Inheritance (28 page)

He kept speaking, in a torrent of words. Once my father had come to his aid; now my father needed his help. My father—so generous, so blinded by optimism, had been always so soft-headed beneath his seeming strength. He wasn’t surprised that my father, for all his quick intelligence, had been seized at random by a small cadre of activists. He had always been like that, so sure of himself that he was always blundering into traps, never knowing when he was under the power of another: man or woman. With that statement, Li Bing stopped himself. For a moment he didn’t speak. Then he turned to me. They had captured my father, it was true, but did we blame them for what they did? Was it such a bad thing to hold the ideals of Communism, to give to poor men and women some power of their own, a sense of something at stake? Was it such a surprise that, if they were given freedom from the men who stood over them, they would take up arms to defend this freedom, make a move against the fate that bound them to such suffering?

I listened and said nothing, for I sensed he was not speaking to me. Next to me, Hu Ran nodded, to comfort him.

An hour later, when my father stepped out of the back room, the light spilled behind him, his tall shape traced by the silver rays, his face thrown into shadow. For a moment he was the image I had so long treasured, pure qi poised to leave the ground. I felt that he was somehow different from every other human being: brighter, with his strengths outlined against the light of heaven. Then he came toward me and this image vanished. I saw his shadowed face, his wrinkled clothes, and, in each step, the injury that had destroyed his walk, the moment of hesitation after he put his right foot down.

“Hong,” he said. His words came to me softly, as if he were speaking from a distance. “Daughter. And Hu Ran.”

Hu Ran said, “General Li.”

When my father saw his brother standing with us, he could not find words of greeting. For a long moment, they stood before each other, looking.

Li Bing moved toward him. “Gege.”

“Didi.” Most of the room was watching, but my father and uncle didn’t see.

“Gege,” Li Bing repeated. He took my father’s arm. “Please sit.” He led my father to a table. “Please sit with me for a moment. This has all been an error. I apologize for what happened. I didn’t know that it was you until Hu Ran found me. I would have come right away.”

Li Bing turned to Hu Ran. “Thank you, thank you so much,” he said. My father grinned at Hu Ran and saluted him.

Then my uncle turned to me. “Hong, go home and wait for your father. We have some catching up to do. He should be there in an hour or two.” He gestured for tea. Hu Ran and I left the room. I saw them leaning toward each other, my father’s features hidden by the steam rising from his cup. Years afterward, when he told this story, my father never revealed what they said to one another.

HU RAN HAILED
another bicycle cab and gave the driver the address of the Y. For several blocks, we jounced under the awning without speaking. It was cold and wet. I trained my eyes out on the shabby shops with their colored paper signs and advertisements fluttering bravely in the rain.

Finally, Hu Ran said, “So I hear your marriage has been promised to Pu Li.”

“No, that isn’t true,” I made haste to explain. “You know my mother is friends with his mother.” His expression didn’t change. “Well, I don’t think my mother really likes his mother. But I think,” I tried to explain, “that our fathers were friends.”

“A perfect match.”

“No,” I insisted. The cab wheel dipped into a puddle, and I clutched the side. “Pu Li and I aren’t engaged,” I said. “That’s just something my mother told Pu Taitai, many years ago. I’m sure that she’s forgotten it.”

“Why are you sure?”

His gaze was too intense. “I never thought about it,” I said.

“Do you really think your mother would forget about anything?”

My mind moved slowly. “Why would she promise Pu Taitai?”

He shrugged. “They say Pu Taitai is a generous woman,” he said. “Maybe she has done your mother a favor of some kind.”

“My mother needs no favors.”

“Do you like Pu Li?”

I watched the cabbie’s churning legs. I thought of Pu Li, small and solid—not quite my height—with his head of thick, soft hair and a fair, round face. He had a good-natured calm that I found comforting.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I heard you’re all but married to Pu Li.”

I said nothing. I remembered Pu Li’s words years before, under the bombs, in the shelter. “Your mother promised my mother,” he’d said.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What if it is true? I still can’t imagine it happening.”

“Well, it will happen unless you object.”

We listened to the rain hitting the awning.

“Why don’t you stand up to your mother? Do you want to be under her heel for your whole life?”

I remembered my mother’s words to Hu Mudan,“. . . and take that brat with you.” I wanted to explain to Hu Ran that it was not so simple.

I struggled to control my voice. “Why do you care?” I asked. “You won’t have to leave. This country will be yours.”

He sat still for a moment. His gaze moved out past the cabbie’s laboring back. “Or you could stay here, Hong. Stay with me.”

“Do you want me to?”

“This country could be ours.”

So suddenly it had opened up: the chance for me to choose my fate. My mother had tried to keep me safe as if behind a glass. Now I could be out in the world with Hu Ran, his mother, and my aunt. I could leave my mother behind and live a life of passion. I could stay and live out China’s future.

Hu Ran reached out and took my hand. We sat together in the cab like well-behaved children, resting in the eye of a great storm. In a moment, the ride would stop. The world would come whirling back and we would find it altered past imagining.

“I’ll stay with you,” I said.

Hu Ran’s voice was gentle. “Are you sure, Hong?”

“I’m sure.”

He reached under his jacket. When he opened his palm he held the pendant of green jade that he’d tried to give to me when we were only children.

“My mother was given this pendant by your grandmother Chanyi,” he said. “She said it was a sign of friendship and love, and that it would connect the giver to the receiver, always, no matter what happened. I am older now. I’m sure my mother and your grandmother would understand.”

I bent my head, and he put the pendant over it. The chain was cool against my throat, but the jade was warm.

