The Secret Mother (31 page)

After a while, she checked each of the rooms for damage, but I had already cleared the worst of the mess, apart from her sequinned dresses, I couldn’t salvage them at all.

I disappeared to my room and hunched on the mat, looking up at the loose rope hanging from the ceiling. For a moment, I wondered if a noose might be the easy way out. Then the baby kicked me unexpectedly between my ribs and I came to my senses.
Never let you go.

For weeks, I fretted over Mr J’s return. I was nearly eight months and knew I couldn’t live there forever. Madam Feng wouldn’t tolerate a crying baby during the day. I had to be wise.

It was a wet, late-autumn afternoon when things came to a head. Madam Feng had woken up badly and rushed into my bedroom. She stared through me, her skin marbled with sweat.

She shook me by the shoulders. “Where is he? I heard him in the kitchen, where’s he gone?”

From her breath, I could tell she had been drinking more of the hard stuff. “Is the door locked?” She ran into the lounge and called out to me. “I don’t understand, I heard him, he was here. I was sure I heard him …”

“Take it steady,” I said, directing her onto the settee.

Her eyes were unusually wide – had she taken too many of the pink tablets? I wondered.

“I know it’s none of my business, but I want you to know that I understand – how a man can force himself.”

“You don’t know anything,” she said.

“It happened to me too … with Manager He.”

“Don’t you get it?” she screamed. “I don’t want you prying into my business. So keep the hell out of my life and stop asking so many questions. And if you can’t cope with that, then just go back to wherever it is you came from.”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“This isn’t a place for a kid like you, or your baby, you hear?”

I don’t think she meant to say it so directly, but once the words left her mouth there was nothing I could do but to gather up my belongings. I stuffed Manager He’s money inside my bra as quickly as I could.

Madam Feng stood in the doorway, blocking my exit. Her voice was flat. “Where will you go?”

I shrugged.
Just me and baby from now on.

“Wait.” She disappeared into the kitchen, coming back with a handful of yuan. “At least take this.”

It was money she kept hidden in a pot at the back of the cupboard. I took it but didn’t hug her.

In Straight Street, thick smog mingled with rain. Live music rose from one of the bars,
Lady Plays the Blues.
The usual crowd spilled out onto the pavement.

Half way down the street, I glanced back to see if Madam Feng was looking out for me. Sure enough, she was leaning over her balcony, waving in my direction. But there was something strange about the way she flung her arms that made me pause and do a double take. As I stared, unsure of whether to go back and say goodbye properly, someone barged past, knocking me sideways. I put a hand out and managed to steady myself.

“Watch it, mister,” I called.

The black fabric of his bomber jacket was heading straight for Madam Feng’s.

“Look!” shouted one of the young guys at the bar. “The woman up there’s going to jump!”

The crowd blurred and a sudden pain in my haunches stapled me to the street. There were shouts from the bar; a shrill cry from the balcony.

“She’s jumped!”

“The woman’s jumped.”

“She’s killed herself.”

“Mind the body!”

Whose body? What body?

A sudden flow of water issued from me. The melon seller dropped his crate. Rain grizzled down. Melons, fat and round and ready to burst, rolled into the gutter. People scrambled to see what was happening. The melon seller started to run.

“Call the police.”

“It’s too late for a doctor!”

Water everywhere.

This is it, baby, hold on tight.

There in the road, where the crowd now gathered, was a twisted body and a head smashed against a crimson pool of blood. One leg straight as a stork’s, another tucked beneath her chest, exactly as she slept. Her arm not where an arm should naturally be, angled behind her neck.

I couldn’t run. The baby wouldn’t wait. There in the street, baby tells me it can’t hold on.

“We should call the ambulance!”

“Look at her!”

I dug Manager He’s envelope from my bra and looked again at the name and address of the doctor he had given me.

Doctor Quo, you’d better be ready.

All was unexpected. All premature, like a downpour blighting summer.

Yifan was their only footnote to the past. There had to be another meeting, thought Jen as she texted him three, four even five times. Eventually he acquiesced and agreed to meet them at the Suseng Teahouse off Middle Road in the old town. It was a dark, traditional building smelling of jasmine and half full of ageing men playing mahjong. Yifan arrived late, delayed by his rounds at the hospital.

