Chapter 35
Hua Zhengyi
Vancouver, Canada
Zhengyi put the pen down, wishing she could shake out her wrist but knowing the simplest gestures were fraught with risk these days.
She had known age would bring frailty, but she hadn’t understood the dread that came with it.
She feared everything. The sounds of young people speaking loudly outside her window.
The telephone ringing. The stairs that led to her room, since, despite the fear, she refused to have a bed made up for her in the living room on the main floor.
That was too humiliating a display of her weakness.
She could hardly believe she’d once been young and courageous. Foolhardy at times, walking into situations with nothing but her determination to succeed.
“What are you doing?” Her great-granddaughter came in, clucking her tongue. “Ma told you she didn’t want to see you writing.”
Of course Lijing would say that. Her granddaughter was sometimes too fussy over what she thought Zhengyi could manage.
They spoke in their comfortable native language.
Zhengyi was fairly fluent in English, but as the day slid into night, she began to tire and it was more difficult to remember the correct words.
“Your mother worries too much.”
Yulan smiled at her as she fussed with the night table and its accumulation of books, knickknacks, and medicines. “She would say you don’t worry enough.”
Zhengyi laughed, pleased the sound didn’t hurt her throat.
The day she could no longer laugh would be the day she would simply give up and allow her soul to pass into God’s hands.
“I was adding notes to my chapter for the register,” she said.
“It took me so long to transcribe that beast I could barely think about my own past.”
She put the heavy leather-bound book away.
Unlike the previous version she had burned many years ago when she’d completed her job of transcribing it, the peony embossed on this cover retained its golden paint.
Only a single scratch marred the front, which sent Zhengyi into a minor fury every time she caught sight of it.
She had kept it pristine for the years she spent transcribing the fifty generations before her.
Then, one careless moment with a pair of embroidery scissors later, it was ruined.
Silliness, to care about such a thing. By the time it came to the next fifth daughter—Yulan’s own granddaughter—the cover would be lovingly worn once more.
“Amuse an old woman,” she said. “What have you been doing?”
Her great-granddaughter served as a buffer for all those fears of the sounds outside, and the stairs, and the fruit that now passed through her like water.
Yulan had come prepared with samples of what she was working on.
Zhengyi sniffed with interest, grateful her nose continued to work amid the ruin of the rest of her body.
The new synthetics were a boon to modern perfumers, enabling them to create the strangest, most unusual odors.
What would their grandmothers have been able to create given such choice?
Perhaps in the future people would wish to smell like more than flowers and spice and wood.
They would smell like—she cast her mind around—like the moon, or dirt, or ink. Strange and wonderful things.
“I want to move the store one day,” Yulan said as she gathered up the discarded papers and tossed them into an embroidered bin. “Ma says no, but I want to bring in more clients.”
Zhengyi raised her eyebrows. “Western ones?”
“Any client who wants us.” Yulan shrugged. “Also, there’s a woman who would like one of your moli scents, if you have the energy.”
“Of course.” Zhengyi struggled to sit up straight and held her breath to force down the cough that rose to her lips.
If the others thought she was too tired, they would decline on Zhengyi’s behalf.
It infuriated her to be treated like a child again, she who used to be the most powerful member of the family.
She had been the one to insist they come to this new country after their wealth had been lost, despite her own daughter’s tears and protests and her refusal to see they’d had no choice.
When they were safe in Canada, Meihui had still complained about deserting China when they were needed to rebuild the country, even though the communists had outlawed bourgeois extravagances such as perfume.
She couldn’t think of those times now, especially while the sun was out.
The day was for living, or what passed for living in this bed.
The nights were for the dead who haunted her dreams. Her son and daughter and husband.
Grandson. Her mother. Her brothers. Then there was Jun, dead as well but so alive in her mind.
Yulan was chattering on about the new client, Mrs. Chen—from one of the old families who had come to Canada from Taiwan, and who had been luckier with their riches than the Huas.
“I don’t like her,” said Yulan, frowning, her hair long and parted in the middle.
So flat, although Zhengyi told her setting it would be more attractive.
“She was rude to Ma, as if Ma were a servant.”
“What was she wearing?”
“A summer fur. Mink, glossy and black around her shoulders. Her cigarette case was gold.”
Zhengyi nodded. “Charge her double.”
Yulan’s narrow eyes grew wide. “Double?”
“You said she was a Chen. I know that family. They respect only two things: themselves and money. The more they pay for something, the more they will value it. Don’t bargain with her.
Act simply as if she would of course pay such a small amount for a treasure.
” She paused, thinking. “Make it triple.”
Yulan looked at her with admiration. “You are a shark.”
Zhengyi snorted. “I am an old woman with no time. She wishes for her true love?”
“She wore a wedding ring.”
“Ah.” Zhengyi adjusted the thick duvet. She loved the way it felt like being embraced by a cloud. Her great-granddaughter came up to adjust the pillows behind her, then frowned and told her to lean forward. Zhengyi did and felt the relief of Yulan drumming lightly on her back.
It was several minutes until she finished coughing, and she discreetly folded the bloodied handkerchief in her hand before Yulan took it away. “Wedding rings are no evidence of love,” Zhengyi said as if their conversation had not been interrupted.
Yulan turned and arranged her face. She had looked in the handkerchief, then. Zhengyi prayed she had the sense to not worry her mother but knew it was a false hope.
“You say that with the tone of a woman who knows from personal experience,” Yulan said.
Zhengyi’s laugh resembled a bark, and this time it hurt. “Every fifth daughter knows this, the same way all Hua women know how difficult it is to trust people outside the family.”
She said this deliberately, for Yulan had been fighting with her mother about her marriage, the same way Zhengyi had fought with her own mother.
Perhaps that was another tradition of Hua women, to fight with their mothers over their husbands.
