Part 7 (1/2)
”I brought a few things for your mother, out of respect for your father.” He reached into a leather briefcase and withdrew a small statue of T'ang Ming Huang, the patron saint of Chinese opera. He held it up for her approval. She nodded and watched him place the clay figurine on the shrine near the casket, next to offerings of food, money, and smoldering joss paper.
”And I've had this for some time, but I'd rather it belong to your family now.” He held out an opera mask with both hands. ”It was ...”
”My mother's.” Liu Song took the mask, gently, looking at the ornate design-dramatic features painted in red, green, and black.
”This is the one she wore ...”
”As Zhuangzi's wife,” Colin said with a polite smile.
Liu Song touched the wooden mask as though she were caressing her mother's cheek. She brought it to her nose, and for a moment she thought it even smelled like her mother's perfume, or at least the greasy black eye makeup that she wore.
”The art director took ill,” Colin said. ”So I offered to take it home and replace the straps on the back. I was eager to do anything to impress your father. But then the fire-I know your father looked for another venue ...”
”And then the quarantines.”
Colin frowned and nodded. ”I was unable to return it. I sent letters to Leo-your stepfather. I told him that I had something that belonged to your mother, but either he never received the missives or he never bothered to reply.”
Liu Song knew the answer. She thanked him, then excused herself for a moment and walked to her mother's open casket, lingering, looking at her ah-ma's hands. Her fingers, which had been long and graceful, now looked aged, withered. Liu Song reached out to touch them, but stopped an inch away when she felt the absence of warmth and noticed that her mother's favorite ring had been removed-the ring that she had been given by Liu Song's father after they were wed. Her mother had continued to wear it, since Uncle Leo never gave her a new one.
Liu Song held the mask and ground her teeth, her heart pounding, angry and laden with guilt-she shook her head and wondered why she hadn't cried. What kind of shameful daughter was she? She should be on her knees in a pool of tears, pulling out her hair and screaming. Instead she drifted to her bedroom, unnoticed, a specter in a room full of shadows. She hid the mask in the valise under her bed with her mother's other precious possessions, a photo of her father, her mother's favorite brooch, her brother's empty cologne bottle, and odds and ends from a life she was orphaned from.
When she returned to the living room, her heart sank as she realized the young man was gone; his chair and teacup were empty. She felt more alone than before.
Most of the visitors had left or were in the process of leaving, all but a handful of men that Uncle Leo had selected as pallbearers, toothless men who worked in his laundry. None of them had known Liu Song, or her parents. If they seemed unaffected by their duties, the three wailers more than made up for their stoic expressions. As the casket was slowly closed, the three old women cried and screamed hysterically, their shoulders heaving with a crescendo of violent sobs. Uncle Leo covered his ears and yawned.
Liu Song took one final look at her mother's face and then stepped back.
”Goodbye, Ah-ma,” she whispered.
Everyone turned their backs since it was terribly unlucky to watch a coffin being nailed shut. All but Liu Song, who numbly watched a white-haired man in an old suit swing a small hammer again and again. The pounding reminded her of the rhythmic sound of coiled bedsprings.
Liu Song watched each nail sink deeper.
I'm already cloaked in bad luck, what more can be done to me? she thought. I have no one else-no one left to lose. I have nothing.
As Liu Song stared at the casket, she imagined her mother inside, her eyes opening again, filled with tears. Her mother's cracked lips, her frail voice urging, pleading, ”Run away, Liu Song. Run away.”
Big Mother.
(1921).
After Liu Song's mother was lowered into the ground, Uncle Leo went out to dinner with his family and friends. He didn't bother to invite Liu Song, so she stayed at the cemetery and picked wildflowers. She placed them on the tiny slab of marble that marked her mother's grave. As she regarded the elaborate, towering headstones to the left and right of her mother's humble plot, she tried to remember how her ah-ma had looked when she left for her performance-so alive, so vibrant, larger than life; no stage seemed too grand for her. But now there was no audience, no curtain call. Now her ah-ma would remain in the wings, the backstage of a sodden hill, a forgotten bit player, forever.
Liu Song walked home alone in the rain, down King Street, beneath a blizzard of painted signs and hanging lanterns. As she pa.s.sed the Twin Dragons Restaurant, she could see Uncle Leo and his family through the rain-streaked gla.s.s, sitting at round tables, crowded with platters of food on spinning lazy Susans. But instead of eating tofu, boiled white chicken, and jai choy, the heavenly vegetables one would normally eat after a funeral, the mourners laughed as they feasted on roast duck with ginger and chives, oily rock cod, served whole, and tureens of oxtail soup. They were enjoying a celebratory dinner. Liu Song smelled sesame oil and heard the sizzle and pinging of a cast-iron wok in the kitchen as more dishes were brought out, but she had no appet.i.te. Her belly was full of grief. She had feasted on the bitter rind of sorrow.
At home, she left the lights off. She donned a nightgown and then crawled into bed, tucking her head beneath the covers. She imagined the blankets were shovelfuls of dirt, burying herself in darkness as her wet hair dampened the sheets. She curled up so tightly she could feel the beat of her heart, her blood pulsing in her legs. She slapped her face and pinched her cheeks, hoping to make herself cry-wis.h.i.+ng the knot of grief inside her chest could be expelled, cut off, cauterized. She'd watched her mother slip away, one piece, one touch, and one memory at a time. Liu Song had lived for the past four years in a state of perpetual mourning-maybe she'd already exhausted a lifetime supply of tears.
