A Paper Son (10 page)

They make slow progress now—the roads are marred from the hoof prints of oxen and the wheels of oxcarts, and wide puddles force them to weave back and forth. There is other traffic: Boys walk in their same direction, nearly all of them, Li-Yu notes, accompanied by their mothers. Farmers circulate among the fallow rice paddies. Oxcarts trundle past, their woodwork creaking, the oxen breathing and emitting soft grunts.

She has not left the village since their arrival, and to Li-Yu there is something secret and ominous about the terrain. When they have walked a mile or so the road splits. One lane continues around the edge of the valley floor but the other rises up the hillside, climbing toward a saddle in the ridge. They have been told that it's a fifteen-minute climb to the ridge, and then another twenty minutes into Jianghai, the nearest village large enough to have a school. The road narrows as it rises and Henry and Rose slow their pace a bit. Other children overtake them easily, catching them with quick sideways glances as they pass. Some of them carry umbrellas.

A half-hour passes before they attain the ridge, which is wrapped in clouds. The mists close in around them and the paddies below disappear. The trail levels out for a time, and just when it begins to descend they come upon a group of three men, each of them walking with the slow, lilting gait of sleepwalkers. Rifles hang from the hunched shoulders of the first two, and their heads are down. Their uniforms are mismatched and dirty. The third, an older man, trails a bit behind them. The other children pass the men quickly, without a glance, but Henry and Rose cannot help but stare as they pull even with the last man. He looks down, sees Henry, and smiles so broadly it startles Li-Yu. Nobody has smiled at any of them that way in weeks.

“You look just like my littlest grandson,” the man says.

Henry smiles back. Rose is immediately warmed by this flash of friendliness, and speaks. “Where are you going?” she asks.

The man shrugs, but his smile does not wane. “That way,” he says, nodding toward the road ahead of them.

“Are you going to a war?” Henry asks, looking at the rifles. It is unlike her children to be so outgoing with strangers, but Li-Yu can see why. His smile has the same shape and warmth as their grandfather's, back in California.

He thinks before answering. “There are some men doing bad things,” he says. “We're on our way to ask them to stop.”

“What are they doing?” Rose asks. “Where are they?”

“Lucky for you, and unlucky for us, they are far, far away,” the soldier says.

“Why don't you have a gun?” Henry asks.

“We don't have enough!” he says, his smile still broad. “But that's okay. I have a different job.”

“What is your job?” Rose asks.

He points to the men ahead of them. “They don't know where they're going,” he whispers, with a wink. “They need someone to show them the way.”

“Really?” Henry asks.

“Yes, really. Funny, isn't it! But what about you? Where are you going?”

“I'm going to school,” Henry says.

“Ah, I have something for you, then,” the man says. He reaches into his jacket. Henry's eyes widen.

“It can't get wet, though,” the soldier says, “so when I give it to you, you need to quickly put it somewhere dry. Are you ready?”

Henry nods. He has been holding Li-Yu's hand, but now he releases it, readying himself. The soldier produces a book with a tattered red cover. He thumbs through it quickly, rips out a page, folds it in half, and hands it to Henry.

“Quickly now, inside your jacket,” he says. “Poems need to be kept warm and safe.”

Henry stuffs the page through one of the openings between his coat buttons and then takes his mother's hand back. He beams up at the soldier. “Do you have one for Rose, too?” he asks.

“Of course I do,” says the man, studying her with a look of exaggerated thoughtfulness, “but this one is a little trickier.” He thumbs through the book again, glancing back and forth from Rose to the pages, his eyes bright. Eventually he slaps a page with his palm. “Perfect,” he murmurs. He rips another page free of the book and passes it to her. “Keep it dry, now,” he says. “Don't let the words wash away.”

His companions have stopped by the side of the road and are now hunting through their pockets as they wait for him. “It must be breakfast time,” the man says. He squats down in front of Rose and Henry and looks at them earnestly. “You be good now,” he says. “Make your mother proud.”

