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We didn't have a real shower in our apartment. Mother attached a hose to the faucet in the kitchen. She tied the other end to a water pipe that ran up to the ceiling. It hung over a drain in the corner of our concrete floor. This became our shower.
Each day of summer, I looked forward to getting in the cold shower after dinner. I stayed in as long as I could.
“Hurry up, Ling. I have the ointment ready for you.” Mother opened the kitchen door a crack.
“I'm drying off.” I quickly turned off the water and wrapped myself in a big towel decorated with a red rose print.
Mother came in. With a cotton ball, she swabbed a white, cooling mint ointment all over my neck, arms,
and legs. It felt like she had blown magic cold air onto my heat rash. The itching stopped for a minute. I wished my skin could feel this way the rest of the day. In the mirror hanging next to the kitchen window, I saw an oval-faced porcelain doll with patches. I stretched wide my double-lidded eyes and wobbled my head. If we could just run our fan more often. What was taking the Revolution so long?
As I dressed, I heard Father greeting someone. “Come in! Come in, please!”
A soft voice asked, “Where is my sweet girl?” It was Mrs. Wong! I quickly buttoned my cotton blouse and ran out of the kitchen. Dr. Wong, Mrs. Wong, and their son, Niu, were here. The Wongs had just returned from shopping. A big yellow straw bag sat by our front door.
“Here I am!” I stretched out my arms and wrapped them around Mrs. Wong's waist. When she bent down to kiss my cheek, her long, wavy hair tickled my nose and smelled of jasmine tea. I once overheard her tell Mother she used pearl powder to wash her face and tea to rinse her hair. She had to be the most beautiful lady in the world. Today she wore a
red silk top with ruffles all down the front and a big full skirt with red and green flowers.
Behind her stood Dr. Wong and Niu. Dr. Wong wore a light yellow shirt, white shorts, and a pair of white leather shoes. He was not as tall as Father, but had the same wide shoulders and dark skin. He looked like a tennis player from Father's English magazines.
“Is this a good time to visit?” With one finger, Dr. Wong pushed up his gold-framed glasses. He glanced at Comrade Li's apartment.
Father shrugged. “Let me show you this article.” He led Dr. Wong to our dinner table.
Niu's short-sleeved white shirt was tucked into his long blue trousers. He walked over to Father's bookcase and pulled out a music book. Mrs. Wong complained to Mother that Niu refused to wear shorts, no matter how hot it was. I guessed that was because he didn't want his skinny chopstick legs to show.
“Let me take a good look at you, my little doll.” Mrs. Wong bent down on one knee. She pulled back my collar to examine my neck.
“My poor thing! You shouldn't wear a blouse with a collar anymore, it makes your rash worse.” Her big
brown eyes widened. “Come upstairs. We'll pick out a fabric and I'll sew you a new blouse.”
I felt as if she had just handed me a bag of ginger candy. I looked at Mother for approval. The smile faded from her face.
I hoped she'd let me go.
Mrs. Wong had told Mother many times that she dreamed of having a daughter like me. Sometimes I wondered if Mother would be as nice if she stayed home like Mrs. Wong did. Yet Mother often told Father she couldn't imagine wasting her years of schooling to be just a housewife.
“Thank you, Mrs. Wong,” said Mother. “On such a hot day, we don't want to trouble you.”
“No trouble! Why don't you all come up and have ice cream? I made some yesterday after the electricity came back on.” She picked up the big shopping bag. Niu snapped shut Father's music book,
Romantic Songs from Russia,
and slipped it back onto the shelf. He could sing half the songs in that book.
My eyes begged Mother.
“All right, Ling. You can go for a while. I'm afraid I have to stay here and write up reports for new
patients.” Mother straightened my collar. The rash around my neck itched and burned again. “You behave!”
Whenever Mother and Mrs. Wong were together they reminded me of flowers in our courtyard garden. Mother was like a proud white rose, which stood alone. I was afraid to touch her because of her thorns. Mrs. Wong was fragrant and warm like a red peony, which always welcomed visitors. I wanted to be close to her.
I glanced at Father, hoping he would go. He loved ice cream almost as much as I did. Father looked up. “No, thank you. I have to go to the hospital soon.”
Dr. Wong didn't even look up from the magazine. “You know I don't care for sweets,” he said as he continued reading. “And I have to go to the hospital, too.”
I was afraid of Dr. Wong. His eyes never smiled from behind his gold-framed glasses. Unlike Father, he made no jokes. His smell reminded me of small plum flowers with pink petals, the only flower that blossomed in our courtyard on cold snowy days. Behind their backs, I had heard the nurses call Father and Dr. Wong “the two handsome surgeons, Dr. Warm and Dr. Cold.” Though they were very different,
Father and Dr. Wong were good friends. Both of them had been Dr. Smith's favorite students. They would chat in English over tea for hours. Patients came from all over the country seeking their help. One from northern China had traveled two days to see them.
“Well, let's go have ice cream, then. Who is coming?” Mrs. Wong looked at me and smiled.
My eyes followed Niu as he edged toward the door. I moved in front of him and yelled, “You can only beat me in your dreams!” I jabbed him with an elbow as we crowded through the doorway.
“Ling!” Mother's scolding chased me up the stairs, along with Niu. “Be a lady!”
“Niu, you're losing again!” Mrs. Wong's tinkling laugh echoed along the staircase.
Barely beating Niu, I slapped the gold lion knocker on the heavy red door. “Touched base!” Turning back, I smiled proudly at him.
Niu's pale face had turned red. His glasses had slipped down on his nose. “Oh, I let you win. You know I am a nice brother.” He pushed back his glasses.
