A Hundred Flowers (21 page)

Out of nervous habit, Suyin touched her cheek, feeling the scattered rough patches and scabs of her pimples that were finally disappearing. A few weeks before, Kai Ying had given her a small jar of cream to use every night before she went to bed. “You don’t need a lot,” she said. “Like this.” Kai Ying spread a thin layer of the cream across her pimples, her fingertips gently patting Suyin’s cheek like quick kisses. She had suddenly felt like crying.

“Did you make it?” Suyin asked.

Kai Ying nodded.

“What is it?”

“I’ll show you another time,” Kai Ying said, and smiled.

More than anything, Kai Ying’s skills as an herbalist fascinated Suyin. The simple act of brewing teas and soups with the right combination of herbs gave Kai Ying the power to restore health and prevent illnesses. Suyin now realized how the natural world, which she’d taken for granted, could be used to heal. Kai Ying had already taught her there were possibilities in everything around her, and Suyin loved watching her create magic from her assortment of dried herbs and leaves and roots in jars lining the shelves, wondering if she could one day learn to be as good an herbalist.

By the end of her first week using the cream, the angry red pimples had magically begun to dry up. Suyin sat down in front of the tarnished mirror. For the first time in months, she dared to look at her reflection, seeing hints of the healthy young girl she once was. She touched her cheek again, marveling at another small miracle.

Suyin needed to find a way to make things right again.

Wei

As the train continued onward, Wei gazed out the window until they left the outskirts of yet another small town before he again leaned across the aisle.

“Did you ever find Ai-li?” he asked.

Tian turned to him and began talking, as if there hadn’t been any pause since he’d last spoken of her. “I caught the first train out of Guangzhou on that Saturday,” he said, his voice quiet and serious, “and arrived back to Luoyang on Monday, but Ai-li was no longer at her boardinghouse, and no one from her office had seen her after she packed up her belongings and left there on Friday. I walked all over the city looking for her, finally deciding to report her missing at the public security bureau. Then I rented her old room and waited for two days, foolishly hoping she might return there, although it had been completely emptied of her existence. Her landlady told me that she’d given everything away. I thought I would go insane.”

“There was no one who knew where she was?” Wei asked.

Tian yawned and shook his head. “I finally remembered the address of where she attended Party meetings, but her comrades were well prepared and wouldn’t tell me anything. My gut feeling was they not only knew where she was, but had most likely aided in her disappearance. On my way out, one skinny, hawk-nosed comrade remarked, ‘I guess you just weren’t man enough for our Comrade Ai-li!’ I went crazy and hit the bastard until I was dragged away, battered and bruised and thrown out on the street.”

“You never saw her again?”

Tian shook his head. “By the end of the week, even her landlady begged me to leave because I was frightening her tenants. I stayed in Luoyang for two weeks, and couldn’t find a trace of her or where she’d gone. The police found no evidence of any wrongdoing, concluding that she must have simply moved away of her own volition, telling me it was best if I returned to Guangzhou and moved on with my life too. I was nothing but a spurned lover to them.”

“You returned to Guangzhou?”

“There was nothing left for me to do. I didn’t know if I still had a job to go back to in Guangzhou, but it was the only thing left that felt real. Everything else I believed in had been destroyed. Sometimes, I wish we had married and that we fought bitterly and grew to hate each other. At least then, I would be free of her ghost.”

Tian’s words hung in the air and shivered between them. He put a cigarette to his lips and lit it, inhaling, smoke emerging from his nose and mouth and rising upward.

“I was angry for many years,” Tian said. “I finally decided to return to Luoyang again this year, although I can’t tell you why. Perhaps because she still remains an integral part of the city for me and I need to say good-bye properly,” he said, turning toward Wei. “You must think of me as an extremely foolish man.”

“No,” Wei said, “not at all.” How could he ever explain his own demons? “Have you ever married?” Wei asked.

Tian shook his head. “I’ve been with several women, good women, but I never met anyone who could make me forget Ai-li.”

