The Scavenger's Daughters (Tales of the Scavenger's Daughters, Book One) (5 page)

Benfu shook his head. The girls knew he had a strict rule about criticizing parents for leaving their children. He always told them no one knew the entire story or what was truly in the parents’ hearts. He even believed that sometimes it wasn’t the mothers who did or even agreed to the abandoning of their children. He knew that from experience—a hard lesson he’d learned years before.

“Zheng Ivy, we mustn’t make rash judgments. Perhaps her mother was sick herself and someone else took her baby from her. We just do not know the truths of the story. All we know is that it is fate that she is a part of our family now,” Benfu gently chastised her while pushing away a forbidden memory that threatened to invade his thoughts.

Ivy hung her head, her cheeks flaming. Benfu patted her on the back. Ivy and Lily were their only set of twins—identical at that!—and had been with them for nine years. At first he’d got their names constantly confused but he’d finally stopped calling them the wrong names. Now they were fourteen and Ivy’s emotions seemed to be all over the place as she struggled with feelings about her birth parents. She was a loyal one—he’d give her that. She’d always been the eyes for her blind sister and totally devoted to caring for her. Lily had so far been a gentle-mannered girl but lately Benfu could sense some discontent behind her unwavering stare.

He knew she needed to be enrolled in a school for the blind but so far his requests had gone unheeded by the council of affairs. The whole family continued to let her be as independent as possible but the truth was that she needed more assistance to learn the ways of the blind than they could give.

Ivy didn’t lift her face to meet his gaze; she didn’t like to be scolded. And in return he didn’t like to see his girls unhappy and rarely worked up the energy to discipline them. He didn’t see life through rose-colored glasses, though. He’d admitted before that some of the girls who’d passed through their doors had taken months and even years to soften. Many of them had been physically or emotionally abused—sometimes even both—but he and Calli always remembered that all children had some good in them. With the most difficult cases, they’d focused on giving them a stable home, and Lao Tzu was right when he once said, “Kindness in giving creates love.”

Benfu sighed as he thought about how dearly he loved all twenty-four flowers that had bloomed in the fields of his life.

A
s the sun set and the nighttime chill invaded their house, the rest of the family arrived and they all gathered around the room, ready to sit down for supper. The concrete floors had been swept clean and mopped, the colorful braided rugs beaten and returned to their places. The fire had been allowed to die down, the usual routine to keep the girls from breathing in too much coal smoke as they slept. Benfu also kept their supply of coal rationed, in case the weather turned bad and he couldn’t buy more. Coal used to be inexpensive but nothing was cheap these days. It was inevitable that the cost of living in Beitang would soon catch up to the bigger cities. Every yuan needed to be carefully accounted for.

The modest home could only accommodate a small table that sat three, so all but Jasmine scattered to other perches. Some balanced on overturned crates and some on short stools. Benfu always told the others that he liked to have Jasmine at the table beside him so he could watch and make sure their tiny sister ate her dinner. The other girls didn’t mind—they knew his affection for Jasmine and, bundled up in coats and scarves, they sat quietly, their cheeks flushing a healthy pink hue.

Benfu looked around and smiled at his daughters, proud of their attempt to look proper for dinner. Although they couldn’t change their clothes for another day or so, until their allotted bath day, they had all washed their faces and combed their hair. He and his wife had raised many children, and
most of them were now out living their own lives, but he had always made it a point to teach them to be proud of who they were no matter what their status. The children in the room were meant to be the last ones but the new arrival today had changed that plan—once again.

Linnea, currently the oldest daughter in the house, held the baby. She had arrived home and stopped to repair the loose wheel on the bicycle before taking her turn to get to know the newest member of her family. At seventeen, the girl had an unusual ability to understand mechanics and could fix most anything. Still, like some of her adopted sisters, she had not been allowed to attend school past the fifth grade, as her birth was unregistered. Instead she held a job as an assistant to a street-side bicycle repairman. It earned her only a few yuan a week, but her contribution to the family income was needed and appreciated. Benfu also liked that her job kept her busy; he dreaded the day that she would become interested in boys, as she was already turning into quite the beauty. Luckily, he thought, she hadn’t realized it yet.

It was Ivy’s turn for kitchen duty, and she scooped the rice from the cooker and distributed it evenly among the bowls as another sister handed out clean chopsticks. When finished, Ivy took the first bowl to her twin. Lily felt Ivy approach and Benfu watched her serene smile slowly appear, her hands out, ready to receive her supper. Then Ivy picked up another bowl and took it to the bench where Maggi stretched out. As she approached, Maggi pushed herself up on her elbows, eager to eat.

