"Not hot enough?"
"It"s good, really."
I gave her more. I watched her drink my soup. And then I told her.
It is the same pain I have had for many years. It comes from keeping everything inside, waiting until it is too late.
I think my mother gave me this fault, the same kind of pain. She left me before she could tell me why she was leaving. I think she wanted to explain, but at the last moment, she could not. And so, even to this day, I still feel I am waiting for her to come back and tell me why it was this way.
I never told you about my mother? That she left me? Oh. That"s because I never wanted to believe it myself. So maybe that"s why I did not tell you about her.
Of course, that does not mean I did not think about her. I loved her very much. In fact, when I was young, and for many years, I kept her hair, three feet long, curled up in a small tin box. I saved it for her all those years, thinking she would someday return, and I could give it back to her, like a gift. Later, when I believed she was dead, I still kept her hair. I thought I could someday find her body, and she and her hair could be reunited. That way, in the other world, she could loosen her hair. And once again she could let all her thoughts run wild.
That is how I remember her, in her room, untying her hair, letting it down. She let me touch her hair.
What else? Of course, I do not remember everything about her. I was only six years old when she disappeared. But some things I can remember very clearly: the heaviness of her hair, the firmness of her hand when she held mine, the way she could peel an apple all in one long curly piece so that it lay in my hand like a flat yellow snake. You remember? That"s how I learned to do that for you.
Other things from my memory are confusing. I saw a painting of her once. This was after she was gone. And I did not remember the mouth in that painting, so stiff, so firm. I did not remember those eyes, so sad, so lost. I did not recognize the woman in the painting as my mother. And yet I wanted to believe this painting was my mother, because that was all I had left of her.
I used to hold that painting in my lap, peer at her face from one side to the other. But her face always looked in another direction, never at me. She showed no thoughts. I could not tell what she was thinking before or after her painting was made. I could not ask her all the questions I had before she left: Why she talked so angrily to my father, yet kept a big smile on her face. Why she talked to her mirror at night, as if her own face looking back belonged to someone else. Why she told me that she could no longer carry me, that I would have to learn to walk everywhere by myself.
One day, when I was perhaps ten-this was after she had already been gone for several years-I was again looking at her painting. I saw a little spot of mold growing on her pale painted cheek. I took a soft cloth and dipped it in water, washed her face. But her cheek grew darker. I washed harder and harder. And soon I saw what I had done: rubbed half her face off completely! I cried, as if I had killed her. And after that, I could not look at that picture without feeling a terrible grief. So you see, I did not even have a painting anymore to call my mother.
Over the years, I tried to remember her face, the words she said, the things we did together. I remember her ten thousand different ways. That is what Chinese people always say-yi wan-ten thousand this and that, always a big number, always an exaggeration. But I have been thinking about my mother for almost seventy years, so it must be ten thousand different times. And it must be that she has changed ten thousand different ways, each time I recalled her. So maybe my memory of her is not right anymore.
So sad! That is the saddest part when you lose someone you love-that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost? Maybe you lost more, maybe less, ten thousand different things that come from your memory or imagination-and you do not know which is which, which was true, which is false.
But some things I know for certain, like my legs, how they got to be this way. Look how my legs are still thin, no muscles on the calves! My mother used to carry me everywhere, even when I was six years old, so spoiled. I refused to walk even ten steps by myself. And this was not because I was sick or weak. I always wanted to see the world at her same height, her same way.
So that"s why I do not remember too much of those early days when we lived in the fancy Shanghai house. I did not come to know that house and the people who lived in it the way you would if you were a child walking around by yourself, discovering how one corner turns into another. Whenever I think about those early days, I remember only my mother"s room, the one I shared with her, and the long staircase that took us down to an entryway with watery patterns on the floor.
In my mind, I can still see that steep tunnel of stairs that wound down one floor after another, and my mother holding me as she leaned over to look down to another level, where other relatives lived. I think my father"s other wives lived on the floor below, although this is only my guess now. My mother was telling me to be very quiet, not to laugh or ask questions. I was holding my breath, trying to obey, although I wanted to cry out, to tell her I was scared looking at the staircase falling beneath us. And then we heard servants" voices, and she leaned back. We both breathed deeply at the same time and I held onto her tight, so glad we both did not fall down.
