The Language of Threads (28 page)

Ji Shen's moans brought her thoughts back to their cramped, warm room. Pei looked down to see the midwife frantically trying to stop the flow of blood from the incision. Song Lee had disappeared to fetch more clean towels. Pei's heart quickened to see how pale Ji Shen was and how her grip was weakening.

“What's wrong?” Pei screamed, wide-eyed with fear. “Do something! Do something!”

The midwife made a coughing sound as if something were stuck in her throat, but didn't answer. In the next moment it seemed as if she were trying to do a hundred things at once, mumbling to herself. Finally, she said the words aloud: “The bleeding won't stop.” She removed a bloody towel from between Ji Shen's legs and replaced it with the last clean one.

Pei bent down to Ji Shen's ear. “You have to live through this,” she pleaded. “There's still so much you have to do. You
have to see your son grow into a man.” The heat of the room was stifling with the sour smell of sweat and blood. “Ji Shen, can you hear me?”

The slightest whisper of a moan.

“Ji Shen! Ji Shen!” Pei's distraught cry filled the room.

Very slowly Ji Shen opened her eyes and smiled calmly at Pei, her head rising just a bit. “I'm sorry,” she mouthed.

A last breath of words before her lids suddenly fluttered and her eyes rolled to the back of her head; the last of her spirit rose from her parted lips. Pei clutched Ji Shen tighter, refusing to let death take her. “Live! Live! Live!” The frantic chant, willing Ji Shen to return to life, as the baby squirmed beside her, making small gurgling sounds that sounded faintly like laughter.

The funeral was small and spare, the sky as clear as glass. Pei and the baby, Song Lee, Quan, and Ho Yung stood on the graveyard hill. Pei had borrowed money from Ho Yung to secure a plot and marble headstone for Ji Shen in a Chinese cemetery. It stood before them, soft gray swirls in hard white rock. A life—a loving mother who wasn't given the chance to love her son—reduced to an engraved name, the years of birth and death. Song Lee cried aloud as Ho Yung held gently onto her arm. Quan stood stone still, tears streaming down his face.

On this gloriously bright day, Pei held on tightly to baby Gong and said her final good-byes to Ji Shen, who for the last eight years had been the sole remaining member of her Yung Kee family. Pei kowtowed three times in front of the grave and felt the squirming bundle press against her. A hot sting of tears burned inside her but wouldn't emerge. Grief had numbed her. Nothing could have prepared her for Ji Shen's death. Now she felt the shadows of both Lin and Ji Shen hovering over her. Pei looked up quickly and thought she saw a thin woman in a red scarf watching from a distance, but when she looked again, the woman had disappeared into the bright sunlight.

During the nights that followed Ji Shen's death, Pei hardly slept. The heaviness of grief pressed against her and left her breathless every time she closed her eyes. Whenever she stepped out of the warmth of her bed to check on Gong, he, too, was awake in the dark silence, waiting. It was as if the memory of Ji Shen kept pulling them both awake. Pei understood her own deep longing, but how was it possible that a newborn child could already know that he had no mother to love him and no father to give him a name he'd be proud to carry on?

Pei watched the baby intently for any small resemblance to Ji Shen. The thick black down that covered his fragile skull. His pale, soft skin, and the tiny hands that reached out for Pei every time she came near. His small, dark eyes, which already seemed to know her from long ago. They were all a part of Ji Shen, and Pei felt a hot knot of tears pushing from behind her eyes every time she looked at him.

Every morning Pei wrapped the baby up in a blanket and took him with her to the Invisible Thread. Keeping busy was the only thing she could do. She sleepwalked through her days at the shop and occasionally even stuck herself with a needle in her daze. Ji Shen's death had been too unexpected, like a suddenly missed step. Hard and surprising. But every time Pei thought she couldn't pick herself up again, she watched Gong and saw how one life had unexpectedly taken the place of another.

