Right away, I could see through the patch of my blind eye. And before me was a small path, cast with dusk light. The land everywhere else was hidden by night. I turned to Yiban. “Quick now,” I said, and I marched ahead as bravely as any soldier.
After several hours, we were standing in front of a bush. As I pulled back the branches, I saw a hole just big enough for one person to squeeze through. Yiban climbed in first. He called back: “It’s too shallow. It ends a few paces in.”
I was surprised. Why would Zeng take us to such a poor cave? My doubt insulted him. “It’s not too shallow,” he said. “On the left side are two boulders. Reach down between them.” I climbed in and found a cool opening that slanted down.
“This is the right cave,” I said to Yiban. “You just didn’t look carefully enough. Light the lantern and climb down after me.”
That hole was the beginning of a long, twisty passageway with a small stream running along one side. Sometimes the tunnel split into two directions. “Where one way goes up, the other down,” Zeng said, “always go lower. Where one has a stream, and the other is dry,” Zeng said, “follow the water. Where one is narrow, the other wide,” Zeng said, “squeeze in.” The farther we went, the cooler the air became, very refreshing.
We turned one corner after another, until we saw a celestial light. What was this? We were in a place, like a palace room, that could have held a thousand people. It was very bright. In the middle of the floor was a lake—with water that glowed. It was a greenish-golden color, and not like light that comes from a candle, a lamp, or the sun. I thought it was the beams of the moon shining through a hole in the world.
Yiban thought it might be a volcano bubbling underneath. Or ancient sea creatures with shining eyes. Or perhaps a star that broke in two, fell to earth, and splashed into the lake.
I heard Zeng say, “Now you can find the rest of the way yourself. You won’t get lost.”
Zeng was leaving me. “Don’t go!” I shouted.
But only Yiban answered back: “I haven’t moved.”
And then I could no longer see out of my blind eye. I waited for Zeng to speak again. Nothing. Gone like that. No “Good-bye, my little heart-liver. Soon I will meet you in the next world.” That’s the trouble with yin people. Unreliable! They come when they want, go when they please. After I died, Zeng and I had a big argument about that.
And then I told him what I am telling you now, Big Ma: That with your death, I know too late what I have truly lost.
16
BIG MA'S PORTRAIT
I listened to Kwan talk to Big Ma for half the night. Now I’m bleary-eyed. She’s as perky as can be.
Rocky is driving us to Changmian in a trouble-prone van. Big Ma’s shrouded body is lying across the bench in the back. At every intersection, the van coughs to a stop, belches, and dies. Rocky then jumps out, flings open the hood, and bangs on various metallic parts, while bellowing in Chinese, “Fuck your ancestors, you lazy worm.” Miraculously, this incantation works, much to our relief and that of the honking drivers behind us. Inside, the van feels like an icebox; out of consideration to Big Ma and her sad condition, Rocky has kept the heater turned off. Staring out the windows, I can see fog rising off the banks of irrigation ditches. The peaks have blended into the thick mist. This does not look like the beginning of a good day.
Kwan is sitting in the back, chatting loudly to Big Ma’s body as though they were girls on their way to school. I am one bench up, and Simon is sitting on the seat behind Rocky, maintaining proletarian camaraderie and, I suspect, keeping an eye on dangerous driving maneuvers. Earlier this morning, after we checked out of the Sheraton and loaded the luggage into the van, I told Simon, “Thank God this will be the last ride we have to make with Rocky.” Kwan gave me a horrified look: “Wah! Don’t say ‘last.’ Bad luck to say such a thing.” Bad luck or not, at least we won’t have to make the daily commute to and from Changmian. We are going to live in the village for the next two weeks, rent-free, courtesy of Big Ma, who, according to Kwan, “invite us to stay her place, even before she die.”
Above the metallic rattles of the van, I can hear Kwan bragging to the dead woman: “This sweater, see, it looks like wool, doesn’t it? But it’s crylic-ah, mm-hmm, machine wash.” She says “acrylic” and “machine washable” in her version of English, then explains how washing machines and dryers figure into the American judicial system: “In California, you can’t hang laundry from your balcony or window, oh no. Your neighbors will call the police for shaming them. America doesn’t have as much freedom as you think. So many things are forbidden, you would not believe it. I think some rules are good, though. You can’t smoke except in jail. You can’t throw an orange peel on the road. You can’t let your baby poop on the sidewalk. But some rules are ridiculous. You can’t talk in a movie theater. You can’t eat too many fatty foods. . . .”
