A Hundred Flowers (25 page)

“My
ma ma
raised the three of us for several years on her own,” Suyin continued. The words she’d kept to herself for so long suddenly fought to push their way out. “My
ba ba
left for work one day when I was eight years old and he never returned. My mother remarried when I was twelve.”

“Is your family in Guangzhou?”

Suyin hesitated. Perhaps Kai Ying would want her to return home if she knew they lived in Old Guangzhou. And yet, it seemed pointless to lie now; Tao had already seen her brothers. “Yes,” she finally answered.

“Does your mother know about the baby?”

Suyin shook her head. “I left when I began to show.” She tasted a tart bitterness on her tongue and tried not to think about her stepfather.

Kai Ying put the jar of fungus ears back up on the shelf and turned to her. “So she has no idea where you are, or how you are?”

Suyin shook her head again.

“Or that she has a granddaughter?” Kai Ying asked, her voice rising slightly with the question.

Suyin remained silent. Her hand unconsciously rose to her cheek, the rough patch of skin barely detectable now. Suyin felt a dull ache in the middle of her stomach, knowing that her time in Dongshan was coming to an end. What was she supposed to do now; she was fifteen years old with a little baby. She couldn’t return home and live in the same apartment as that monster.

It was Kai Ying who spoke again. “We’ll work something out,” she said, before she reached over and gently pulled Suyin’s hand away from her cheek, holding on to it.

Suyin didn’t move. It had been such a long time since anyone had held her hand. Kai Ying’s hand was warm and soft and Suyin held tightly on to it as if she were falling, as if the wall she had built up so meticulously during the past year was suddenly plummeting all around her.

“He came home drunk one afternoon,” Suyin began. Her heart raced. “I didn’t know what to do. Before I knew what was happening, he had grabbed me and pushed me to the ground and was on top of me,” she said in one breath.

“Who?” Kai Ying asked. “Who hurt you?”

In the weeks following the rape, Suyin daydreamed that she had fought back, that she had reached out and gripped one of her father’s old hammers and swung with all her strength, hitting her stepfather again and again until he no longer moved, pushing his bloody deadweight off her as the room spun around and the daydream ended with a moment of pure relief before the feeling disappeared again.

“My stepfather,” she said, spitting out the words.

Suyin didn’t dare look up when she felt Kai Ying’s hand suddenly pull away. She stared down at the table, her tears falling on the stained, scratched wood, realizing her hunger wasn’t just about food. All these months she’d been starving for warmth and shelter and family. Suyin couldn’t stop crying until she felt Kai Ying come over and wrap her arms around her, pulling her in from the cold.

“It’s all right,” Kai Ying whispered into her ear. “You can stay here for as long as you like. You’ll always have a home here.”

Suyin tried to say something but all that emerged was a choking sound.
A home,
she thought, which made her cry even harder.

Wei

The day began bittersweet. Wei suggested they stop for breakfast on their way to the train station. It would be a nice walk before Tian’s long trip home. Wei memorized the streets so he wouldn’t get lost when he was alone again. They had already arranged to meet back in Guangzhou when Wei returned. He’d forgotten that life could still surprise an old man, how he had to travel all the way to Luoyang to find a new friend from Guangzhou.

At the train station, Wei didn’t think it would be so difficult to part with someone he’d barely known for a week. “Thank you, Tian, for all you’ve done for me,” Wei said. “Your guidance has been invaluable.”

“I did nothing,” Tian said. “I’m only sorry I won’t be here to hear about the reunion with your son.”

“I’ll tell you all about it when I return to Guangzhou.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

Wei shook Tian’s hand and the younger man boarded the train, turning back to wave before he disappeared into the car. Through the windows, Wei could see scattered passengers sitting throughout. He watched Tian move past them, choosing a window seat toward the back of the car, seeking quiet away from the others now that his story had found an ending.

Wei turned when a woman selling greasy fried donuts tugged at his arm, but he shook his head and pulled gently away from her. Discouraged, she tapped on the train windows, hoping a passenger might buy something from her. Wei stepped back and waited. When the train began to move slowly out of the station, he looked for Tian but no longer saw his friend sitting by the window. Still, he raised his hand to wave anyway.

