Inheritance (21 page)

One midsummer afternoon, Hwa and I were working on Hwa’s shoes. Before this, our mother had paid a country girl to help her with the soles, which were created from many layers of cloth stuck together with paste. The hardened layers were then pierced with an awl and stitched with thick linen thread. The arrangement with the local girl had worked out until one day when my mother returned from a brief errand and discovered her eating the paste. My mother’s disgust and pity at this made it impossible for her to bear the presence of the girl. She sent her home with a few yams and resolved that we would do the work ourselves.

“It’s about time you learned to sew,” she told me. “You need practice in the home arts. You have no idea how lucky you are; your grandmother had to learn to walk with bells sewn to the hem of her dress. If the bells rang, she was punished.”

On my own shoes, I’d stitched the character for “victory” with rough cotton. They were finished, and I wore them on that day. But my mother insisted that I embroider on Hwa’s shoes chrysanthemums for autumn—an intricate flower requiring hundreds of small stitches. I’d been working for an hour when there came a knock on the door. There was something familiar in the knock, yet carefully polite.

Hwa and I ran to the door. I threw it open and backed away, surprised. Before me stood my aunt Yinan wearing a loose dress. Hu Mudan was at her side holding a basket with some paper parcels. Behind her stood a tall boy with thick hair in a wild brush.

Hu Ran spoke first. “Hello, young miss.”

“Ayi!” I shouted. Yinan smiled her old smile, the one I’d always felt was meant for me alone. For a moment she looked ready to gather me into her arms. Then her smile dropped away and her gaze shifted behind me. My mother had entered.

“Li Taitai.” Hu Mudan spoke over my shoulder. She held out her package, fragrant peppers and a box of sesame cakes.

In that brief instant I feared my mother might tell them to leave. We hadn’t seen Hu Mudan since the day my mother had willed her from the room. But my mother beckoned, triumphantly, and I began to see that she was pleased Yinan had come to her. Yinan’s eyes filled with tears. Hu Mudan handed the packages to my mother.

“I’ll put these in the kitchen,” my mother said. She gestured to the others and they walked after her. Hwa went to use the toilet and Weiwei followed.

I stole a glance at Hu Ran. He’d entered adolescence, and his adult features had emerged: prominent cheekbones, a high-bridged nose, and long, Mongolian eyes that held a watchful expression. He looked around the room, taking in the radio, the scattered sewing project, the furniture and curtains my mother had brought from Hangzhou. Then he turned his curious, bright eyes onto my face. Our gazes locked. He looked at the door and without thinking I went toward it.

Hu Ran moved fluidly down the city steps. I followed more slowly, keeping my new shoes out of the dust, watching his square, brown elbows sticking out of his shirtsleeves. His pants rose halfway up his sturdy calves. He had no new things, he explained, because his mother was sending him to school. He was much larger than the other children, but he didn’t care. He wanted to learn to read. After school, he rented a bicycle to run errands for money. Two coppers for the bicycle brought in as much as seven coppers in payment. He could buy his own ink and school supplies, and he was saving for a bicycle of his own.

His manner was entirely natural and friendly. But as he spoke of all these things—his school, his coppers, and his bicycle—I held back. I felt left out of his new life. And clearly, he knew more about Yinan than I did. How did he have the right to know about my aunt, when I, her favorite, had been kept in the dark?

Then there were physical changes. In the past, Hu Ran had smelled only salty, like a boy, but now he gave off a puzzling scent that made me look away. There it was again—the mystery of the afternoon behind the willow tree—but this time I was old enough to know there was no proper place to put my curiosity.

“You’ve changed,” I blurted.

Hu Ran nodded. “It’s extra food, from the Americans. I grew six inches in one year.” He turned toward the river. “We all miss you. Especially your ayi.”

“She seems different.” I wanted to say more, but something stopped my throat.

Hu Ran stared out at an empty rice junk, high in the water. “She’s all right,” he said. “She has a job. At night sometimes she still writes poems.”

