Kwan acts offended. “This not plan. This China.”
After a few moments of silence, I grumpily excuse myself. “I have to use the bathroom. Where is it?”
“Down lane, turn left, you see small shed, big pile black ash—”
“You mean there’s no bathroom in the house?”
“What I tell you?” Kwan answers, now grinning victoriously. “This China.”
WE EAT a proletarian lunch of rice and yellow soybeans. Kwan insisted that Du Lili throw together some simple leftovers. After lunch, Kwan returns to the community hall so she can prepare Big Ma for her portrait session. Simon and I take off in different directions to explore the village. The route I choose leads to an elevated narrow stone lane that cuts through soggy fields. In the distance, I see ducks waddling in a line parallel to the horizon. Are Chinese ducks more orderly than American ones? Do their quacks differ? I click off a half-dozen shots with my camera, so I can remind myself later of what I was thinking at the moment.
When I return to the house, Du Lili announces that Big Ma has been waiting for her picture to be taken for more than half an hour. As we walk toward the hall, Du Lili takes my hand and speaks to me in Mandarin: “Your big sister and I once splashed together in those rice paddies. See, over there.”
I imagine Du Lili as a younger woman caring for a child-size version of Kwan.
“Sometimes we caught tadpoles,” she says, acting girlish, “using our headscarves as nets, like this.” She makes scooping motions, then pretends she is wading in mud. “In those days, our village leaders told married women that swallowing a lot of tadpoles was good for birth control. Birth control! We didn’t even know what that was. But your sister said, ‘Du Lili, we must be good little Communists.’ She ordered me to eat the black creatures.”
“You didn’t!”
“How could I not obey? She was older than I was by two months!”
Older? My mouth drops. How can Kwan be older than Du Lili? Du Lili looks ancient, at least a hundred. Her hands are rough and callused. Her face is heavily furrowed and several of her teeth are missing. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t use Oil of Olay after a long, hard day in the rice paddies.
Du Lili smacks her lips. “I swallowed a dozen, maybe more. I could feel them wiggling down my throat, swimming in my stomach, then sliding up and down my veins. They squirmed all around my body, until one day I fell down with a fever and a doctor from the big city said, ‘Hey, Comrade Du Lili, have you been eating tadpoles? You have blood flukes!’ ”
She laughs, and a second later turns somber. “Sometimes I wonder if that’s why no one wanted to marry me. Yes, I think that’s the reason. Everybody heard I ate tadpoles and could never bear a son.”
I glance at Du Lili’s wandering eye, her sun-coarsened skin. How unfair life has been to her. “Don’t worry.” She pats my hand. “I’m not blaming your sister. Many times I’m glad I never married. Yes, yes— what a lot of trouble, taking care of a man. I heard that half a man’s brain lies between his legs—hah!” She grabs her crotch and ambles forward in a drunken manner. Then she grows serious again. “Some days, though, I say to myself, Du Lili, you would have been a good mother, yes, watchful and strict about morals.”
“Sometimes children are a lot of trouble too,” I say quietly.
She agrees. “A lot of heartaches.”
We walk in silence. Unlike Kwan, Du Lili seems sensible, down-to-earth, someone you can confide in. She doesn’t commune with the World of Yin, or at least she doesn’t talk about it. Or does she?
“Du Lili,” I say. “Can you see ghosts?”
“Ah, you mean like Kwan? No, I don’t have yin eyes.”
“Does anyone else in Changmian see ghosts?”
She shakes her head. “Only your big sister.”
“And when Kwan says she sees a ghost, does everyone believe her?” Du Lili looks away, uncomfortable. I urge her to be open with me: “Myself, I don’t believe in ghosts. I think people see what they wish in their hearts. The ghosts come from their imaginations and longings. What do you think?”
“Ah! What does it matter what I think?” She won’t meet my eye. She bends down and wipes the toe of her muddied shoe. “It’s like this. For so many years, others have been telling us what to believe. Believe in gods! Believe in ancestors! Believe in Mao Tse-tung, our party leaders, dead heroes! As for me, I believe whatever is practical, the least trouble. Most people here are the same way.”