Whenever I think about that staircase, I remember the room, and then I remember something else, more and more, until it becomes the time just before she left. Or maybe it is all my memories and imagination of her, now gathered into one day.
After looking down the staircase, we returned to our room. It was early in the morning, and other family members were still sleeping. I do not remember why we were already awake, cannot even guess. To judge from the color of the sky, it would be perhaps another hour before the servant girl would come with our morning meal.
My mother was playing a game with little red and black tablets spread out on a board. She said this was a foreigners" game called chiu ke, "prison and handcuffs."
It is only now that I think of this game-chiu ke-that I realize she must have been talking about checkers. She was sliding the tablets across the board, explaining that the different colors were people fighting under different warlords, trying to capture each other. But when she started to explain more, my young mind became confused. Of course, I did not know how to say I was confused, so instead, I complained that I was hungry.
I could do this with my mother, complain and demand things. She was not strict with me, not the way some mothers can be. She was perhaps even more lenient than I was with you. Yes, can you imagine? If I wanted something, I could always expect to receive it, never thinking I would have to give something back in return. So you see, although I knew my mother only a short time, I learned this from her, a pure kind of trust.
That day, when I said I was hungry, I already knew my mother had a box of English biscuits hidden on top of her tall dresser. She brought the tin box down. These biscuits were her favorites, my favorites too-not too sweet, not too soft. My mother had many favorites from different countries. She liked English biscuits, of course, and also their soft furniture, Italian automobiles and French gloves and shoes, White Russian soup and sad love songs, American ragtime music and Hamilton watches. Fruit could be from any kind of country. And everything else had to be Chinese, or "it made no sense."
My father owned several cloth factories, and once a foreign customer gave my mother a bottle of French perfume. She had smiled and told the man she was honored to receive such a fine gift from a big, important customer. If you knew my mother, you would have known she did not like this man, the way she called him a "big, important customer."
Later, she let me smell the insides of the bottle. She said it smelled like urine, and that"s what I smelled too. "Why do foreigners always pay big money to put such a stink on themselves?" my mother said. "Why not just wash more often? It makes no sense." She emptied out the perfume into her chamber pot and gave me the round crystal bottle. It was a deep blue color. And when I held it up to the window and shook it, it threw dancing colors all around the room.
That morning I was eating my English biscuit, playing with my French bottle. I could hear the sounds of the morning. My mother was the one who taught me how to listen. She was always lifting her ears up to catch a sound, showing me how to judge its importance. If the sound was important, her ears stayed up; not important, she went back to what she was doing. I copied what she did.
Together we heard servants walking up and down the hallway, removing chamber pots, lifting them with a small grunt. We heard someone dragging a box down the stairs and someone else whispering loudly, "What"s the matter, wind in your brains?" Outside, a big bucket of water was thrown out of a high window so that it splashed all at once onto the back courtyard-pwah!-sounding just like hot frying oil. And after a very long time, we finally heard the little ting-ting-ting of chopsticks. .h.i.tting against the sides of porcelain bowls, an announcement that servants were entering rooms to bring in the morning meal.
They were all the usual sounds, what we heard every morning. But that morning my mother seemed to be paying attention to all of it. Her ears stayed up, mine too. And it is still a question in my mind-if she heard what she was listening for, if she was disappointed or relieved.
Before I finished my breakfast, my mother left the room quickly. She was gone for such a long time, although maybe it was only a few minutes. You know how children are, one hour or one minute, it doesn"t matter, they become impatient. You were the same way.
When I could wait no longer, I opened the door and peeked outside, then toward the end of the hall. I saw my mother and father standing there, talking in harsh voices.
"This does not concern you," my father said firmly. "Do not mention it again."
"My mouth is already open," my mother said quickly. "The words have already fallen out."
This was not the first time I had seen them argue. My mother was not like my father"s other wives, the ones who used the same kind of fake manner, acting more pleasant than someone else, as if they were in a contest to win something big.
My mother"s manners were genuine. She could be gentle, of course, but she also could not stop herself from being honest and open. Everyone said this was a fault of hers. If she was mad, she let everything come out, and then trouble would follow.
