saw them start to arrive.

The first was a local man who visited every day bringing Sister many traditional medicines made from fresh herbs and dried animal parts, which needed to be brewed into medicinal teas. He was a withered old man who looked like the desiccated creatures and twigs he brought with him. He would shuffle around the outside of the house, checking for objects that would create bad feng shui then remove them before coming inside to visit Sister. There was also a man who practiced Western medicine, who came carrying a neat little bag of bottles and pills. He wore spectacles and was smartly dressed in a gray
ma qua
and Western shoes. The doctors generally saw Sister alone in her room, coming at least once a day. They must have been expensive, as I noticed that Grandfather needed to give Ba extra money to pay for them.

There was now only three weeks to go before the wedding. Sister spent much of the day resting in her room and would only go out in the evenings with Ma. I rarely got a chance to see her, but when I did she looked thinner and paler. Her skin had become gray and translucent, the whites of her eyes cloudy, pupils raw and angry. Her pregnancy was not really noticeable, but when I commented on this to Grandfather and Ba they said I should not speak of it as it would only bring bad luck. I wanted to be sure that the baby would be born healthy, but I was secretly glad Sister was so weak, because it meant she was too distracted to bother with me. If she’d had the strength, I knew she would have told our parents that I liked talking to Bi and was meeting him in the gardens. Fortunately the attention of every other family member, maid, and servant was focused on one thing only.

I continued to spend my time as I pleased. Even Grandfather now seemed too distracted to notice.

In the early evening, once the seamstress was gone for the day, I would sometimes go to the top of the house to see the wedding dress Sister would wear for the important tea ceremonies. The dress was made in a proud startling red—the luckiest shade. After the seamstress had completed her daily work, she would slip the dress over a mannequin, which stood in the corner of the otherwise empty room. The seamstress was now working on the embroidery, which was very fine and complicated. In the half-light of dusk cast through the window at the end of the room the dress looked ghostly. Several times I stood in the doorway, just looking at it, too frightened to enter on my own.

I thought it best to spend as much time as possible away from the house so I would sit in the gardens, reading or lying in the grass, staring at the sun. I used all these opportunities to see Bi, who would be busy fishing or weaving grass crayfish baskets.

“I would like to tell you more about my life. Do you want to hear?” he asked me one day.

I nodded in reply.

“My town is in the heart of China in the countryside . . . it’s called Daochu.” He looked at me as if I should know it, then smiled. “You’ve never heard of it?” He laughed. “It is near the old capital city, Xian. I used to go to the ancient ruins with my friends and we’d stand on the tall wall that surrounds the city and pretend to be Imperial soldiers. That was a long time ago. Now I go with my father to tend the fields and fish.” He paused and looked at my hands, then slowly up at my face and straight into my eyes. “Seventeen years ago, when I had just been born, there was a terrible drought and both my grandparents died. I like watching you with your grandfather. I think it would have been good to have grandparents.

“I have not told you this before but my mother is the seamstress making your sister’s wedding dress. You are very lucky that she is making it. She is a great seamstress and can do the old Imperial stitches . . . even the great forbidden stitch. Her family have known these things for many generations.” Suddenly his excitement faded and he paused, looking away from me. He started twisting the grass between his fingers. “But today she will finish her work and tomorrow we will go back home.”

My heart started to beat very fast and I could not think. I wish I had said something to him then but in that moment I had no words, just the feeling that I was suddenly part of the garden, left rooted there to watch things pass me by, like a flower gently nodding in the breeze, no longer part of this conversation. As if expecting me to say nothing, Bi continued speaking.

“I liked talking to you, and I liked sitting here with you. You’re very pretty. In my town it is traditional for the men to marry young. When my mother makes the wedding dress for my bride, I want you to be wearing it.”

I was lost. Had nothing but silence to offer in reply. He stood up and held out his hand to me. I took it and we stood facing each other. I had never been so close to a boy before. I looked at his eyes, the strong lines of his eyebrows, then down to his mouth, his hands, his feet. The hems of his trousers were all muddy and wet.

He touched the corner of my long blouse, below the last button. I realize we were young and childish but he held it as if he were holding me, tethering me to that spot in the grass by the river, and although he did not touch my skin, I felt that he did. Looking down, I could see his hand so close to my body, my skin. I wanted him to touch me instead of the cloth, but that would be wrong and improper. As he talked he kept holding this tiny piece of me and I thought it might be acceptable to take his hand. I almost reached out, wanting our fingers to be entwined in a knot that no parents could ever untie. I did not do any of these things, though. I remained still, just watching his warm eyes looking at me so tenderly.