“So you don’t really believe Big Ma’s ghost is here in Changmian.” I want to pin her down.
Du Lili touches my arm. “Big Ma is my friend. Your sister is also my friend. I would never damage either friendship. Maybe Big Ma’s ghost is here, maybe not. What does it matter? Now do you understand? Ah?”
“Hmm.” We keep walking. Will Chinese thinking ever take root in my brain? As if she heard me, Du Lili chuckles. I know what she’s thinking. I’m like those intellectuals who came to Changmian, so smart, so sure of their own ideas. They tried to breed mules and ended up making asses out of themselves.
WE ARRIVE at the gateway to the community hall just as a heavy rain begins pelting the ground so violently my chest thumps, urgent and panicky. We dash across the open yard, through double doors leading into a large room that is bone-chillingly cold. The air holds an old, musty dampness, which I imagine to be the byproduct of hundreds of years of moldering bones. The balmy autumn weather, for which Guilin is supposedly known, has taken an early exodus, and although I have on as many layers of clothes as I can fit under my Gore-Tex parka, my teeth are chattering, my fingers are numb. How am I going to shoot any pictures this afternoon?
A dozen people are in the hall, painting white funeral banners and decorating the walls and tables with white curtains and candles. Their loud voices rise above the rain, echo in the room. Kwan is standing next to the coffin. As I approach, I find myself loath to see my photo subject. I imagine she’ll look fairly battered. I nod to Kwan when she sees me.
When I look in the coffin, I’m relieved to see that Big Ma’s face is covered with a white paper sheet. I try to keep my voice respectful. “I guess the accident damaged her face.”
Kwan seems puzzled. “Oh, you mean this paper,” she says in Chinese. “No, no, it’s customary to cover the face.”
“Why?”
“Ah?” She cocks her head, as if the answer would descend from heaven and fall into her ear. “If the paper moves,” she says, “then the person is still breathing, and it’s too soon to bury the body. But Big Ma is dead for sure, she just told me.” Before I can prepare myself, Kwan reaches over and removes the sheet.
Big Ma certainly looks lifeless, although not horribly so. Her brow is bunched into a worried expression and her mouth is twisted into an eternal grimace. I’ve always thought that when people die, their facial muscles relax, giving them a look of grateful tranquility.
“Her mouth,” I say in awkward Chinese. “The way it’s crooked. It looks like her dying time was very painful.”
Kwan and Du Lili lean forward in unison to stare at Big Ma. “That might be,” Du Lili says, “but right now she looks very much as she did when she was alive. The turn in her mouth, that’s what she always wore.”
Kwan agrees. “Even before I left China, her face was this way, worried and dissatisfied at the same time.”
“She was very heavy,” I note.
“No, no,” Kwan says. “You only think so because now she’s dressed for her journey to the next world. Seven layers for her top half, five for the bottom.”
I point to the ski jacket Kwan selected as the seventh layer. It’s iridescent purple with flashy southwestern details, one of the gifts she bought on sale at Macy’s, hoping to impress Big Ma. The price tag is still attached, to prove the jacket isn’t a hand-me-down. “Very nice,” I say, wishing I were wearing it right now.
Kwan looks proud. “Practical too. All waterproof.”
“You mean it rains in the next world?”
“Tst! Of course not. The weather is always the same. Not too hot, not too cold.”
“Then why did you say the jacket is waterproof?”
She stares at me blankly. “Because it is.”
I cup my numb fingers near my mouth and blow on them. “If the weather’s so nice in the other world, why so many clothes, seven and five layers?”
Kwan turns to Big Ma and repeats my question in Chinese. She nods as if listening on a telephone. “Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah-ha-ha-ha!” then translates the answer for my mortal ears: “Big Ma says she doesn’t know. Ghosts and yin people were forbidden by the government for so long, now even she’s forgotten all the customs and their meanings.”
“And now the government allows ghosts?”
“No, no, they just don’t fine people anymore for letting them come back. But this is the correct custom, seven and five, always two more on top than on the bottom. Big Ma thinks seven is related to the seven days of the week, one layer for each day. In the old days, people were supposed to mourn their relatives seven weeks, seven times seven, forty-nine days. But nowadays, we’re just as bad as foreigners, a few days is enough.”
