She scans ahead. “That place there! We used to hold a big market there. But now look, it’s just an empty field. And there—that mountain up ahead! That’s the one we called Young Girl’s Wish. I once climbed all the way to the top.”
Kwan laughs, but the next second she seems puzzled. “Funny, now that mountain looks so small. Why is that? Did it shrink, washed down by the rain? Or maybe the peak was worn down by too many girls running up there to make a wish. Or maybe it’s because I’ve become too American and now I see things with different eyes, everything looking smaller, poorer, not as good.”
All at once, Kwan shouts to Rocky to turn down a small dirt road we just passed. He makes an abrupt U-turn, knocking Simon and me into each other, and causing the owl to shriek with indignity. Now we are rumbling along a rutted lane, past fields with pillows of moist red dirt. “Turn left, turn left!” Kwan orders. She has her hands clasped in her lap. “Too many years, too many years,” she says, as if chanting.
We approach a stand of trees, and then, as soon as Kwan announces, “Changmian,” I see it: a village nestled between two jagged peaks, their hillsides a velvety moss-green with folds deepening into emerald. More comes into view: crooked rows of buildings whitewashed with lime, their pitched tile roofs laid in the traditional pattern of dragon coils. Surrounding the village are well-tended fields and mirrorlike ponds neatly divided by stone walls and irrigation trenches. We jump out of the car. Miraculously, Changmian has avoided the detritus of modernization. I see no tin roofs or electrical power lines. In contrast to other villages we passed, the outlying lands here haven’t become dumping grounds for garbage, the alleys aren’t lined with crumpled cigarette packs or pink plastic bags. Clean stone pathways crisscross the village, then thread up a cleft between the two peaks and disappear through a stone archway. In the distance is another pair of tall peaks, dark jade in color, and beyond those, the purple shadows of two more. Simon and I stare at each other, wide-eyed.
“Can you fucking believe this?” he whispers, and squeezes my hand. I remember other times he has said those same words: the day we went to City Hall to be married, the day we moved into our co-op. And then I think to myself: Happy moments that became something else.
I reach into my bag for my camera. As I look through the viewfinder, I feel as though we’ve stumbled on a fabled misty land, half memory, half illusion. Are we in Chinese Nirvana? Changmian looks like the carefully cropped photos found in travel brochures advertising “a charmed world of the distant past, where visitors can step back in time.” It conveys all the sentimental quaintness that tourists crave but never actually see. There must be something wrong, I keep warning myself. Around the corner we’ll stumble on reality: the fast-food market, the tire junkyard, the signs indicating this village is really a Chinese fantasyland for tourists: Buy your tickets here! See the China of your dreams! Unspoiled by progress, mired in the past!
“I feel like I’ve seen this place before,” I whisper to Simon, afraid to break the spell.
“Me too. It’s so perfect. Maybe it was in a documentary.” He laughs. “Or a car commercial.”
I gaze at the mountains and realize why Changmian seems so familiar. It’s the setting for Kwan’s stories, the ones that filter into my dreams. There they are: the archways, the cassia trees, the high walls of the Ghost Merchant’s House, the hills leading to Thistle Mountain. And being here, I feel as if the membrane separating the two halves of my life has finally been shed.
From out of nowhere we hear the din of squeals and cheers. Fifty tiny schoolchildren race toward the perimeter of a fenced-in yard, hailing our arrival. As we draw closer, the children shriek, turn on their heels, and run back to the school building laughing. After a few seconds, they come screaming toward us like a flock of birds, followed by their smiling teacher. They stand at attention, and then, through some invisible signal, shout all together in English, “A-B-C! One-two-three! How are you! Hello good-bye!” Did someone tell them American guests were coming? Did the children practice this for us?
The children wave and we wave back. “Hello good-bye! Hello good-bye!” We continue along the path past the school. Two young men on bicycles slow down and stop to stare at us. We keep walking and round a corner. Kwan gasps. Farther up the path, in front of an arched gateway, stand a dozen smiling people. Kwan puts her hand to her mouth, then runs toward them. When she reaches the group, she grabs each person’s hand between her two palms, then hails a stout woman and slaps her on the back. Simon and I catch up with Kwan and her friends. They are exchanging friendly insults.
“Fat! You’ve grown unbelievably fat!”
“Hey, look at you—what happened to your hair? Did you ruin it on purpose?”
“This is the style! What, have you been in the countryside so long you don’t recognize good style?”
“Oh, listen to her, she’s still bossy, I can tell.”
“You were always the bossy one, not—”
Kwan stops in mid-sentence, transfixed by a stone wall. You would think it’s the most fascinating sight she’s ever seen.
