A Hundred Flowers (23 page)

Song

When she heard a knock on the door, Song looked up surprised to see Suyin standing in her opened doorway. The girl had ventured back to her garden and rooms only once or twice, either to bring her a message from Kai Ying or to gather some needed vegetables for their dinner. Now her shadow wavered unexpectedly in the threshold.

“Come in, come in,” Song said.

Suyin stepped into the room and out of the bright afternoon sunlight. She appeared like a different girl from the one Song had first spoken to in Great-Auntie Shu’s room. She no longer reminded Song of an underfed dog, shivering in the streets. But it wasn’t just a physical change Song could see; there was an energy and vigor emanating from her again. Song could see it in her eyes.

“Auntie Song, have you seen Tao?” Suyin asked.

“What is it? Is everything all right?” she asked, pushing her bowl of pea sprouts to the side.

After all the turbulence of the past year, Song’s first thoughts had naturally bordered on dread.
Not again,
she thought.
Not again.

“Kai Ying can’t find him. She thought he might be back in the garden with you.”

“No, no, he was with me yesterday,” Song said, “not this afternoon. Did you look upstairs?”

Suyin nodded.

“He can’t have gone far,” she said.

Voices came to them from the courtyard, and Song smiled. “That must be him now,” she said.

They looked at each other and without saying another word, hurried in the direction of the voices.

*   *   *

The courtyard gate had just closed and Kai Ying stood alone in the courtyard holding a piece of paper in her hands.

“What is it?” Song asked.

Kai Ying looked over at her. “It’s finally a telegram from Wei,” she said, relieved.

“At last!” Song exclaimed.

She suddenly felt her blood flowing again, the warmth spreading through her body.
He made it,
she thought to herself. The old fool had actually made it all the way to Luoyang.

Kai Ying held a thin, yellow piece of paper out to her that read:

ARRIVED SAFELY IN LUOYANG. WEI

They all looked again when the courtyard gate opened and Tao hurried in, sweating and dragging his leg. He looked on the verge of tears.

“What happened? Where have you been?” Kai Ying asked.

Tao kept silent.

“Are you all right?” Song asked.

He nodded and limped over to his mother. He pulled two coins from his pocket and put them in her hand before going into the house.

Tao

While it was Auntie Song who walked Tao to school every morning, it was Suyin who stood by the front gate waiting for him every afternoon. Ever since Tao had gone to the park alone, he’d had to go directly home after school to do his homework. Tao hadn’t told anyone what had happened, and he didn’t care if he never stepped foot into that park again. He was secretly happy Suyin was waiting for him after school. She wasn’t so sickly-looking anymore and her skin had cleared. Walking next to her, he realized she was almost as tall as his mother and thin all over. Tao couldn’t imagine how a baby could have come from her. She usually wore a dark cotton tunic and pants and he recognized one of his mother’s sweaters that she was wearing.

Tao liked walking home with Suyin; it made him feel older. He liked the way she nodded at him without saying a word, without making a fuss the way Auntie Song did trying to help him with his books or forcing him to put on his jacket as the days grew cooler. Suyin kept things simple and to the point. If he didn’t feel like talking to her, she never pushed.

“Ready to go?” she said.

Tao nodded that he was.

“I need to make a quick stop for your mother,” she said. “It’ll only take a few minutes.”

“Sure,” he said, following her as she turned down the street and away from home.

As the days went by, he also liked the way Suyin reached across and helped him with his book bag without saying a word, and how she purposely walked slower so he could keep up with her, but never in a way that seemed deliberate. Once in a while, she asked him a question about school and what he had learned that day, but she never asked about his father or his grandfather and he never asked about her family.

As they weaved in and out of the pushing crowds, she leaned over and took hold of his sleeve so he wouldn’t be pulled away from her. She’d never know how grateful Tao was as he hurried to keep up.

“How’s your leg feeling?” she asked.

“Better.”

Suyin leaned closer and asked, “Where did you go the other day when we were looking for you?”

The question was so unexpected he paused for a moment before he said, “I went for a walk.”