“But why only five layers on her lower half?”
Du Lili cracks a smile. “It means that two days a week Big Ma must wander about with her bottom naked in the underworld.”
She and Kwan laugh so hard that people in the hall turn and stare. “Stop! Stop!” Kwan cries, trying to stifle her giggles. “Big Ma is scolding us. She says she hasn’t been dead long enough for us to make such jokes.” When she regains her composure, Kwan goes on: “Big Ma isn’t sure, but she thinks five is for all the common things that attach mortals to the living world—the five colors, the five flavors, the five senses, the five elements, the five emotions—”
And then Kwan stops. “Big Ma, there are seven emotions, ah, not just five.” She counts them on her hand, beginning with her thumb: “Joy, anger, fear, love, hate, desire . . . One more—what is it? Ah, yes, yes! Sorrow! No, no, Big Ma, I didn’t forget. How could I forget? Of course I have sorrow now that you are leaving this world. How can you say such a thing? Last night I cried, and not just to show off. You saw me. My sorrow was genuine, not fake. Why do you always believe the worst about me?”
“Ai-ya!” Du Lili cries to Big Ma’s body. “Don’t fight anymore now that you’re dead.” She looks at me and winks.
“No, I won’t forget,” Kwan is telling Big Ma. “A rooster, a dancing rooster, not a hen or a duck. I already know this.”
“What’s she saying?” I ask.
“She wants a rooster tied to the lid of her coffin.”
“Why?”
“Libby-ah wants to know why.” Kwan listens for a minute, then explains. “Big Ma can’t remember exactly, but she thinks her ghost body is supposed to enter the rooster and fly away.”
“And you believe that?”
Kwan smirks. “Of course not! Even Big Ma doesn’t believe it. This is just superstition.”
“Well, if she doesn’t believe it, why do it?”
“Tst! For tradition! Also, to give something scary for children to believe. Americans do the same thing.”
“No we don’t.”
Kwan gives me a superior big-sister look. “You don’t remember? When I first arrived in the United States, you told me rabbits laid eggs once a year and dead people came out of caves to look for them.”
“I did not.”
“Yes, and you also said if I did not listen to you, Santa Claus would come down the chimney and put me in a bag, then take me to a very cold place, colder than a freezer.”
“I never said that.” And even as I protest, I vaguely recall a Christmas joke I once played on Kwan. “Maybe you just misunderstood what I meant.”
Kwan sticks out her lower lip. “Hey, I’m your big sister. You think I don’t understand your meaning? Hnh! Ah, never mind. Big Ma says no more chitter-chatter. Time to take the picture.”
I try to clear my head by doing a routine reading with the light meter. Definitely, time for the tripod. Aside from the illumination of a few white candles near a spirit table, the available light is northern, glary, and coming through dirty windows. There are no ceiling fixtures, no lamps, no wall outlets for strobes. If I use a flash unit, I won’t be able to control the amount of light I want, and Big Ma might come out looking even more ghoulish. A chiaroscuro effect is what I prefer anyway, a combination of airiness and murkiness. A full second at f/8 will produce nice detail on one half of Big Ma’s face, the shadow of death on the other.
I take out the tripod, set up my Hasselblad, and attach a color Polaroid back to do a test. “Okay, Big Ma,” I say, “don’t move.” Am I losing my mind? I’m talking to Big Ma as if I too believe she can hear me. And why am I making such a big deal over a photo of a dead woman? I’m not going to be able to use it in the article. Then again, everything matters, or should. Every frame should be the best I can shoot. Or is this another one of those myths in life, passed along by high achievers so that everyone else will feel like a perpetual failure?
Before I can ponder this further, a dozen people gather around me, clamoring to see what’s come out of the camera. No doubt many of them have seen tourist photo stands, the ones offering instant pictures at extortionist prices.
“Hold on, hold on,” I say, as they crowd closer. I place the print against my chest to speed up the developing. The villagers fall silent; they must think noise will disturb the process. I peel off the top and look at the test. The contrast is too sharp for my taste, but I show them the photo anyway.
“Very realistic!” one person exclaims.