Niu was four years older than I was. I barely reached his shoulder. All the kids living around the
courtyard knew I had a “big brother,” even though he didn't live with us. Whenever I played with him in the courtyard, I felt safe and protected. Father always said when I was born he was happy to have a daughter, because he already had a sonâNiu.
I thought Niu was the luckiest boy in China. Along with having a real bathtub, a heater, and a refrigerator, his family was the only one I knew who owned a sewing machine.
“Niu, get the bowls ready. I'll get the ice cream out in a minute.” Mrs. Wong set the shopping bag on the redwood table in the middle of their living room. “Come here, Ling. Let me show you some fabric.” She led me to the sandalwood dresser beside the bathroom. It was decorated with carvings of a phoenix. The top shelf held layers of blankets. The middle shelf was full of colorful sweaters. She kept all her sewing fabric on the bottom shelf.
“Which would you like for your new blouse?” She dabbed her forehead with the tip of her white handkerchief.
I stood there staring at the stack of beautiful fabric, not sure what to do. Should I be polite and say,
“No, thank you. It's too much trouble,”
like Mother often did? But I really wanted to have a new blouse.
“Don't be shy.” Mrs. Wong took out a stack of fabric and held it in front of me. “Take your pick.”
I pointed to a thin cotton fabric with the same pattern as her bathroom curtainsâlittle girls in red sun hats sitting on a beach. Behind them were palm trees and sailboats floating on water. Above them were the moon and stars. The pattern reminded me of pictures from Father's hometown on Hainan Island, far away in southern China.
Whenever I saw the curtains, I daydreamed about going to a beach in southern China and picking up seashells with Father.
“All right, my dear. We have enough material to make you a blouse.” She handed me the fabric and put the rest inside the chest.
I followed Mrs. Wong into the kitchen to her foot-pedal sewing machine. The beautiful black-and-silver machine had been an anniversary present from Dr. Wong. Mrs. Wong was almost as proud of her new machine as she was of her heater. It stood in the corner of the kitchen, where she could look out on
the Han River beyond our courtyard. The kitchen's tall French doors led to a patio.
The Wongs' apartment was much bigger than ours. For one thing, the corner of their apartment wasn't someone else's home. For another, their bathroom was in their apartment, instead of down the hall, like ours.
“Can we have ice cream now?” Niu asked. He pulled out the chair next to him for me, drumming his long fingers on the table.
I was glad he asked first. I couldn't wait to have the cold ice cream melting in my mouth.
Sitting next to Niu at the small kitchen table, I could smell the fragrant detergent from his clothes. I studied his face. He had Dr. Wong's single-lidded eyes and Mrs. Wong's full lips. Unlike other boys in the courtyard, he always dressed nice and clean.
“Be patient,” said Mrs. Wong. She walked to the refrigerator by the French doors, twisting up her hair into a bun. I stared at her porcelain neck and wondered why she never got heat rash.
An evening breeze drifted in from the Han River. It had been a rainy spring, so the river now filled its
banks with dark green water. A few blocks down, it joined the wide, light brown Yangtze. The setting sun turned the smooth river into a golden blanket. On the left stood the Han Bridge. Lines of cars and bicycles moved slowly along it. On the right, a row of short buildings crowded together. The three buildings in our courtyard were the tallest in the neighborhood.
Mrs. Wong told me that our building was the oldest in the courtyard. The other two buildings were built after the Communist revolution, with small apartments.
From our apartment, the milk trees blocked the view. Niu and I gave that name to the trees around our building because if we picked one of the leaves, white liquid flowed from the stem. I licked it once, and the milk tasted bitter.
Mrs. Wong brought us two glass bowls on matching saucers. In each bowl sat three scoops of red bean ice cream. Square chocolates rested on the sides of each saucer.
I took a small bite of the ice cream. Wishing to keep the sweet taste in my mouth as long as I could, I waited until it melted before swallowing it.
Niu picked up the chocolate and looked at the foreign letters on the plastic candy wrapper.
“Is this English?” I asked.
“No, this is obviously German.” He slid his wrapper over to me. “They make good chocolate.”
“Oh, all chocolate tastes good to me.”
I took the wrapper and smoothed it out. I didn't like it when Niu talked to me as if I was a little kid, but I put up with it because he always gave me his wrappers.
The kids at school prized these colorful plastic wrappers. They were hard to come by, since most candy was wrapped in paper. We used them as bookmarks or placed white paper over them to trace the drawings. After collecting a few, I could trade them for things like postcard portraits of Chairman Mao. I could then trade the postcards for homemade hairpins or even small handkerchiefs with stitched-on flowers.
A small barge blew its horn, sounding like a mooing cow. I pointed at the river.
“Where are the boats headed? Are they going to San Francisco?”
Niu rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Those are riverboats. They would never make it across the great Pacific.”
I hummed. I bet Niu learned to talk like that from Dr. Wong.
Niu stared at the river and took another bite of ice cream. “You need to do better with your geography. Remind me to show you my maps.”
“Ling is not quite ten yet. She will learn,” interrupted Mrs. Wong.
Niu frowned at his mother and continued, “I need to show her how far away San Francisco is. She is very confused.” He shook his head. “It's a lot of work to be her brother.”
I wanted to tell him I didn't like maps. I could never find the place I was looking for. But I held back. Out the window, Gardener Zong's bald head bobbed up and down. He was planting more flowers along the walkway to our building. He always kept the garden tidy.
Mrs. Wong pulled a chair up behind me and combed my hair. She was gentle. It didn't hurt the way it often did with Mother.
“Let's put your beautiful hair up so you will feel cooler.”
I nodded and my heart grew. Mother never told me my hair was beautiful. Niu only stared. Did he think I had beautiful hair? Did he think I was beautiful?
Mrs. Wong made two tight braids and pinned them around my head, just like the French girl from a painting in her living room.