“It looked more like you were running away from someone, or something,” she said.

Tao stayed silent. His mother had been angry at him for taking the coins and leaving the house without telling her, but she assumed he was on his way to the store before he simply changed his mind and returned home. Tao wasn’t sure if he should tell Suyin about the man in the park, but when he finally decided he would, he realized she had let go of his sleeve and was no longer walking beside him. He turned around to see that she had paused at the corner and was staring at something down the street.

“Is everything all right?” Tao asked.

Suyin didn’t answer.

“What is it?” he asked. “What are you looking at?”

Tao followed her gaze and didn’t see anything particularly special. It was a street teeming with people going about their business, just like every other street in downtown Guangzhou. He watched all the people moving back and forth, a grandmother walking with her grandchild, two boys a bit older than he was standing in front of a storefront, a woman and man in a heated conversation, nothing out of the ordinary.

When Suyin finally did respond, she looked serious and sounded very far away. “You see those two boys?” she said. “They’re my brothers.”

*   *   *

Later that afternoon, Tao paused at the opened door of Suyin’s room. He never thought she’d have family of her own so close by. Why hadn’t she said anything about them? As much as he wanted to ask her, he knew not to, not yet. She was standing by the window with the baby in her arms and he suddenly felt sorry for her having to be all alone.

Suyin turned unexpectedly and caught him watching them. “Do you want to come in?” she asked.

Tao’s face flushed warm. He was all ready to say no, but his left foot led and he stepped in.

“How’s your baby?” he asked, trying to sound more grown-up.

She laughed. “Growing. She’s getting bigger every day, and her rash seems to be disappearing. See?” She held the baby out toward him.

Tao took another step into the room. With the drapes drawn, a harsh sunlight illuminated everything. It was the first time he’d seen the room in the clear light of day, the water stains like dark puddles across the ceiling, the peeling paint that curled along the edges of the wall, the faded armchair that sat in the corner of Great-Auntie Shu’s old room.

Standing in the middle of it all was Suyin and her daughter. The baby was so small, he thought, with a full head of black hair sticking up. She opened her eyes wide and raised her tiny fist up, reaching out toward him.

“I think she likes you,” Suyin said.

Tao touched her hand with his finger and smiled. “What are you going to name her?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure…”

“
Ma ma
says you’re supposed to wait a month,” he said, remembering what he’d heard.

“I’m afraid I’ve missed that deadline already,” she said. “She’s almost seven weeks.”

“You’d better start thinking,” Tao said.

Suyin looked down at the baby and then back at him. “Maybe you can help me find the right name for her.”

Tao thought for a moment. There once was a stray cat that wandered into their courtyard that he’d named Mao, not for the Premier, but because it had the same sound as the word
cat
in Chinese. Mao came every day for months until he began to think of the cat as his. And then one day, Mao stopped coming and he never saw him again. Tao had cried when the cat hadn’t appeared by the third day, but his grandfather sat him on his lap and told him Mao was a very busy cat and had other children to visit. Some cats strayed from one place to another, never forming attachments, he said, so the fact that Mao stayed for so long visiting him was already something very special.

Now Tao wondered if Suyin and her baby would suddenly just disappear too.

“I’ll think about it,” he answered, slowly backing out of the room.

Wei

Wei awoke just after dawn. For a moment he couldn’t remember where he was until he heard Tian snoring softly in the cot across from his. He was in Luoyang waiting to see Sheng. His back ached and when he stretched out lengthwise, his feet hung off the end of the small cot, which must have been someone’s childhood bed, a child Tao’s age. Just the thought of his grandson made his eyes tear up in the dismal room.

When Wei was a boy, it was a different world, one that was now condemned by Mao and the Party as extravagant and wasteful. But he also remembered the beauty and intellectual curiosity of a country that could have easily caught up with the rest of the world, if she weren’t always being dragged backward. And now he didn’t know if Tao would ever experience any of China’s glories, other than in the stories from the books he read to him. In the China his grandson was growing up in, just surviving each day left very little time for much else.

