Pearl of China (8 page)

C
HAPTER
8

At Sunday service Absalom announced his family’s departure. “God will prevail” were his farewell words to the crowd. He promised to return as soon as he settled his family in Shanghai.

“Monkeys will scatter when the tree falls,” Papa said. He was worried.

Led by Absalom, the converts packed the church’s valuables and hid them within their own homes. Carie’s piano was a big problem. There was no way to hide it. Papa volunteered to go to Bumpkin Emperor and his sworn brothers for help. The warlords were enemies of the Boxers.

The first thing Papa said to Bumpkin Emperor was “A smart rabbit digs three holes for security. If I were you, I wouldn’t miss this opportunity to make friends with the foreign god.” Papa went on to tell how the Western fleets had recently destroyed the Chinese Imperial Navy.

Bumpkin Emperor took Carie’s piano and hid it in his concubine’s mansion.

Carie was relieved. She thanked Papa. For the last time, she trimmed her roses and cleaned her yard. Watering each of her plants, she broke down. She sat on the dirt and wept.

Pearl and I exchanged farewell souvenirs. I gave her a pink silk fan painted with flowers. Pearl gave me a hairpin with a silver phoenix. She would be leaving in ten days, perhaps sooner.

I shut my eyes and told myself to go to sleep that night. But my eyes stayed open. I tossed until dawn. NaiNai told me to forget about Pearl and to spend time with other girls in town. Over the next few days I tried, but without much luck. People didn’t care to be my friend. Since I’d begun to attend the church school, I had changed. I didn’t like the town girls, whom I considered narrow-minded and shallow. I couldn’t help but compare them with Pearl, who was kind, curious, and knowledgeable. The town girls fought over food and territory, and they fought among themselves. They could be best friends and worst enemies and best friends again all in one day. They often singled someone out to be the enemy of the moment. Then they attacked her by embarrassing her. I avoided them because I knew that Papa and NaiNai’s past would be used to torment me.

Unlike peasant daughters, who were too burdened and exhausted to have time to themselves, the Chin-kiang town girls had time on their hands. Many of their parents were shop owners and merchants. They loved to pretend to be big-city girls. But they knew very little about the big cities, like Shanghai, where Carie once lived before Pearl was born. The Chin-kiang girls looked down on peasants. They made fun of their uncivilized habits and forgot that they were not much different.

I had long accepted the reality that I was considered an odd character among the town girls. Catfighting didn’t suit me. Since I had become Pearl’s friend, I had been the target of these girls. The fact that Pearl and I were so close drove them mad. They watched us with jealousy and envy. Now I was having trouble. I couldn’t break into the town girls’ social circle. I feared that people would say I had been abandoned.

I played cards with the town girls one afternoon. My heart ached for Pearl. She would be here only a few more days and I wanted to be with her. I forced myself to concentrate on the cards. One girl cheated and I caught her. She argued and denied everything. She didn’t mean aggression, nor did she say anything to provoke my anger, but I attacked her. I stopped the game and called the girl a liar. Step-by-step I exposed her tricks. The cards flew from my hands. The girl was embarrassed and exploded. No one was able to break us apart until Pearl arrived.

Pearl knew it was not my character to fight with others. She knew that I was troubled by her departure. She carefully wiped the blood off my forehead with her handkerchief. The spot on my left cheek where my opponent had scratched me with her fingernails swelled. Looking at me with her gentle blue eyes, Pearl sighed.

“I don’t need you here,” I said.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“No.”

“It’s not like we won’t see each other forever,” she said in a soft voice.

“But when? When will you come back?” I cried out.

She was unable to answer.

It was a clear day when Pearl’s family boarded a steamboat that came from the upper Yangtze River. The townspeople filled the pier to see them off. Papa, NaiNai, Carpenter Chan, Lilac, and their twins, Double Luck David and Double Luck John, and a newborn son were among the crowd. Absalom had recently baptized the boys and named the newborn Triple Luck Solomon.

Carpenter Chan nodded and gave his word.

Wang Ah-ma begged Carie to take her with them.

“My husband’s mind is set,” Carie told her tearfully. “You must go your own way. We no longer have the money to keep you.”

“I’ll work for free!” Wang Ah-ma stuffed her mouth with the corner of her blouse to avoid crying aloud. “I’ll cost you no money. I have no one else, no place to go. You and the children are my family.”

The actors from the Wan-Wan Tunes opera troupe came. Many of them, including the nasty turtle-faced lady, had become Christians to Absalom’s credit. “Actors travel,” Absalom once told Papa. “They will be perfect to spread the Gospel.”

The actors wished Pearl’s family a safe journey and sang their new aria, adapted from the Bible.