“Big Ma,” she murmurs. “What’s happened? How can this be?”
A man in the crowd guffaws. “Ha! She was so anxious to see you she got up early this morning, then jumped on a bus to meet you in Guilin. And now look—you’re here, she’s there. Won’t she be mad!”
Everyone laughs, except Kwan. She walks closer to the wall, calling hoarsely, “Big Ma, Big Ma.” Several people whisper, and everyone draws back, frightened.
“Uh-oh,” I say.
“Why is Kwan crying?” Simon whispers.
“Big Ma, oh, Big Ma.” Tears are streaming down Kwan’s cheeks. “You must believe me, this is not what I wished. How unlucky that you died on the day that I’ve come home.” A few women gasp and cover their mouths.
I walk over to Kwan. “What are you saying? Why do you think she’s dead?”
“Why is everyone so freaked?” Simon glances about.
I hold up my hand. “I’m not sure.” I turn back to her. “Kwan?” I say gently. “Kwan?” But she does not seem to hear me. She is looking tenderly at the wall, laughing and crying.
“Yes, I knew this,” she is saying. “Of course, I knew. In my heart, I knew all the time.”
IN THE AFTERNOON
, the villagers hold an uneasy homecoming party for Kwan in the community hall. The news has spread through Changmian that Kwan has seen Big Ma’s ghost. Yet she has not announced this to the village, and since there is no proof that Big Ma has died, there is no reason to call off a food-laden celebration that evidently took her friends days to prepare. During the festivities, Kwan does not brag about her car, her sofa, her English. She listens quietly as her former childhood playmates recount major events of their lives: the birth of twin sons, a railway trip to a big city, and the time a group of student intellectuals was sent to Changmian for reeducation during the Cultural Revolution.
“They thought they were smarter than us,” recounts one woman whose hands are gnarled by arthritis. “They wanted us to raise a fast-growing rice, three crops a year instead of two. They gave us special seeds. They brought us insect poison. Then the little frogs that swam in the rice fields and ate the insects, they all died. And the ducks that ate the frogs, they all died too. Then the rice died.”
A man with bushy hair shouts: “So we said, ‘What good is it to plant three crops of rice that fail rather than two that are successful?’ ”
The woman with arthritic hands continues: “These same intellectuals tried to breed our mules! Ha! Can you believe it? For two years, every week, one of us would ask them, ‘Any luck?’ And they’d say, ‘Not yet, not yet.’ And we’d try to keep our faces serious but encouraging. ‘Try harder, comrade,’ we’d say. ‘Don’t give up.’ ”
We are still laughing when a young boy runs into the hall, shouting that an official from Guilin has arrived in a fancy black car. Silence. The official comes into the hall, and everyone stands. He solemnly holds up the identity card of Li Bin-bin and asks if she belonged to the village. Several people glance nervously at Kwan. She walks slowly toward the official, looks at the identity card, and nods. The official makes an announcement, and a ripple of moans and then wails fills the room.
Simon leans toward me. “What’s wrong?”
“Big Ma’s dead. She was killed in that bus accident we saw this morning.”
Simon and I walk over and each put a hand on one of Kwan’s shoulders. She feels so small.
“I’m sorry,” Simon stammers. “I . . . I’m sorry you didn’t get to see her again. I’m sorry we didn’t meet her.”
Kwan gives him a teary smile. As Li Bin-bin’s closest relative, she has volunteered to perform the necessary bureaucratic ritual of bringing the body back to the village the next day. The three of us are returning to Guilin.
As soon as Rocky sees us, he stubs out his cigarette and turns off the car radio. He must have heard the news. “What a tragedy,” he says. “I’m sorry, big sister, I should have stopped. I’m to blame—”
Kwan waves off his apologies. “No one’s to blame. Anyway, regrets are useless, always too late.”
When Rocky opens the car door, we see that the owl is still in his cage on the backseat. Kwan lifts the cage gently and stares at the bird. “No need to climb the mountain anymore,” she says. She sets the cage on the ground, then opens its door. The owl sticks out his head, hops to the edge of the doorway and onto the ground. He twists his head and, with a great flap of wings, takes off toward the peaks. Kwan watches him until he disappears. “No more regrets,” she says. And then she slips into the car.
As Rocky warms the engine, I ask Kwan, “When we passed the bus accident this morning, did you see someone who looked like Big Ma? Is that how you knew she’d died?”
“What are you saying? I didn’t know she was dead until I saw her yin self standing by the wall.”
“Then why did you tell her that you knew?”
Kwan frowns, puzzled. “I knew what?”
