All the Flowers in Shanghai (30 page)

He pleaded with me but I couldn’t understand.

“Go back to that little whore.”

He looked down, shook his head, and left me standing alone in the deserted corridor. The belt still lay on the floor where Lu Meng had thrown it, its buckle covered in blood.

I
t was I who had lost face.

I had been wronged and my son stolen from me. Xiong Fa and Lu Meng told me that this was not true, Yu just wanted to be a good servant, they said. But I was certain I knew how good she was being, and ordered that if he could not be a dutiful son he should move from the apartment next to mine. To my shock, he did. Xiong Fa arranged for an apartment to be made ready near to his and I requested that I did not see Yu again.

I had been betrayed by my own son in exchange for the favors of a young stupid whore. Yan told me that she’d been put to work in the laundry room but I had seen her, with my own eyes, walking to school with Lu Meng and slipping into Xiong Fa’s apartment again in the middle of the day.

I cut them all off as they deserved. They would never be allowed into my life again. My days were spent with Yan. I slept late, went alone to the Cathay Hotel for tea in the afternoon, and shopped in the few remaining places that still stocked foreign goods. Shanghai was changing; it had once been the most cosmopolitan of Chinese cities but now the foreigners were largely gone and with them the opulence and luxury that the Sang family had enjoyed for the last hundred years.

I lived alone again, in hatred and anger.

T
he city I knew was very small. I had only experienced the gardens, my school, the backstreets full of peasants and the poor, places to eat and buy beautiful things, this house, my apartment, my window, my dressing table, and my bed. After losing Lu Meng, I withdrew even further. Yan accompanied me at a distance, wary of my narrowing focus. She knew that my world had now become so small, so finely balanced around me, that any alteration to it could be upsetting. My days became locked into a pattern, like a beautiful spiderweb, trembling at the slightest breeze—the smallest truth. Too close and I would not hesitate. I was too frightened
not
to attack.

Every morning in my apartment I would wear the same clothes, a cheongsam and a shawl; I would hold the same conversations, eat the same lunch in the same restaurants, repeat the same walks and visits, greetings and genuflections, again and again, the same feelings, gestures, vocabulary, breaths, colors, the same light, the same darkness . . . all repeated until I felt my muscles and senses could continue without my volition or even the beating of my heart. Each strand of my life was carefully held in place by the others.

Then . . . change.

Suddenly, a flood of new thinking and new demands, millions of minds and bodies commanded by one man, would disassemble my world, piece by piece, without my even noticing at first. They, too, chose to wear the same clothes: not traditional like mine, but of red, black, white, green, and dark blue . . . but all gray nonetheless, because there was no longer any trace of individuality allowed. They repeated the same vocabulary and gestures; they were as unerring in their devotion to their life as I was to mine. Closing their businesses, they gave up their livelihoods, setting aside their own interests for the good of everyone else. They stopped being respectful to their betters, like the Sang family. Red was now the national color; the red of rage. People talked of politics I did not understand; even waiters in the few remaining tearooms and the servants employed by the Sang family held strong views. Our household workers left and could not be replaced. It was all ending. But I was still First Wife of the Sang family, what did I care? Politics was for people who had to work every day to earn their living; for people whose hearts still beat and minds imagined something better.

Increasingly as Yan and I went into the city, even just for a walk on the Bund, people would openly stare at me and my clothes: traditional cheongsams and elegant Western styles made by the best tailors. They would call out names I did not understand. Shanghai was busy but newly hostile, the things I remembered long gone. I returned to the backstreets where I had once strayed with Grandfather, but they seemed dirty and vulgar to me and I could not understand what I had seen in them that had made me enjoy them so much and want to keep returning. Posters were plastered on walls, calling for change; students were going from door to door, rousing the people to think and believe in something new.

Gestures, vocabulary, and manners—all had suddenly changed. People openly showed that they did not respect me.

“Capitalist roaders, greedy pigs!” a young woman shouted at me as I passed. “You should be ashamed, wearing those fine clothes when others are struggling. Who was exploited so you could live like this?”

