Inheritance (22 page)

There was rumbling, closer now. Pu Li whispered, “Don’t worry, Hong. I’m here.”

I liked Pu Li but didn’t want his reassurance. I tried to pull away from him, but couldn’t see where to move.

“I’ll protect you, Hong.”

I shrugged.

“It is proper. One day we’ll be husband and wife.”

“No, we won’t.” He had succeeded in getting my attention.

“Oh, yes, Hong. Your mother has told my mother we will.”

How could this be? And yet something in his voice told me he wasn’t lying. Next to us, Hwa snored lightly. I wrenched myself away from Pu Li and darted off in the direction my mother had gone.

“Hong!” I heard Pu Taitai cry. “Where are you going? Come back here with us!”

The others hissed at her. Through the darkness, I made my way, stumbling over people and their belongings. Nobody stopped me or even noticed me. I turned left as my mother had turned; I could feel or smell her presence, somewhere beyond. There she was. Her long white hand shone in the dim light of a shaded lantern. I squatted down, strained to see into the thick forest of people’s legs.

From that hidden place, there came an unearthly sound. Was it sirens? I stood alert, half expecting my mother to find me and explain. Then the sound came again, like a keening in the dark. It was some time before I understood that I was listening to a human being, a woman’s voice rising to unintelligible cries of pain. The shrieked words, blurred and twisted, rang off the walls.

Then the voice began to speak. It was a quavering voice, otherworldly and yet familiar to my ears. I didn’t recognize the speaker.

“I’m afraid,” said the voice.

“Shhh,” I heard an old woman say. “It will all be over soon.”

Then she said something in the local dialect. I saw her reach out and pick up a bare arm, push the sleeve away from the wrist, and hold the wrist between her finger and thumb. A slender wrist, like the stamen of a flower.

“Her pulse is wild and too strong.”

“What does that mean, Cho Puopuo? Can you stop it?”

“We need to take away the extra blood. We’ll need leeches.”

“Impossible.”

“Hot water, then.”

“We can’t risk smoke.”

Cho Puopuo squatted, a tiny woman with her lip thrust out. “Bring the crockery,” she said. “The cord must be cut with freshly broken crockery, to make sure the cut is clean.” She felt the wrist again. “Rip some cotton into strips.”

I wedged myself behind a suitcase, where nobody could see me. For a time I must have fallen asleep, for when I could see again, the crowd of women had shifted and I had a clear sight line. My mother and another woman were standing over the patient. Between their legs, I caught a glimpse of a human face, a woman’s face seized with pain, eyes staring, all whites.

“Jiejie, please, I am sorry.”

It was my ayi. Yinan—gentle Yinan—was here, she was in pain, perhaps she was dying. I wanted to help her but I hung back, afraid. And my mother kept her face as white and fine as dust.

“Please, will you forgive me?”

“Push,” said Cho Puopuo.

“Please,” Yinan said, almost whispering. “You forgave him, so will you not find it in yourself to forgive me, too?”

In the depth of silence, my mother’s voice was cold as iron. “You are my sister,” she said. “He is only a man.”

“
Push
.”

There came a long, terrible shudder, and the cries began again. But this time, I could make out the words. “Jiejie! Jiejie! Jiejie! Jiejie—” It was the sound of someone who had lost all hope. The darkness seethed with hissing from all corners, “Stop! Make her stop!” Then all sounds were ended by an enormous boom. It was as if we were in the middle of a great drum.

The enemy was over us.

“Ayi!” I screamed. “Ayi!” But Yinan could not hear me.

Since that time, I’ve come to recognize a certain expression on someone’s face: it is the look of a person who lives in fear of a particular experience, a dark lake of memory opening, swallowing them up. There are times we can’t forget, much as we long to lose them in sleep, or love, or wisdom. So many years later, when I am swallowed back into that time, I can’t remember the bombing coming to an end. I don’t think about emerging, after days underground, into the gray, shattering light. Instead, I see the darkness, only darkness, and the shaking of the walls. And I remember in the very depth, in the core of that exploding force, my mother’s will. No solace and no comfort, no yielding, no forgiveness.