“You were telling her you knew, in your heart you knew it was true. Weren’t you talking about the accident?”
“Ah,” she says, understanding at last. “No, not the accident.” She sighs. “I told Big Ma that what
she
was saying was true.”
“What did she say?”
Kwan turns to the window, and I can see the reflection of her stricken face. “She said she was wrong about the story of Young Girl’s Wish. She said all my wishes had already come true. She was always sorry she sent me away. But she could never tell me this. Otherwise I wouldn’t have left her for a chance at a better life.”
I search for some way to console Kwan. “At least you can still see her,” I say.
“Ah?”
“I mean as a yin person. She can visit you.”
Kwan stares out the car window. “But it’s not the same. We can no longer make new memories together. We can’t change the past. Not until the next lifetime.” She exhales heavily, releasing all her unsaid words.
As our car rumbles along the road, the children in the playground run toward us and press their faces against the slat fence. “Hello good-bye!” they cry. “Hello good-bye!”
K
wan is devastated, I can tell. She isn’t crying, but when I suggested earlier that we simply order hotel room service rather than troop outside for a bargain, she readily agreed.
Simon offers her a few more awkward condolences. He kisses her on the cheek, then leaves the two of us alone in our room. We’re dining on lasagne, twelve dollars a plate, wildly extravagant by Chinese standards. Kwan stares at her dinner, her face blank, a windswept plain before the storm. For me, lasagne is comfort food. I’m hoping it will fortify me enough to comfort Kwan.
What should I say? “Big Ma—she was a great lady. We’re all going to miss her”? That would be insincere, since Simon and I never met her. And Kwan’s stories of Big Ma’s mistreating her always sounded to me like material for an
Auntie Dearest
memoir. Yet here is Kwan, grieving over this vile woman who literally left her with scars. Why do we love the mothers of our lives even if they were lousy caretakers? Are we born with blank hearts, waiting to be imprinted with any imitation of love?
I think about my own mother. Would I be desolate if she died? I feel terrified and guilty even pondering the question. Think about it, though: Would I revisit my childhood to cull happy memories and find they are as rare as ripe blackberries on a well-picked bush? Would I stumble into thorns, stir up the queen wasp surrounded by her adoring drones? Upon my mother’s death, would I forgive her, then breathe a sigh of relief? Or would I go to an imaginary dell where my mother is now perfect, attentive and loving, where she embraces me and says, “I’m sorry, Olivia. I was a terrible mother, really shitty. I wouldn’t blame you if you never forgave me.” That’s what I want to hear. I wonder what she would in fact tell me.
“Lasagne,” Kwan says out of the blue.
“What?”
“Big Ma ask what we eating. Now she say big regret don’t have time try American food.”
“Lasagne is Italian.”
“Shh! Shh! I know, but you tell her that, then regret don’t have time see Italy. Already too many regret.”
I lean toward Kwan and say sotto voce, “Big Ma doesn’t understand English?”
“Just Changmian dialect and a little heart-talk. After she dead longer, learn more heart-talk, maybe even some English. . . .”
Kwan keeps talking, and I’m glad she’s not drowning in grief, because I wouldn’t know how to save her.
“. . . Yin people, after while, just speak heart-talk. Easier, faster that way. No misconfusion like with words.”
“What does heart-talk sound like?”
“I already tell you.”
“You did?”
“Many time. Don’t just use tongue, lip, teeth for speaking. Use hundred secret sense.”
“Oh, right, right.” I recall snatches of conversations we’ve had about this: the senses that are related to primitive instincts, what humans had before their brains developed language and the higher functions—the ability to equivocate, make excuses, and lie. Spine chills and musky scents, goose bumps and blushing cheeks—those are the vocabulary of the secret senses. I think.
“The secret senses,” I say to Kwan. “Is it like your hair standing on end means you’re afraid?”
“Mean someone you
love
now afraid.”
“Someone you love?”
“Yes, secret sense always between two people. How you can have secret just you know, ah? You hair raise up, you know someone secret.”
“I thought you meant that they were secret because people have forgotten they have these senses.”
“Ah, yes. People often forget until die.”
“So it’s a language of ghosts.”
“Language of love. Not just honey-sweetheart kind love. Any kind love, mother-baby, auntie-niece, friend-friend, sister-sister, stranger-stranger.”
“Stranger? How can you love a stranger?”
Kwan grins. “When you first meet Simon, he stranger, right? First time I meet you, you stranger too. And Georgie! When I first see Georgie, I say myself, ‘Kwan, where you know this man from?’ You know what? Georgie my sweetheart from last lifetime!”
“Really? Yiban?”
“No, Zeng!”
Zeng? I draw a blank.