Tears stung my eyes. “What else do you know?” I asked.

“What haven’t you been told?”

“I don’t know anything.”

“She’s going to have a baby.”

I stopped and stared. “How is that possible?”

“I can’t tell you!” Hu Ran blushed.

“Let’s go back,” I said, seized by a panic I couldn’t express.

We climbed the stairs in silence. Hu Ran reached the house a few paces ahead of me and paused on the doorstep, listening. Then he waved me away. But I couldn’t bear to be protected any longer. I walked through the mud up to the open window.

Yinan and my mother sat facing one another. My mother had brought out the good teapot, and she smiled graciously at Yinan as if she were an honored guest. But as I watched, I sensed they were engaged in a curious struggle. My mother stayed behind a wall of friendliness and ease. Yinan, seated opposite, clenched the arms of her chair. She leaned toward my mother, frowning with sorrow and determination. Hu Mudan remained apart, eyes closed tightly as if she had a headache, listening and rocking in her chair.

“I can’t stay,” Yinan apologized. “Rodale Taitai needs me. But I must talk to you and tell you what happened. After I confess, you must decide whether you still find it in your heart to forgive me.”

“Of course you are forgiven. You know this happens all the time, Meimei.”

“No, I don’t think it does.”

“Oh, yes, it does. It’s all right, Yinan. You may think I’m upset, but you needn’t worry. You think I haven’t seen or heard of this before? You couldn’t help what happened; it was just proximity.”

“No.”

“The confusion afterward is natural; the feelings will pass,” my mother said. “It’s like having a bad cold.”

“Please, Jiejie.”

“You can live here with me until the baby comes. Then we’ll find you a good man. No one will blame you in these mixed-up times. You can forget this episode and put it all behind you.”

“I can’t live here.”

My mother shrugged her graceful shoulders. “I’ve told you again and again. I’ve already forgiven you.”

“Please let me tell you what happened.”

“I can guess.”

“It’s not what you think. Things—changed when I was there.”

“No, Meimei. You are too innocent to understand.” She tipped her head back, more beautiful than ever, and examined my aunt through her lashes. “Are you worried he’ll be in the house? He’s not even in the country.”

“No,” Yinan cried. “It’s not him I’m thinking about. That was my fate and now my life is ruined. But I don’t care about that, not in the way you think. It’s you who matter, Jiejie. Please hear what I’m asking you to forgive. You asked me to preoccupy him. I didn’t understand. But when I got there and I saw him, then I knew. I knew what you expected. And things changed, he changed. I changed.”

“I told you it doesn’t matter now.”

“I became a person.”

“Nonsense.”

“I’m not your meimei anymore.”

“That’s ridiculous. We’re family.”

Yinan’s voice was barely audible. “And Li Ang is your husband.”

At the sound of Yinan’s voice speaking his name, a queer expression came over my mother’s face. She said nothing, but she raised her head slightly as if listening for a visitation from a force that she had always feared but did not want to name.

Their eyes met. Yinan, too, was waiting. Yinan took a deep breath. “Jiejie,” she said, “why do you think he decided to leave Chongqing and go to Burma?”

My mother’s face closed over like the surface of a pond. She shut her eyes for one second, two seconds. When she spoke, her voice was toneless, harsh. “He was ordered. By the general.”

Yinan sat back, exhausted.

In a moment there was no evidence of the wound: no surprise, no lines of anguish, but rather a visage rendered utterly smooth and unrevealing. It was as if my mother’s face had been frozen shut. Her voice was hard. “I don’t need you to tell me what his motives are,” she said. “You go ‘become a person’ with some other man. I’ll get you another soldier, if that’s what you prefer.”

“No, Jiejie. Goodbye, Jiejie.” I could barely hear the words. Then Yinan stood with blind dignity and went to the door. I heard the front door click shut and her slow, dazed footsteps on the path. Too late, I remembered my shoes. The muddy spots under the eaves had ruined them.

Inside the house, Hu Mudan gathered up her basket.