During a pause, somebody said, “It is a boy.”

Shanghai 1946–49

MY MOTHER BELIEVED HWA’S VIOLENT HEART HAD COME FROM
Chun, her wet nurse. According to her story, she had chosen Chun in haste. She had been looking for a girl in the turmoil of occupied Hangzhou; it wouldn’t do to have the baby living on rice porridge, and upper-class women didn’t nurse their children. Even in her rush, she chose with care—mindful that a child grows to resemble the woman whose milk it drinks—but in selecting for intelligence, she overlooked the girl’s fierce eyes. Chun, who came from a remote corner of Hunan, at first appeared to be a shy young thing. But in time, without the heat of spice, she languished and complained, and my mother, distracted, let Chun cook her own meals and little Hwa take Chun’s wild milk. By the time Chun’s temper revealed itself, Hwa had flourished on her strong drink and would not have any other. She grew into a watchful child, perfectly obedient unless she held a grudge, when she would scream and cry until we did her bidding. Hwa’s tantrums tested even my mother, who lamented that the tumult of war had caused her to overlook the household peace. It was one of the few mistakes she would confess to.

But Hu Mudan had seen the truth. The cause of Hwa’s ferocity lay more close at hand; her temperament was a replica of my mother’s. Like my mother, Hwa wielded her anger to protect a sensitive heart. As a child, she couldn’t bear to be ridiculed or forgotten. It was as if she sensed she wasn’t wanted. I cannot say how she knew, because our mother never mentioned wishing Hwa had been a boy. She had bitten down her wishes and accepted Hwa the moment she was born, laying claim to this new daughter with her own fierce sense of loyalty.

So Hwa’s defensiveness ran in her blood, as did her desire for answers, her cool poise, and her hesitance to trust. Over time, she learned to manage herself. She didn’t lose control; she didn’t confide. She barely knew our father, and her belief in our mother’s love was absolute. Later, when we were settled in America at a safe remove from the tumult of our childhoods, Hwa would remain devoted and invite our mother to live with her in California. She would believe exactly what our mother chose to tell her. And she would stand staunchly in favor of our mother’s attitude toward our past—she wouldn’t care to contemplate the family story, nor would she support my efforts to do so.

“You seem to think,” Hwa told me once over the telephone, “that if you dwell on all this long enough, it will make sense. But even if it does, what difference does it make? In the end, everything has worked out for you. Your life is no worse than anyone else’s.”

“That’s true,” I said. “And since it’s true, what’s wrong with the idea that I go back to visit China?”

“It would be trying to reclaim the past,” she said. “And that’s impossible.”

“But there’s a certain point when we must think about our lives. We must consider those we’ve loved, and how that love has changed us.”

“You talk to Hu Mudan too much.”

“I think about who they were and how that influenced the choices that they made. I think about the times in which they lived—in which we lived. The Communist idea of overturning power. Ma was always older and she had the power. So she didn’t clearly see Yinan, couldn’t predict what she would do or feel.”

“Or maybe Yinan didn’t want to reveal herself,” Hwa said. “Maybe she had plans for herself, from the beginning. You said she’d been engaged and that fell through. She was getting old. What else could she have done?”

I shook my head. “She wasn’t that kind of person.”

“How do you know?”

“I knew Yinan. I remember her. Anyway, the point is that they were surprised.”

“What’s that have to do with it?”

“They were surprised by their emotions. All three of them, and especially Ma. You know how much she hates that. If she hadn’t been so taken by surprise, how do you think they could have ended up the way they did?”

There was a silence over the line. “What you really mean,” Hwa finally said, “is that you wouldn’t have ended up the way you did.”