Or it could be true for all women, and probably some men. Not all people make suitable spouses.
“How did you know my great-grandfather was the man for you?” Yulan asked quietly.
Zhengyi looked at the book by her side and wondered if she could tell Yulan the story she had hesitated to write down.
“I didn’t want to marry your great-grandfather at first,” she said. “He was an old friend, as you know. He understood what I would be doing with my life and that I could not leave my family. I had known him for years.”
“You needed him to come to Canada.”
“I needed a man I could rely on. You know I couldn’t even open a bank account without his permission?” Zhengyi snorted. “The landlord refused to speak with me because I was a woman, so I couldn’t rent the store. Hao had to sign everything.”
“You must have loved him from the beginning?”
“He was good to me.” She wondered how honest to be before deciding the girl was old enough to understand. “I didn’t love him at first. I thought he was a bore. I was in love with a man named Jun. He was a friend of my brother’s, and when he saw me on the street, he liked the look of me.”
Yulan looked shocked. “He said that way back then?”
“Aiya, how old do you think I am? That I lived with dinosaurs?” Zhengyi was insulted. “It was 1900, the dawn of the new era, and I was very pretty those days. Prettier than you wearing that paint on your lips that looks like nothing. Not even pink.”
“Sorry.” Yulan looked appropriately penitent, so Zhengyi continued.
“I had been in Nanjing to see a client with my brothers. Jun had been there as well.”
Zhengyi smiled to herself, unable to explain to Yulan the sheer excitement of being in the city.
Their house in the country was large but quiet, and the sounds and movement of Nanjing kept her holding her breath to absorb everything.
Jun had been so different from the other men in her life, and especially from Hao, who walked leaning forward as if he were being chased and had a permanent line of worry between his brows.
Decades later, the memory of Jun’s smile, slow and soft and all for her, still made her heart leap.
“My mother noticed the change in me first. I told you of the deal we had made.” She looked over at Yulan, forgetting for a moment if she had.
Yulan leaned forward in the battered armchair. “That you could marry who you pleased, as long as she approved. Did she approve of Jun?”
“No.” Zhengyi snorted, but delicately. “She was too smart to let me know. Back in those days I was willful and stubborn, and she knew the moment she said anything bad, I would be in his arms.”
Yulan’s eyebrows shot up, but she quickly schooled her expression. “You wanted to marry him?”
Matrimony had not been uppermost in her mind at the time.
Zhengyi looked at her great-granddaughter, a woman in her twenties with innocent eyes and a wide brow, and judged her too young to have to imagine a wrinkled old woman panting in lust for a man who would look ridiculous by modern standards, in his long robe and queued hair. “Yes,” she said.
“Yet you didn’t.”
“Jun courted me, but I was too blind to see his clothes were mended over and over, although he bragged about the luxuries he bought, or the secret gifts he brought were not expensive, but things he said only a woman like me could appreciate.”
“He wanted your money?”
“He did, but had I been told that, I wouldn’t have believed it.
Or I might not have cared. My mother was sly.
He came to see my brother, and she left a gold pin out as if it had dropped from her hair, and pretended not to notice when it was gone.
He didn’t know she had stationed me near the room. I saw him pick it up.”
“He denied it when you accused him?”
Zhengyi laughed. “He didn’t have to. I learned my lesson the moment the hairpin disappeared and I saw the naked greed on his face. He looked more animal than man. Mother and I both thought it money well spent to find out his true self.”
Yulan stared at her in wonderment. “You weren’t angry she tricked him? And you?”
“I was.” Zhengyi recalled the anger and something she’d forgotten about.
The relief. The knowledge she wouldn’t have to try to explain her moli to Jun, and to beg to be allowed to stay with her family, and her clients, and the work that was her life.
Hao—later Howard—understood and was willing to come to her.
He could be trusted to support her and their children, and that stability had been worth more than anything the most exciting lover in the world could offer.
Yet she still regretted Jun. One of many regrets, to be sure, but there. She had often wondered if Hao had similar sorrows, but never had the nerve to ask.
“Then why did you not say anything?”
“My mother had told me something her mother had told her. In fact, I think all mothers have said this to their daughters in the hope that one day, we will no longer need to pass it on.”
Yulan frowned. “What?”
“That we are at a disadvantage in this world.” Zhengyi closed her eyes for a moment, simply to rest them.
She couldn’t recall the last time she felt truly refreshed, her body without aches and pain.
“We women, I mean. As Huas we have been given a unique gift to help protect ourselves, and we need to be vigilant. Some would take it from us or try to control us. It’s our responsibility to keep ourselves safe for our daughters, and if sometimes that means our own hearts are made heavier, that is the price we pay. ”
She forced her eyes open to see Yulan looking troubled. “Ma told me the same thing when I turned sixteen.”
Ah. Zhengyi reached out a warped hand she no longer recognized as her own. “Perhaps you will not have to tell your own daughter. I chose wisely, in the end. Your great-grandfather respected me and our gift. He was a good man, and I loved him dearly. I miss him.”
They sat in silence as Yulan came over to take Zhengyi’s hand. “You’re tired,” she said gently. “Ma will kill me if I keep you from your rest.”
She checked the water glass was full, and Zhengyi waved her away. “I’ll sleep soon,” she promised. “There’s one last thought I need to get down.”
Yulan looked like she was going to refuse, so Zhengyi summoned her old imperious look, the one that cowed rich clients and worried great-granddaughters alike. Yulan rolled her eyes, the minx. “Don’t tell Ma,” she said.
When she was alone again, Zhengyi took up her pen and let it drop back to the page. She was so tired, and it was late. The morning would be soon enough to write about Jun and the goodness of Hao.
With that, she let her eyes close. Morning. She would do it in the…