Rocky revs the engine and speeds down the bumpy road. Now I’m concerned not only for Kwan’s state of mind but also at the possibility that Big Ma’s body will soon go hurtling onto the floor.
“Also, you can’t make your children work,” Kwan is saying with absolute authority. “I’m telling the truth! Remember how you made me gather twigs and sticks for fuel? Oh yes, I remember. I had to run all over the place in the wintertime, up and down, back and forth, here and there! My poor little fingers, swollen stiff with cold. And then you sold my bundles to other households and kept the money yourself. No, I’m not blaming you, not now. Of course, I know, in those days everyone had to work hard. But in America, they would have put you in jail for treating me this way. Yes, and for slapping my face so many times and pinching my cheeks with your sharp fingernails. You don’t remember? See the scars, here on my cheek, two of them, like a rat bite. And now that I’m remembering this, I’m telling you again, I didn’t give those moldy rice cakes to the pigs. Why should I lie now? Just as I told you then, the one who stole them was Third Cousin Wu. I know because I watched her cutting off the green mold, one little rice cake at a time. Ask her yourself. She must be dead by now. Ask her why she lied and said I threw them away!”
Kwan is unusually quiet for the next ten minutes, and I figure that she and Big Ma are giving each other the Chinese silent treatment. But then I hear Kwan shout to me in English: “Libby-ah! Big Ma ask me can you take her picture? She say there no good picture of her when she still alive.” Before I can answer, Kwan does more yin-speak translation: “This afternoon, she say best time take picture. After I put on best clothes, best shoes.” Kwan smiles broadly at Big Ma, then turns to me. “Big Ma say she proud beyond words have such famous photographer in family.”
“I’m not famous.”
“Don’t argue with Big Ma. To her, you famous. That’s what matter.”
Simon wobbles toward the back and sits next to me, whispering, “You’re not actually going to take a picture of a corpse, are you?”
“What am I supposed to say?—‘I’m sorry, I don’t do dead people, but I can refer you to someone who does’?”
“She might not be very photogenic.”
“No kidding.”
“You realize this is Kwan’s wish for a photo, not Big Ma’s.”
“Why are you saying things that are completely unnecessary?”
“Just checking, now that we’re in China. A lot of weird stuff has already happened, and it’s only the second day.”
WHEN WE ARRIVE in Changmian, four elderly women snatch our luggage and wave off our protests with laughter and assertions that each is stronger than the three of us combined. Unencumbered, we wend our way through a maze of stone-paved lanes and narrow alleyways to reach Big Ma’s house. It is identical to every other house in the village: a one-story walled hut made out of mud bricks. Kwan opens the wooden gate and Simon and I step over the threshold. In the middle of an open-air courtyard, I see a tiny old woman draining water from a hand pump into a bucket. She looks up, first with surprise, then with delight, in seeing Kwan. “Haaaa!” she crie
s, her open mouth releasing clouds of moist breath. One of her eyes is pinched shut, the other turned outward like that of a frog on the alert for flies. Kwan and the woman grab each other by the arms. They poke at each other’s waistlines and then break into rapid Changmian dialect. The old woman gestures toward a crumbling wall, throws a deprecating scowl at her untended fire. She seems to be apologizing for the poor condition of the house and her failure to have ready a banquet and forty-piece orchestra to hail our arrival.
“This Du Lili, my old family friend,” Kwan tells Simon and me in English. “Yesterday she gone to mountainside, pick mushrooms. Come back, find out I already come and gone.”
Du Lili crinkles her face into an expression of agony, as if she understood this translation of her disappointment. We nod in sympathy.
Kwan continues: “Long time ago we live together, this same house. You speak Mandarin to her. She understand.” Kwan turns back to her friend and explains on our behalf: “My little sister, Libby-ah, she speaks a strange kind of Mandarin, American style, her thoughts and sentences running backward. You’ll see. And this one here, her husband, Simon, he’s like a deaf-mute. English, that’s all he speaks. Of course, they’re only half Chinese.”