MY MOTHER ONCE
warned me not to be too proud of how much I could see. I believe it wasn’t pride but righteous curiosity that made me strive to notice things. Curiosity mingled with a need to uncover what flowed beneath our household calm, a hidden source of pain that wasn’t mentioned. I had seen it in my grandfather, his hair a shock of white, his gaze sliding away as if the sunlight hurt his eyes. I had seen it in my solitary aunt. Now, in the aftermath of Yao’s birth, I could see it in my mother. It was like living with another presence. This presence wasn’t human and it wasn’t a ghost. My mother worked to keep it hidden, yet it didn’t disappear. Nothing could vanquish it: not Hwa’s devotion nor my good grades in school; not even my mother’s growing stash of jewelry and gold.

She had planned for Yinan to preoccupy him. But then something happened that she hadn’t planned. How could she have known? She who had refused to see the strength of her own passion, she who’d loved him for so many years without telling him about her love or knowing his desires. She must have retraced each telegram and each event, driven to know exactly how her plan had slipped from her control. Yet the central mystery of those months in Chongqing could never be uncovered. There was an elusive, stubborn element she couldn’t have predicted. It was untidy, it went beyond her preconceptions. It had crept up on her, the way a hidden tree root can destroy the foundation of a house. Now, slowly, she began to see what Yinan had tried to tell her, what she’d refused to see. She had lost Li Ang. Yinan was no longer the sister she had known. Yinan had betrayed her.

It was their love that betrayed her, more than anything, more than even their child. It was their love that couldn’t be forgiven.

I REMEMBER THE
sun-hazed afternoon in those chaotic days after the end of the war, when I saw my brother and cousin Yao on an infrequent visit.

Yao was then a boy of five. Like my father, he moved with an athletic grace; like my father, he possessed a cheerful openness. He charmed everyone who knew him, especially my mother. During his infrequent visits she had developed a bond with him. She sent a present to Yao for every holiday or festival, always beautifully wrapped and addressed to him by name. In the midst of the war, she sent him fine, machine-made clothes and handsome toys. That particular afternoon, she gave Yao a “victory”suit with a tiny Nationalist flag sewn on the jacket pocket. She coaxed him to put it on. It was too hot for such clothing, but he obliged her graciously, strutting back and forth before stopping proudly next to his mother.

“He’s a picture of strength,” my mother said. “Strong as a warrior, and good-tempered, too.” She turned to Yinan. “You’re doing a good job.”

“You are too flattering, Jiejie,” said my aunt. But her hand closed protectively over Yao’s brown wrist.

“He’s five years old. Surely soon, when he is ready for school, you’ll need help getting him a good education.”

Yinan shook her head. “The missionary schools are excellent. And since I work for Rodale Taitai, we don’t have to worry.”

My mother persisted. “Surely you don’t want him to have a foreigner’s education. He must grow into a patriotic man.”

Yinan didn’t reply.

“Look how handsome and how smart! A future hero of China, shining like a star. He must have every opportunity.” My mother straightened in her chair. “Of course, I’ll pay for his schooling. Our boy must have the best.” My mother held her arms out for Yao and he burrowed into them. She stroked his smooth hair and he returned her attention with a smile. It was my father’s thoughtless charm. My mother didn’t understand. She responded to Yao’s smile with an expression I’d never seen: proud, adoring, and filled with yearning. I was shaken by the hunger in her glance. I told myself it didn’t matter: it had nothing to do with me. But as the dimple deepened in Yao’s cheek, I grew furious with him. If it is possible to hate a child, I hated him for his boyishness, his ease, the way he basked in her attention without a thought of what it might lead her to feel or to believe.

Yinan’s face was pale. She stood, stammered goodbye to us, and led Yao out the door.

Soon afterward, my mother sent a man to Yinan with the money for Yao. The messenger knocked on the door, but no one answered. He looked through the window and discovered the apartment empty. Yinan had fled. My mother asked around, discreetly, until somehow she learned that Yinan and Yao had left Chongqing. They had returned to Hangzhou with Katherine Rodale, and Hu Mudan and Hu Ran had gone with them.