So that morning when I heard my mother and father talking that way, I was scared. They were not shouting, but both were angry, I could tell. My father"s voice made me want to close the door and hide. While my mother"s voice-it is so hard to describe a sound according to how a little girl felt it-I can only say it sounded ragged, like good cloth already torn, never able to be mended.
My father turned to walk away. And then I heard my mother say, "Double Second," as if the words were a curse. My father did not turn around. "You can never change this," was all he said.
"You think I cannot change this?" said my mother, as my father walked away.
Back then I did not know what these words meant, "Double Second." I only knew those words were very bad, the worst name someone could call my mother, a name that always made her spend many hours in front of her mirror, accusing the double second that stared back at her.
Finally my mother turned around. She was wearing a strange smile, one I had never seen before. At that moment she saw me. "Still hungry," I complained right away in a small voice.
"Coming, coming," she said softly. And then her smile changed back to the kind one that I recognized, although I was still thinking, Why is she smiling when she is so angry?
Back in our room, she told me to get dressed. "Good clothes," she said. "We"re going outside."
"Who else is going?"
"Just we two," she said. This was very unusual. But I did not question her. I was glad for this rare opportunity. And then she took a long time to prepare herself. I watched. I always liked to watch my mother getting dressed. She put on a Western dress, looked at herself in the mirror, then took that off. She put on a Chinese dress, took that off, put on another Chinese dress, frowned. Finally, after many more dresses, she put the first dress back on, and that"s what she wore, a jade-green dress with short sleeves and a long straight skirt of smooth pleats running down to her ankles.
I waited for her to pick me up, so we could finally leave.
But instead she patted my head. "Syin ke," she said, "you"re already so big." She always called me syin ke, a nickname, two words that mean "heart liver," the part of the body that looks like a tiny heart. In English, you call it gizzard, not very good-sounding. But in Chinese, syin ke sounds beautiful, and it is what mothers call their babies if they love them very, very much. I used to call you that. You didn"t know?
"Syin ke, my mother said, "today I will teach you important secrets. But first you must learn to walk by yourself." And before I could cry or complain, she was walking ahead of me, saying, "Let"s go, let"s go," as if all kinds of fun lay ahead. I followed, and then we were out the front gate and into one of the new-style pedicabs that darted in and around the city faster than the old rickshaws.
It was the beginning of summer, so it was still cool in the morning, although by afternoon it would be steaming hot. As we drove farther away from our house, I started to hear different kinds of sounds: the shouts of vendors, trolley cars grinding by, motorcars honking, and so much hammering-old buildings were being pulled down everywhere, new ones being pushed up. Hearing all those sounds, I was so happy! My mother seemed happy too. She became a different person, laughing, teasing, pointing, and shouting in a glad voice, just like a common person.
"Syin ke, look!" And it was a shop-window display, filled with calfskin gloves for ladies. We stepped out of the pedicab to look in the window. "So many thin hands reaching into the air for customers," my mother said. I made my hands move like a snake, and we both laughed. We got back in the pedicab.
"Look!" I cried a little while later. I pointed to a man spitting a long stream of bean-curd paste into a pot of boiling water. I was proud I had found something interesting to show my mother. "He looks like a fish," I said, "a fish in a fountain!" I stood up in the pedicab. The spit had curled into doughy threads.
"He is using his mouth just like a cooking tool," my mother explained.
We pa.s.sed so many interesting things that day. It was as if my mother wanted me to open my eyes and ears and remember everything. Although maybe it is just my imagination now that makes me think this. Perhaps she had no such intention. Maybe we saw none of these things as I have described. Maybe we did not go to all the places that I now remember. For how could we have done all this in one day? But that is what I remember, and even more.
That day we also went to all the places where the best things in the world could be found. To Zhejiang Road, where she said they made the best French-style leather shoes; she did not buy any. To Chenghuang Miao, where she said they sold a beauty tonic of crushed pearls. She let me put some on my cheeks, but she did not buy this either. To Bubbling Well Road, where she bought me the best American ice cream sundae; she did not eat any, told me it was "too messy, too sweet." To Foochow Road, where she said you could buy any kind of book, any kind of newspaper, Chinese and foreign too. And there she did buy something, a newspaper, although I do not know what it was exactly, since I could not read.
