Red Skies (The Tales of the Scavenger's Daughters) (25 page)

“Most everyone I talked to acted as if they couldn’t understand my Chinese. Even when I pointed at my watch, they simply told me the time or tried to send me to one of the vendors that sold knock-off watches,” Max said.

Mari set the photo of Mei down on the table and leaned back in her chair. “We may have to come back another day. I’m getting worried about the girls.” She didn’t mention that she also felt tired to the bone. Even though she’d been eating more lately, with all of Max’s grocery store trips filling up her pantry, she still wasn’t sleeping. Nightmares of Bolin hanging from the closet made her afraid to close her eyes, and when she finally did, it was only for short periods at a time.

The waitress returned and set two cans of Coke on the table. Max reached for one, and Mari caught his grimace that it wasn’t cold. She looked at the young girl that waited for the money and smiled, then asked her to bring them two cups of ice.

The girl nodded, walking away quickly as she worked to push a stray hair back into her ponytail. She looked a bit harried and for a second, Mari felt bad for asking her to do more work. But then she remembered how Max tipped and knew the girl would be rewarded for the extra effort.

“I forgot it’s not easy to get cold drinks here,” Max said.

Mari shrugged. “Not at these small places. It takes too much electricity to make ice, and anyway, warm liquids are much better for your system than cold. But I’ll admit, I enjoy a cold drink when I’m overheated.”

It was a nice day—the sun shone brightly overhead and made Mari sweat from all the trekking around. A cold Coke sounded wonderful to Mari. A nap did, too, but she doubted she’d be so lucky.

“What if we don’t find anyone? Are your parents prepared to take the girls to their home?”

Mari hesitated. “They will—but it would put them in a bad position to take the girls out of this jurisdiction. If caught, I’d be subjecting them to some possible serious charges. I’m not ready to give up on finding Mei’s family and seeing if they’ll take them both.”

Max nodded, and Mari was thankful he didn’t tell her how hopeless it all was. She wasn’t stupid—she knew the chances of ever reuniting either girl with her family were tiny.

The waitress returned and set the two plastic cups of ice down on the table. “Thirty renminbi,” she said.

Mari didn’t even attempt to pay for her own. She’d spent enough time with Max to know he’d never allow it. He’d proven to be very old-fashioned and believed he should open doors and pay for things—even though they were both clear that being together was nothing romantic.

As he dug for his money clip in his front jean’s pocket, the waitress looked down at Mei’s photo laying on the table. “Your daughter?” she asked Mari.

Mari shook her head. “No, we’re looking for her family. She was found after wandering away from them. Do you recognize her?”

The waitress picked up the photo and studied it, looked interested for just a second, then set it back down. “
Dui bu qi
, I don’t recognize her.” She took the outstretched fifty-renminbi bill, and Max waved away her offer of change. “Do you have a family name, or know what they do?”

“We only know that her grandfather had a small clock shop. He either sold them or repaired them—we aren’t really sure.” Mari felt a wave of disappointment. She’d thought the girl recognized Mei.

“Do you know of any clock shops?” Max asked in what Mari thought was pretty good Mandarin.

“
Dui
,” the girl answered. “There’s a clock shop in the Liulichang West Alley, just a half mile from here.”

Mari and Max both sat up straighter.

“Mari, you ask her again. She probably thinks I want to buy a watch and is going to tell us about some street thug.”

“No, she’s talking about a real shop,” Mari said, then turned back to the girl and asked for more directions.

When she’d gotten as much detail as they could from the waitress, Mari urged Max to carry his Coke and continue their search. She picked hers up, too, and they took off in the route they’d been directed. After they’d snaked through crowd for another fifteen minutes, they finally turned the corner onto Xijie road, and Mari jabbed Max in the arm, unable to contain her excitement. “I don’t see the clock shop but look—there’s a fruit stand!” She pointed at the small store. It was barely more than four feet wide, but it looked cozy, with baskets hanging in front of the window and overflowing with fruits and vegetables. Under them were stacks of crates, each holding a different color or variety of freshly farmed food.

“It has to be close,” Max said, and Mari could hear he was just as excited.

Mari suddenly saw another fruit stand on the other side, then one farther down the street. She sighed. “Ah, Max, I now see three different fruit stands.”

He nodded. “I do too, but don’t get discouraged. Let’s just keep looking.”

The came upon two old men sitting on overturned crates, playing a game of cards atop the crate between them. Max took her empty Coke can from her, and threw it along with his in the trash bin beside the men, giving him and Mari a reason to move in closer.

Mari pulled the photo from her pocket and showed it to them both. “Have you ever seen this little girl?”

They looked only for an instant, then one of them bellowed at Mari that the girl looked like every other little girl he’d ever seen.

She had to laugh to herself, then Max joined her when she told him what the old man said.

“Half blind maybe?” Max said.

“No, they’re just cranky old men—set in their ways. They choose not to see girls as individuals. To some of the elderly in China, a female child is still just a hindrance on the family tree.”

They walked a little ways more before Max spoke up.

“They do realize, don’t they, that they wouldn’t be here if not for some little girl that grew up to be their mother?”

Mari laughed again. She should’ve told them that. “Well, they aren’t all like that.”

