Tangled Vines (23 page)

Mei Xi beckoned for Linnea, Sky, and Mari to sit, and they sat around the ceramic table, opposite the old iron bed that held Lao
Long. The girl settled down on a stool next to her grandmother.

“I’ve got to finish feeding her and then we can talk.” As she spooned the congee into the woman’s mouth and wiped away the streams of it that dribbled out the one side, Long looked at Linnea with an unrelenting stare. Linnea felt uncomfortable, as if they were intruding on a private moment of shame.

“Is she well?” She didn’t know quite how to ask what was wrong with the old woman.

Mei Xi nodded. “She’s as well as can be expected. She suffered a few small strokes last year but then a few months ago a big one hit her. Her motor skills have suffered but she can understand what’s going on around her. She’s still as sharp as a tack, and can be a handful. Right, Nai Nai?”

The old woman grunted her answer and with that Linnea was worried. If she couldn’t talk, how would they find out what happened to Dahlia?

“Can she speak?” Mari blurted out exactly what Linnea was thinking.

Mei Xi nodded. “She can, but I’m usually the only one who can understand her. I came to live with her full-time after the last stroke.” She finished feeding her the remaining congee and wiped her grandmother’s face gently. She tucked the cloth into the woman’s gnarled hand, then stood and went to the kitchen cove and set the bowl down in the sink. She washed her hands and then turned to them.

“Would you like some tea?” She didn’t wait on an answer; instead she opened a cupboard and pulled out three small cups. She filled them with tea from the kettle on the stove and brought them over to the table. Then she returned to the kitchen and plucked an orange from a heaping bowl on the counter. Quickly she sliced it and arranged the pieces on a small plate. She brought the plate over and set it down, then took a seat opposite Linnea.

“Thank you, Mei Xi,” Linnea said. “Your home is very nice.”

She looked around at the different items. A small cot was arranged on the wall next to the old woman and Linnea assumed it was where Mei Xi slept. Mari nudged her and pointed to a chest that looked antique—and expensive.

“Yes, most of these things were given to my Nai Nai while she worked in the welfare institute. She didn’t make much money but over the years many of the items she acquired have paid the bills. Selling one thing at a time has kept us going.”

“Has she always lived here in Liulichang?” Sky asked.

Mei Xi nodded. “Yes. Years before she worked in the children’s home, she owned a store selling calligraphy books and paper. It was located on the street with all the other shops for scholars. During the Cultural Revolution she lost everything when all the stores were shut down. She was lucky to get a position with the welfare department and eventually was made the director. When that time was over and she could’ve opened her store again, she chose to stay with the orphanage. It was her passion to continue helping homeless children.”

Linnea nodded with feigned sympathy. She’d heard enough of the talk about the woman’s history. It was time to get to the heart of the matter. She turned on her stool until she was facing the old woman. “Lao Long, we’re trying to find my sister who was at the orphanage you directed. Do you remember a woman named Zheng Feiyan?”

The old woman shifted in bed though she didn’t move much. She appeared agitated but she forced out an answer. “Noooo.”

“I’m sorry. She doesn’t know this person,” Mei Xi said. “Perhaps the girl was from the other orphanage?”

Linnea shook her head. “No, Zheng Feiyan wasn’t my sister. That was the name of the woman who brought her there about thirty years ago.” She turned to the old woman again. Before she could stop it, she felt a burst of irritation and her mouth let loose words that she had meant to keep to herself.

“Lao Long, I know my sister Dahlia was in your care and I know that her grandmother paid you to keep her lost in the system. She was never supposed to be there.”

Mari spoke. “Her parents wanted her—she wasn’t abandoned. She was stolen.”

Mei Xi gasped and covered her mouth. “That’s horrible! Surely my grandmother knows nothing about that.”

Linnea hoped her sister hadn’t ruined things. Sky must have thought the same thing, because he kicked her under the table, making Linnea decide to change tactics. She ignored the granddaughter and instead drummed up a sympathetic smile for the old woman. She softened her tone. “You were only doing what you thought was right but it was wrong. Now her real parents want to know where she is. Please. You can right the wrong by helping us.” She fumbled in her purse for the letter from old Zheng. “I have a letter from Dahlia’s grandfather. His wife, Feiyan, is dead but he is releasing you from your promise and asking you to help us find Dahlia.”

Lao Long began to wave the dish towel in her hand, back and forth, her hand shaking with the effort.

“Nai Nai, what is it?” Mei Xi got up and went to her grandmother. The old woman struggled to sit up. A solitary tear made its way down her wrinkled cheek.

“Get me my book…,” she moaned.

“What book, Nai Nai?” Mei Xi patted her grandmother’s shoulder. She turned to Linnea and Sky. “I don’t know what’s come over her. She hasn’t been this agitated since her stroke. I don’t know what to do.” She fussed around the old woman, pulling the quilt tighter around her, then using her hand to wipe at the tear.

Linnea looked at Mari, her eyebrows raised. She didn’t know what to think, but she didn’t feel sorry for her, as she knew Long had deliberately kept Dahlia lost in a maze of red tape for years, keeping her from being adopted or finding her family. Mari shrugged her shoulders.

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset her,” Linnea lied, hoping it didn’t mean the end of the conversation. She still hadn’t found out anything.

The old woman began saying one word over and over. Linnea couldn’t understand her but Mei Xi leaned in and listened. Then she stood up. “Oh, I know what she’s talking about. She’s kept a book of records. It must be in her chest of things in the outbuilding.”