As she drifted to sleep she thought about the comfort of the earth, the ground, where her family had all been laid to rest. Then her thoughts drifted to the strange young man-her father's understudy. She wondered how old he must be, perhaps in his mid-twenties, too old, perhaps. She doubted he would call on her again. Why would he? Though she certainly entertained the notion of finding him-just to see him perform, of course. She could allow herself that. She knew that a schoolgirl crush was foolish, but the theater community was small, compet.i.tive, and well connected-there had even been talk in the newspaper of building a Chinese opera house. If Colin Kwan was in town, she could find him. That wouldn't be too desperate, would it? As she slept, she dreamt of her father, strong and pa.s.sionate, wearing the mask and gown of a qing yi-a n.o.blewoman, exuding grace and virtue. And she fantasized about her parents bringing the young understudy to America as Liu Song's tutor-and suitor, for an arranged marriage that would play out onstage, in three acts plus an encore. But as much as she wanted it to be a hero's story, even in a dream, she knew that tale could only end in tragedy.
With her family gone she was certain no man would want her. Her parents would have discouraged all of the Chinese-born suitors, knowing that if she married one of them she risked losing her status as an American-born citizen. Plus the students who spoke Mandarin had always looked down on her, while the Cantonese men all wanted wives born in China-versed in the traditions of submission and subservience. They regarded her as too tall; or too skinny, her eyes were too round, or she was too ugly, too modern, too American. And no one wanted a shameful performer for a daughter-in-law.
But this is only Act One, she thought, still dreaming.
In a lucid state, she wondered what it might be like to see Colin perform to a packed house-perhaps she'd join him in front of the footlights one day at the Moore Theatre or the Palace up north, in Vancouver, where she first saw her father perform. The notion of klieg lights and plush velvet curtains only made her ache for her mother-for her family. And when she imagined Colin onstage, she also saw her father, and then her uncle. Drunk with sadness, she felt a stranger's breath on her neck and turned her head, sure that she was still dreaming, until she felt the covers pulled back and smelled barley wine, and ginger, and sesame oil. She sensed thick fingers, tugging, rending the fabric of her bedclothes. She felt a calloused hand over her mouth as a man's knees parted hers. ”M'h'gi bng ngoh!” Her scream for help was m.u.f.fled as she struggled to fight him off. Liu Song stared at the shadowy tin ceiling, horrified. She felt pain and grief, shock and sorrow, and crus.h.i.+ng, suffocating humiliation amid the bristling whiskers on his chin, the hair on his legs, and the sweaty folds of his unwashed skin. She felt him tugging on the wide elastic of her sanitary belt, pausing, then pulling it aside. She thrashed with all her might, hysterically, but she was almost as small as her mother. She felt stabbing pain, tearing, but she couldn't cry. She closed her eyes and was someplace else-someone else, an actress in a silent film. She was Pearl White in Perils of Pauline, tied to a train track as a hulking steam locomotive chugged through a cloud of coal smoke, bearing down on her. Then the scene faded to black.
WHEN THE BED finally stopped shaking, Uncle Leo groaned and stood up, out of breath. He put on his bathrobe and slippers. ”Stay in bed. Don't get up until sunrise.” He patted her arm and touched her hair as if to make sure she was still there in the dark.
Liu Song closed her eyes and didn't move or make a sound.
As she heard the door close behind him, she lay there, paralyzed, her mind telling herself that it didn't really happen. Her aching body told her otherwise. Finally she pulled the covers up to her face, then smelled Uncle Leo's odor and tossed the bedding aside. She rolled to her side, clutching her pillow. She curled her trembling body around it.
She opened her eyes and saw a waning orb through the curtains, reflecting glittering moonlight around her bedroom, her ceiling, dotting the walls. She looked down and saw that the mirror on her nightstand had tipped over and smashed on the wooden floor. s.h.i.+ny bits of bad luck lay scattered around her bed as though a tiny shooting star had crashed to Earth, shattering upon impact.
LIU SONG WOKE up startled, terrified. She felt someone kicking her bed, and she opened her tired eyes as someone slapped her face.
”Wake up,” a woman's raspy voice said.
Liu Song looked around the darkened room. A faint glow of sunlight was coming through the drawn curtains. Maybe it was all a dream-a nightmare, she thought.
”Ah-ma, is that you?” Liu Song whispered.
The woman stepped back.
”Ah-ma?”
The woman shook her head.
”Leo told me how lazy and disobedient you are. No wonder your mother died. She'd still be alive if you'd taken better care of her. Now get up and clean this mess before you make breakfast.”
Liu Song sat up slowly, aching. Confused by the portly woman standing in front of her. She wore her dark hair up in a tight bun that barely hid streaks of gray, and her excessive makeup failed to conceal her wrinkles, or her moles and acne scars.
The woman leaned in so close that Liu Song could smell the tobacco on her breath and see the dark stains on her teeth and swollen gums.
”Clean yourself up,” the woman said. ”And wash the blood off your sheets.”
Liu Song wrapped the covers around her waist. ”Who are you?”
The woman looked down her nose, proudly.
”I'm Leo's first wife-from Canton. Your mother was only second wife.”
Liu Song struggled to comprehend as the woman held out a thick hand that looked like it belonged to a meat cutter, with stubby, dirty fingernails. She proudly showed off the gold and jade wedding band that had once belonged to Liu Song's parents.
”From now on, I'm Big Mother. But you may call me Auntie Eng.”