They thank him and tell him goodbye and continue their descent. Soon they emerge from the mists and a new valley appears beneath them. Its floor and foothills are covered with a patchwork of rice paddies and terraces, just as in their own valley. In its center sits a village, three times the size of Xinhui. It takes them twenty minutes to make their way down the hill, through the paddies, and into the village's outskirts.

Although the houses here are also made of mud bricks, they are larger than the homes in Xinhui. Women lean from their front windows, calling out menus or the names of things for sale. Small clusters of shops and restaurants sit on the corners. Li-Yu, Rose, and Henry follow the other children into the heart of town.

The school is made of concrete blocks, its roof corrugated tin panels that sound like drums in the rain. Children file through the door, quietly and with purpose. Henry releases Li-Yu's hand and latches on to her leg. He buries his face into her side. “I don't want to go, Mommy,” he says, in English, his voice muffled.

“You must,” she says, in Cantonese. She pries his arms from her legs, hugs him briefly, and then hands him the cloth bundle of paper and pencils. “No more of this. Your sister and I will be here when you are finished. Now go.”

He turns from Li-Yu but he does not head for the door. Instead he goes to his sister. Desperation covers his face. He takes her hand. “Come with me,” he says. Li-Yu is about to step toward him, but something in Rose's expression stops her. Rose puts her hands on her brother's shoulders.

“Listen, Spider,” she says, in English. It is a nickname she gave him when he was first learning to crawl, a name she called him in a different time, a different place, and the sound of the word sends a shock through Li-Yu. When the impact of it clears she finds in its place a sudden catalog of memories. She sees her two children sitting in the room they shared in their little wooden house in Stockton, playing quietly on the faded blue rug, motes of dust dancing in the sunbeams. She smells the wood baking in the heat and hears the creak of the planks as the children pad about the rooms, exchanging one toy for another, making messes. She hears Bing's voice echo through the house, recounting stories of things that happened at the store that day—a winning lottery ticket he sold, perhaps, or some neighborhood gossip. She hears the sounds of gleaming cars passing by, and sees the way the light inside the house changes as the cars' reflections dart across the walls. When she returns to the rain and the doorway of the little school, she is surprised to see that the nickname has inspired a sudden change in Henry, too. He is standing a little taller, and his shoulders are back. His face is calm. “They don't let girls go to school here,” Rose is saying, “so you have to listen very carefully to everything they teach you, and remember it all, and you can tell it all to me on our walk back home. Okay? Promise me you'll do that.” Henry nods. He looks down and seems to discover the cloth bundle of supplies in his hands. He pushes it into his sister's hands, turns, and runs into the building, ignoring Li-Yu's shouts.

***

I emerged from my room, vague thoughts of food on my mind. It had grown dark and rain assailed the windows. Eva was asleep on the couch, lying on her side, her face buried in the crease between the seat cushions and the back, her clasped hands sandwiched between her thighs. The volume was off, but the television had been left on, tuned to a newscast. A Cadillac slid sideways across a flooded intersection, its headlights sweeping uselessly across the storefront windows. I decided I wasn't that hungry.

I climbed into the shower and immediately heard the strange song of that violin again. I turned the water off and on, off and on, and the music fell away and returned, fell away and returned. It had to be something in the pipes, I decided. I'd talk to the manager about it soon. I angled the stream out and over me so that it fell quietly against the far wall, and I crouched down, out of the water so I wouldn't hear the sound of it hitting me. I let it slant over me and I closed my eyes and listened as the music and the mist fell down around me.