Tao

It was Little Shan who approached him first in the school yard one morning. Although it wasn’t very cold, Shan was bundled up in a sweater, padded jacket, and a woolen scarf wound around his neck. Tao knew it was what his grandmother always made him wear every year after the Mid-Autumn Festival, whether it was cold or not. He was reminded of the heavier Little Shan he once knew.

“What is it?” Tao asked bluntly.

“I think we should call a truce,” Little Shan said. He kept his hands in his pockets, shifting from one leg to the other as if he really were cold.

Truce.
It was what they always said when they were still friends and had a disagreement, neither of them wanting to give in and say they were sorry.

Tao thought about it. Little Shan had betrayed him to be one of Lai Hing’s stray dogs, and now he wanted to be friends again. Mao would have sent him away for less, just like he did his
ba ba.
He looked up and studied Little Shan’s face, trying to understand what had happened during the past few months, how his entire life had been turned upside down ever since he’d fallen from the kapok tree. Yet, here he was, standing upright. Little Shan hadn’t totally abandoned him, having saved him from being pummeled by Lai Hing and his gang.
Best friends are hard to come by,
his grandfather had said. His
ye ye
was hard to come by. There would never be anyone else like his grandfather, and Tao wanted him back, but until then, Little Shan stood bundled up and waiting in front of him.

“Truce,” Tao said.

Kai Ying

Kai Ying kept to a regular schedule, trying not to think beyond what she needed to do from day to day. She waited anxiously for another telegram to come from Wei telling her Sheng was alive and well, but there had only been another week of suffocating silence.

She found her most fulfilling moments came every afternoon when she taught Suyin about the herbs, watching her listen intently to everything she said, quizzing her on simple remedies and basic treatments. They had fallen into a comfortable rhythm and Kai Ying enjoyed teaching. She now understood the satisfaction that Wei and Sheng must have received from their students, as each day her lessons with Suyin grew a little longer.

“What herb would you prescribe for a sore throat and fever?” she asked Suyin.

The girl’s face grew serious in thought. Kai Ying saw a moment’s hesitation, which quickly turned to certainty.

“The root of the Chinese foxglove,” Suyin answered.

“Yes,” Kai Ying said, and smiled.

Suyin’s face lit up with joy.

“Why would you prescribe the root of the foxglove?” Kai Ying asked.

She didn’t hesitate this time. “It helps to remove the heat from the body and cool the blood.”

Suyin was a natural.

At the end of their lesson, Kai Ying went upstairs and searched through her bureau drawer, finally finding the cotton pouch. In it were the pearls she had taken from Herbalist Chu when she studied with him. Kai Ying always meant to put them back, but she knew now she’d kept them for this very reason, to pass on to the next student.

Downstairs, she poured the tiny translucent pearls into the palm of her hand.

“What are those?” Suyin asked.

“Each pearl represents the time it’ll take for you to learn the basics of herbal work.”

Suyin looked confused.

“Do you remember the skin cream I gave you?” Kai Ying said.

Suyin nodded, her fingers brushing across her cheek, the once dark patches now almost undetectable.

“The pearls are the secret ingredient I told you about,” Kai Ying said, placing a small pearl in Suyin’s hand. “By the time you have collected all these pearls in the palm of your hand, twenty-four months will have passed, and you’ll have learned more about herbs than you ever wanted,” Kai Ying explained. “That’s if you want to,” she added.

“Yes,” Suyin said, closing her hand around the pearl. “I want to.”

Wei

Wei left for Ruyang on the noon bus. He checked and rechecked his pocket for Clerk Hu’s permission slip from the camp managers to visit Lee Weisheng at the Ruyang correctional facility that afternoon. Seeing his son’s name printed on the slip had instantly brought Sheng back to life, making it all a reality. On Wei’s lap was a bag that contained the woolen sweater he had carried all the way from Guangzhou. He had no idea if his son was allowed to accept anything from him, but he was determined to give him the sweater one way or the other.