“It’s not too late.”

Tian looked at him and smiled. He appeared tired and spent. “Perhaps one day,” he said.

“I married late in life,” he said, as if giving testament that life did provide surprises.

“And now your son is in Luoyang?” Tian asked.

“Yes,” Wei said.

He watched Tian and realized he might be one of the few people who would understand how he, too, had been led to this faraway city in search of a ghost.

“Would you mind,” Wei asked, clearing his throat, “listening to a story of mine now?”

Tao

With his grandfather gone, the house felt emptiest at bedtime. Tao scrambled into bed and pulled up his covers, listening for his mother. She was the one who would tuck him in now, the one who would calm his fears and read him stories at night.

His
ma ma
usually read to him from books, while his grandfather often told him stories from memory, or made them up right there in front of him.
History is a series of stories pieced together,
he once told Tao.
And art is a living record of it.
His grandfather’s voice rose in a happy rhythm as he spoke on and on, and it was the first time Tao realized how much his
ye ye
must have missed being at Lingnan teaching, and how lucky he was to be his only student now.

For as long as Tao could remember, all his favorite stories,
The Monkey King
or
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,
were read to him by his father or his grandfather before bed. His
ye ye
would also read to him other world classics like
The Arabian Nights
and
The Three Musketeers,
which he said Chairman Mao wouldn’t approve of, so they kept the books their secret. One by one, the books lovingly appeared in his grandfather’s hands each night, only to disappear again once he had finished reading them to Tao. A nagging thought suddenly worried him; what if he never found out where his grandfather had hidden all his books?

*   *   *

Tao wanted his
ba ba
back, but not if it meant his
ye ye
had to leave. He just wanted everything to return to the way it was. Before his grandfather left, Tao wanted to apologize to him for what he’d said. He never realized how the word
hate
could fill an entire room, swallow up all the air. But every time he had tried to approach his grandfather, his tongue twisted and his lips sealed and the words wouldn’t emerge. A rush of conflicting emotions moved through Tao that he wasn’t able to control, and even if he did want to say something, it felt like his
ye ye
was too close and too far away from him at the same time. And now he was afraid it was too late.

*   *   *

Tao was still adjusting to all the changes. His mother didn’t read to him with the deep professor voice of his grandfather or the funny voices his father used to make him laugh, but he liked her calm, cool mother voice. It was soothing. Tao imagined it was the same voice his mother’s patients heard to put them at ease and to quiet their worries.

He turned in his bed to face his mother as she chose a book and opened it. Tao didn’t really know what to believe anymore. For as long as he could remember, his
ma ma
had always been the one to teach him about what was right and wrong, how to behave and be well-mannered, or how to fold his clothes and make his bed neatly. She also told him the names of herbs and flowers and leaves that would stop his cough or settle his upset stomach. Even when he was a very little boy, she reminded him it was important that he always be able to take care of himself. Tao had wondered why, when she and
ba ba
and
ye ye
were there to take care of him. “Because there will be a time when we aren’t,’ she said, putting her warm palm on his cool cheek. “Not now,” she added, “but a very, very long time from now.”

Before his mother began reading to him, Tao wanted to tell her that he wasn’t ready to take care of himself yet. Instead, he pressed his lips together and held the words in. He didn’t want to upset her, but he wished he could say them aloud—
I’m still a little boy and it hasn’t been a very long time like you promised, so why are both
ba ba
and
ye ye
gone?

Kai Ying

Wei had been gone for three days and they still hadn’t had any word from him. Kai Ying could feel Auntie Song’s anxiety by the number of times she visited each day, checking to see if she’d had any word from him. “Tomorrow, I’m sure,” Auntie Song said when she left that evening, an edge of disappointment in her voice.

Kai Ying pulled out a pair of Tao’s pajamas from his bureau. She had allowed Tao to stay up later than usual with Auntie Song and Suyin, and now she was exhausted and hoped he would get to sleep quickly.

“Tell me a story?” Tao asked.