“I’m so sorry about last time, rushing you out of my bureau. It was such a shock for me.” His eyes were earnest behind his thick-rimmed glasses.

“You’re not kidding,” said Ricki.

“I never imagined I’d see you again after all these years. I can hardly take it all in.”

“We appreciate you meeting with us,” said Jen. “It’s a great comfort to know a piece of the puzzle exists.”

“A puzzle indeed,” said Yifan.

Ricki fiddled with the strap on her Nikon.

“I see you like photography, Ricki. My son has – what’s the word? An
exhibit
with the School of Art. Perhaps while you are in Nanchang you would like to see his work?”

Jen glanced at Yifan’s wedding ring – sign of his life after May.

“He’s working on it today; he would be pleased to explain his material to you.”

“Sure,” Ricki said.

A waiter, wearing a gown and traditional cap, bowed and poured the tea. Yifan tapped his finger against the cup to thank him.

“Your mother and I met here once. You see that table?” He signalled towards the window where two men sat in companionable silence, smoking.

“I know this story,” said Jen, reaching into her rucksack for the book of traditional tales. “You were sitting by the window. You gave May this.”

Yifan blanched.

“She held onto your book all these years, Yifan. Look, here’s the inscription from your grandparents.”

His hand brushed the cover, as though brushing away the dust that settles on memory, and he leafed silently through its pages.

“Why did you give her a book?” asked Ricki. “Maybe if you’d given her something more romantic you could have been our dad.”

“Ricki!”

“Perhaps you’re sister’s right, perhaps not. I suspect, however, that Mai Ling’s heart already belonged to someone else and I was a poor suitor in comparison. In my country, we have a saying: ‘a broken heart has never been cured by medicine’. You know, our nation is very wise if we would listen to our ancestors.”

“May taught me some of these stories during our lessons,” said Jen. “She said I would never understand China unless I looked to the past. That all seems so ironic now.”

Yifan closed the book. “I’m afraid Mai was never so interested in the past when I knew her. Perhaps when she left China, she could finally value our country, even with its flaws. Although, forgive me, England is also to be admired: Shakespeare, the Queen …”

May had once compared England and its language to a postage stamp – small but necessary to communicate with the rest of the world, Jen remembered.

Ricki cradled her tea cup. “So what was she like when you knew her?”

“Very beautiful, to me at least. A real sense of adventure; she was a survivor –
plucky
I think you say in English? She lived to work and was so stubborn, dogged at times,” he smiled fleetingly, forgiving now of her faults.

Ricki stiffened in self-recognition. “Did you love her?” she said.

Yifan glanced towards the door. “In truth, I would have loved her all my life if she had agreed to be my wife. She was all I could think about for years after we parted. Sometimes, even now, I wake up next to my wife and believe, for the briefest of moments, that it is Mai Ling beside me. I can’t tell you what it means to see you both sitting here – you look so like her, especially you Ricki. It is as though, when I came into the teahouse, it was her back turned to me, her shoulders stooped over the table, and then when I saw your face in the light …” He removed his glasses and wiped his eyes. “My wife makes me happy; she would be devastated to hear me talk this way. She doesn’t even know I am here. I hate to deceive her.”

“Perhaps if May had married you, we might never have been abandoned – perhaps you would have taken care of her?” said Jen. “And us?”

“Of course I would have loved you as I do my son.” He shook his head. “But that was never meant to be, Jen. Life cannot be relived. It is a bitter truth I am telling you because I don’t want you to live as I have done, regretting everything that has gone before. We must accept May’s choices. As for what happened, I’ve told you everything I know. After leaving God’s Help, I never saw her again.”

Ricki set her cup down. “I think May didn’t make choices, so much as mistakes.”

“No, Yifan’s right,” Jen said, “May chose her own destiny. She knew exactly what she was doing when she left us behind and when she came to find us. We can’t pity her for that.”

“But you’re a doctor,” said Ricki, “you must see all sorts of women – women like May who can’t cope. How can you say abandoning your child is a choice?”