Usually the baby stayed upstairs in his bassinet while Pei quietly mended beside him and Song Lee temporarily worked the counter. Pei was grateful for Song Lee's devotion, for all the sympathy she hadn't voiced, but simply showed by remaining with
them. She felt Song Lee's sadness in the sighs that floated up from downstairs, as if each breath were too heavy. “Leave it, leave it,” she heard Song Lee's indifference with a customer. The air no longer rang out with the music of Ji Shen's patient small talk. Pei swallowed and tried to fill the hollowness that threatened to overtake her. She peeked at the baby, watching for the slight rise and fall of his chest, always fearful that he, too, could be snatched away from her.

Each week Ho Yung and Quan came to the shop and visited the baby. As the days passed, Pei saw how each one brought a special gift of strength and character that would enrich Gong's life. He reached up to them, flailing his tiny arms, asking to be picked up; both men were careful and attentive to the delicate package they held.

One day, Pei left the baby in his bassinet behind the counter with Song Lee. “He has a high forehead,” remarked the first customer to come in that afternoon. “A sign of great intelligence!”

“Don't let the gods hear you say such things,” Song Lee snapped. “Anything can still happen with a child so young.” Then she quickly added in a loud, clear voice so the gods would hear her, “This one's a scrawny little thing. Nothing much to look at!”

For the first time since Ji Shen's death, Pei wanted to laugh. She knew it was one thing to read a face and see its good fortune, another to say that fortune aloud and bring bad luck. It hadn't been five minutes since she'd brought Gong downstairs, and already this new addition to their family had made his presence felt in the shop.

Sometimes Pei was surprised that the Invisible Thread kept flourishing, even when so much else around her seemed to have wilted. She reached into a pile of clothing that needed to be mended and pulled out a piece of bright blue silk, startled by its sudden rich
color. It opened up to reveal a banner of embroidered flowers representing the four seasons. Pei fingered the worn threads of each flower.

A peony rising in spring
.
The lotus of summer
.
Autumn's chrysanthemum
.
The plum in winter
.

What once must have been a beautiful array of colors had faded and frayed over the years. Pei examined the pale bouquet against the bright blue sky. It would require a great deal of work to replace the intricate embroidery with new threads. Pei stood up and made her way downstairs.

“Who brought this in?” Pei asked, placing the blue silk banner on the counter.

“An older woman who was in a hurry,” Song Lee remembered. “She wanted to know if you could replace each flower with new threads.”

“I only mend clothing. This work would be too time-consuming, not to mention the cost.”

Song Lee shrugged. “She said never mind the cost. She was willing to pay whatever you charged because she'd heard you did good work. She also said she wasn't in any hurry to get it back, so you could take your time.” Song Lee glanced up at Pei. “Was I wrong to accept it?”

Pei fingered the faded threads and could already see the bright colors that would replace them. “No, you weren't,” she smiled.

A month after Ji Shen's death, Pei still struggled with sleepless nights and a suffocating grief. During the day she threw herself into her work. At night, she sometimes fell asleep long enough to dream of Ji Shen alive again—sitting behind the counter at the Invisible Thread, talking and laughing with customers—only to be startled awake by the knowledge that Ji Shen was gone. “I won't let anything happen to either of you,” she had promised;
the words turned over and over in her mind. The bed beside hers was empty, the dark house full of night cries.

Pei rose in the coolness to check on the baby, who had now fallen into regular sleeping habits. Pei's hands moved away from the soft baby skin to the smooth silk of the blue banner. She sat down beside the table lamp and quietly began to snip away the faded threads; they fell to her lap like blades of grass. Pei was determined to replace each flower, one thread at a time, as if she could control the flow of seasons. Gradually, all the colors lit up her dark nights—red, the summer of life; white the color of autumn; black of winter; blue of springtime; yellow that rose from the center of the earth.

Eventually, Ji Shen's death no longer kept Pei from sleeping, and even more slowly the language of threads spoke loud and clear against the bright blue sky.