“Which book would you like me to read to you?” She went over to his bookshelf.

“Not any of those,” he said. “Tell me a story about your life?”

Kai Ying paused a moment in thought. Reading to Tao was one thing, but she was tired and storytelling had always been left to Wei and Sheng. She was much more comfortable curing a headache or upset stomach. Kai Ying thought back to her childhood and asked, “Did you know that Zhaoqing, the city where I grew up, means the beginning of auspiciousness and happiness? It’s called the City of Happiness.”

Tao shook his head. “Were you happy there?” he asked.

She pulled off his T-shirt and slipped his pajama top over his head. “Yes, I was. It was a wonderful place to grow up. Remember I told you the city of Zhaoqing surrounds Star Lake, which is actually divided into five smaller lakes with seven mountain peaks surrounding them. It’s beautiful there. Auntie Lan and I grew up riding boats and going swimming in the lakes.”

Tao had met his mother’s younger sister only a few times, when he was too young to remember much about her.

“And then you came to Guangzhou and married
ba ba
.”

She nodded. “And now I’m happy here with you.”

“And
ba ba
.”

“And
ba ba,
” she repeated.

“And
ye ye
?”

She hesitated for moment. “Yes, of course,
ye ye,
too,” she answered.

“Because he’ll be back soon,” Tao added, his voice rising. He turned to her and asked, “Was it my fault
ye ye
went away?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Why would you think that?”

“I said something mean to him.”

Kai Ying helped him into his pajama bottoms. His eyes watched her intently, an anxious look on his face.

“Your
ye ye
loves you more than anything else in this world. You could say a thousand mean things to him and it wouldn’t change the way he feels about you.”

Tao hugged her and his body slowly relaxed. “You know, we always planned to take you back to Zhaoqing for another visit,” she said, changing the subject.

“Tell me a story about Zhaoqing?”

Kai Ying settled him into bed and pulled up his covers.

“Let me see,” she said. “When I was about your age and Auntie Lan was not more than five, my father always told us one story in particular, called ‘The Bright Pearl,’ before we went to sleep. It was our favorite fable because our
ba ba,
your other grandfather, told us it was exactly how all the lakes and mountains of Zhaoqing had come to exist a long time ago.”

“Tell me that one,” Tao said.

Kai Ying hesitated and then sat down on the bed beside him. “All right,” she said. “But only because it’s a very short story.

“There was once a magical white pearl that fell from the heavens to the ground and turned into a beautiful lake. It wasn’t just any magical white pearl; she was coveted by the white jade dragon and the golden phoenix, both of whom couldn’t bear to leave the pearl when she turned herself into a lake. So instead, they turned themselves into the mountains that surrounded the lake so they could always stay by her side.
And that’s what your Auntie Lan and I thought every time we looked at Star Lake, that it was the magical white pearl and the surrounding mountains were once the white jade dragon and the golden phoenix.”

Kai Ying stopped abruptly and realized she hadn’t told it very well. “It was too short, wasn’t it? I’m afraid I’m not the storyteller your
ba ba
and
ye ye
are,” she said, her eyes watering and her throat closing. She looked away so Tao wouldn’t notice her tears.

“I like the story,” he quickly said, reaching out for her hand.

Of course he would notice, she thought. And then Tao repeated to her what she had just told him in his own words, embellishing it in places that instantly added life to the same story. And for the first time, Kai Ying realized that he already had the same gift of storytelling handed down from Wei to Sheng, and now to Tao. She couldn’t help but think how proud they both would be of him.

“Are the mountains in Zhaoqing as big as Cloud Mountain?” he asked.

Kai Ying shook her head. “They’re much smaller, but they’re still very beautiful. They rise above the lake as if they’re floating just above the water. I can’t wait until you see them.”

She could feel her spirits rising as she talked about Zhaoqing. It must be the city of happiness, if it could make her feel better during such a difficult time.

“Can we go there when
ba ba
returns?” Tao asked, leaning closer to her.