“Ahhhhh!” Du Lili’s tone suggests either shock or disgust. “Only half! What do they speak to each other?”
“American language,” Kwan answers.
“Ahhhhh.” Another note of apparent revulsion. Du Lili inspects me as if the Chinese part of my face were going to peel off any second.
“You can understand a little?” she asks me slowly in Mandarin. And when I nod, she complains in more rapid speech: “So skinny! Why are you so skinny? Tst! Tst! I thought people in America ate lots. Is your health poor? Kwan! Why don’t you feed your little sister?”
“I try,” Kwan protests. “But she won’t eat! American girls, they all want to be skinny.”
Next, Du Lili gives Simon the once-over: “Oh, like a movie star, this one.” She stands on tiptoe for a better view.
Simon looks at me with raised eyebrows. “Translation, please.”
“She says you’d make a good husband for her daughter.” I wink at Kwan and try to keep a straight face.
Simon’s eyes widen. This is a game he and I used to play in the early days of living together. I’d give him bogus translations, and both of us would play out the lie until one of us broke down.
Du Lili takes Simon’s hand and leads him inside, saying, “Come, I want to show you something.”
Kwan and I follow. “She needs to check your teeth first,” I tell Simon. “It’s a custom before the betrothal.” We find ourselves in an area about twenty feet by twenty feet, which Du Lili calls the central room. It is dark, and sparsely furnished with a couple of benches, a wooden table, and a scattering of jars, baskets, and boxes. The ceiling is peaked. From the rafters hang dried meat and peppers, baskets, and no light fixtures. The floor is made of tamped earth. Du Lili points toward a plain wooden altar table pushed against a back wall. She asks Simon to stand next to her.
“She wants to see if the gods approve of you,” I say. Kwan rounds her mouth, and I wink at her.
Tacked above the table are pink paper banners with faded inscriptions. In the middle is a picture of Mao with yellowed tape across his torn forehead. On the left is a cracked gilt frame containing a portrait of Jesus, hands raised to a golden ray of light. And on the right is what Du Lili wants Simon to see: an old calendar photo featuring a Bruce Lee look-alike in ancient warrior costume, guzzling a green-colored soda pop. “See this movie star?” Du Lili says. “I think you look like him— thick hair, fierce eyes, strong mouth, the same, oh, very handsome.”
I peer at the photo and then at Simon, who is waiting for my translation. “She says you resemble this criminal who’s on China’s most-wanted list. Forget the marriage. She’s going to collect a thousand yuan for turning you in.”
He points to the calendar photo, then to himself, mouthing, “Me?” He shakes his head vigorously and protests in pidgin English: “No, no. Wrong person. Me American, nice guy. This man bad, someone else.”
I can’t hold on to the façade any longer. I burst out laughing.
“I win,” Simon gloats. Kwan translates our silliness to Du Lili. For a few seconds, Simon and I smile at each other. It’s the first warm moment we’ve shared in a long time. At what point in our marriage did our teasing drift into sarcasm?
“Actually, what Du Lili said was, you’re as handsome as this movie star.”
Simon clasps his hands together and bows, thanking Du Lili. She bows back, glad that he finally understands her compliment.
“You know,” I tell him, “for some reason, in this light, you do look, well, different.”
“Hmm. How so?” His eyebrows dance flirtatiously.
I feel awkward. “Oh, I don’t know,” I mumble, my face growing warm. “Maybe you look more Chinese or something.” I turn away and pretend to be absorbed in the picture of Mao.
“Well, you know what they say about people who are married, how we become more and more alike over the years.”
I keep staring at the wall, wondering what Simon is really thinking. “Look at this,” I say, “Jesus right next to Mao. Isn’t this illegal in China?”
“Maybe Du Lili doesn’t know who Jesus is. Maybe she thinks he’s a movie star selling light bulbs.”
I am about to ask Du Lili about the Jesus picture, when Kwan spins around and calls to some dark figures standing in the bright doorway. “Come in! Come in!” She becomes all bustle and business. “Simon, Libby-ah, quick! Help the aunties with our luggage.” Our elderly bellhops push us aside and with mighty huffs finish dragging in our suitcases and duffel bags, the bottoms of which are spattered with mud.