LATER, WHEN WE
left his room, the soft light was dazzling, and from the cab it seemed to me that we were all underwater. We moved slowly, as if submerged, and all around us the drenched colors were more vivid than before. It was as if my decision had finally dissolved the boundary that separated me from the world. Now I was in the middle of a vast sea, bobbing alongside every person in the city. Thousands floated past, clutching bundles and belongings. A woman with a brilliant red umbrella flicked a shimmering raindrop at my window. A rickshaw runner moved alongside. I could smell cauliflower and soy sauce in his low, heavy breath.

It was some time before we reached my street. The lofty elms stretched over us; I’d never seen their leaves so green, their trunks so black. They dripped on the timid mansions, many boarded up against the flood of change. Soon, soldiers would tear the boards away. Soon, the houses and everything inside them would be reclaimed. Soon. But my mother’s house was brightly lit as if by her strength and will, radiating from within, and as we walked up the path, I felt an odd tremor of fear.

Hu Ran and I went through the door.

My father and uncle were there. I could hear them from the foyer, and as I came toward the front room, I could also hear my mother’s voice. Nearby sat Hwa, watchful, knowing always when she must behave. She’d been getting ready for a New Year’s party when the men had come, and she still wore her bright red blouse, pressed perfectly until the silk was flat as paper.

“. . . need your help with a few things,” my mother was saying.

“I owe you so much, Jiejie. Of course the men can overlook a shipment or two.”

“Thank you,” my mother said. “It’s only furniture. I am terribly attached to it. Leaving will be hard enough—” In that moment she saw Hu Ran and me in the doorway. I’d let go of his hand, but my fingertips were warm with the knowledge of his presence. My mother’s gaze moved over me: my hair, my eyes, my cheeks and mouth. For a long moment I felt exposed. Then she, too, looked vulnerable.

It was my father who spoke. “Junan, do you remember Hu Ran?”

“Oh, yes,” she said politely, recovering herself. “How are you, Hu Ran?”

“I’m fine.”

“If it hadn’t been for this young man,” my father said, “I would be dead.”

My mother smiled coolly. “Thank you for helping bring the general home,” she said. “You deserve some compensation.”

“Oh no,” said Hu Ran.

“Well, then, thank you for your xingli.”

“Young man,” my uncle said, “I think it’s time that you and I were going. We have plenty to talk about.” He gestured toward the door. “See you again,” he told my mother.

“Thank you for your help, Li Bing.”

“Goodbye,” he said, looking at my father, “and consider my advice.”

“I will.”

Hu Ran winked at me. I looked around to see if anyone had noticed.

I went to the window and watched them leave the house. They walked down the front path, Hu Ran’s head bent toward my uncle’s, listening.

AND SO WE SAT:
my mother and father, Hwa and I, on the four uncovered chairs, under bright lights reflected in the rain-streaked windows. Sheets were draped on the remaining furniture: a couch, two armchairs, and a divan.

Now that my father was suddenly returned, now that he had been in danger and was saved, my mother sat shaking. Her love for him went through her; it straightened her back; it glittered in her eyes. It shamed her beyond anything else.

She said, “I’ve packed everything that we can take. I’m ready to leave, and with your brother’s help, the furniture and other things will safely reach Taiwan.”

My father didn’t answer. “We’re leaving in two days,” she said.

Still he didn’t speak. He sat staring at his hands.

“What is it, Li Ang?”

“Junan,” my father said, “you are a generous woman.”

“What do you want?”

“Junan,” he said again, “let’s talk about this by ourselves.”

But my mother gestured toward Hwa and me not to move. “Surely there’s nothing you have to say that your two daughters can’t hear.”

He turned to me and then to Hwa, helplessly, before turning back to our mother.

“I’ve sent a telegram to your sister.”

I heard a sharp intake of breath. I stole a glance at Hwa, but she sat unmoving in her red shirt, her back straight like a young soldier’s.

My mother asked, “And what did you tell her?”

“That she will be in danger.” My father’s voice rose. I heard emotion in it, building, as well as anticipation. He was discovering what he’d wished to say for a long time. “You know as well as I do,” he said. “Yinan won’t be safe. She has no family, no influence. She has the Americans, but when the Republic goes . . . under the Communists, the Americans will leave. She’ll be vulnerable.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

My father took a deep breath. “I want her to come with us.”

In the long minute that followed, the sound of rain lightened and moved away. Outside the window I saw the headlights of a car approaching slowly, then pulling into the drive before our house. The driver opened the door, and two women stepped out.

It was Hu Mudan, and with her stood a woman, unfamiliar, although I had the feeling that I must know her.

She was slender, smaller than my mother, with a pale, careworn face and short hair pushed behind her ears. She was dressed very simply in a long, gray skirt edged with rain, a long-sleeved white blouse, and loafers. Her skirt and blouse were wrinkled and appeared to be deliberately plain and deliberately Western—they were, in fact, donations from the missionary woman Katherine Rodale—and it was perhaps these clothes that made me so slow to recognize her. I remembered my aunt as a very young woman, a little plain, a little lacking in grace, with the girlhood softness in her. This woman was older, certainly, but she’d grown older in an unexpected way. For one, she was no longer plain; she wasn’t pretty so much as pleasing to look upon, striking in her simplicity. It was as if the years had whittled away at who she’d been, allowing this new person to emerge. Only after a long moment did I find in her eyes the old watchfulness, the gentleness, transformed into an expression of quiet understanding.

“Ayi,” I blurted. Hwa shot me a fierce glance. I struggled to speak properly. “Ayi.” It came out sounding flat with a bright and uncontrollable happiness and sorrow at its edges.

Yinan tried to smile. My mother didn’t move.

“Li Taitai,” said Hu Mudan.

My mother didn’t answer.

Hu Mudan offered to wait in the car and left.