Beautiful as Yesterday Page 26

  Mary remembers that Mingyi once mentioned that her parents had died in the fifties, just like her own grandparents. Though she doesn’t know how they died, she has assumed that they were the victims of the Anti-Rightist campaign.

  Mingyi continues. “Six months later I was sent to a labor farm as well, in the farthest northeastern area. He was in the west, I was in the east. We were separated by thousands of miles. The first two years, we could still get each other’s letters. I read his letters so many times that I remember them by heart. He hid love poems in his writing, like puzzles, so the jailer wouldn’t confiscate his letters. Many nights I’d lose sleep decoding those poems. Then for six months I didn’t get a single letter from him.

  “One night I decided that if I didn’t get a letter from him in another month, I’d escape and go to Qinghai to find him. Of course, my idea was crazy. Anyone with any sense knew that escaping meant death. A week before my planned escape, he wrote to me, saying that he had been sent to build roads in a remote town and hadn’t been able to write. Afterward, he wrote once a month, a poem in each letter. Beautiful poems.”

  Sensing where the story is going, Mary looks at her friend sadly. Why did Mingyi have to undergo so many misfortunes, to encounter so many hardships? she asks in her heart. Why didn’t all-knowing, all-powerful God help her? It was easy for Him.

  “Two years later, I was told that I would be released from jail soon. So I wrote him and told him that I’d travel to Qinghai to see him. The next letter I received was from a stranger, a previous cell mate of his. He told me that my fiancé had died more than two years earlier. He was severely injured while building a railroad and died a few days later. Before he died, he wrote me letters day and night. Afraid that I would commit suicide if I knew about his death, he asked his cell mate to send me those letters regularly.”

  Mingyi pauses, intertwines her hands behind her head, and looks at the ceiling, releasing a long sigh. But she soon recovers her composure. “Many nights I recite the poems he wrote me and feel that I’m having a conversation with him. You probably think I’m silly, so obsessed with a dead person. But to me he’s still alive, living in my blood and with every breath I take. I’m with him every second, and I’m happy. God has given me my biggest joy by letting me love him so much.”

  They sit silently, looking away from each other—not because they want to avoid awkwardness but because each needs to be in her own thoughts. Silence sometimes is the best way to communicate, Mary believes. It’s like the silence she experienced when she and her mother talked in front of the fireplace, when her mother told her how Ingrid came into the world. She had hugged her mother then, silently—a gesture of consolation and also of understanding.

  Today, even a hug is unnecessary; Mingyi looks content and grateful, and there’s something sacred in her smile. For the first time, Mary seems to see inside Mingyi.

  “Did you ever ask God why all these things happened to you?” Mary asks.

  “Oh, yes, many times.”

  “But still…”

  “I didn’t question Him again after I was baptized. He told me everything through the Bible. Without Him, I wouldn’t have had the courage to live.” Mingyi smiles again.

  More silence.

  An ambulance blasts its siren, shattering the stillness that has reached all the way into their souls as they sit together joined by reminiscence. A blessed stillness, Mary thinks.

  “Thank you for listening,” Mingyi says, taking the teaware and the kettle to the counter. She looks at her watch. “I’ve got to go. I have an appointment with someone in a senior center. Could you wash these for me, please?”

  Mary nods hard. “Yes, of course. I still have time before picking up Alex from school.”

  Mary waves Mingyi away with a smile and watches her walk to the parking lot and get into her car, then sees her Beetle merge into El Camino Real, where the traffic is already heavy.

  THIRTEEN

  March

  FENGLAN AND A GROUP of elderly Chinese people are practicing Chen-style tai ji at the park near where her daughter lives, occupying a shaded area under an umbrella-shaped oak tree. Starting a month ago, she has come here at seven every morning to exercise with this group. The air is fresh and soothing, vibrant with the melodious singing of birds. The grass quivers with dew that glitters in the soft March sunlight. Along the winding, paved path, a young Caucasian couple is jogging, wearing caps and sports gear of the same color and style. A bearded Middle Eastern man with a black turban is striding behind them. He is talking loudly and fast on his cell phone, laughing periodically. Near the pond flanked with beech trees, a black woman is training her puppy; he is more interested in the rawhide chewing bone in her hand than in chasing the dirty tennis ball his mistress just threw for him.

