All the Flowers in Shanghai (20 page)

I closed my eyes to sleep.

“Mistress, I’ll wake you tomorrow for a bath. We’ll clean you up properly then.”

“No, Yan. Please come back in a minute. I want you to tell me again about your husband and your garden. I’m tired and want to sleep, but I want to hear your voice and the stories of your home. I’m sorry for everything I have asked you to do, but it was necessary.”

I heard Yan leave, the patter of her footsteps down the corridor, and then she stood still. I heard liquid hit the courtyard below and her footsteps returning. She quietly opened the door and slipped inside then sat down on the chair beside my bed. I heard her talking as I drifted away.

Maybe an hour had passed since I had fallen asleep; there was a knock at the door and Yan went to answer it. She told the servant they were too late, everything had already been thrown away. How many must have waited with Xiong Fa, his father, and First Wife? Other members of the family coming up to its three most prominent elders, offering false sympathy while relishing their pain and upset. I imagined Xiong Fa, his Western trousers and shirt covered by a long traditional silk robe, and his father wearing full traditional clothes, his stomach pushing tight against the sash. Father-in-law’s face would show little emotion as usual, just narrow eyes beneath bushy gray eyebrows, made narrower still by the swell of cheeks and jowls below. His silver hair was always slicked back tight against his scalp. I would never see beyond this unchanging facade and, unlike all the other women in the household, I would not try. Xiong Fa would be sitting next to his father, but he would not be still. I imagined him getting out of his seat and walking up and down the room, speaking to the doctor and the fortune-teller about what might happen next. Whether there would ever be a son? Men and more men. What Xiong Fa needed was an heir. I would have to provide one in time.

I thought of Bi then, my imagination racing through a hundred little moments we had shared on the riverbank or walking alone together in the gardens. Watching the shadows I returned to a moment we had spent, lying side by side on our backs, under the huge willow tree by the riverbank, staring up into its branches. They fell to the ground around us like a canopy bed and I tried to trace their origins back to the trunk as they crisscrossed each other. I turned my head to look at Bi and after a few seconds he must have heard my breathing, or maybe sensed my gaze, and met my eyes. We were holding hands for the first time. It had started tentatively with his fingers finding the backs of my hands and following my knuckles down to the fingertips. I had never before had someone caress me, even in this most tentative way. His fingers crept into mine as I opened them wider, and once they were entwined I immediately squeezed them tight, binding us together. I thought then we would never be broken apart. When we met each other’s eyes a few moments later, we both looked down at our fingers and slowly smiled. Together we looked into the water, watching it run endlessly past.

The images faded and I opened my eyes to see the shadows on the wall flickering restlessly.

I
n the morning Yan woke me for a bath. She had brought enough water for two and had ordered the male servants from the lower quarters to bring up two tubs. Within a few minutes of my sitting in the first tub, the water turned red with the clotted blood and after some scrubbing Yan helped me move to the second, in which she bathed me properly and applied oils and lotions.

I felt hollow; everything around me had no substance, only colors and shapes. It was as if with your birth all my organs had been ripped from me as well, leaving a shell. I felt nothing but an emptiness that I knew I would eventually need to fill.

After three days of rest, Xiong Fa came to visit me. He knocked quietly and opened the door slowly. He moved carefully across the room though he barely managed to get a few steps away from the open door. Yan was sitting next to me and on seeing Xiong Fa enter she stood up and started to excuse herself.

“Yan, sit down again. I am very pleased that you have looked after Feng during this difficult time. Feng, I am sorry that we lost our first child, I wanted this very much.”

He stood at the corner of the bed uneasily. I watched him fumble his words and look around the room avoiding me.

“I . . . I . . . I hope you can get better soon. I think it would have been fine if . . .”

Whatever he was to say he stopped himself. He looked at Yan and then his eyes rushed from her past me and to the wall behind me.

“I will see you when you are ready. Rest and become healthy again.”

For nearly four weeks I slept. Sleep punctuated only by meals and reading, I remained in my room letting the hours and days rock slowly forward like an ancient riverboat propelled by a single oarsman. I listened at the window to the world outside. Only a year ago, before I was pregnant, I had longed to visit it but now it had lost all excitement and color for me.