They walked another half a block, showing Mei’s photo around and asking about a clock shop.

Finally, an old woman sweeping the walkway in front of her cigarette store lit up when Mari showed her the photo. “I think I’ve seen her before,” she said. “Who is she?”

“I’m not sure. That’s why we are asking around. We’re trying to find her family,” Mari said.

The old woman pointed a bit farther down the alley. “Ask Lao Feng Ji in that clock shop at the end of the lane. He lost a granddaughter last year. That might not be her, but you should at least ask. The officials said she’s long gone, though.”

Mari looked up at Max, and their gazes held. She smiled. The woman had said ‘clock shop’. It had to be him. They’d found it.

The woman went back to sweeping, and Mari led the way, practically skipping to the end of the street where, almost at the very corner, a tiny shop with many clocks in the window waited.

Max held the door, and Mari entered with him behind her.

The shop was dim, and Mari’s eyes took a moment to adjust. She realized there were no sounds of ticking.

“It’s too quiet in here,” she said. Mei had talked about how she loved to listen to the clocks, but in this room, all was silent.

Max grunted a response just as she spotted the old man.

He was at the back of the room behind the counter, hunched over a scarred wooden desk. With a headlamp strapped to his close-cropped white hair and rounded bifocal glasses perched on his nose, he used a large magnifying glass to examine a pocket watch he held in his hands. He was thin, a much smaller man than her own baba, but he also looked older. He wore the bland clothes favored by the older generation: faded blue Mao-style jacket and matching pants—clothes meant to make a man blend in with everyone around him, clothes for some that back in Mao’s time, helped them disappear into a crowd to avoid being targeted for any sorts of unfounded transgressions that a person could be accused of.

“Be with you in a minute,” he muttered.

Mari could wait. She could wait there for a year, if that was what it took. She looked around, taking inventory of the many old and new clocks on the walls. Cuckoo clocks were among the many types, and Mari felt on edge that a silly bird might pop out at any moment and make her jump in fright.

Max nudged her. “All the clocks are stopped at three fifteen.”

She looked closer. He was right. Every clock—even the cuckoo clocks—read three fifteen. Mari wondered what that was all about.

“I’ve never seen clocks with Chinese numbers on them,” Max said.

In modern China, most clocks sported Roman numerals or just plain numbers like the rest of the world used. But here, in this man’s small shop, it was like stepping back into another era.

The man finally stood, and bringing the bronze-colored pocket watch with him, he approached the counter. He looked up at Mari and Max, barely mustering what would pass as a pleasant look. The deep crags and wrinkles in his face gave him an air of a scholar, and Mari straightened with respect.

“
Hao
,” the man greeted them.

Mari wanted to see what his first reaction would be. That would tell her so much more than any amount of conversation. Without saying a word, she pulled the photo of Mei from her pocket and slapped it down on the table.

He peered down at the photo, surprised at first, then his expression changed to disbelief. He pushed his bifocals up higher on his nose and picked up the photo, bringing it closer to his face.

“Maelyn?” he asked, then looked up at Mari, his face paled as if he’d seen a ghost.

Mari looked at Max. That was surprisingly close to the nickname, Mei, that the girl had adopted. She turned back to the old man. “Do you know her?”

The old man swallowed hard, then backed up until he was leaning against an old stool behind his counter. He still clutched the photo, studying it.

“Does he know her or not?”

“
Laoren
, please. Do you know the girl?” Mari asked again.

The old man man’s eyes filled with tears. He spoke low and gravely, barely loud enough for them to hear. Mari leaned down and strained to catch his words.

“Does the bumblebee know a flower? Does the moon know its stars? Of course I know this girl—she is the child of my heart, my little
pínggu
o
z
i
. If you know where she is, you’d fulfill an old man’s final wish and return her to me.”

Until that second, Mari hadn’t realized she was holding her breath. Now she let it out. She smiled reassuringly at the man, nodding. She had to swallow back tears herself, but finally she was able to speak.

“If you can hold on for one more day, we’ll bring her tomorrow.”

Mari was drained, and yet she owed it to her parents to stay awake until the girls went to sleep, so that she could explain to them what she’d found. It had taken two long bedtime stories filled with legends of dragons and a foreign princess thrown in for good measure before Mei had finally dropped off to sleep. An Ni had been easy. From what her mama said, An Ni had been on high alert all day, intuiting that something was going on. When Mari had returned as if she’d done nothing but a day of shopping, An Ni hadn’t fought an early bedtime one bit.

“So after two hours of talking to him, I feel pretty sure it’s the right family. I promised I’d take Mei there tomorrow.” She held her cup up to her mama and let her add a dab of honey to her tea. A day out in the pollution wreaked havoc on her throat.

“But he hasn’t really proven he is her family,” her baba argued from his place on the borrowed cot. He’d set it up next to the couch where Mari’s mama had slept since they’d come. Mari would crawl in with the girls again, and it made her feel bad that her parents had such uncomfortable sleeping accommodations.

“Tell us what makes you so sure, Mari,” her mama said.

“He had other photos. Lots of them. It’s definitely her. He admitted to me that when Mei was born, he was disappointed she was a girl. But he said when his son started leaving her at the store with him while they worked, that she lit up the place, bringing life where before there was none.”