The bus was crowded and noisy with day laborers going to work. He sat by a window near the front and closed his eyes for a moment against the bright sun. Since his first night on the train, Liang hadn’t returned to him. His greatest sorrow was that he loved her better in death than in life.

Wei opened his eyes and gazed out at the flat, dry plains surrounded by tall mountains in the distance. He wondered if the famous Longmen Grottoes and the Fengxian Temple, with its many carved stone Buddhas, were over there. It was the first time since arriving in Luoyang that Wei thought about it once being the cradle of Chinese civilization, where many of the finest Chinese poets and writers also gathered and had produced great works of literature. At one time, Wei’s heart would have raced with joy to know that he was so close to so many ancient art treasures, but now it was only an afterthought, a distant place where Sheng had been taken to be reeducated.

The correctional facility was a three-story, whitewashed building surrounded by a high wall trimmed with barbed wire. Wei held the letter of permission nervously in his hand, then watched as it was passed from one uniformed officer to the next, until he was finally ushered down a darkened passageway and told to wait in the room at the end of the hall. “Your son will be brought down shortly,” the woman told him in a flat, tired voice. And then she was gone.

The room was stark and cold and windowless. Several dim lights hung from the ceiling. There were three rows of five wooden tables with chairs facing each another. Wei sat down at a table closest to the door, while another older woman sat at a table on the other side of the room. She looked over at him and then away again. Wei was told that he’d been given special visiting rights, since visitors were usually allowed only at the beginning or the end of the month. He wondered if the woman had come from far away, too. Wei was tempted to make conversation, to raise his voice and ask her who she was there to see, but they had chosen tables far apart from each other for privacy, and he thought it better to keep it that way.

When the door finally opened, Wei’s heart leaped. He took a deep breath and held it in, only to let it seep slowly out again when he saw a thin young woman with a shaved head walk in with a female guard. She was hunched over and moved slowly, as if in great pain, but raised her head just long enough for Wei to see her black eye and swollen lip and just how young she was. She wasn’t much older than Suyin. When she walked past him, a foul stench emanating from her accosted him, and Wei quickly turned away.

The older woman immediately rose from the table, but the guard held up her hand to stop her. The woman, who he assumed was the girl’s mother, hesitated, then sat back down again. Wei could see how anxious the woman was to get up and go to the girl, but she gripped the edge of the table instead and waited. The guard pushed the young woman down in the chair across from her and stepped to the side.

“Fifteen minutes,” the guard said.

Respectfully, Wei looked down at the table. There was nowhere else to escape. He knew well that privacy could be found only in small gestures, by closing his eyes, or turning his body away, or dropping his gaze to the tabletop. It provided emotional distance if nothing else. He looked down at the sticky and worn tabletop. Someone had further added to the despair by making a deep gouge in the table that ran in a curving line from one end to the other. But the longer Wei studied it, the more it appeared to follow the same route as the Yellow River flowing through Central China. He had spent more hours than he could count scrutinizing maps and tracing the artifacts in this area where so much of China’s civilization began. The river wound through nine provinces from Qinghai to the Bohai Sea, where the table ended. Wei might have been imagining it, but he was delighted with the discovery. The Yellow River represented the spirit of the Chinese people, and it was not only fitting, but inspired that someone would have scored it into the tabletop as a symbol for all those visiting their loved ones. Even if he were the only one ever to make the connection, it lifted his spirits.

He studied the tabletop closely, wondering how the gouge had been made and by whom, the visitor or the inmate. With a pen? A sharp object? Out of rebellion or despair? It must have required thoughtful planning and cunning not to have been seen and stopped by the guards. He imagined the room crowded with visitors, voices raised to be heard, the guards gathered together smoking, ignoring the reunions. Wei’s finger traced the line and he smiled at the secret of it. He had been thoroughly searched before he was allowed into the facility, and had the presence of mind to wear Sheng’s sweater rather than carry it in. He wondered how many others had prepared intricate plans of defiance on their visiting days.