Petals from the Sky (12 page)

PART TWO

15

New York, New York

B
ack in Hong Kong, right after Mother had helped me bring in the luggage and closed the door, she lowered her voice as if to divulge a secret. “While you were away, some
gweilo
has called several times.”

My heart started to pound. “Oh, what’s his name?”

“Mic Ko something. He said he called from the United States.” Mother eyed me suspiciously. “Who is this foreign devil?”

“Nothing, Ma—”

“You mean this man is nothing, or he wants nothing from you?”

“Ma!”

“If a man’s mouth says he wants nothing, that always means he does want something, you understand?” She paused. “I don’t like foreign devils—they always want more, more, more!” Now she stared at me through her pinched eyes. “But then when you want to get married, they don’t want you anymore!”

“Ma, no one is talking anything about getting married!”

“Oh, if you react so strongly, that means you’re thinking about it, right?!”

“Ma!” I decided to lie to save myself from more motherly harassment. “I think it must be the Asia Society in New York, which might be interested in my application for a position.”

Mother looked happy. “Good. Now let me fix some tonic soup to invigorate you after the plane ride,” she said, then whistled “One Day When We Were Young” all the way to the kitchen.

Although I was dying to call Michael right back, I decided to wait a little.

Mother prepared a big dinner. “This is to celebrate your Ph.D.” she said, then started to pile fish, chicken, shrimp, and vegetables onto my plate.

Starved from the unsatisfying airplane meals, I was hungry for my mother’s delicious cooking and ate with great relish. As I was raking rice into my mouth with my chopsticks, I noticed that she was not eating.

“Ma, are you not hungry?”

“Ah”—she looked at me as if I were her first love, then rolled her eyes heavenward—“I don’t know how an ignorant woman like me can give birth to a doctor daughter like you!”

I reached to pat her hand. Just then the phone rang and Mother dashed to pick it up.

She cupped the receiver and made a face. “It’s that same
gweilo!
”

I went up to snatch the receiver from Mother and waved her away. “Michael?”

“Meng Ning?”

A silence. Then Michael’s voice again. “Meng Ning, where have you been? I was worried about you!”

He sounded so upset that I didn’t have the heart to blame him for not calling me earlier. “I was…in Paris.”

“Your mother told me that, but she wouldn’t give me your phone number.”

“I’m sorry, Michael. She doesn’t trust strangers.”

“It’s all right. So you’ve gotten your Ph.D.?”

“Yes.”

“Congratulations, Meng Ning. I’m so happy for you!”

“Thanks.”

Another pause. His voice now sounded low and edgy, as if he hadn’t slept for days. “I’m so sorry I didn’t call you earlier. The operator tried many times, but couldn’t connect from Tibet to Hong Kong. Then when I tried from the States, you’d already left for Paris.”

“Michael, I’m sorry about all that…but anyway, I’m talking to you now.” A pause, then I asked, “How’s Professor Fulton?”

“He had a stroke while collecting antique
thangkas
in Lhasa. When I arrived, the local doctors were treating him with Tibetan medicine, which I didn’t understand at all. I immediately booked a flight, brought him back, and put him in New York Hospital.”

Michael went on to tell me that fortunately it was only a mild stroke, so the Professor’s partial loss of memory and motor function would only be temporary. Already he could eat on his own and move around, though with a walker.

“You don’t have to worry, Meng Ning. He’s fine now,” Michael said, sounding more relaxed. Then he changed the subject. “Will you come to the States to see me?”

I didn’t know how to respond to this for several seconds. Then I felt his anticipation rolling toward me from the other side of the world.

“Meng Ning, you there?”

“Yes.”

“Will you come? Please…”

I didn’t know what to say. Wasn’t he angry with me? If I went to see him in the States, what would happen? Would he still be serious about me, even though I’d turned him down?

I covered my chest, fearing that my heart would flutter out of me. In the intimate silence stretching across the Pacific Ocean, I imagined myself listening to his breathing and touching his eyebrows, which resembled the Chinese character “one” saturated with
qi.
…

“Meng Ning, please.” Michael’s urgent voice rose again. “Please say yes.”

A moment later I looked at the telephone receiver, now back on the table. I had agreed.

