A Hundred Flowers (9 page)

*   *   *

Away from the villa, the short distance brought clarity. Kai Ying was free to think and feel everything she’d hidden when she was at home. She had to stay strong and not upset her family any more than they had already been. During Tao’s convalescence, their well-meaning neighbors had come by with oranges and starfruit to welcome Tao home. And though she was grateful, Kai Ying just wanted their lives to return to some kind of normalcy. Sometimes, she heard the low murmurs of their neighbors out in the courtyard consoling her father-in-law. “He’s a strong boy,” they whispered. Still, no one dared to talk about the other small deaths that might remain: the fracture that hadn’t set right, the limited use of his right leg, the pronounced limp the doctor said might always stay with him. How would he get along in an already difficult world? Kai Ying had spent many sleepless nights lying in bed worrying. She wasn’t alone.

Almost every night, Kai Ying heard her father-in-law’s muffled coughing from down the hall and knew he was having a hard time sleeping. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since Sheng was taken away. Sometimes she heard him moving quietly down the hallway, opening the balcony doors and stepping outside. She pictured him staring out into the night as if he could disappear into it. So far, none of the teas or soups she had brewed for him had restored his energy, not even those boiled with the expensive, and more potent, black ginseng. The few times she did try to talk with him, he became distant and uncomfortable around her, much as he was when she and Sheng were first married and she came to live with them.

The smallest details still returned to her, how young and frightened she had been, how her mother-in-law, Liang, had been more than welcoming, while Wei greeted her with a quiet reserve, watching her, scrutinizing. Even if he didn’t say a word, Kai Ying felt his disappointment, the thinly veiled knowledge that his son could have married a better educated woman from a wealthier Guangzhou family. She was an outsider and Dongshan was a world away from where she grew up in Zhaoqing. Her parents were modest and simple dry goods merchants, while the Lee villa was the largest house she’d ever been in. After she entered the household, Wei was always cordial but he seemed awkward and uneasy with her, always surprised when he ran into her in the kitchen or hallway. “He’s slow to warm up to people,” Sheng reassured her. “Don’t worry.”

Kai Ying had never forgotten the joy she felt when her father-in-law finally introduced her as his
sun po,
his daughter-in-law, to an old family friend for the first time almost a year after her marriage. Still, in the back of her mind, Kai Ying always wondered if the only reason she was finally accepted by Wei into the family was because of his beloved wife’s failing health. The thought still stung.

*   *   *

Over the years, Kai Ying thought she and Wei had found a common ground of support and understanding. But since Sheng’s arrest, she felt it gradually slipping away when she needed it most. Did Wei think she knew about the letter Sheng had written? Did he blame her for not stopping him? He’d become distant with everyone except Tao. Now after Tao’s accident, her father-in-law had fallen into a new state of distress. She was not only worried about his physical health, but his emotional state as well. Kai Ying heard Sheng’s voice telling her once again,
“It takes the same amount of energy to worry about the worst thing that can happen as it does to hope for the best. It’s up to you to choose.”

Where was he?

Tao

While his mother was gone Tao consoled himself. Not only was his cast coming off, but tomorrow night was Moon Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival when the moon was at its fullest. It was one of his favorite celebrations of the year. He loved eating the round palm-sized moon cakes filled with sweet bean and lotus seed paste, a hard-boiled egg yolk in the middle, full like the moon. They would begin the celebration with a special dinner and he would help them decorate for Moon Festival by hanging red and gold lanterns in the courtyard. The table would be set extravagantly with his grandmother’s good blue and white bowls with the rice pattern around the edge. His
ye ye
told him the blue and white colors in porcelain vases and bowls had become popular during the Yuan Dynasty, when artists began to express themselves freely instead of following the orders of the emperor and his court. They were his grandmother’s favorite dishes. And next to the bowls would be their ivory chopsticks instead of their old wooden ones.

And just before it turned dark, he and his grandfather would go outside to the courtyard where his
ye ye
would tell him the legend of Houyi, the archer, and his wife the beautiful maiden Chang’e, the Moon Goddess of Immortality. While they always remained the central characters, his grandfather explained, there were several versions of the same myth, and each year he told Tao a different one.

