Chapter Five #2
Mama’s words were stilted, the cadence all wrong. That was when I realized she’d known about Baba’s other wife for years. I suddenly felt sick. “Aren’t you angry?”
“It is common to take more than one wife,” Mama said. She made a well in the center of the rice and cracked two eggs inside. “We’ve arranged for a boat to take you and your brother from the port. Pack what you need. This will be a good opportunity for you.”
Steam blurred my vision. “What about you?”
“I’ll stay with Ah Ma. Now that the war is over, your father’s begun sending money again. You needn’t worry about us.”
“But—”
“Mind the heat,” she interrupted. “Always stir in the same direction.” She handed the paddle back to me, closing the matter. She knew me, and she was succinct. “No more questions.”
No more questions? But I had a hundred. How long had she known that Baba had gotten married again? Was he ever coming back to Tunglam? Had he forgotten her?
In my pan, the eggs sizzled.
I let them burn.
It was easy to pack since I didn’t have much.
My three-drawer chest was sparsely endowed with my brothers’ old shirts and jackets, two of Mama’s faded cheongsams, and undergarments I had sewn myself from a fraying blanket.
I folded my clothes into a brown wicker suitcase, packed an extra pair of shoes and one of Mama’s wooden combs, and I tucked my doll inside, too.
Her clothes were stained and her porcelain face had yellowed from the humidity, yet everything we’d gone through together endeared her to me. I had nothing else I loved as much.
Mama slipped into my room, a gray shawl draped over her shoulders. She said, “I don’t remember you having a mark on your chest. It’s new, isn’t it?”
“Ah Ma says such marks are unlucky,” I mumbled.
“Only certain ones.”
Like yours? I thought. I was still angry with her. These last few years, I’d begrudged her for not letting me go to Hong Kong. Now I was furious that she wanted me to go. She should have told me about Baba’s new wife from the start. I would never have wanted to live with them.
Sensing my frostiness, Mama sat on my bed. On her lap was a small box bundled in a sheet of lumpy cotton. “Open it.”
My curiosity won out over my indignation. I undid the fabric, and inside the box were two silk ribbons for tying my hair, and a carefully folded cotton undergarment.
My eyes widened with surprise. “Glasses?”
That was what we called bras.
“You’ll need it soon,” Mama said. “Maybe when you’re twelve, or the year after. I won’t be there with you, so if you have questions, ask your aunt or your second mother.”
“I don’t know them.”
“You will soon enough, after living in Gu Ma’s house.”
Gu Ma was Baba’s only sister. Though I hadn’t seen her since I was a baby, Ah Ma grumbled about her plenty. Her husband owned a shoe factory in Hong Kong, but he’d died recently, leaving her solely in charge. Ah Ma was sore that she hadn’t sent money back, unlike my dutiful father.
Mama, I sensed, also didn’t like Gu Ma. But I doubted it was about money; Mama didn’t care about such things.
“There’s nothing to be scared about.” Mama drew me close to braid a ribbon into my hair.
“Study well, and keep your thoughts to yourself. Hong Kong is a big city, bigger even than Guangzhou. Don’t be too trusting of others—not everyone will want what’s best for you.
And don’t make trouble for your father.”
Or your stepmother, she left unsaid.
I made a mute dip of my head.
“And be polite to your aunt,” Mama added. “Your father has always been close to her. He works for her factory, and she’ll pay for your clothes, your food, your schooling.”
Again, I could hear what she left unsaid. It’s more than I can do for you.
She rose and walked to the door. Something else was on her mind. I could tell from how purposefully she slid the door open.
“Show me what you did,” she said then, very quietly, “when the Japanese came into our house.”
My eyes flew to hers. We hadn’t spoken of that day in years.
I followed Mama down the narrow corridor to her bedroom.
Her windows were shut, trapping stale smells of chrysanthemum tea and newspaper ink within the alabaster walls.
Over it all, the sharp tang of vinegar tickled my nostrils.
After the Japanese had left, we scrubbed every room clean with vinegar, yet I could still make out an undertone of cigarette smoke.
I faced that wretched spot in the room—the cupboard against the wall where I had nearly died.
“You said you hid in here.” Mama opened the two wooden doors wide. “Show me.”
I gawked. I couldn’t fit in there anymore. I was almost twelve!