And she answers in Chinese: “You know—the man who brought me oil jars.”
“Yes, I remember now.”
“Wait, Big Ma, I’m telling Libby-ah about my husband.” Kwan looks past me. “Yes, you know him—no, not in this lifetime, the last, when you were Ermei, and I gave you duck eggs, and you gave me salt.”
As I poke my fork into the lasagne, Kwan is happily chatting away, distracted from grief by her memories of a make-believe past.
T
he last time I saw Zeng before he became Georgie, that was . . . ah, yes, the day before I died.
Zeng brought me a small bag of dried barley, and some bad news. When I handed him his clean clothes, he gave me back nothing to wash. I was standing near my steaming pots, boiling the clothes.
“No need to worry about what’s clean or dirty anymore,” he told me. He was looking at the mountains, not at me. Ah, I thought, he’s saying our courtship is over. But then he announced: “The Heavenly King is dead.”
Wah! This was like hearing a thunderclap when the sky is blue. “How could this happen? The Heavenly King can’t die, he’s immortal!”
“No longer,” Zeng said.
“Who killed him?”
“Died by his own hand, that’s what people are saying.”
This news was even more shocking than the first. The Heavenly King didn’t allow suicide. Now he had killed himself? Now he was admitting he wasn’t baby brother to Jesus? How could a Hakka man disgrace his own people that way? I looked at Zeng, his gloomy face. I guessed he had my same feelings. He was Hakka too.
I thought about this as I drew the heavy, wet clothes out of the water. “At least the battles will now end,” I said. “The rivers will flow with boats again.”
That’s when Zeng gave me the third piece of news, even worse than the other two. “The rivers are already flowing, not with boats but with blood.” When someone says “not with boats but with blood,” you don’t just listen and say, “Oh, I see.” I had to nudge him to get every piece of information, like begging for a bowl of rice one grain at a time. He was so stingy with words. Little bit by little bit, this is what I learned.
Ten years before, the Heavenly King had sent a tide of death from the mountains to the coast. Blood flowed, millions died. Now the tide was returning. In the port cities, the Manchus had slaughtered all the God Worshippers. They were moving inland, burning down houses, digging up graves, destroying heaven and earth at the same time.
“All dead,” Zeng told me. “No one is spared. Not even babies.”
When he said that, I saw so many crying babies. “When will they come to our province?” I whispered. “Next month?”
“Oh no. The messenger reached our village only a few paces ahead of death.”
“Ai-ya! Two weeks? One? How long?”
“Tomorrow the soldiers will destroy Jintian,” he said. “The day after that—Changmian.”
All feeling drained from my body. I leaned against the grinding mill. In my head, I could already see the soldiers marching along the road. As I was imagining swords dripping with blood, Zeng asked me to marry him. Actually, he didn’t use this word “marry.” He said in a rough voice: “Hey, tonight I’m going to the mountains to hide in the caves. You want to come with me or not?”
To you, this may sound clumsy, not so romantic. But if someone offers to save your life, isn’t that as good as going to church in a white dress and saying “I do”? If my situation had been different, that’s what I would have said: I do, let’s go. But I had no room in my mind to think about marriage. I was wondering what would happen to Miss Banner, Lao Lu, Yiban—yes, even the Jesus Worshippers, those white faces of Pastor and Mrs. Amen, Miss Mouse and Dr. Too Late. How strange, I thought. Why should I care what happens to them? We have nothing in common—no language, no ideas, no same feelings about the earth and sky. Yet I could say this about them: Their intentions are sincere. Maybe some of their intentions are not so good to begin with, they lead to bad results. Still, they try very hard. When you know this about a person, how can you not have something in common?
Zeng broke into my thoughts. “You coming or not?”
“Let me consider this awhile,” I answered. “My mind is not as quick as yours.”
“What’s left to consider?” Zeng said. “You want to live, or you want to die? Don’t think too much. That makes you believe you have more choices than you do. Then your mind becomes confused.” He went over to the bench next to the passageway wall, put his hands behind his head, and lay down.
I threw the wet clothes on the grinding mill. I rolled the stone to squeeze out the water. Zeng was right; I was confused. In one corner of my mind, I was thinking, Zeng is a good man. For the remainder of my life, I may never get another chance like this, especially if I die soon.
Then I went to another corner of my mind: If I go with him, then I’ll have no more questions or answers of my own. I can no longer ask myself, Am I a loyal friend? Should I help Miss Banner? What about the Jesus Worshippers? These questions would no longer exist. Zeng would decide what should concern me, what should not. That’s how things are between a man and a woman.