1949

Song Lee knocked lightly on Pei's door. Night after night she saw a slice of muted light coming from underneath that door. She knew Gong had been fast asleep for hours, knew Pei was trying to catch up with all the mending, which multiplied with each passing day. Song Lee held the cup of hot tea steady, and tapped again. When she heard Pei's voice whisper a response, she turned the doorknob and quietly entered.

“You're up late,” Song Lee said. “Again.” Even in a whisper, the last word echoed through the room.

“There's so much . . .” Pei answered, without glancing up, without finishing her sentence.

“I brought you a cup of tea.”

Pei looked up and smiled. “Thank you.”

In the flickering light Song Lee saw the fatigue that clouded her eyes, the grief still etched along the rims.

“You know . . .” Song Lee paused, then peeked at the sleeping Gong, who at two years old was a constant reminder of Ji Shen. He had the same full lips, and a slightly flat nose that Song Lee lovingly pinched together to give it height. She knew he was still young enough to change the fates. “It's time you found someone to help you with all the mending.”

“Yes,” Pei agreed.

Song Lee looked at her in surprise. They'd had the same conversation for almost two years now, with always a hesitant response emerging from Pei's lips. “Not just yet . . . Maybe later . . . I'll think about it.” In the quiet room Song Lee heard Gong's even breathing. On the wall above his bed hung the blue silk banner with the flowers of the four seasons. The old woman had never returned to the Invisible Thread for it. Another abandoned child. Song Lee knew the hours Pei had worked on it, the colors carefully chosen to bring each flower back to life.

After a year's time, when Gong had begun to wobble and walk, Pei hung the banner on the wall of their room to keep him from grabbing at the bright material. It was a sign of renewal, a testament of their passage through a most difficult time.

“I'll begin looking for someone tomorrow,” Song Lee quietly offered.

Pei nodded, then closed her eyes for a moment, her hand still pulling the thread through the silk jacket in her lap.

It didn't take long for Song Lee to get the word out that the Invisible Thread was looking for another seamstress: “Efficient, fast worker with a mild, easy personality. Bring a sample of your work.” Song Lee interviewed each woman who stepped through the door to apply for the job. She had prided herself on finding the right domestic positions for her sisters; now she would do no less for Pei. Again she implemented her face-reading skills; she dismissed those with demanding, down-turned mouths, and the obviously devious ones who wouldn't look her directly in the eyes. Less than a week later, Song Lee had happily found the perfect seamstress to work alongside Pei.

“She'll be here any minute!” Song Lee's voice rang high in her excitement. She moved the clothes waiting on the counter into a tidy stack.

“Bring her upstairs when she arrives,” Pei said. “I'd better start working.” She was only too glad that Ho Yung had come to take Gong out for a walk.

Pei had just sat down when she heard the jingle of the bell on the front door. Song Lee and another voice filled the air with soft and polite words. Their hard, firm steps followed up the stairs. Song Lee and a thin woman in her late twenties emerged at the top of the stairs and paused.

“Come in,” Pei said. She stood up, forgetting that her height immediately gave her a certain advantage.

Song Lee stepped aside. “This is Mai.”

Mai bowed her head, nodded shyly.

“Please sit,” Pei offered.

In one quick glance Pei saw a modest young woman with large deep-set eyes and a slightly protruding forehead, accentuated by hair tightly pulled back in a chignon. She clutched a sample of her work, which she offered to Pei—a pair of brown cotton trousers that, she explained, had been ripped at the knee. “The left knee,” she quickly added.

While Song Lee excused herself to return downstairs, Pei and Mai made small talk, exchanging careful, courteous words they wouldn't remember in the years to come. While Pei spoke of the eight hours required, of the salary she could afford to pay, Mai listened quietly. Then, in a flood of soft words, she told her story. She'd been sewing and mending for her younger brothers and sisters ever since she was a little girl. Sewing was all she knew. It was what she loved. Now she had a husband who was ill, who could work only sporadically, when he was strong enough. She
washed clothes, scrubbed floors, and emptied buckets of night soil. She didn't mind the work. It earned honest money to pay their debts. Her husband was a good man, but the fates had been unkind to them.