He reached up and cupped my cheeks with his hands. I let my face fall gently between them. I should have pulled away but I could not. I felt my eyes start to fill and carefully he used his thumbs to catch my tears. I smiled and coughed a little, and he smiled back at me. Then our lips touched.

It was my first kiss. As I recall it now, so that I can tell you, I think of it as tender and loving, but the power of these two emotions were unknown to me then. The kiss was soft, lovely, and left me wanting more. It took only the briefest of moments but it has lasted my whole life.

As he withdrew his lips he also let his hands fall from my cheeks and return to holding the corner of my blouse. He played with the fabric again, perhaps not knowing what to do next. We stood perfectly still and the only sounds were those of the river and the trees.

“Shall we sit down again . . . maybe a fish will leap into our laps for supper?” he suggested.

After a few hours spent sitting together, talking about the river, Bi got up, telling me it was time for him to go. We did not seem to be able to say anything more to each other. He looked at me for a long time, almost drinking me in. Then I watched him follow the course of the river out of the gardens and sat there myself for a few moments more, staring at the water until the light grew gray and I had to return home.

He had left me his fishing rod, which I took with me. I leaned it up against the wall outside my bedroom door. Later that evening, Sister walked past and the hook caught the stitching of her dress and pulled a small thread. She immediately looked down, grabbed the rod and broke it, all the time screaming for me. When I arrived, eating a sticky rice cake, she knocked it from my hand and shouted at me for ruining her dress. She threw the broken rod at me then, which caught me and cut my arm slightly. I looked down at her clothes and could see it was the tiniest of stitches in an old dress.

She noticed me looking at it and grabbed me by the chin and cheeks, forcing me to look at her instead. Her hands were bony and her fingers bit hard into my flesh. I saw that her face looked gaunt and hollow. I had not studied her closely for weeks and realized that the makeup she wore had concealed the change in her. I had only caught glimpses of her, leaving and entering the house, her room, or having conversations with Ma and Ba. From a distance, her carefully groomed facade had always seemed exactly the same.

“Why are you so stupid? You hide in those gardens with that foolish little boy, ignoring the things that will teach you what you really need to know. How do you expect to learn anything useful there? You leave this dirty thing here, to cut me and ruin everything . . . Your safe little life is not going to last forever, you know! Soon you will understand what it means to be an adult. That there is more to this world than just playing. You may even have
my
life, though you don’t deserve it.”

She screamed so wildly and relentlessly at me that I was too scared to move. The maids had stopped work and I could see them watching from a safe distance.

I began to cry. Her fingers still gripped my face and she forced my head up and back. Even though I was taller, in her Western shoes with heels she could nearly look me in the eye. Tears rolled down my cheeks toward the floor. I could see Grandfather walking past in the background. He stopped briefly when he noticed us then scuttled down the stairs where he must have waited as I did not see him appear in the courtyard below.

“Cry! Cry! And keep crying because
this
is how I would like to remember you. It won’t change a thing. You have done nothing! You do not work or practice. You don’t deserve anything. So when it happens, enjoy it all—all that I have given you. For you it comes completely free. But remember me and Ma every day.
Every single day
.”

As she stopped screaming this at me, Sister released her grip on my face and pushed me away. She stared at me for a second as I staggered back a step and then she slapped me once, twice, on the cheeks that Bi had just held so gently. It did not matter how hard she hit me. Now I had something of my own and no one could ever change that. She continued to punch and slap me until Grandfather came hurrying back up the stairs and grabbed her hands. I stood still, looking into her bony face and wild eyes. Grandfather led her away. As she was helped back into her room she let out a loud animal howl that echoed around the courtyard and hung in the air like angry spirits, even after she had closed her bedroom door.

I snatched the broken rod from the floor and went back to my room where I lay on the bed and trembled. After several hours Ba came to my door. He stood silently on the other side for a long time before he asked me how I was. I could only lie there, feeling anxious and scared. I did not understand what had happened, I did not understand what Sister had said to me. I had never seen her so angry, but she’d looked frail, too, as if anger was the only thing keeping her upright. I said nothing to Ba and after some minutes I heard him walk away.