  All this looks new and strange to Fenglan, just as when she first arrived, three months ago. She has to pinch herself, to feel the pain, to believe that she is thousands of miles from China in a country called the United States, which both of her daughters now call home. In her eyes, Caucasians, blacks, Indians, Arabs, fat people with legs thicker than her waist, heavily powdered old women, quiet parks, big lawns, undisturbed pigeons, even the blue sky, all belong to the United States, a country that has no relevance for her except that her daughters live here. She feels uncomfortable here, a trespasser; even now, listening to music played by Chinese instruments and practicing a Chinese exercise, she is conscious of the foreign environment around her.

  She joined this exercise group because of her older daughter’s urging—Guo-Mei had thought that it would help her get used to living in America. These people have lived here for many years and are all U.S. citizens, and though they speak only enough English to get by in their daily lives, they possess credit cards and driver’s licenses, they know which Chinese restaurants are good and cheap, and they know how to withdraw money from ATMs.

  It didn’t take long for Fenglan to become acquainted with the group members, especially Mr. Jing and Mrs. You. Mr. Jing leads the tai ji practice. He’s a Cantonese and came to America forty years ago. He used to own several shoe-repair shops but gave them to his three children when he retired. Mrs. You is from Fujian Province; her sole income is the rent from a duplex in Mountain View, purchased in the early nineties, when real-estate prices were low. She has a daughter in Los Angeles, a doctor, who rarely visits her. Mrs. You lives in a five-bedroom house owned by a Hongkongese family, and she cooks and cleans for them in exchange for room and board.

  Apart from doing her morning exercises and playing mah-jongg with them now and then, Fenglan doesn’t participate in their other activities. Mr. Jing and Mr. Wu just returned from a two-day trip to Las Vegas, which they visit at least once a month to play the slot machines and enjoy the cheap buffets. They like to talk about gambling, but it doesn’t seem to her that they have won much.

  She has difficulty understanding Mr. Jing’s and Mrs. You’s heavily accented Mandarin; she has to listen carefully. Where she lives in China, few tourists visit and most of the people she knows are local, so she is not good with accents. She complained about their Mandarin to her older daughter, hinting that she’d rather do her morning exercises by herself, but her daughter said, “Ma, why do you care which province they are from? You’re Chinese and they’re Chinese too.”

  The group takes a break before the next practice, called mulan fist, which Mr. Jing learned at a local wu shu studio and then taught everyone else.

  Mrs. You asks Mr. Jing if he has made a will. Mr. Jing nods, then says that he may have to revise it because his oldest son—the one who puts in more time at the shoe-repair business than his other two children—thought it unfair and asked for a higher percentage of the inheritance.

  “It’s hard to be fair.” Mr. Jing shakes his head. “I hope they won’t argue after I die. I don’t want my hard-won money to go to lawyers.”

  “It’s easier for me. I have only one daughter. But she’s already told me that she doesn’t want my
money,” Mrs. You says. “Of course, I also can’t expect her to look after me when I can no longer work.”

  “If you hadn’t threatened to disown her, she wouldn’t have acted like that,” Mr. Jing says.

  “But why did she marry a white guy? The guy looked so much older than her, with hair all over his arms and legs. She wasn’t ugly, or fat, or too short, and she went to medical school. She could have found an Asian guy who is also a doctor. All her friends married Asians.”

  “We’re old. We don’t know what young people think. Why don’t you just apologize to her? At least you’d get your daughter back.”