Soon afterward, in the kitchen garbage bin half covered by yam peelings, I found a pile of black and white images. Some were whole, while others had been sliced away from larger photographs. Each of them held a picture of my aunt. One showed my aunt as a toddler, with a single pigtail standing straight up on her head. In another, I saw my aunt as a child, with someone’s arm—my mother’s?—curled protectively around her shoulders. One photograph with scalloped edges showed my aunt in a loose, pale dress, holding a half-bloomed rose. Her familiar eyes looked out at me, gentle and unhappy. I put this picture in my pocket. I went to the room I shared with Hwa and scrutinized it for a hiding place, but found nowhere suitable. In the end, I hid the photograph behind another photograph. I slipped it into a frame, behind the picture from my parents’ wedding.

A week after Yinan departed, my mother announced that we were moving east as well, to Shanghai. By now I knew my mother’s mind and guessed the reason for her decision. Shanghai was close to Yinan, but not too close. In the next few weeks, there was a flurry of activity as my mother’s friends unloaded old furniture and finery in payment for their mahjong debts. We gained a cache of scrolls, a set of tables, and even a cello. Then, in the spring of 1946, when I was thirteen years old, we moved into an elegant Shanghai house close to the former French concession.

OVER THE NEXT
few years I grew the way a grass stem grows, long and slender, bending at the neck. My mother cautioned me, “You’ll be a striking woman, not a classical beauty. You’ve inherited too mixed a combination of our features.” I had her long eyes but his heavy brows; her oval face and his dark complexion. He claimed some northern ancestry, and he had given me the height and ochre skin of the Mongolian marauders. “But you must not forget,” my mother said, “to carry yourself with grace. Your father is a general, and so your beauty must come from knowing this.”

She frequently reminded me my father was a general. If I was sour with Pu Taitai or raised my voice, she said, “Remember who your father is.” I led a limited existence, shuttled between school and home, but somehow she managed to find reasons to remind me. These admonitions filled me with confusion. Why did she insist I be so proud—so proud of my father—when her relationship with him filled her with pain? I couldn’t tolerate her pain. Even worse, I didn’t trust my own feelings toward my father. I missed him with a ferocity that shamed me.

In the chaos of postwar Shanghai, Hwa and I lived the lives of wealthy girls. We were awakened by a maid, and dressed in clothes she had laid out for us. My mother enrolled us in a private school with intensive English classes, as well as history, literature, and mathematics. On weekdays, Hwa and I put on starched uniforms and rode the school bus; on weekends, we went window-shopping on the Bund. Hwa took to the change with admirable ease. A full head shorter than I, she was demure and chaste in her white blouse, plaid shirt, and polished loafers. She made friends easily with our classmates and their brothers, all except for Willy Chang, a slender, lively boy who wrote beautiful characters. Whenever he was near, Hwa would frown and hold quite still, as if struggling with something.

I had a more difficult time of it. I had no interest in a social life; I spent my time reading novels, fairy tales, and scandalous newspaper serials I snuck into my room at night. I grew so tall my mother had to order my shoes from a specialty store and buy extra fabric to lengthen my school uniform. Thanks to her and Hwa, I had the proper haircut, coat, and socks, but they had no control over my mind, which continued to run wild with dangerous and troubled thoughts. Surrounded by propriety, safe under my mother’s care, I began to see my place within a troubling design.

In Yinan’s book of fairy tales, a wild and ragged stranger was transformed into a handsome man. Chimney sweeps were revealed to be kings. And mysterious beggars held the enlightenment of holy figures. In “Snow-white and Rose-red,” two sisters answered a knock on the cottage door. There stood a fierce black bear, but when the girls befriended him, he became a comely prince. I had come to understand that there was passion in the darkness. I knew that as a woman I would fall into that darkness.