I remembered what Ming had said to me, that First Wife needed to give her husband a grandson and she could never rest until it had happened. Ming understood everything, I wished I could see her again. I had only met her briefly and not seen her since that dance a year ago. I heard she was traveling with her husband, working to further his career in politics and business. I had learned also that she was an exception: educated and confident, a woman with her own opinions and ideas. Many of the older women, like First Wife, hated her because she threatened everything that underpinned their existence. As she had advised, I read whatever books I could find though they meant little to me then. I seemed to exist only in the narrow spaces between the strokes and characters, the columns and the rows, a life with no form, substance, or meaning. Surrounded by all three, I could grasp none for myself.

I had excused myself from family meals by claiming that I was very weak after losing the baby and needed time to recover. First Wife had sent a doctor to check me but he knew nothing and simply agreed with me, telling Father-in-law, First Wife, and Xiong Fa that if I were to try again then I would need rest. So it was, day after day, until one morning Yan rushed into my room. It was just before half past ten and I was still in bed.

“Mistress! I have just received a note from master’s servant, that ugly Ah Cheuk, saying that your parents will be coming tomorrow,” she announced.

I did not move, looking at the ceiling—an unending white. I no longer felt anything.

“What do they want?”

“I don’t know, but it will do you good to see them again.”

“When will they come?”

I did not want to see them. What did they want to see me for? What could they have to say?

“They will come at ten o’clock in the morning. Ah Cheuk gave me this letter from Master Xiong Fa.”

She passed me a sheet of paper. The letter was short, saying merely that my parents had requested to see me after hearing I had lost my son. Xiong Fa finished by saying he thought it was a good idea as it might aid my recovery.

“Thank you, Yan.” I gave her back the note. “I will go back to sleep, you can leave me.”

She waited for a moment, surprised by my coldness, then turned and left me.

I returned to lying on my back and closed my eyes. I saw Xiong Fa, his bulk heavy above me, his hips brushing and rubbing against my thighs. In the blackness I felt his ugliness trying to penetrate me, control and hurt me. I looked up and saw his face, contorted and red, felt his sweat drip on my face. I rubbed my face hard but it remained wet. Nothing seemed to dry my cheeks, his disgusting sweat continued to stain them.

I woke up suddenly, finding my face covered in tears. I pulled the sheet up to it and dried my eyes.

I had nothing to say to my parents. I must see them out of politeness, but this would be the last time.

In the morning I woke up in time to be bathed and then dressed by Yan and two young maids. I lay in the bath in the center of my room and looked out of the window into the clouds. The sun streamed in and warmed my shoulders and face. I hadn’t decided what I would wear. I thought about meeting Ba again and what he would say to me. The last time I had seen him was the final night of the wedding when I was still his little daughter. He had held my hand tight as we parted and now I knew why. He had been anxious for me. He had known what awaited me, and though he would do nothing, he understood, as all men must, what would happen to me after that night. I thought of his face and was sad that he had loved me but failed me, like Grandfather.

I didn’t think of you; just of myself. I refused to think of you.

I thought of Ma and how I would feel when I saw her. She had sent me here assuming that like Sister I would be happy at our success of joining this family and all that I, and she, would gain once I was married. She would expect me to repay my debt to her for arranging this marriage by ensuring she was welcomed into these social circles. I could find nothing inside myself but hatred for her. I would never give her what she felt she was owed but I also wanted her to know that it would always be out of her reach and that all her work and sacrifice was for nothing.

I decided to wear my most expensive cheongsam, with my most beautiful shawl over it. Everything must be perfect; there would be no flaws. I wanted to see her beg for what she really wanted, what she had fought for and used us to obtain.

At ten o’clock I sat like a dutiful daughter, waiting on one of the chairs lining the main hallway. They arrived at five minutes past ten. Ba was dressed in a Western suit with a fedora and Ma in a new cheongsam she must have acquired since I had left. The silk was dull, the colors bright but with no depth, and the embroidery loose. It was poor quality. They stood in the doorway and looked over at me, then, marveling, up at the ceiling three floors above.