The beginning of the story always remained the same: Houyi was commanded by the Emperor Yao to use his archery skills to shoot down nine of the ten suns to keep the earth from burning up. Upon completing his task, the emperor gave the famed archer a pill that granted him eternal life. Knowing its value, Houyi left the pill at home with Chang’e when he was sent away on another mission for the emperor. From there, the story of why Chang’e swallowed the pill of immortality splintered off into different versions. So far, Tao’s favorite account was Chang’e having to protect the pill from Peng, one of Houyi’s apprentice archers, who forcefully tried to take the pill from her. Knowing that she was unable to fight him off, her only choice was to swallow the pill herself. Afterward, Chang’e escaped and flew up into the sky. When Houyi returned home to find his wife gone, he tried to follow her but was forced to turn back when Chang’e reached the moon, where she discovered she could never return to earth and to her husband. Houyi eventually settled on the sun and was able to visit his beloved wife only once a year on the night of Moon Festival.

Tao wondered if his father would return and visit them tomorrow night. Even once a year was better than nothing. He knew the first thing he would do when he gazed up at the full moon was to close his eyes and wish that his
ba ba
could be guided home again by the moon’s bright light.

*   *   *

Tao heard his grandfather downstairs and hurried to eat his piece of bread and drink his soy milk. Outside the window he watched as the leaves of the kapok tree moved back and forth as if they were waving to him.

Tomorrow at this time, everything would return to normal. He’d be downstairs in the kitchen eating breakfast with his mother and
ye ye.
The cast would be off and Tao would be as light as Houyi the archer flying through the sky. He would grow taller and learn two dozen characters and see his friends again. His classmates would gather around him in the yard and he would tell them the story of his falling from the tree, exaggerating small details just as his grandfather, who was the best storyteller in Guangzhou, often did. Tao would add just a few feet to the height from which he had fallen, or tell them he’d seen the peaks of White Cloud Mountain right before he slipped.
Weren’t you scared?
they would ask.
Didn’t it hurt?
He would look his classmates straight in the eyes, but he wouldn’t tell them that he didn’t remember anything after hitting the ground. There wasn’t time to be scared, he’d tell them. It had all happened so quickly. But he knew if it were a myth his grandfather was telling them, he’d have flown up into the sky like Chang’e and Houyi, and would now be living on the moon or the sun.

Kai Ying

As Kai Ying approached the marketplace, it appeared as if all of Dongshan had made an early start shopping for Moon Festival. The stalls were crowded three or four persons deep as bargaining voices filled the air. In stacked wooden cages, the live chickens clucked frantically, growing more anxious with all the noise. Kai Ying had worn a lightweight gray cotton tunic and pants and still found she was perspiring in the humidity. She longed for the cooler days of winter. Instead of entering into the throng to fight for what little there was, she quickly turned the corner to avoid the pushing crowds. She still had a piece of salted fish at home and decided to take her chances. Kai Ying kept walking farther downtown until she was a few streets away from the bustling market and could walk briskly down the street and toward the Dai On herb shop. She would pick up a few herbs she needed first, then double back to buy a box of moon cakes from Mr. Lam’s shop before returning to the marketplace to see what was left.

*   *   *

The scent of roasting chestnuts on the street reminded Kai Ying of the first day she stepped out of the train station, having just arrived in Guangzhou to study with Herbalist Chu. Her hometown of Zhaoqing was another world away. Kai Ying had grown up surrounded by natural beauty, a gift she never realized until she arrived in Guangzhou and was confronted by the incessant noise and the congestion of so many people, buildings, and streets. She found the city suffocating and everyone unfriendly. The bicycles and pedicabs whizzed around her as if she were just an obstacle in the way. Kai Ying felt as if she were constantly stumbling those early days in Guangzhou. She never ventured far from Herbalist Chu’s shop, feeling safe within its narrow and crowded rooms. She was terribly homesick, that first month in Guangzhou, missing her family and the mountains and lakes of Zhaoqing. There wasn’t a day she didn’t want to get on a train to return home.