“Book?” Sky asked.

“Yes, she has a book she kept privately with notes about children she knew over the years. I’ll be right back.” She patted Long on the arm, then crossed the room and left through the back door.

Linnea looked at Sky. Could the book hold the information they needed? She turned to find Long staring at her again. Though the rest of the woman was ancient, her eyes were unwavering and fixed on Linnea as if trying to read her mind. She was quiet now, waiting for her granddaughter, but still Linnea could see she was very unsettled. She didn’t know what to say to the woman, so she held her tongue. Obviously Sky felt the same because he didn’t utter one word.

The door slammed behind Mei Xi and Lao Long sat straight up in bed and closed her sagging mouth. She suddenly looked at least a decade younger. The strong voice that came from her was even more startling. Gone was the weak stammering and in its place was a strong, bitter voice. “What do you want from me?”

Linnea and Mari were both too dumbfounded to speak at first. Then Linnea remembered what the assistant at the orphanage had said about Long being wicked, and her temper got the better of her again. “What game are you playing, old woman?”

The woman waved her hand in the air dismissively, without a single tremor. “Show me the letter you have if you want an answer. When my granddaughter returns, we won’t find that name in the book and I’ll go back to being a failing invalid, so you’d best hurry.”

Linnea looked at Mari, then Sky with disbelief. “What the…?”

He shook his head with pity. “She’s acting so she can keep her granddaughter at her side is what it looks like to me.”

Long nodded. “I’m not faking my illness. I did have a stroke and because of it, for the first time in two decades, I’m not left alone with all the ghosts of the children who haunt me. With Mei Xi here, they stay just out of reach but if she leaves, they’ll once again be at my bedside. Hurry! The letter.”

Linnea pulled the letter from her bag and opened it, then crossed the room. She held the letter out, and Long snatched it and quickly read it.

“I don’t know where this girl is and I cannot help you.” She dropped the letter on the bedspread, and Linnea picked it up and tucked it back into her purse. She then pulled the last-known photo of Dahlia out of the inside pocket and held it up for the woman to see.

“This is her when she was younger. You sent this photo and others of her to the Zheng family in Shanghai. And I think you know where she is, and if you don’t tell us, I’m going to tell your granddaughter what an amazing actress you are.” She crossed her arms over her chest and gave the woman her most stubborn look. Then she looked around at the many expensive trinkets in the room and waved her hand in the air. “How do all these useless items of wealth make you feel now? Do they take away your sense of responsibility for ruined lives?”

Sky joined her at the bed. “Now, Linnea, let’s all just calm down here. No need to cause more misery for Lao Long. I think her guilt is burden enough.”

“Coming from someone who knew his own parents and was never at the mercy of people like this,” Mari whispered.

Sky’s face fell.

Long turned her stare to Sky. “I speak the truth. There are a lot of children whose faces I cannot remember, but for those who were in and out of my institute until they aged out and took to the streets to make their own way.
I know who they are. That girl—she was one of my most troubled. She would not accept her fate graciously. She went back and forth to many homes.”

Linnea felt her temper flaring. “Graciously? You speak of her accepting her fate graciously? What if her fate was to stay with her parents and she was robbed of it by two selfish old women? She
had
a home. But it was taken from her!”

“Despicable,” Mari added.

Sky put his hand on Linnea’s wrist, urging her to calm down. “Lao Long, if you want us to go away, tell us what you know.”

Long stared at Sky for a moment. “Then you will leave immediately? Before Mei Xi returns? I do not want her to know about this. She only knows of the families I helped build through adoption.”

“What about the ones you wrecked to pad your pockets?” Linnea couldn’t help herself.

The old woman shot her a look of contempt. “Not everything I did was wrong. Mei Xi’s not even my real granddaughter. I gave her to my son when she was just a baby left on the side of a street with no one to claim her. She only spent a week in the orphanage before I gave her a home. I gave her an identity when she had none.”

“Oh, so now she owes you, right?” Mari asked, shaking her head in disgust.

Linnea was shocked at that confession and infuriated at the flippant way the woman claimed to have
given
a child, as if she owned the baby! But her admission meant that Mei Xi was also one of the lost girls of China and probably didn’t know her true beginnings, either. She wondered just how much the young woman did know.

Sky nodded. “That was a noble gesture, Lao Long. And yes, we will leave immediately if you can just direct us where to find Dahlia.”

With the salve of Sky’s soft tone, an expression of resignation came over the woman. “I can only tell you that the last place she was officially placed was a home in Suzhou. But the foster mother woke up to find her gone one morning. She thinks she may have worked the girl too hard. After that she wasn’t heard from again.”

Linnea frowned deeply. “Never? How old was she?” To know that Dahlia had lived in Suzhou, only a mere fifty or so miles from her own parents in Wuxi was mind-boggling. So close yet too many miles apart.

Long’s brow crinkled in concentration. “I don’t know. Maybe sixteen, seventeen—something like that. It was time for her to age out of the system anyway. I didn’t bother trying to find her. I had my hands full of enough unwanted children to bother tracking down one more.”

“And you have no idea where she went?” Mari asked.

The old woman shook her head.

Linnea didn’t want to say another word to her. She saw nothing but pure meanness coming from her eyes. Long would never feel remorse for her part in Dahlia’s story, so why even bother? For a second she thought about waiting and telling Mei Xi all that she knew, but then realized it wouldn’t help her find Dahlia and might bring the young woman a world of grief to know the truth about where she came from. She quickly decided it wasn’t her place to turn another’s world upside down.