“Get out of here,” my mother said. “Stop meddling in my affairs and take that brat with you.”

Hu Mudan obeyed. When she reached the door, she turned calmly toward my mother. “I’ve known you since you were in split pants,” she said, her dry voice falling into the spent air. “You are afraid the child will be a boy.”

THEN THERE WERE
no more visits from and no more mention of my aunt. The mahjong women were our only company. Hwa watched the games. My mother told me to piece together a replacement pair of shoes, and I sat in the bedroom accompanied by the relentless clicking of the tiles. I was seven years old, trying to sort through the layers of the conversation I had overheard.
You asked me to preoccupy him.
Click.
It’s like having a bad cold.
Click-click.
I became a person.
Click.
He was ordered. By the general
. Now my mother was afraid of Yinan. How could this be?

One night in late summer I awakened in the bomb shelter. First there was the brief disorientation of coming to consciousness in darkness. Then I searched for my mother and for Hwa. Hwa lay sleeping next to me, but my mother was up; she was standing nearby, speaking to a strange woman. I reached out to touch her ankle. I could feel her muscles taut, all attention, in the dark.

“Wait,” my mother said. “I must talk to the child.” She bent down and slid her long arms around me. “Be still,” she said, “and listen to me carefully. You must stay here and be good.”

“Can’t I come with you?”

“No.”

“What about Meimei?”

“Hwa is sleeping. You must stay here and be good and wait for me to come back. I have asked Pu Taitai to watch you. You be good and stay with Pu Taitai.”

“Where are you going?”

“Not far.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Stay here with Hwa.” She turned and told Pu Taitai she was leaving.

“Hao,” Pu Taitai said.

As they walked away, I heard my mother ask, “Where is she?”

“Farther, the left tunnel.”

Then they were gone. Next to me, Hwa slept. I touched her shoulder. “Hwa,” I whispered. “Wake up. Hwa, wake up.” But she merely yawned, turned over, and swam back into sleep.

“You let her be,” said Pu Taitai. She pulled me onto her lap. I felt smothered by the smell of her sandalwood perfume. “Come and sit with me for a while,” she said. “Don’t worry. God will protect us.”

“Hello, Hong,” whispered Pu Li. “Don’t be frightened.” Long ago, my aunt and I had mocked him for not knowing his left from his right.

Pu Taitai put both arms around my waist. “I have to watch you carefully,” she said. “Your mother is my close friend, you know.”

I sometimes watched while Pu Taitai and the other women played mahjong with my mother. Pu Taitai was always worrying about her husband, and the other women were always trying to soothe her. My mother was different from the others, more beautiful, with her calm, oval face and her white throat. And she was stronger. She did not confide. I knew Pu Taitai thought my mother was her friend because my mother lent her gambling money. But I didn’t think my mother considered Pu Taitai her friend.

Pu Taitai went on. “Some of the women in our group believe that your mother in a past life was a man,” she said. “She gambles like a man. I admire her, even when she does beat me. Before he went south, my husband used to say, ‘What, I need to give you more money? Have you been playing with Li Taitai again?’ But I told him, she is smarter than the rest of us.”

She paused and listened nervously. “Your father was in charge of supplies,” she continued, “and your mother could have anything she wanted, but I saw the food on your table and it was as simple as what we had.” I said nothing. Pu Taitai didn’t know the truth of it. My mother was too smart to draw attention to herself by living in extravagance. The black market flourished in the war—for cigarettes, for stockings, for penicillin—and occasionally, these items had come my father’s way. With a canny alchemy, my mother had transformed these goods into gold.

Pu Taitai had just lapsed into silence when we heard what was unmistakably an airplane.

“God will protect us,” Pu Taitai whispered. But I could feel how afraid she was. I tried to squirm out of her hold.

“Don’t be afraid, Hong,” echoed Pu Li. Even in the bomb shelter, he was a calm, stolid boy. At recess he spoke as slowly as he did in the classroom, and now, underground, he spoke exactly the way he did at recess.