And then we went to Little East Gate, where all the best seafood vendors put up their stands. She said she was looking for a delicacy she had not tasted for many years. It was a rare little fish, called wah-wah yu, because it cried just like a baby-wah-wah!-and it could wave its arms and legs. And when we found that fish, I heard it cry out loud, I saw it move just as my mother promised it would.
"Long ago I loved to eat this fish," she said. "So tender, so delicious. Even the scales are as soft and sweet as baby leaves. But now I think it is sad to eat such a creature. I have no appet.i.te for it anymore."
I was paying attention to all these places and things my mother found. And I remember thinking, This is important. Listen carefully. So many desires to remember, so many places to find them. I thought my mother was teaching me a secret-that my happiness depended on finding an immediate answer to every wish.
That afternoon we also went to the theater. It was already very hot outside, the full sun was out, and I felt sticky. So I was glad to think we would go into the dark theater. Of course, I was mistaken in thinking the theater would be cool. The last time I had been there must have been during the winter or spring. But that day, it was steaming hot inside, like an oven-and dark. The moving picture was already playing when we arrived, a story about a little blond-haired girl. Someone was playing a piano, loud crashing sounds.
"I can"t see, I can"t see," I cried to my mother, afraid to take even one step forward.
"Wait a little," my mother said. And when my eyes took in all this darkness, I could see rows of people, everyone waving a paper fan. My mother counted off the rows, "... six, seven, eight." I did not wonder why she was doing this, looking for the number-eight row from the back. I was interested only in her counting, because that was what I was learning to do. And then we were standing at that number-eight row, pushing our way toward the middle, until my mother came to an empty seat. She whispered to someone sitting on the other side. At the time I thought she was saying, "Excuse us." It was not until later that I came to think she was saying something else.
I had seen many moving pictures before with my mother, all silent: Charlie Chaplin, the fatty man, policemen and fire engines, the cowboys running their racehorses in a circle. That afternoon the picture show was about an orphan girl who had to sell matches in the snow. She was shivering. A woman in front of me was crying, blowing her nose, but I was thinking that little girl was lucky, to be so cool on a hot day. That"s what I was thinking before I fell asleep in the dark theater.
When I awoke, the lights had come on and my mother was leaning toward the man sitting next to her, whispering to him in a solemn voice. I was alarmed. This seemed a dangerous thing she was doing, talking to a stranger. So I whined a little and pulled my mother toward me. The man leaned over and smiled at me. He was not too old. He looked refined. His skin was smooth and light-colored, not like the face of someone who worked outdoors all day long. Yet he was wearing a common villager jacket, plain blue, although very clean. My mother thanked him, and then we stood up and left.
On our ride home, I fell asleep again, all my excitement used up. I woke up only once-b.u.mped out of sleep by the pedicab driver cursing a slow cart on the road. My face was leaning against my mother"s hair. I found myself looking at the color of her hair. How different it looked from mine, from that of other women in our family, from anyone else"s I had ever seen. Not a brown-black or black-brown. Not any kind of black with a name.
My mother"s hair was a color you could feel more than see-very, very black, as black and shiny as water at the very bottom of a deep well. And winding through her bun were two white hairs, like little ripples when tiny stones are thrown in the water. And still, these words are not enough to describe it.
I remember only a few more things, what happened that evening. I was already very tired from the day. We ate a simple meal in our room. Afterward, my mother showed me how to do an embroidery st.i.tch, one she said she invented herself. I copied her very badly, but she did not criticize me, not once. She praised what I had done. And then, as she helped me undress for bed, she gave me another lesson, how to count my fingers and toes. "Otherwise, how will you know if you wake up each morning with the same number?" she said. "... six, seven, eight, nine, ten."
You see how educated and clever my mother was? She always found a reason why I should learn. She told me once she had wanted to be a schoolteacher, just like the missionaries who had taught her.
And then she sat at her stool in front of her dresser, and I watched her take off her clothes, her jewelry. She pulled off her gold bracelet, her jade earrings. She saw me looking at her in the dresser mirror. She turned around and held up the earrings.
"Someday these will be yours," she said in a somber voice. I nodded.
"And all this." She patted her jewelry box. I nodded again.