“Open your purse,” Kwan says, and before I can comply she is rifling through my bag. She must be looking for money for a tip. But instead she pulls out my Marlboro Lights and gives the women the whole damn pack. One of the women gleefully passes the pack around, then pockets the rest. The old ladies start puffing away. And then, in a cloud of smoke, they leave.
Kwan drags her suitcase into a dark room on the right. “We sleep here.” She motions me to follow. I expect a grim communist bedroom, decor that will match the minimalist look of the rest of the house. But when Kwan opens a window to let in the late-morning sun, I spot an ornately carved marriage bed, enclosed with a shredded canopy of grayed mosquito netting. It is a wonderful antique, almost exactly like one I coveted in a shop on Union Street. The bed is made up in the same way Kwan does hers at home: a sheet pulled taut over the mattress, the pillow and folded quilt stacked neatly at the foot end. “Where did Big Ma get this?” I marvel.
“And this.” Simon brushes his hand along a marble-topped dresser, its mirror showing more silver than reflection. “I thought they got rid of all this imperialist furniture during the revolution.”
“Oh, those old things.” Kwan gives them a dismissive wave, full of pride. “Been in our family long time. During Cultural Revolution time, Big Ma hid them under lots a straw, in shed. That’s how everything saved.”
“Saved?” I ask. “Then where did our family get them originally?”
“Original, missionary lady give our mother’s grandfather, payment for big debt.”
“What big debt?”
“Very long story. This happen, oh, one hundred year—”
Simon cuts in. “Could we talk about this later? I’d like to get settled in the other bedroom.”
Kwan lets out a derisive snort.
“Oh.” Simon’s face goes blank. “I take it there’s no other bedroom.”
“Other bedroom belong Du Lili, only one small bed.”
“Well, where are we all going to sleep?” I search the room for an extra mattress, a cushion.
Kwan gestures nonchalantly toward the marriage bed. Simon smiles at me and shrugs in an apologetic manner that is clearly insincere.
“That bed’s barely big enough for two
people,” I say to Kwan. “You and I can sleep there, but we’re going to have to find a spare bed for Simon.”
“Where you can find spare bed?” She stares at the ceiling, palms up, as if beds might materialize out of thin air.
Panic grows in my throat. “Well, somebody must have an extra mattress pad or something.”
She translates this to Du Lili, who also turns her palms up. “See?” Kwan says. “Nothing.”
“It’s okay, I can sleep on the floor,” Simon offers.
Kwan translates this to Du Lili as well, and it elicits chuckles. “You want sleep with bugs?” says Kwan. “Biting spiders? Big rats? Oh yes, many rats here, chew off you finger.” She makes chomping-teeth sounds. “How you like that, ah? No. Only way, we three sleep same bed. Anyway, only for two weeks.”
“That’s not a solution,” I reply.
Du Lili looks concerned and whispers to Kwan. Kwan whispers back, tilts her head toward me, then Simon. “Bu-bu-bu-bu-bu!” Du Lili cries, the nos punctuated by rapid shakes of her head. She grabs my arm, then Simon’s, and pushes us together as though we were two squabbling toddlers. “Listen, you two hotheads,” she scolds in Mandarin. “We don’t have enough luxuries for your American kind of foolishness. Listen to your auntie, ah. Sleep in one bed, and in the morning you’ll both be warm and happy as before.”
“You don’t understand,” I say.
“Bu-bu-bu!” Du Lili waves off any lame American excuses.
Simon blows out a sigh of exasperation. “I think I’ll go take a short walk while you three figure this out. Me, I’m amenable to three’s a crowd or rats on the floor. Really, whatever you decide.”
Is he angry with me for protesting so much? This isn’t my fault, I want to shout. As Simon walks out, Du Lili follows him, scolding him in Chinese: “If you have troubles, you must fix them. You’re the husband. She’ll listen to your words, but you must be sincere and ask forgiveness. A husband and wife refusing to sleep together! This is not natural.”
When we are alone, I glower at Kwan: “You planned this whole thing, didn’t you?”