Wei pulled the thin blanket closer against the cold, thankful he was still fully dressed, or else he might have frozen to death during the night. Wei looked around the cell-sized room, the two small cots, a wooden chair and table, a small coal stove in the corner. From one side of the ceiling, a long zigzagging crack ran across it and all the way down one wall. He had hoped things might appear better in the daylight. Instead, it looked sadder and dingier as light filled the room and everything came into focus. Wei’s heart sank at the thought of returning to the police bureau for another long day of waiting for any information about Sheng.

When Tian coughed, Wei knew he was awake.

*   *   *

Wei watched Tian drop a few pieces of coal into the little corner stove to heat some water for tea. When it was ready, he made the tea and pulled one of the cots closer to the wooden table where Wei sat in the only wooden chair, rubbing his back.

“Did you sleep well?” Tian asked.

Wei nodded. “For the most part,” he said, his hands cupped around the hot tea. It was the most warmth he’d felt in days. On the table was their breakfast: the package of dried plums and tin of biscuits he had bought back in Guangzhou. “It’s much colder here in Luoyang,” he added.

“I’ll ask Mrs. Lai for a couple of extra blankets tonight,” Tian said. “I forget how this dry cold settles into your bones here.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Wei said. “I don’t know what I thought. It’s obvious I came without planning everything thoroughly. I wouldn’t have known what to do if it wasn’t for you.”

Tian smiled. “I knew there was a reason to return to Luoyang now. It’s good to know that something will come out of this trip.”

Wei had spent his life holding on to the past, trying to preserve the old and failing to live in the present. And now he would give whatever was left of his life just to know that Sheng was all right.

“It’s time we both moved forward,” Wei said.

Tian smiled and sipped his tea.

*   *   *

Wei felt better after he’d eaten. He prepared himself for the long day ahead while Tian stood up and cleared the table. Wei watched him move easily through the tiny room and didn’t dare ask when he would be returning to Guangzhou. At the moment, he was just grateful that Tian had enough enthusiasm to carry them both through the day.

Tao

Tao heard someone on the stairs and looked up to see Suyin standing in his doorway carrying her baby. “What do you think about the name Meizhen?” she asked. “Your
ma ma
calls her that when she doesn’t think I can hear,” she said, and laughed. “Now I find myself calling her Meizhen, or Mei Mei, too.”

“It’s all right,” he said. He felt good having her confide in him. “I like it.”

“Me, too,” Suyin said. “Good night then.” She nodded again and was gone.

Suyin

Suyin walked quickly down the street. Once or twice a week she ran errands in the morning for Kai Ying while Auntie Song watched Mei Mei. Dongshan appeared different now that she was actually living there, the villas behind the tall walls no longer a mystery. They were filled with families and problems just like in Old Guangzhou. But instead of the multitude of voices all screaming at once from the crowded apartments, there was a quiet seething just below the surface in Dongshan. Upon closer scrutiny, she saw the cracks in the stone walls, the big houses crumbling slowly behind them in need of repair or paint or new tiles. All Suyin’s illusions of grandeur had suddenly disappeared. She would never be the same wide-eyed schoolgirl walking down the street for the very first time, and the thought brought both a sigh of relief and a moment of sorrow.

It was a mild morning. Most of the trees that lined the boulevard were now stripped bare of leaves. The last time Suyin had stumbled down the street in the rain was almost two months ago, the baby pushing her way out into the world. The pain had been unbearable. Suyin didn’t know what she would have done if she hadn’t made it to Kai Ying’s house.

*   *   *

The vendors were just setting up when Suyin arrived at the marketplace. Kai Ying had asked her to buy a lean piece of pork before they sold out. Pork was the main ingredient for most of her soups, providing taste with little fat. If there wasn’t any pork, she was to bring back a chicken.

Suyin wondered if any of the vendors recognized her as the pregnant beggar girl scrounging for their throwaway fruits and vegetables. Only with close scrutiny would they find any resemblance to the girl she once was, and Suyin knew they’d never paid her that kind of attention. It shouldn’t matter to her now what they thought, but it did.