  “She hasn’t called me even once in the past four years, not even during Spring Festival. What did I do in my previous life to deserve such a heartless daughter?” Mrs. You blots her eyes with the back of her hand before continuing. “Her father died early, and I worked as a nanny to send her to college. I didn’t remarry—I had my chances, you know—because I was worried that she wouldn’t get along well with a stepfather. She should have thought about what I had done for her. If she had called me, I’d have felt better and maybe I’d have accepted her husband.”

  Mr. Jing must have heard Mrs. You’s story many times. He only murmurs, “You know, they are young. We’re old. Young people are like that.”

  Mrs. You turns to Fenglan, who sits on the bench next to theirs.

  “Mrs. Wang, don’t you have two daughters?”

  “I do. They both live here,” she says softly. Seeing Mrs. You’s sad face, her heart aches. Mrs. You’s accent suddenly doesn’t sound awkward to her; now they are just two mothers talking. If her own daughters hadn’t contacted her for four years, she’d have been heartbroken as well.

  “Are they married?” Mrs. You comes to her bench and sits with her. Mrs. You is a small woman with thick calluses on her hands and timid eyes.

  “My older daughter is, but not my younger.”

  “Is her husband Chinese?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Fenglan says hesitantly. “His great-grand-parents came from China. But he doesn’t speak Mandarin or any other Chinese dialects.”

  “He is Chinese,” Mrs. You assures her. “Just like my daughter. She was born here. She can speak some Mandarin but can’t read or write it. Mrs. Wang, you’re lucky that your daughter married a Chinese. Now their children are Chinese too, and have a Chinese last name.” She rubs her eye before continuing. “I can’t even pronounce my grandson’s last name. It’s very long. One of my daughter’s friends once sent me a picture of my grandson. He didn’t look Chinese, but he was cute, big blue eyes, and thick eyelashes. His hair was curly. It must be very soft.” Her face brightens but soon dims. “It’s no use talking about him. My daughter doesn’t even let me see him. If I’d had a son instead of a daughter, maybe I wouldn’t have cared that much whom he married. Now no one is going to carry on my husband’s family name and roots. I don’t dare go back to my hometown. People will look down on me.”

  “Maybe you should listen to Mr. Jing and apologize to your daughter,” Fenglan suggests, though she sympathizes with Mrs. You and thinks her daughter is wrong.

  “You think so? If your daughter married a white guy, would you be okay with that?” Mrs. You stares at her.

  “I don’t know,” she replies honestly. After thinking a little more, she adds, “I live in China. I’m just visiting here. I can’t tell my daughters what to do and what not to do. Like my second daughter, she’s thirty-two and she doesn’t even have a boyfriend. What can I do about her? Nothing. She’s made up her own mind.”

  “You’re right,” Mrs. You says slowly. “My grandson’s birthday is next Friday. I’m thinking about sending him a gift. He probably doesn’t even know he has a grandma.”

  Mr. Jing starts his mulan fist music on the portable stereo. Mrs. You rises from the bench and joins the practice. Fenglan feels tired, so she tells Mr. Jing and the rest of the group that she will skip this round.

  She goes to the water fountain to drink and then returns to the bench. She recalls her conversation with her older daughter two months ago, regretting again that she told her the truth when she had sworn to her husband that she’d never say a word about Guo-Ying’s birth.

  Will her older daughter treat her half-blood sister differently now? she wonders. Though her two daughters seem to be on good terms in her presence, chatting and smiling, she senses uneasiness in their suddenly downcast eyes or stiff smiles. Also, she has found out from her grandson that Guo-Ying didn’t visit Guo-Mei for a long time. What has gone wrong between them? Fenglan has no idea, nor does she know how to ask. True, they’re her daughters, but she hasn’t lived with them for years and has rarely seen them, not to mention the fact that her daughters live in a country so different from China. She feels that she no longer understands them. Are they her Guo-Mei and Guo-Ying, or are they actually Mary and Ingrid? She is confused and even appalled, as if by changing names they had changed their identities and their pasts, and thus had somehow denied her and their father.