“Xie xie.”
She thanked her as Ivy handed her the bowl and then took the time to pull the coverlet over the girl’s feet. Even though Maggi couldn’t feel anything from the hips down, Ivy didn’t want her toes to be cold. They all took great pains to make sure the girl was always treated with the utmost care. The doctors had said she would never be able to walk because her spina bifida hadn’t been treated soon enough. But other than her sometime grumpiness from pain caused by the lump on her spine, and her embarrassment at her incontinence, Benfu rarely remembered her ever complaining in the three years she’d been with them. She was one of the sweetest eight-year-olds he’d ever known.

“You’re welcome.” Ivy returned to the bowls and took the next ones to Nai Nai and Ye Ye at the small table. She took Linnea’s bowl to her and set it down beside the stool the girl sat on. She quickly finished handing out the rest and sat down with her own bowl in one hand, chopsticks in the other. They all sat still, waiting for Benfu to give the word to begin their dinner.

“Linnea, put the baby down into the cradle,” he reminded her.

She gently laid the baby in the wooden bed and tucked the blanket around her. The child still slept, as she had done almost nonstop since her first bottle hours before. Benfu was worried about her, but he knew that they had done all they could and her destiny was now out of their hands.

“Let’s eat,” he said, and the room erupted into a clatter of chopsticks against porcelain. Tonight’s dinner was only steamed rice and eggs with tomatoes, but around the room the girls ate as if tasting one of the greatest recipes on earth.

“Ye Ye, when will we have pork again?” Lily asked, then shoved a bite of rice in her mouth. Lily couldn’t see the expressions everyone held as they looked up to see what Ye Ye’s response would be. However, she was startled at the sudden silence brought on by her question.

As the eldest, Linnea looked up to answer for their Ye Ye. “Lily, we all look forward to the nights that a bit of meat or vegetables will accompany our rice, but you must learn to keep that thought inside your head and not let it pass through your lips,” she said quietly. When she finished, the eating began again and noise filled the room.

Benfu looked up from his bowl just in time to see a sad shadow cross Lily’s face. He held his tongue, knowing that each child must learn the lesson of a humble life and pass it down to the younger ones. He had no doubt that in time Lily would learn it, too.

For Benfu, Lily’s question brought back a lot of memories. During the revolution and the years after, meat was allowed only once a week for most families. And that was only if they had the proper food coupons, which were mostly given to the red families—those without questionable backgrounds of ties to counter-revolutionaries. Of course questionable backgrounds included
anyone related to an official, teacher, landowner, or intellectual, so many families were automatically out of the equation. Since all the persecution had ended in the early seventies, he’d had meat more often, but since he was getting older and money was getting scarcer, they had to depend more on rice and noodles for their daily meals.

After dinner his daughters gathered around in a circle. Benfu brought in a large box of scrap from his morning collection and set it in the middle. The girls reached to grab remnants but Benfu held up his hand. Their nightly sorting of empty plastic bottles, newspapers, tin cans, and other treasures could wait a few minutes.

Benfu went and picked up the infant from her bed. He brought her with him to the rocking chair and sat down, cradling her in his big hands.

“Wait. First, we name the baby. Who has a name they’d like to offer up?”

The girls all made various expressions of concentration. Benfu looked over their heads at his wife and smiled. Calli had taken the baby to the doctor and he had given her a once-over and declared her fit to stay in their home. They still weren’t sure she would live or even if they would be given custody of her after the police reports were made, but instead of waiting the traditional one month, they always gave each child a name right away so that if she died, she could enter the spirit world knowing who she was. Some in China might call their initial dubbing only
milk
names, to be changed after they started school or married, but with Benfu’s girls the names would be permanent. After so many daughters, it was getting harder to come up with new names and these last few years he had made the important decision a family affair. His daughters took the naming ceremonies very seriously.

“What about Fang?” Ivy offered. “It means fragrant. Zheng Fang makes a nice name.”

Behind her the infant stirred and let out a small cry. The girls giggled. The baby then began to coo and do her best to give all of them a piece of her mind.

Calli laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a young infant be so vocal. I think she wants a say in if she should be called Fang.”

“I don’t think she likes that name and anyway, it isn’t a flower, Ivy,” Linnea said, rolling her eyes.

“Close enough, because a flower smells good!” Ivy retorted, crossing her arms sullenly.

Benfu chuckled, remembering how
fragrant
the infant had been when he found her. He was glad that his wife had washed the strong smell of urine off her once she had settled. Now she smelled only of the flower water Calli made and distributed each week to the girls.

The girls began chattering among themselves, too quickly for Benfu to keep up with. He looked at his wife and pointed toward the kitchen cove.

Calli stopped her rigorous massaging of Maggi’s legs and went to the cupboard. She took the key from around her neck and unlocked the door, opened it, and removed a pencil and a thick leather-bound book. Sitting down at her stool at the table, she untied the twine and opened the weathered cover. Benfu smiled at the sight of the red book embossed with a golden
, the character representing
Family
.