I went back to finish my celebration dinner. I decided not to tell Mother about Michael—not yet.

So, when she asked about my long-distance telephone conversation, I said, “Ma, it’s the Asia Society in New York. So I’m going to the United States for a job interview.”

“Wow, Meng Ning.” A big smile bloomed on her face. “Now good luck finally pours into our house one after another!” she enthused, beginning again to pile food on my plate until it’d become a miniature meat mountain.

So barely two weeks after I’d come back from Paris I was packing again. My hands were busy smoothing the tiny red flower on a pair of black lace bikini panties, from which Mother’s suspicious eyes seemed unwilling to part.

Then my mother, who’d never been to New York, but who had her opinion about any city, told me emphatically, “Meng Ning, when you take a taxi in New York, you have to make sure you never take your eyes off the meter, because the driver has fixed it to jump faster.”

“Ma!” I cast her an annoyed glance, stuffing the panties in the suitcase. The flower now looked like a drop of blood on the black spider-web pattern.

Mother plunged on. “I was told in New York passersby will just stand and watch while people are being robbed, or even murdered. But this is not the worst. The most disgusting is that when passengers push and shove to get onto the subway, they’ll thrust others onto the rail and the train will just keep going and nobody cares. So this is New York! Be careful!

“Oh, I also remember there is a place called something like Sentro Bark which is famous, not for its scenic spots, but because it is packed with drug addicts, murderers, whores, child molesters, gigolos, rapists, and vampires at night. So promise me you’ll never go there, will you?”

On September third, near the end of the six-hour flight to New York from San Francisco, the captain’s cheerful voice announcing the plane’s arrival at JFK awoke me from a nap. I looked out the window and saw the 747’s wing bank low over the water and turn back toward the sandy beach. Inland, miniature buildings, cars, highways, skyways, and a few patches of green angled away from me. When the plane finally struck the runway, I realized I’d be seeing Michael in a few minutes. My heart started to pound. I took out the painting I’d made for him and looked at it one last time as the plane taxied down the runway. It was a white-robed Guan Yin riding on a huge lotus leaf, holding the Heart Sutra. Since I couldn’t afford to buy him anything expensive and did not want to bring him anything cheap, I hoped the Bodhisattva I had brushed onto gold-speckled rice paper would find her way into his heart.

The moment I walked into the waiting area I spotted Michael leaning against a pillar. I was startled by the sadness on his face and by the leanness of his once robust frame. A pain stabbed inside me. Then our eyes met. The air had reincarnated. Michael swiftly came to me and, without a word, pulled me into his arms. After long moments of silence, he whispered into my ear, “Meng Ning, I’ve missed you so much.” Then more hugs and kisses before he released me, grabbed my suitcase, and led me to the cab stand.

Beside me in the confines of the cab, Michael looked very appealing in his black turtleneck and gray corduroy pants. I felt happy feeling his shoulder against mine as the nearness of his body soothed my heart. My eyes busily played a tug-of-war between the passing scene outside and his long-missed face within. Michael put his hand on my thigh as the car sped along Grand Central Parkway toward Manhattan.

Michael held my hand during the trip, until our taxi pulled to a stop at a nondescript apartment building. “We’re on the Upper East Side,” he told me as he paid the driver. A blue-uniformed doorman came to open the door for us and carried my baggage into the lobby.

“Good evening, Doctor,” he said to Michael.

Michael introduced me and told Frank, the doorman, that I would be staying for a few weeks. Should I need any help, his assistance would be appreciated. Frank nodded while he held open the elevator door and punched the button for the twenty-eighth floor. “Nice to meet you, Miss Du. Enjoy your stay.”

I smiled back and saw Michael stick a twenty-dollar bill into his hand.

After we entered his apartment, Michael set down my luggage, took my arms, and tilted back to study me. I felt his lips warming my forehead and my brows. Moments had passed before he released me to look me in the eye. “Meng Ning, how come each time I see you you’re more beautiful than before?”

With his fingers, he slipped the band from my ponytail so that my hair tumbled over my neck and shoulders. He smoothed it back and began to search my lips with slow, gentle kisses.

“I missed you,” he whispered, his breath light and ticklish in my ear.