"When you put them on, people will think your words are worth more." I nodded once more.
"But you should never think this way, never," she said. I shook my head right away.
She climbed into the bed we shared and smoothed my hair away. As I looked up at her face, she sang me a little song-about a naughty mouse who stole lamp oil. Do you remember? I used to sing you that song. That night, before I could hear the ending, I fell asleep.
I dreamt about all the things I had seen that day. A fish that cried and sang a song about a little mouse. The blond-haired girl trying on fancy French shoes. My mother"s hair, the way my fingers wove through it only to discover it was not hair at all, but embroidery and jewels. My mother, sitting at her dressing table, combing her hair, crying to her face in the mirror, "Double Second! Double Second!" Although maybe this last part was not a dream.
The next morning, when I awoke, she was not there. I thought she had slipped quietly out of bed and walked to the staircase, the same as we had done the day before. I opened the door and looked out. I saw only the servants, carrying away chamber pots. I went back in the room and sat down to wait for her return. And then-ting-ting-ting-the servant came in with two steaming bowls of syen do jang. You know the one, the salty-tasting soy-milk soup we can get at Fountain Court on the weekend. Last time, Cleo ate a big bowl by herself, no spills.
Anyway, that morning I had no taste for do jang. "My mother-where is she?" I demanded.
The servant did not answer me, only looked around the room, puzzled. She put both bowls down on our table.
"Now eat fast. Don"t let it get cold," she scolded, and left the room in a hurry. I let my bowl become cold. I waited, and when I became impatient, I began to cry, just a little. A lump grew in my throat, and I waited for my mother to return so I could release it, cry and tell her how long I had waited. I decided that when she did return I would point to my cold bowl. I would demand some English biscuits, at least three to make me happy again. I waited some more. I tipped over my bowl and made a big mess. I stood on a chair and brought down the biscuit tin myself. And still she did not come.
The servant came back to take our bowls away. She looked at the mess I had made. She looked around the room. "Look what you"ve done!" she scolded, then left quickly. As soon as she closed the door, I opened it. I saw the servant talking to the head servant. They both rushed down the stairs, and I ran over to the staircase to watch them going down. And then I heard loud voices downstairs, more people walking, doors opening and closing. I could see Nai-nai, my grandmother, walking slowly up the stairs with the servant talking fast next to her. Nai-nai was not the kind of grandmother who patted my head and told me I was pretty. She was the big boss of all the ladies of the house, and I was the smallest girl, the one she noticed only when she wanted to criticize. I raced back into the room and sat on my bed, scared. Trouble was coming, I knew this.
I cried as soon as they walked in the door. "Where is your mother?" Nai-nai asked again and again. "When did she leave? Did she take anything with her? Did someone come get her?"
What could a little girl say, a girl who knew nothing? I shook my head, cried and cried, "She"s not gone! She is still here, right here."
Suddenly another person burst into the room. I don"t remember who, because I had eyes only for what she was holding in her hand. It was my mother"s hair, chopped off, now hanging down like a horse"s tail! I screamed. Of course I screamed. It was the same feeling as seeing her head cut off. How bad!
And now my memories of that time are very cloudy. I only remember that everyone was nervous, whispering secrets. And my father was angry. He came into my mother"s room. He opened her drawers, the armoire, her jewelry box, all full. He sat down, quiet. He looked at me sternly as if something were my fault.
"Where did she go?" he asked. And I was trying to be obedient. I tried to guess for him. I said Zhejiang Road. I said maybe Chenghuang Miao. I mentioned the fish stand at Little East Gate. I said she was at the picture theater.
I did not leave the room for three days. I sat there, waiting for my mother. n.o.body told me I had to stay there. But n.o.body came to get me either. The servant who brought me my food said nothing, and I did not ask her any questions.
On the fourth day I went downstairs by myself. As I already told you, my mother used to carry me everywhere. So my legs were never too strong. That day they were very, very weak. But perhaps this was also because I was afraid of what I might see.
Let me tell you, it was worse than what I had imagined. I saw funeral banners hanging on the door. I knew what this meant, without asking. Yet I did not want to believe it. So I walked up to the girl who washed our laundry and asked who had died. The girl said, "How can you ask such a question!" I walked up to Old Aunt, who had arrived that day, and she said, "Don"t talk about this anymore."