*   *   *

The Dai On herb shop seemed frozen in time. Kai Ying paused a moment before she entered the old building, the faded sign above the door buckled with age. It appeared as it must have for generations of Herbalist Chu’s family, and just as it did when she first stepped in the door at nineteen. She was immediately confronted by the familiar smell of mold and musk from the mushrooms, tinged with the sweetly medicinal scent from the herbs, berries, and dried dates. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness of the room, her gaze resting on the wall of narrow drawers behind the dark wood counter that held the hundreds of herbs she’d come to know so well. Kai Ying felt immediately comforted, as if she were falling into the familiar embrace of an old friend.

The past returned to Kai Ying every time she stepped into the herb shop. She was that young woman again, overwhelmed by the sheer number of different herbs each drawer held. There were six hundred commonly used herbs and thousands more that weren’t used on a regular basis. And while each herb possessed a singular quality, it took a combination of several herbs working together to balance the five major organs: the liver, heart, spleen, lungs, and kidneys. Herbalist Chu told her that the really expensive, hard-to-get herbs and the good-quality ginseng were locked away in the back room. It was where he also kept the high-priced ground deer antlers that could “make a man young again,” he once said, and winked at her, revealing the powdery substance that left a brownish film in the palm of his hand. At the time, Kai Ying couldn’t imagine how she would remember every herb and she was in constant doubt of her effectiveness and intelligence to succeed as an herbalist, or a healer of any kind.

As Kai Ying looked around the shop now, she wondered if Herbalist Chu had hidden away all the expensive herbs before the Communist takeover. On the wall opposite the drawers were shelves of large glass jars, which once contained dried deer tail, shark’s fin, dried scallops, fish maw, and bird’s nest. The floor was still cluttered with large wooden barrels no longer brimming with dried
Lingzhi,
or spiritual mushrooms, citrus peels, dried fruits, cinnamon bark, wild yam root, and poor man’s ginseng. Still, it was one of the best herb stores in all of Guangzhou.

Kai Ying looked up at the top row of drawers. They were so high up she’d had to climb a ladder to get to them. The third drawer from the left once held her favorite secret of all, the small, translucent white and pink pearls that Herbalist Chu ground into a fine powder and mixed into a cream that kept skin young and smooth. At the time, women came from all over to buy the expensive cream, the smaller the pearls, the greater their value. There were handfuls of tiny pearls in the drawer and Kai Ying liked to hold their lightness in the palm of her hand, knowing only the wealthy could afford such an extravagance. Each month she slipped a small pearl into her pocket, one for every month she had to stay and study in Guangzhou. Kai Ying knew it was wrong, but she told herself it wasn’t really stealing because she intended to put them all back in the drawer before she left. If Herbalist Chu knew, he never said a word. She kept the pearls hidden away in a small cotton pouch in her upstairs bureau, each one a reminder that she was closer to returning home.

At the time, Kai Ying believed the cluttered rooms of the herb shop were all that a small-town girl needed until she returned home to Zhaoqing. But then she met Sheng and married into a family of scholars, and remained in a city she had only meant to visit.

*   *   *

After Kai Ying bought the herbs and moon cakes, she made her way back to the market, where the crowds seemed only to have swelled with the heat. Shoppers laden with bags quickly surrounded her. Street dogs roamed the area, sniffing at the bags, whining for scraps until they were pushed or kicked away. The exuberance Kai Ying felt just an hour ago was now gone. She bought oranges and taro, which grew heavy and cumbersome as she pushed her way from one stall to another. All she wanted at the moment was to go home and see how Tao was doing.

Kai Ying quickly turned around when she heard her name called. It was one of their neighbors, Mrs. Sai, who approached her complaining about yet another ailment she hoped Kai Ling would have a remedy for. Her illnesses changed day by day.

“I have a terrible cough,” she said, before she’d even said hello. “I barely slept last night I was coughing so much.” She turned and coughed weakly.

“Come see me tomorrow,” Kai Ying said, and smiled. “I’ll be away this afternoon.”