I stopped. The streets were so narrow here that when I turned around she was almost upon me. Her face was pretty and delicate, her hair neatly arranged in pigtails. Her lips were thin and her skin almost translucent; a beauty that would have attracted Father-in-law, Xiong Fa, and their friends. But her eyes were full of hatred, and she brought her left hand up and brandished her fist in front of my face.

“Your days are running out,” she shouted at me. “Get out of here! You don’t belong here . . . get out of our country.”

She was not part of the world I controlled. I was frightened. Yan took hold of my hand as I looked at the young girl. My maid had not held my hand for years. Our fingers instinctively entwined. She pulled me through the crowds of onlookers. As we left the backstreets, my mind was blank. Faces faded in and out of my vision. We reached the main road and the car was waiting. Yan quickly opened the door for me to get in. Behind the curtains of the car I was able to breathe and felt safe. Yan pushed the cloth aside and looked outside to check no one had followed us and then asked the driver to take us home.

I was still upset when we arrived at the back entrance to the house.

I had hidden you away in the back of my mind since Xiong Fa had confronted me in the corridor, again pushing the possibility of your existence to a place where you would be lost to me.

I got out of the car to see Xiong Fa with Yu and an old couple standing on the steps to the back door.

The old couple looked so happy to see Yu. She smiled, the scar framing one side of her smile, making her face slightly misshapen. It had been beautiful before. I knew every detail of it. I had been extremely jealous of her high cheekbones, curved lips, deep brown eyes, and her youth.

As I stood by the open car door still barely out of the backseat, Yan took my hand urgently. It had been years since she had held me like this and I looked at her sharply but her look silenced me.

“Mistress, that couple. I gave the baby to them. I need to tell you mistress.”

I was not listening.

“But when I gave the baby away I gave them a drawing of the family seal so they would know and it would be recognized.”

I looked at Xiong Fa and, seeing me, he smiled sadly, showing me he understood and he waved me to come to them. I could not move. He had known for so long. I had hit you, scarred my own daughter. I thought he had been with you. I wanted to close my eyes but I needed to watch those two loving people throw their arms around you. The old woman put her hand to your right cheek. She touched the scar, her finger gauged its depth. I looked behind me. The gate was still open.

Xiong Fa started to walk toward me. He shouted at me.

“Feng, come here.”

I could not face any of you, even Yan, my maid, who had disobeyed me to do what was right.

I turned to look at the gate again and the open road behind it, full of traffic and crowds of people. I looked at your face. My face as a young girl. You said something to the old couple, these strangers who were your parents. They turned and looked at me. They must have been angry but they knew they could not do anything to me. I was a Sang. My mother had married me so well that nothing was sacred; I could treat my own daughter as a creature, to beat and scar.

I stepped backward. My heart raced but everything else slowed. These poor people who had raised you in the countryside, who had done everything to help you survive, embraced you with such love.

Xiong Fa continued to walk toward me, beckoning me to join them.

Everything crashed together in my mind and I stumbled backward. My left hand caught the side of the car to steady me. I looked again at the deep scar on your face, the pained expression of the woman, your mother, hurt as she touched your cheek . . . and I turned around and ran through the gate and out into the road.

As I ran I shouted, telling myself that none of this could be possible; screaming that I could not be held responsible. I stopped and thought of turning back then but I could not face that house again, with its endless corridors, balconies, and impenetrable darkness. I couldn’t let any of you see me. I thought of Lu Meng, and what my beloved son would think I could not imagine. I walked on, ran, tripped and fell, and was picked up by passersby. I had torn my clothes and scraped myself.

The streets began to grow dark and lights appeared here and there. I kept going until I recognized a street corner and realized I had come to the gardens. A wind had started blowing and rained dust into my face and eyes. I stopped to rub it out and catch my breath as well. My shocked mind was starting to settle. There was nothing left for me to hide anymore.