“Fine quality!” another says. “See how Big Ma looks—like she’s about to wake up and feed her pigs.”
Someone jokes: “ ‘Wah!’ she’ll say. ‘Why are so many people around my bed?’ ”
Du Lili steps up. “Libby-ah, now take my picture.” She is flattening a bristly cowlick with her palm, tugging on her jacket sleeve to smooth out the wrinkles. I look through the viewfinder. She has assumed the stiff posture of a soldier on guard, her face turned toward me, her wandering eye pointed upward. The camera whirs. As soon as I pull the Polaroid test off, she snatches it from my hands and hugs it to her chest, tapping her foot and grinning madly.
“The last time I saw a photograph of myself was many years ago,” she says with excitement. “I was very young.” When I give her the okay signal, she yanks off the top layer and whips the picture up to her eager face. She squints with her turned-out eye and blinks several times. “So this is what I look like.” Her expression speaks of reverence for the miracle of photography. I’m touched, proud in an “aw, shucks” way.
Du Lili carefully hands Kwan the photo as if it were a newly hatched chick. “A good likeness,” Kwan says. “What did I tell you? My little sister is very skillful.” She passes the Polaroid around for the others to see.
“Very true to life,” a man says enthusiastically. The others chime in:
“Exceptionally clear.”
“Extraordinarily realistic.”
The Polaroid comes around to Du Lili again. She cradles it in her palms. “Then I don’t look so good,” she says in a wan voice. “I’m so old. I never thought I was so old, so ugly. Am I really that ugly, that stupid-looking?”
A few people laugh, thinking Du Lili is making a joke. But Kwan and I can see that she is genuinely shocked. She wears the face of someone betrayed, and I am the one who has wounded her. Certainly she must have seen herself recently in a mirror? But then the way we see our reflections from changing angles allows us to edit out what we don’t like. The camera is a different sort of eye, one that sees a million present particles of silver on black, not the old memories of a person’s heart.
Du Lili wanders off, and I want to say something to comfort her, to tell her that I am a bad photographer, that she has wonderful qualities a camera can never see. I start to follow her, but Kwan takes my arm and shakes her head. “Later I will talk to
her,” she says, and before she can say anything else, I am surrounded by a dozen people, all of them pleading that I take their photos as well. “Me first!” “Take one of me with my grandson!”
“Wah!” Kwan scolds. “My sister is not in the business of giving away free portraits.” The people keep insisting: “Just one!” “Give me a photo too!” Kwan holds up her hands and yells sternly: “Quiet! Big Ma just told me everyone must leave right away.” The shouts dwindle. “Big Ma says she needs to rest before her journey to the next world. Otherwise she might go crazy with grief and stay here in Changmian.” Her comrades quietly absorb this proclamation, then file out, grousing good-naturedly.
When we are alone, I grin my thanks to Kwan. “Did Big Ma really say that?” Kwan gives me a sidelong glance and bursts into laughter. I join her, grateful for her quick thinking.
Then she adds: “The truth is, Big Ma said to take more photos of her, but this time from another angle. She said the last one you took makes her look almost as old as Du Lili.”
I’m taken aback. “That’s a mean thing to say.”
Kwan acts clueless. “What?”
“Saying Du Lili looks older than Big Ma.”
“But she is older, at least five or six years.”
“How can you say that! She’s younger than you are.”
Kwan tilts her head, attentive. “Why do you think this?”
“Du Lili told me.”
Kwan is now reasoning with Big Ma’s lifeless face: “I know, I know. But because Du Lili has mentioned this, we must tell her the truth.” Kwan walks up to me. “Libby-ah, now I must tell you a secret.”
A stone drops in my stomach.
“Almost fifty years ago, Du Lili adopted a little girl she found on the road during civil war time. Later, that daughter died and Du Lili was so crazy with sorrow she believed she became her daughter. I remember this, because the little girl was my friend, and yes, if she had lived, she would have been two months younger than I am now and not the seventy-eight-year-old woman that Du Lili is today. And now that I am telling you this—” Kwan breaks off and begins to argue with Big Ma again. “No, no, I can’t tell her that, it’s too much.”