“Xiao Feng, you look lovely . . . so grown up,” my father said as he walked toward me. “We heard that you had lost your son. Have you recovered properly?”

He came close to me as if to take my hand but hesitated, perhaps reminding himself that I was married now and he could not be so presumptuous. He looked healthy and his eyes had regained some of the brightness they had had before Sister had fallen ill. Ma looked older still, having never recovered from the death of her beloved eldest child and the anxiety and disgust that had haunted her from having to rely on me to save her reputation.

“Yes, Ba, I feel much better now. I was very tired but feel much stronger just seeing both you and Ma. Yan will show us to a room where we can have tea,” I told them.

She led us to the room where I had been forced to stand prior to the wedding, where First and Second Wife had come to prod and sneer at me, and where Yan herself had first cared for me. Shortly after the ceremony, chairs and tables had been placed in here so the room could serve as a place to meet guests on a formal basis.

We sat down, my parents next to each other and I opposite, a table with a tea set on it between us.

“You have been very lucky. This house is magnificent,” Ma began.

“Yes, I have.”

She looked around the room but was quickly distracted by the beauty of the scrolls that had impressed me nearly two years earlier, even while I stood here and cried.

“I hope that you often pray in thanks to your sister, for what she gave up,” Ma continued.

Never.

I said nothing in reply.

We sat opposite each other in silence. Ba sipped his tea and smiled at me, his legs crossed at the knees and his back held straight against the antique chair carved with its images of cranes at a lakeside.

“I think it would be proper for you to suggest we visit you both for dinner. You were supposed to visit us after the wedding, but you never did and that was very disrespectful,” Ma remarked pointedly.

“I’m sorry that we did not come.”

I do not need to apologize to you.

“How is your health?” Ba asked. “Xiong Fa told me he was very worried.”

“I am well, Ba. It was bad for me at first and then I was so very tired but now I feel much better. Yan has helped me so much.” I looked over at her standing by the door, and smiled. My father followed the direction of my gaze and smiled warmly at her, too.

“How is Grandfather?”

“He is not well. Has not been well since that day . . . but he told me to say hello to you.”

Hello is never enough from one you love.

“Feng, please make sure that you tell your father-in-law and husband that we must come for dinner. Will you do this?” Ma asked, more insistently.

“I will try.”

“Try is not good enough! It is through my efforts you have made this great marriage.”

“Thank you, Ma. But I can only try. We are just women, aren’t we?”

“If you do not do this—show proper respect for me and your father—then I will not speak to you again.”

A promise that should be kept, I decided.

“I will try,” I said, assuming meekness.

“You
will
do this. You are my daughter.”

“Xiao Feng, please do this for your mother,” Ba interrupted.

To me, she was my mother no longer.

“I will try.”

“Don’t keep saying that! All these things are mine . . . I mean, they were meant for your sister,” she corrected herself quickly.

Ba sat quietly next to her. He sipped his tea and looked past me into the distance. He barely moved, as if I or another member of the Sang family would have to give him permission first.

“We were told that you lost your son, that he died at birth.” Ma looked at me hard and directly. “I knew you did not understand what living in this type of family would mean. Your sister understood. She understood the sacrifice and that everything must be done properly and prepared correctly. She would have done all that was necessary to have a son and fulfill her duties.”

She kept her eyes fixed on me, as she used to do when she was commanding my obedience. Her fierce stare did not make me afraid anymore. It was she who did not know what being a Sang meant. And never would.

“Yes, I did lose a son. Ma, Sister is dead she will not be having any sons or daughters. Perhaps one day I will try again.” I sat with my back, neck, and chin held high and straight, as imperious as I could make myself. I thought of Ming then and her poise and sophistication—so far above Ma, with her meager wisdom and endless ambition. I lifted my cup to my lips and sipped lightly, my lips feeling the heat as the liquid touched them. I thought of whether I would ever want to try again and I felt nothing but revulsion at the idea.