  Another idea flashes through her mind. Will Guo-Mei tell her sister about her birth? Fenglan doesn’t believe that she will, but she still worries.

  If Guo-Ying knew the truth, she would certainly hate her mother and her father, Fenglan believes. Why hadn’t she been able to keep the secret, as her husband had? She reprimands herself, the beautiful yet quiet park in front of her suddenly becoming unbearable.

  Mr. Jing waves to her, saying they’re starting another round of the practice, but she tells him that she needs more rest.

  Walking toward her is an old couple with a stroller. They’re in their late sixties, dressed stylishly. The wife wears a black and red striped silk scarf over a wide-collared suede jacket, the bottoms of her black pants covering most of her high-heeled shoes. The husband sports a wool cap and a brown sweater inside his unbuttoned, long black overcoat. His shoes are shined. Fenglan has seen them in the park before, heard them speaking Mandarin, but they’ve never greeted one another. Having lived in this neighborhood for this long, she has noticed that Asians typically don’t greet strangers, while Caucasians usually do.

  They sit on a bench near her and play with their grandchild, calling the baby “little darling,” “sweet cookie,” and other affectionate names. The baby soon falls asleep. They begin to talk about their son and daughter-in-law. Fenglan does not like to eavesdrop, but she cannot help. She looks away so as not to give the impression that she is listening: she does not want to embarrass them, or herself.

  “They have no idea how tough it is for old people like us to take care of a little baby,” the wife starts. “I held him for only half an hour yesterday. Today my shoulders and back hurt.” She pounds her shoulder with her fist.

  “He’s almost fifteen kilos. Not a little thing,” the husband says. “I can’t even hold him for long. And now he’s learning to walk.”

  “I thought I could finish reading a few books while we’re here, but so far I’ve read only ten pages.”

  “I haven’t even started to write the introduction I promised for Professor Liu’s book. Last time when we talked on the phone, I lied to him and said I was halfway through. I think we should tell our son and daughter-in-law that we have neither the energy nor the time to babysit.”

  “But they are so busy at work. If we left—”

  “You always say that! If they decided to have a baby, they must take care of him themselves. We aren’t their nannies. You must make that clear to them. Didn’t we raise three children all by ourselves? And we both had jobs too.”

  “But times are different now. Also, we’re retired and don’t have an excuse not to babysit our only grandson. Just look at our friends. Aren’t half of them overseas, taking care of their grandchildren? Our daughter-in-law said to me just the other day that she was planning on having another child next year and would fly us over again on a six-month visa.”

  The man grows impatient. “You’re too soft-hearted! Yes, we are retired, but there are so
many things we can do. I can write a memoir, you can teach at an adult school or learn something new at a senior university. We can also travel. The Silk Road, Hainan, Guizhou, Neimeng—there are so many places in China we haven’t been to. What are we doing here, spending our time with a baby who can’t speak, cooking lunch and dinner for our son and daughter-in-law every day? If we could drive or speak good English, we might find more things to do. But the only foreign language we know is Russian. It doesn’t help us get around here.” The man raises his voice. “Moreover, our Chinese money is worth nothing here. If we want to buy anything, we must ask our son for money. Just think about our life in Beijing. So many friends, so many familiar restaurants, theaters, and teahouses. Bus stops and subway stations are within walking distance from our house. Here, you rarely see a bus.”

  Seemingly convinced, the wife nods, then says, “Are you going to tell them that we’re returning to China next week?”

  “Of course, yes. If you don’t want to tell them, I will.”

  “I just don’t want them to be mad at us for not looking after our grandson. You know yourself. You can be a little impatient at times.”

  “I’ll just say that my stomach doesn’t feel well and I need to go back to China for a checkup. Is that excuse good enough? I’ll say that you need to get a checkup as well, for high blood pressure, or they might ask you to stay. Nowadays, children are too dependent.”