“Ying.” Mama raised her voice a step, a gentle warning.
Obediently, I crouched and folded myself inside, bending so I wouldn’t hit my head. Mama closed the doors.
Darkness consumed me. The air grew shallow.
I curled my spine and hugged my knees tightly.
There were no soldiers in the house, I knew that.
Yet just being in there—in that cupboard, I became seven years old again.
Phantom cigarette smoke pricked my eyes, and shadows swam across my vision, shaped like guns and silvery steel fangs.
Fear galloped inside my chest, and I wiped the mucus dribbling out of my nose, down my lip.
“I want to come out,” I cried. “Let me out. Mama!”
One door creaked open. Outside was Mama, holding a paring knife. She pressed it to my throat, applying pressure.
“Ma, what are you—”
“Try again. Do exactly what you did.”
She pointed the tip of the knife to my neck. The metal was cold. It bit into my skin, and I gasped. “Mama?”
My mother’s gaze was blank and callous. Her eyes became mirrors into my past, drawing me back to the Japanese soldier who had opened this same cupboard, the tip of his bayonet scraping against the lacquered wood before finding the soft flesh of my knee.
I looked away, choking on terror. No, I thought frantically. Don’t hurt me. Go away!
The air went out of my lungs. I couldn’t breathe.
Then it happened.
The warning was little more than a tickle across the nape of my neck, a caress of cold air that sent the barest shiver down my spine. It was like going underwater, entering a dark and silent realm where no one would touch me. No one could see me.
Mama’s knife clattered into the cupboard, jolting me back into existence. I let go of my breath and it was over.
“You can make yourself into nothing,” she said quietly. She extended her hand to help me out of the cupboard. “That’s how you escaped.”
Goosebumps pinpricked my arms. I was shaking. “What happened?” I was rattling with questions. “How did I—” I gulped. “This can’t be—”
“Breathe.” Mama cut me off before I could finish.
She touched my cheek, and her voice fell low.
“When I was a girl, a monk passed through my hometown. My sisters were curious about him and followed him down the road, begging him to read their fortunes. I went along to make sure they wouldn’t get in trouble.
At the edge of the village, he turned around.
He couldn’t have been older than my father, but he had the oldest eyes.
Ancient yet fiery—like the Great Sage. He stepped toward me and touched my forehead.
” Mama demonstrated, pressing her palm to her head.
“Then he leaned down and spoke into my ear so only I could hear. He told me that there was a demon inside me, as small as a fish bone. I wasn’t the first in my family, and I wouldn’t be the last. It was an affliction—a curse that manifests differently in every generation, and it would pass to my daughter and her daughter until . . .”
“Until what?”
Mama’s hand fell to her lap. “He wouldn’t say. But when you told me the Japanese didn’t see you, I suspected that you, too . . .” She shook her head. “You were young, Ying. Too young.”
I swallowed hard. “What is your curse?”
“Visions,” replied Mama distantly. “They began when I was thirteen, soon after my family moved to Guangdong and I first bled.
When I slept, I . . . I had dreams. Terrible dreams. I thought they were nightmares—I saw my mother vomiting blood into a pot, the life being drained from her over a few short days.
I saw metal birds in the sky dropping seeds that set the world below ablaze.
I saw myself as a grown woman locked away in a narrow room, my hands and feet bound to a bed, and my mouth gagged by cloth as I shouted names I did not yet know.
“I became afraid of sleeping.” Mama touched the dark circles under her eyes. “I tried to stay awake as long as I could, but I could never last more than a few days. When I slept again, the dreams came back.
“No one would listen to me,” she went on. “My uncles called me mad, and my father beat me for bringing distress to my mother. He threatened to sell me if I uttered another word about my dreams. So I kept quiet.”
“Then what happened?”
“My mother became ill a few days later. She had always suffered terrible pains in her head and slept to drive them away. By the time the doctor came, it was too late. She wouldn’t wake up.”
Mama wrung her hands, twisting them together.
“You can’t understand how hard it was for me, wondering if I might have saved her.
If only someone had listened. If only she’d seen the doctor earlier.
At night I’d walk into the pond until I was chin deep, and I’d stay there, shivering so I wouldn’t fall asleep.
In the mornings I went to the temple and prayed.
I could think about nothing else—other than how I allowed my mother to die.