My mind was going back and forth, this way, that way. A new life with Zeng? Old loyalty to friends? If I hide in the mountains, will I suffer from fear, then die no matter what? If I stay, will my death be quick? Which life, which death, which way? It was like chasing a chicken, then becoming the chicken being chased. I had only one minute to decide which feeling was strongest. And that was the one I followed.
I looked at Zeng lying on the bench. His eyes were closed. He was a kind person, not too clever, but always honest. I decided to end our courtship the same way I started it. I would be a diplomat and make him think it was his idea to stop.
“Zeng-ah,” I called.
He opened his eyes, sat up.
I started hanging the wet clothes. “Why should we run away?” I said. “We’re not Taiping followers.”
He put his hands on his knees. “Listen to your friend, ah,” he said, very patient with me. “The Manchus need only a hint that you’re friends with God Worshippers. Look where you live. That’s enough for a death sentence.”
I knew this, but instead of agreeing, I argued: “What are you saying? The foreigners don’t worship the Heavenly King. Many times, I heard them say, ‘Jesus has no Chinese baby brother.’ ”
Zeng huffed at me, as if he had never realized what a stupid girl I was. “Say that to a Manchu soldier, your head will already be rolling on the ground.” He sprang to his feet. “Don’t waste time talking anymore. Tonight I’m leaving. Are you coming?”
I continued my foolish talk: “Why not wait a little longer? Let’s see what really happens. The situation can’t be as bad as you think. The Manchus will kill some people here and there, but only a few, to set an example. As for the foreigners, the Manchus won’t bother them. They have a treaty. Now that I think of this, maybe it’s safer to stay here. Zeng-ah, you come live with us. We have room.”
“Live here?” he shouted. “Wah! Maybe I should cut my own throat right now!” Zeng squatted and I could see his mind was bubbling like my laundry pots. He was saying all kinds of impolite things, loud enough for me to hear: “She’s an idiot. Only one eye—no wonder she can’t see what’s the right thing to do!”
“Hey! Who are you to criticize me?” I said. “Maybe a fly has flown into your one ear and filled your head with locust fever.” I held up the tip of my little finger and made zigzags in the air. “You hear
zzz-zzz,
you think clouds of disaster are coming from behind. Scared for no reason.”
“No reason!” Zeng shouted. “What’s happened to your mind? Have you been living in foreign holy clouds so long you think you’re immortal?” He stood up, looked at me with disgust a few moments, then said, “Pah!” He turned around and walked away. Instantly, my heart was hurting. As his voice drifted off, I heard him say, “What a crazy girl! Lost her mind, now she’s going to lose her head. . . .”
I kept hanging the laundry, but now my fingers were trembling. How quickly good feelings turn to bad. How easily he was fooled. A tear was burning my eye. I pushed it back. No self-pity. Crying was a weak person’s luxury. I started to sing one of the old mountain songs, which one I don’t remember now. But my voice was strong and clear, young and sad.
“All right, all right. No more arguing.” When I turned around, there Zeng was, a tired look on his face. “We can take the foreigners to the mountains too,” he said.
Take them with us! I nodded. As I watched him walk away, he started to sing the boy’s answer to my song. This man was smarter than I had thought. What a clever husband he would make. With a good voice too. He stopped and called to me: “Nunumu?”
“Ah!”
“Two hours after the sun goes down, that’s when I’ll come. Tell everyone to be ready in the main courtyard. Do you understand?”
“Understood!” I shouted.
He walked a few more steps, then stopped again. “Nunumu?”
“Ah!”
“Don’t wash any more clothes. The only one left to wear them will be a corpse.”
So you see? He was already being bossy, making decisions for me. That’s how I knew we were married. That’s how he told me
I do.
AFTER ZENG LEFT
, I went into the garden and climbed up to the pavilion where the Ghost Merchant died. I looked over the wall and saw the rooftops of many houses, the little pathway leading to the mountains. If you had just come to Changmian for the first time, you might think, Ah, what a beautiful place. So quiet. So peaceful. Maybe I should do my honeymoon here.
But I knew this stillness meant the season of danger was now ending, and disaster would soon begin. The air was thick and damp, hard to breathe. I saw no birds, I saw no clouds. The sky was stained orange and red, as if the bloodshed had already reached into the heavens. I was nervous. I had a feeling that something was crawling on my skin. And when I looked, creeping on my arm was one of the five evils, a centipede, its legs marching in a wave! Wah! I whipped out my arm to shake it off, then crushed that centipede flat as a leaf. Even though it was dead, my foot kept stomping on it, up and down, until it was a dark smear on the stone floor. And still I couldn’t get rid of this feeling that something was crawling on my skin.