“What do you want from me?” He pleaded in a whisper.

The men in the window sat motionless, pinned in time like subjects inside a painting. The muted patter of rain sounded above the noise of the radio. Yifan checked his watch and slid the book inside his attaché case. Jen sensed he had not told them everything.

“Are you going so soon?” she asked.

“I’m afraid so, my first lecture is at ten.”

“What about your son’s exhibition?”

“I can walk that way with you a little. He will explain it far better than me, I’m afraid my brain is scientific in nature and I admit to not knowing a great deal about the way artists think. My son and I are very different; he is the new generation.” Yifan put on his rain coat and plumped the cushion where he had been sitting. He paid and left a customary half cup of tea.

The exhibition was housed in an unassuming building in a run-down part of Nanchang, not far from the old town. Yifan called up a narrow, badly lit staircase. A tall, handsome figure appeared, his hair shaved. Yifan introduced him to Jen and Ricki.

“Son, these two young ladies have come all the way from England. They wish to see your exhibition. I told them you would be happy to show them around. They are special visitors, Guan, I want you to take good care of them.”

He gave a small bow. “Hi there,” he said in impeccable English.

“Son, you look very pale, have you been working through the night again? I’ve warned you not to, stress plays havoc with the immune system.”

“
Dad.
”

Yifan brushed the rain from his overcoat. In the half-light, his forehead looked more furrowed; Jen noticed his black hair was flecked through with white. He cradled his attaché case close to his chest as though reticent to leave. She went over and hugged him tightly, breaking the unwritten rules of formality.

“I’ll remember you,” Jen whispered, “the way May remembered you.”

She could feel Yifan trembling beneath his raincoat. He broke away and held a hand out to Ricki. “I’m very glad you came, Ricki.”

“Thanks,” she said. “It has helped seeing you again.”

“I’m sorry to rush, but I must go if I don’t want to lose my job.”

“Go!” shouted Guan. “Before the dean sends out his search party.”

They followed Guan upstairs to the exhibition and sat down on a battered velvet settee next to a coffee machine, the weight of unresolved questions bearing down on them.

“So you’re English … What brings you to Nanchang?” he asked. “You look young to be travelling alone.”

“We’re here with our parents. They’re back at the hotel,” said Jen.

“The hotel where we were born,” Ricki added.

Guan gave a puzzled expression.

“We’re adopted,” said Ricki. “It’s a long story.”

“We’ve come here to find out more about our birth mum.”

“Ah, so that’s how you know Dad?”

Ricki shot Guan a questioning glance. “What do you mean?”

“He can be so modest at times; people don’t know what an amazing job he does, with young women especially. Do you guys drink coffee? I imagine you’re pretty fed up of all the tea we drink here.”

“Caffeine would be good. It’s been a nightmare so far,” said Ricki, her eyes darting all over the random collection of junk around her.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” said Guan. “I’ve called it
Go
.”

“This is your exhibition? All this?” said Jen.

“I wanted it to feel like you’re entering someone’s house. This place used to belong to a prostitute who committed suicide. Straight off the balcony in broad daylight. A real tragedy. No-one came forwards to claim her stuff and over the last sixteen years or so her apartment sat empty until I was able to rent it. The State doesn’t know I’m using it for an exhibition – not yet, anyway. Although word will spread pretty fast once it gets online.”

Guan rummaged through a cardboard box and pulled out a photograph. “Here she is – Madam Feng.”

“A drag queen?” Ricki asked.

“I don’t think so. She worked in a karaoke bar not far from here; her regulars were mainly local businessmen. She kept their business cards – I tried phoning one; he was a senior guy, Head of Production in the car industry, but the number didn’t exist after all these years. I gave up trying to trace him or the others.”

Guan put the photograph in the bottom of a chest of drawers to make it look as if it had been carelessly shoved away.

“So why do you call it
Go
?” asked Ricki.

“We all have our comings and goings – the shift of life and death; it washes up personal stuff. It would have eventually been thrown in a dumpster if I hadn’t salvaged it, gone forever. No family you see, the woman never had any children, no-one to inherit her belongings. I’m interested in the way objects outlive people. Freaks me out, to be honest.”