Pearl promised to return, but she and I both knew that it was wishful thinking. The Boxers were moving toward the coast and might reach Shanghai soon. America would be the place where Carie and her family would eventually end up.

Pearl and I struggled to find pleasant farewell words, but it was impossible.

We bade good-bye and embraced silently.

The steamboat pulled away from the pier, creating big ripples in the water.

I waved as my tears ran.

The ripples went away. The water became calm again.

I stood on the empty pier and a Tang dynasty poem Pearl used to recite came to mind.

C
HAPTER
9

The day I was engaged to be married, I was fourteen. I had no say in the decision. The town’s matchmaker told Papa, “The only medicine that will help your mother regain her health will be news of Willow’s marriage.”

I wanted to reach Pearl desperately, but our lives had taken separate paths. Pearl had enrolled in a missionary middle school in Shanghai. Her life was a world away from mine.

“Shanghai is like a foreign country,” Pearl wrote.“The international military forces maintain peace here. My father is waiting for things to calm down in the countryside so that he can return to Chin-kiang. At this moment, he is translating the New Testament. At night, he reads out loud from the original Greek text and Pauline theology. He also chants intonations of Chinese idioms. Mother has fallen ill. She misses her garden in Chin-kiang.”

The more dowry that arrived from my future husband, the worse I felt. It didn’t seem to occur to Papa and NaiNai that I deserved better. Papa was angry when I begged to go to school in Shanghai. NaiNai told me that for a small-town girl, “the more she fancies the outside world, the worse her fate will be.”

*          *          *

I had written to tell Pearl that her bungalow home had been set on fire when the Boxers raided the town. To save the church, Papa had replaced the statue of Jesus Christ with the sitting Buddha. Papa told the Boxers that he was a Buddhist and that the church was his temple. To strengthen his lie, Papa dressed like a monk. The converts chanted the Buddhist sutras as the Boxers inspected the property. It was not hard because all the converts were former Buddhists.

Papa begged Bumpkin Emperor to help protect the church. “The foreign god will return the favor,” he promised. “God will save a seat for you in heaven. You will be reunited with all your dead family members and have an extravagant banquet.”

Papa’s tricks didn’t last. Once the Boxers discovered that the “monks” were Christian converts, they were slaughtered. A member of the Wan-Wan Tunes opera was dragged out in the middle of their performance and killed in front of Papa’s eyes.

Carpenter Chan and Lilac were on the Boxers’ list to be beheaded.

They barely escaped.

Papa was the last convert to flee the town. On the morning of the Chinese New Year, the Boxers caught him. A public execution was to be held in the town square.

Papa begged the Boxers to let him live. He admitted that he was a fool.

The Boxers laughed and said they needed to show the public that the Christian God was a hoax. “If your God is real, call him, because we are going to hang you!”

Papa fell upon his knees and hailed, “Absalom!”

Although Papa didn’t believe in God, he believed in Absalom. When a voice answered Papa’s call, everyone was stunned. The voice came from the riverbank. A tall figure jumped off a boat. It was Absalom! His hands were above his head waving a piece of paper. Behind him were Bumpkin Emperor, General Lobster, and General Crab.

“Old Teacher!” the converts screamed.

The Boxers carried on. They slipped the noose around Papa’s neck.

Five more years would pass before Pearl and I would see each other again. By then I was nineteen and Pearl was seventeen. Our reunion happened soon after our ruler, Dowager Empress Tsu Hsi, died. It was said that she had exhausted herself putting out the wildfire that was the Boxer Rebellion. The new emperor she appointed was only three years old. The nation went into a long period of mourning for the Dowager Empress. Nothing had changed locally, although the country was said to have become a headless dragon.

I went to the pier to greet Pearl and Carie the day they returned to Chin-kiang. I was nervous because my appearance had changed. My dress and hairstyle indicated that I was a married woman. Instead of a braid, I wore a bun in the back of my head. In letters, I had avoided mentioning my married life to Pearl. What was there to say? The moment I entered my husband’s home, I found out that he was an opium addict. The matchmaker had lied. His fortune had been squandered long ago. The family was a fabulously embroidered evening gown chewed by moths. He was in so much debt that the servants had fled. My husband had borrowed money to pay for my dowry. The marriage was my mother-in-law’s idea. It was “one stone for two birds.” Her son would get a concubine and she would get an unpaid servant.

My existence was about serving my husband, his mother, and his elder wives and their children. I cleaned beds, emptied chamber pots, washed sheets, and swept the gardens. I had to sneak out to see Pearl and Carie. My husband would never have given me permission had I asked.