Feeling myself stir, I pulled him to me and ruffled his soft hair. “I missed you, too, Michael.”

We collapsed in the chaise longue in the foyer. His caresses started to alleviate my body’s stiffness from the twenty-two-hour trip. When I was about to rest my head on his shoulder, I noticed the door was still left half open.

“Michael, the door…”

But he murmured, “Forget the door,” then kicked it shut and pulled me closer to him….

With my first glance I could see that Michael’s home was full of books, paintings, and works of art. The residue of incense permeated the air. I suddenly remembered something and broke away from him.

“Meng Ning, stay with me. I haven’t seen you for weeks.”

I ignored him, went to open my carryon, took out the Guan Yin painting, then returned. “Michael”—I handed him the framed miniature painting—“I did this for you.”

Michael scrutinized the Goddess, his eyes like those of a child who has just discovered a treasure chest. Moments passed and his gaze was still glued to the white-robed image riding a lotus on the turquoise waves.

Finally I asked, “You like it, Michael? The Goddess will protect you—”

“Like it? Oh, Meng Ning, it’s wonderful.” He turned to look at me hard and long, as if this were our first encounter. “How come you didn’t tell me that you’re also so talented?”

I blushed.

“And so seductive,” he said, tilting up my chin so that he could press his lips hard on mine.

Ten minutes later, Michael stuck his head out of the kitchen and asked, “Is tea OK?” his spiked hair sending a tinge of warmth to my heart.

“No,” I said. “I want Coke. Since I’m now in America, I want something American.”

“Then Coke it is.” His voice sounded cheerful and the sound of his energy filled the kitchen.

I walked around to appreciate the apartment. Illumination from two blue-and-white porcelain lamps warmed the cozy living room. Several pieces of antique Chinese furniture glowed in the soft light. On a low table stood a delicately crafted and subtly glazed
blanc de chine
Buddha statue.

Bookcases lined two walls; the others were covered with Chinese paintings. A very simple brush painting caught my eye: Han Shan and Shi De—the two legendary lunatic-poet-monks of the Tang dynasty—swept the floor of the temple gate with straw brooms, and laughed as if everything in this Ten Thousand Miles of Red Dust is but a joke.

One of Han Shan’s poems was written in cursive calligraphy in a corner of the painting:

Unknown

I live on the mountain

Enjoying the solitude among white clouds

Michael’s apartment possessed a lonely quality. Was this what drew him to Zen? Was I feeling the loneliness of someone orphaned at a young age, or something more philosophical—or both?

Again I looked at the two hermits in the painting. Han Shan—Cold Mountain—got his name because he’d lived a secluded life on a remote mountain where, even in the hottest summer, its snowcap never melted. His friend Shi De—Picked Up—got his name because he was an orphan dumped on the street and found by a Zen master who went about riding on a tiger. Since the boy had no name, no parents, no possessions, the Zen master simply called him by the way he’d found him—Picked Up. Picked Up lived a carefree and detached existence. His eyes always shone clear and bright, and his smile was penetrating. Day in and day out, he and Cold Mountain swept leaves, scrawled poems on rocks, played with the village children, and appreciated the moon. They are honored in Chinese legend because they lived their lives according to the Dao—The Great Way.

A strange feeling crept over me. Michael’s life, in a certain respect, resembled that of the two monks. He’d been orphaned (I hadn’t yet had the chance to ask how). He seemed detached; he wrote poems and appreciated the moon…. However, instead of an isolated mountain monastery, Michael lived in a nice apartment in one of the busiest cities in the world. But hadn’t some of the old Chinese sages taught that the true hermit feels free of the dusty world while dwelling in the clamorous city?

I walked to the kitchen and asked Michael whether he needed help. He was arranging crackers in a bowl. “No, Meng Ning. You must be tired from the trip; why don’t you relax in the living room? I’ll join you in a minute.”

I went back into the living room, not because I wanted to relax, but because I had to suppress an urge to cry. I was confused. If I was so attracted to Michael, why had I turned down his proposal in Hong Kong? But then what about Yi Kong, and the Goddess of Mercy? What about my calling since my fall into the well seventeen years before? What about my dream to be part of the nuns’ carefree life?