Gift of the Golden Mountain (62 page)

They spoke in Mandarin for the speed, because there was so little time and so much to say. Tsiao Jie told May about her grandfather, about her father when he came to China. She said that it had been her most precious wish someday to see May, to touch her face and tell her how proud her grandfather would have been. "He loved beautiful women, you see," she said, her eyes sparkling with wit, "and you are so beautiful. I see now why Chou said we must hide your face."

     Chou. Pronounced "Joe." Of course. The English he spoke was Tsiao Jie's English—May's grandfather's English.

     "Is Chou your friend?" May asked. "How much did you have to do with bringing me here?"

     "There is no time to talk of such things," was her answer, but May knew. Tsiao Jie had put herself in jeopardy to help her. She had engineered the journey, and the people who were helping May were doing it for her aunt, for China Rose.

     "Have you talked with . . . my mother?" May asked.

     Her face, which was the most alive face May had ever seen, became sad. "I have seen Ch'ing-Ling twice," she answered, and May knew the words had been rehearsed. "Once when your father was still alive, again just after his death. Then I was sent far away, to the North, and I have not seen her again."

     "Does she know I am coming?"

     "No," Rose answered simply, "I feared that if she did, she might not agree to see you."

     "She may run from me, even now."

     "Yes. It is possible that you will be disappointed."

     May's answer came without hesitation. "It won't matter, Aunt Rose. If I had to leave now, it would be all right—seeing you, talking to you, being here. It's as if I've found a part of my past that has been missing. I'll always remember how it was, being here today with you."

     Rose took her hand and squeezed it so hard it would have hurt, had May been able to feel pain. "I'm going to come back to China," May said. "I'm going to come back with Hayes, so that you can meet him. And Kit. We will have a family reunion. China can't keep me out forever."

     May watched her great eyes fill with tears; she laid her cheek next to the tiny woman's, and found it soft and smooth. Then Rose's hands pressed gently on her arms as she said, "Go now to meet your mother, and then go back to your betrothed and live in happiness and peace, and when you come back to China, bring me also a grandniece. Or a nephew, or one of each."

     That afternoon May pedaled her bicycle for four hours over rough country roads. She could have gone on forever.

     They slept under a thatch of ironwood trees not far from a
stream with duck pens. May lay awake, filled with a kind of elation. She listened to the ducks scrabble, and went over and over everything Rose had said to her. She had tried so long to imagine what it would be like, meeting her mother, but she had not thought about Rose. China Rose. Dad's half sister, those same wonderful eyes—his eyes!—in that poor little twisted body.

     May knew that her grandmother had been crippled. Grandfather had been tall and straight, like her father, but he had loved two crippled women . . . Rose's mother, she would have liked to ask about her. There was so much she wanted to know.

     Realizing that Xue Lian must be a follower of her aunt's, she asked, "What can you tell me about her?"

     Xue answered, laughing, "She has greatness, your aunt. There is nothing we would not do for her."

     "We?" May asked.

     "Those of us who have the honor to know her, to be at her service. There are many."

     "How many?"

     "That you must ask your auntie—when you come to see her through the front door." She laughed hard, as if she had made some wonderful joke. "Your Mr. Nixon," she ventured, "he is opening the door to China, you will be back."

     May tried to tell her why he wasn't "her" Mr. Nixon, tried to explain why he was probably going to be tossed out on his ear over a scandal called Watergate, but Xue could not understand. As far as she was concerned, Nixon is a great man simply for having come to rap on China's closed door.

     That morning, the first karst formations came into view, strange mountains rising in the morning mist. May felt as if she had entered an ancient Chinese scroll, pedaling through green fields as the karsts came closer and closer. She watched the sun reach its apex and tried to think what time it would be in Washington, but she could not. Washington was another world, another time. When the sun was at an oblique angle, they arrived at the River Li.

     "We rest now, and let the river be our feet," Xue Lian said as they waited on the river bank. Soon a raft made of giant bamboo poles pulled up, and they maneuvered to get their bicycles onto it.

     For more than two hours they floated down the river, the karst formations rising majestically on every side and into the distance. This was the China of May's imagination: delicate in its complexity, light reflecting off the water, giant stands of bamboo casting tender shadows. Here and there villagers harvested weeds from the river's bottom or fished. Cormorants stood motionless on a sandbar, children played alongside the river as their mothers washed clothes and spread them on the rocks to dry. This was life along the River Li, represented on the ancient scrolls, China of a thousand dreams, the poet's China. She could understand why Madame Mao did not want foreign visitors to come to this place, to disturb the old ways, to bring change. And she could see why her mother would have chosen to live here, in the calm of a village on this winding river at the edge of time.

     She sat cross-legged on the raft, one hand holding on to her bicycle to steady it, and felt as if she could drift forever down the River Li.

     The village was like several others they had passed—a high, dun-colored wall behind which nestled several compounds. Children played along the riverbank, clamored over the boats that were tied there. The raft bumped to a stop on the stony quay, and a small boy jumped out to steady it so the two women could disembark with their bicycles. May stretched to make the jump from the raft to the slippery rocks, dragging her bicycle with her. She lost her footing and fell, the bicycle crashing down upon her, metal tearing into the flesh of her leg.

     "Owww," Xue Lian cried out for her as she came to her aid, "It hurts."

     May tried to smile as she pulled herself upright. A young boy jumped to help. She limped up the quay, allowing the boy to guide the bicycle for her, and sat down on a low wall. The cut was
bleeding profusely. Xue Lian knelt to look at it, clucking.