Chapter 21

I
t was cold. I stood up straight and listened. Everything was quiet, but for dogs barking and someone farther down the road packing up a food stall. I thought of Grandfather leaving on the day it was agreed I should marry. I stood across the road from the old house and its bombed-out remains. I had not wanted to see any of my family again after what they had done, and now I did not want to see you or Lu Meng after what
I
had done.

I saw the entrance to the gardens, a place of only happy memories for me, though I did not think of what I would do once I was inside. Maybe just walk. You marry from the family you are born into to the man’s family: one life into another, everything that is familiar and intimate is left behind, sacrificed for the comfortable confines of another’s world. I looked down the path to the front door of my old home; even in the darkness I could see that the house had been damaged. The window through which I had watched Grandfather leave that last day was smashed and a part of the wall broken. He had always known what would happen to me. He left me as I leave you now. All of us so weak, knowing what should be done but unable to do it.

The entrance to the neighboring gardens had been locked and boarded up, but someone had broken in and made a hole to enter by. I walked inside. They had run completely wild. Whereas before the beginning of the war the entrance to the gardens had been properly kept and the rest only lightly pruned by Grandfather and the gardeners, now nature had been allowed to thrive unfettered. The grass was tall and the willows huge and dense. In the distance I saw that the boundary trees had grown much fuller, and underneath them there were scattered small fires surrounded by people huddled together. I took off my shoes and, holding them in my hand, walked barefoot in the direction of the flames. I had not felt grass between my feet since I was last there. Much of it was now waist-high. I felt it brushing my hands as I passed.

The moon lit up the bushes and the shrubs, which cast huge black shadows on the ground that swayed like strange animals from a child’s storybook. I reached one of the fires and the people looked up at me and smiled, then returned to hugging themselves for warmth. One old man’s eyes remained fixed on me as he rested his chopsticks on an old bowl half-filled with rice.

“Mistress, what are you doing here in that nice cheongsam?” he asked politely.

I looked at him and smiled.

“Don’t go north, there are many problems brewing in Beijing. Some say new revolutions will be launched against the rich.” He went back to chewing his rice.

I sat down in front of the fire, closed my eyes, and saw the hot orange and yellow light through my eyelids. I heard the wind whip through the flames, making the fire spit and crackle. I opened my eyes again and looked up to watch the trees swaying heavily, the darkness wrapping itself around them. Their branches waved me on, beckoning me again, as they had many years ago, to join them and be swept up into the air forever. I wanted to be carried away, to forget I had ever left here, and live again in those happy days with Grandfather and Bi.

I wept. While I did so an old lady stood up on bent legs. She came to me and put a shawl around me. I thanked her and crouched there for several hours, tossed between deep sleep and nightmares. When I woke it was still night and I left the huddled group to visit Ma’s and Ba’s house. What was left of it was boarded up as the entrance to the gardens had been but again someone had forced an entry. I did not stop to consider that the invaders might be sheltering there, and luckily it was empty. I went straight into the living area. A bomb had hit the house at the back and killed Ma, Ba, and the cook; the rest of the servants had left and presumably taken whatever they could carry. The courtyard was full of rubble and I saw that there were several piles of ashes there. For a moment I wondered where I wanted to go and then realized that I only wanted to see the room at the top of the house, the one where the seamstress had worked on the wedding dress. The room had frightened me before and I felt afraid now, but I remembered the seamstress whose hands had created such beauty and who had sat so peacefully, and I needed to see that room to remind myself that I, too, had once been a simple little girl.

The stairs creaked as I felt my way up slowly, tripping on things I could not see. I inched my way to the doorway. I looked in and saw the mannequin still standing in the back of the room. It was lit by the moonlight and a faint glow from the streetlights entering through the broken window behind it. As before, I dared not enter the room but stood at the entrance, leaning against the doorway as I had as a child, the mannequin standing facing me. It was covered in white dust, perhaps ash or whitewash from the ceiling that had fallen in the center of the room. It had a number of pins embedded in its sides and front; it looked as if, having been abandoned, it had entered hibernation, barely alive, simply holding itself up until someone came to breathe life into it again with new colors and textures. That was how my heart felt. I needed to find someone who would bring it new life.