***

It is late afternoon by the time they arrive back in Xinhui. Rose follows her mother and brother into the house, the prized bundle of paper and pencils hidden behind her back. She has learned how to stand behind things—other people, the pillars that support the house's joists, furniture—and so to be virtually invisible. She trails Li-Yu into the house, catches sight of Mae's face, and though she is cold and wet and tired, she stops and backpedals through the door. She pulls it shut behind her and she is alone on the stoop. Since that morning the rain has lessened, but large wet clumps of mist now drift back and forth through the village, like watchmen on patrol. She heads out into the road, looks one way, and then the other. There is nowhere for her to go in the village—everybody would notice a girl, especially her, walking alone. But she has to vanish, before the door swings open and her mother calls for her, or Mae shouts at her. She darts to the corner of the house and circles it, heading for the back reaches of the property. She runs down the length of the wall, across a small clearing, and past the servants' house. At the very back of the property, beneath the branches of two barren trees, there is a collection of sheds and small storage buildings. She ducks into the largest of the sheds and stops, her heartbeat sounding in her ears. It is dim and smells come to her before images can—first there is dirt, and then metal, and then the fainter scents of oil and rust. Her eyes adjust and the contents of the shed come into focus. There are bits of discarded furniture, too broken to mend, metal pails, stacks of wooden crates and lids. One corner has been reserved for tools. Here perhaps twenty long bamboo handles rest neatly, their top ends against the wall, their shafts lined up and parallel like the planks of a leaning section of fence. Rose hears footsteps approaching outside, through the mud, and she plunges into the triangular space between the handles and the wall. There is just enough room for her. The floor is hard-packed earth, but the roof and walls have been made well, and it is dry. Rose crawls into the corner of the room, far beneath the leaning handles, deep into the triangular fortress. She lies on the ground, trying to quiet her breath, listening. The footsteps continue past the shed without pausing at the door, but she stays there, curled up in the corner for several minutes, before sitting up.

Now she takes Henry's gift and slowly unties the knot, running her finger along a line of stitching as she lets the cords fall away. She pulls out a pencil and a piece of paper, carefully sets the bundle on the dirt floor, and glances around for something she can use as a surface. Within arm's reach is an old metal bucket, forgotten beneath the leaning bamboo handles. Rose pulls the bucket into her lap and settles the paper against it. There is already a curve to the paper, from the rolled bundle, and the sheet clings to the side of the bucket as though the two were made for each other.

It is the first time in weeks she's had a pencil in her hand, and with its tip poised over the clean white sheet, she finds herself stymied. Back home she might have casually filled the page with drawings of flowers or dolphins or practice signatures, or written a note for her mom or her brother, as she's done a thousand times before. But now paper is a rare and precious thing—there were only a few sheets in the bundle and she doesn't know when or how she'll get more. She sits there with the bucket on her lap for some time, the pencil poised, as images and ideas compete in her head. Finally she touches the tip to the very corner of the sheet and begins to write, in English, in the smallest script she can manage. There is a slight roughness to the bucket's metal, and she can feel it pulling the bits of gray from the tip of the pencil. It is a magical feeling.
It was after school one day when Dad first came home from the store and told us we were moving to China,
she writes. She continues, describing the days before the voyage, and the voyage itself, and the house where she is learning to disappear.

Just when it is getting too dark for her to write, she hears her brother's little voice, calling for her. He doesn't sound like he is far away. Leaving the paper curled against the bucket, Rose crawls back out of the fortress toward the door. Still on her knees, she pushes the door open and peeks out. Henry is peering around the corner of the main house, his brow wrinkled. He sees her right away and a wide smile breaks across his face. He runs to her and plunges into the shed.

“What are you doing in here?” he asks, looking past her, waiting for the shed's contents to take shape in the gloom.

“Down here,” she says, and leads him back into the shelter of bamboo handles. He sits against the wall, his little hands on his knees, taking in the details of their new hiding place, his eyes bright and a smile growing on his face.

“I like it here,” he whispers.

“Me too,” Rose says.

“It smells good.”

Rose nods.

“Does Mom know about it?” Henry asks.

“No.”

“What about Mae?”

“I don't think so.”

“The others?”

She shakes her head.

He beams. “So it's just yours?”

“Mine and yours,” she says.

They are quiet for a minute. Henry spies the bucket and the sheet of paper. “What are you writing?” he asks.

“Our story,” she says. “The story of how we came here.”