     "Here," May said, taking one of the clean rags out of her sack, "wrap this around it."

     Xue worked efficiently, pressing the cut to stop the bleeding.

     "Good we go to see the doctor," she said.

     "Here?" May asked. "Is this the village?"

     The other woman nodded, not smiling now. "It is not far, can you walk?"

     The searing pain in her leg could not compete with the fear rising in May's throat. She rose, and for an instant thought she might faint. She took a deep breath.

     "Lean on me," Xue Lian said. "The clinic is there, down that road."

     As the women hobbled off, the villagers began to gather to follow them. Strangers seldom came here, they were something new to see, and one was bleeding. They pointed and chattered. You could see the dark blood spreading on the rag tied around her leg. By the time they reached the small white building marked with a red cross, some twenty people had gathered to follow and watch.

     One old man offered, "The doctor is not there."

     A reprieve. The tightness in May's chest seemed to subside.

     "Where is she?" Xue Lian asked.

     "In another village," the man answered, waving his arm vaguely in the direction of the river.

     "When will she be back?"

     The man shrugged, he had said all he could say. A woman pushed forward, taking over. "Babies sick there, she gives medicines. Back before dark."

     Xue Lian looked at May. "Let's go inside and stop the bleeding. You can wait there while I find us some food."

     May did as she was told. She seemed to have lost the ability to think for herself. Whatever happened now would be determined by forces she could not control. She could only wait as she had waited on the raft, floating down the river. Xue Lian lifted the latch on the
clinic and pushed the door open. They stepped into a single large room with a wood floor and whitewashed walls. Xue guided May to a wooden chair, and she sat patiently while the other woman found soap and water to wash out the cut. The villagers watched from the open door, but none crossed the high threshold.

     "The doctor," Xue Lian said to May in lowered tones, "must have very strict rules. Look how clean and neat this place is, compared to the village."

     As if given permission, May looked around the room, studying the place where her mother lived and worked. It was a large and airy room. In the front section were two tables, one which might serve as a surgery, and a narrow bed. Medical supplies and instruments were neatly categorized in a glass-front cabinet set against one wall. In another were Chinese herbal medicines.

     At the rear of the room was her living space—a platform for sleeping, a soft chair, a chest with a photograph on top. May was tom by a wish to see the photograph, and a rush of guilt that she was invading another's privacy.

     "Perhaps I should not have come in," she remarked.

     Xue Lian looked surprised. "You are hurt, you must see the doctor."

     May lowered her voice. "I am the doctor's daughter, she may not want to see me."

     "Even so," Xue said, smiling to take the sting out of what she was about to say, "she must see you as a patient before we can leave." She considered May, then asked, "Can I leave you to find us something to eat?"

     Xue closed the door behind her, removing May from the scrutiny of the villagers. She sat back in the chair and concentrated on her breathing, Karin's trick. When you feel the anxiety rising, Karin would say, all you have to do is think about your breathing and you can control the panic. After a while May managed to stand and, by holding on to the chair and the tables, make her way to the back of the room, to the chest with the photograph on it.

     It was a snapshot of a young boy, perhaps twelve. He was straddling a bicycle, both hands on the handlebars, looking gravely into the camera. The picture was yellowed around the edges. May guessed it to be ten or fifteen years old.

     She lowered herself onto the sleeping platform, needing to rest a moment before returning to the patient's chair. She would not want her mother to find her here, in her living space. Except, May thought, looking around her, there is so little that seems personal. A flowered apron hanging on a nail on the wall, a dish with a small round of soap. She lifted the soap to smell it, but there was no perfume to it.

     Xue Lian returned carrying two bowls. The smell of the food made May go weak. She was, she realized, ravenous. "Rice and vegetables and fish," Xue said, putting down the bowls so she could help May back to the chair.

     "Are the villagers still out there?" May wanted to know.

     "No, they've moved down to the riverfront. I think they will meet the doctor, to tell her you are here," Xue said as she scooped the last bits of rice out of her bowl with her fingers. That accomplished, she took May's empty bowl and said, "Now I go to the house of the family who shared their food with us. When you are ready to go, send one of the children for me."

     At the door she hesitated. "We must leave at dawn. It would not be wise to stay longer."

     May nodded and whispered, "Yes."

     When the door closed behind Xue, May felt the blood rush to her head. She was here, in her mother's house, waiting. Always waiting. Then she knew. Her mother would not return, May was not going to see her, she would never meet her mother. She could feel the certainty of it flooding through her body, into her arms and legs and toes. She was not meant to meet her mother, it was over. An awful sadness took possession of her, transferred into a lethargy. She had done all she could do, she had reached her mother's house, the place she
had been all these years. But she was not here, she would not be here.

     May felt the warm tears roll into her mouth, she licked them with her tongue and tasted the salt. She began to cry, small sobs that eased into quiet little catching cries. She moved from the chair to the narrow bed, wrapped her arms around herself for comfort, pulled her knees up to her chest, and allowed herself to escape into the deep, mindless cloud of sleep.

She heard it around the purple edges of consciousness, sounds. Musical, low, hushed. She tried to push it back, away from her. She did not want to hear it, did not want to be brought back.

     The sounds persisted. She could not deny them but she did not know what they were, she did not know where she was. People were talking softly, very softly. She did not open her eyes, she tried to move back into sleep, she did not want to rise to the surface.