Pearl had grown into a stunning beauty. She was tall and slender and dressed in Western clothes. She carried the air of a free spirit. Her smile was full of sunshine.

“Willow, my friend, look at you!” she called from a hundred yards away with arms wide open. “What a pretty lady you have become!”

“Welcome home” was all I could utter.

Laughing radiantly, Pearl hugged me. “Oh, Willow, I missed you so much!”

Papa, Carpenter Chan, and others came. We helped carry the luggage to Absalom’s newly rented house. It was a former merchant’s home located on the top of the hill.

“What a beautiful house!” Pearl marveled. “Father, how have you allowed us such luxury?”

“It is a haunted house,” Absalom explained. “No locals will take it. The rent is very cheap. I took advantage of the opportunity since I don’t believe in Chinese ghosts.”

As soon as Pearl settled in, we took off to climb the hills. Pearl’s younger sister, Grace, wanted to join us, but Pearl and I flew away together. Pearl told me that Shanghai was very flat and that she had missed the mountains and hills. She had been itching to go on a hike. She spoke about ideas I had never heard of. She described a world I could only imagine. Her Mandarin vocabulary was more sophisticated. She told me that she was getting ready for college in America. “After that, I will travel the world!”

I didn’t have much to share, so I told her how we had survived the Boxers. In the middle of my story, I stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Pearl asked.

“Nothing.”

“Willow,” she called gently.

I told myself to smile and to turn away from dark thoughts. But my tears betrayed me.

“Is it your marriage?” she asked, her hand reaching for mine.

My marriage was not uncommon for a Chinese girl, but it was too much for Pearl.

I told Pearl that on my husband’s good days he smoked and gambled; on his bad days, he would take out his anger on me. He would beat me and sometimes rape me. I had to be obedient toward my mother-in-law. As far as she was concerned, it was my fault that the family was going down the drain.

“This is slavery!” Pearl concluded, her features twisting into an expression of anger.

Pearl told me that she had worked with girls in Shanghai who had been forced into abusive marriages or prostitution. “You don’t have to hide your broken arm inside your sleeve anymore, Willow,” she said.

My husband got himself a new concubine. It surprised me because I knew he didn’t have any money. He ignored me when I questioned him. Tradition gave a man the right to dispose of his wife at will. To protest, every morning I went and stood by the village well that everyone shared. I shouted out the terrible things his family had done to me. But I received no sympathy. The village elder criticized me and said that I should commit suicide.

Standing up for myself only gave me a bad reputation. Papa considered me selfish, while NaiNai called me foolish. I didn’t feel completely deserted because I had Pearl’s support. I went to Carie and offered to help with the school and with setting up the new clinic. Besides teaching me English, Carie trained me and other girls to become nurses.

Pearl and I continued to spend time together, but our friendship was no longer the same. The more she looked forward to college in America, the less we could say to each other. She was sensitive and knew how I felt about my own future.

I didn’t believe she would return to China after college. She seemed less sure now too. After all, it had been Carie’s long-held wish to return to America.

Absalom was not interested in Pearl’s departure, nor was he sad that she might never return. Absalom was more excited about his upcoming preaching tour farther inland.

Papa was a different person when he was with Absalom. He respected and worshipped him.

“You can tell just from Absalom’s face that he is no ordinary human being,” Papa told the Sunday crowd. “Absalom experiences a radiant joy when he lifts his hand to bless you. You can feel that God is with him.”

Pearl again admitted that she was jealous of the Chinese converts who received Absalom’s affection. It was one of the reasons she wanted to go away. She told me that she was even unhappy about the donkey Papa had bought for Absalom. “The animal has enabled Father to take farther and longer trips.”

“But your father is happy,” Papa told Pearl.

Although Pearl agreed, she said, “Sometimes I don’t think he is my father. He will tolerate others interrupting his sermon with a question, but never me.”

“Will you consider marriage?” I asked Pearl. “And if so, when?”

She laughed. “I’ll see what happens when I get to America.”

Pearl said that she had already started missing China. “I may have been saying that America is my real home, but I doubt that it is true.”

Pearl knew that revealing her thoughts would disturb Carie, so she kept them to herself. “I never intended to defy my ancestors or Western culture,” she told me. “It is just that China is what I know.”

Carie had been in a good mood although she had been ill. She was happy to be able to grow roses and have a garden again. She said that with Pearl gone she would have more time to sit in the garden and read her favorite Western novels. Carie didn’t want Pearl to know that she dreaded her departure.

Pearl was not fooled by her mother’s cheerfulness. She knew that her mother wept behind her back. Pearl worried that Carie might need her when she was in America.

I assured Pearl that I would take care of her mother and would keep her informed about Carie’s health.