Maybe one week later, maybe sooner than that, I was sent to live on Tsungming Island with my father"s younger brother and his two wives, Old Aunt and New Aunt. The island was two hours from Shanghai by motorboat, up the Huangpu River until you reach its mouth. That"s where my father"s family came from originally, the island countryside. On a map, maybe it is only a little dot stuck in the water, close to nothing, cut off from everyone.
Anyway, by the time I arrived I was sick to my stomach, because of that motorboat ride, because of my grief. I was crying loud, so heartbroken I didn"t care that Old Aunt was threatening to slap my face in two. I shouted, "I want my mother! I want to be with my mother! Tell her where I am, she"ll come get me."
And that"s when Old Aunt told me, "Shuh! This is where your mother is buried, on this island."
If you ask me today what really happened to my mother, I could not tell you exactly, only what everyone told me. And that would not be the truth, only gossip.
I knew this, though: What my mother did was a big disgrace. That"s why they said she died, to bury her scandal. That"s why no one would ever talk about her to my father. That"s why they sent me away, so I would not remind him of her.
And yet, many times they gossiped about her. They all did-Old Aunt, New Aunt, Uncle, and their friends-over tea, during meals, after the noontime nap. For many years, my mother was the source of funny and bad stories, terrible secrets and romantic tales. It was like digging up her grave, then pushing her down farther, always throwing more dirt on top. Can you imagine how a little girl would feel, hearing this about her own mother?
I heard what they said. I felt so bad to hear them. And yet I could not stop myself from listening. I wanted to know how it could be that my mother left me, never telling me why.
So that"s how my mother became a riddle, each piece of gossip making another question in my head. If she was dead, why did they hold no funeral? If she was alive, why didn"t she come back to get me? If she ran away, where did she go?
Sometimes I would try to put together all the pieces of gossip I heard, I would try to make one whole story. But then each part would contradict the next, until no part made sense.
So then I looked at what I knew about my mother, both good things and bad. I tried to think of all the reasons why her life went one way or the other. And this is what I think happened, how my mother came to be the second wife to my father and, later, why she left.
My mother was not like the Chinese girls Americans always imagine, the kind who walk around with tiny bound feet, choosing their words as delicately as they choose their steps. My mother was a modern girl. Many girls in Shanghai were. They were not peasants, nothing of the kind. When my mother was eight years old, her feet were already unbound, and some people say that"s why she ran wild.
She had been born into a wealthy, educated family in Shanghai, the only child of a Ningpo father and a Soochow mother. Soochow is that city of ladies with beautiful soft voices; even a Shanghainese would tell you a Soochow accent is the best. And Ningpo people are such good businesspeople they continue to argue even after they have already made a bargain. So you see, my mother was born with a double character already fighting inside of her.
I think my mother must have been a cla.s.sic beauty, the kind other girls would read about in a story and cry over, wishing they were reading about themselves. My mother once read me a story like that, about a beautiful but lonely girl. One day, she looked in a pond and thought she had finally found a friend, someone who did not envy her. She did not know that the shimmering face smiling back at her was her own reflection. At the end of the story, my mother exclaimed, "Nonsense! What girl would not know her own self looking back at her!"
In any case, my mother did not look in a pond, she looked in a mirror. Every night she did this. So if I am honest, I would have to say my mother was proud of her looks, maybe even vain, just a little.
Of course, she had reason to be proud. Her skin was the color of white jade. Or maybe it was the color of a summer peach. Or maybe I am only remembering my mother as another cla.s.sical tale, all those phrases about ladies with voices as pretty-sounding as lutes, skin as white as jade, their gracefulness flowing like calm rivers. Why did stories always describe women that way, making us believe we had to be that way too?
Maybe my mother was not pretty at all, and I only want to believe that she was. But then I think, Why else did my father marry her? He was an important man. He could have had all kinds of wives-which he did. Back then there was no other reason to marry a second, third, or fourth wife, except to use a woman"s prettiness to add to a man"s prestige. So I think my mother must have been pretty. It is not just bad cla.s.sical stories that make me think this way. There was a reason why she had to be.