Petals from the Sky (5 page)

“You’re back—How long have you been away? Five years?” The stressful situation didn’t seem to have confused her sharp memory. But as I was about to reply I saw she had already closed her eyes.

As I watched the ambulance carry Yi Kong away, from the corner of my eye I saw a face with a red scar like a snake slithering under the sun. I quickly turned, but saw nothing except the sad-faced nuns with their excited orphans.

7

One Day When We Were Young

M
ichael and I stayed in the Fragrant Spirit Temple to help. Fortunately no one was seriously injured, for everybody had gotten out through the windows in time.

By the time everything settled down, we were limp with exhaustion. Then I saw Michael looking at my leg. I followed his eyes and noticed my blood-stained knee and ankle. The bleeding had stopped, but the knee was badly scraped. I burst out crying. He took hold of my shoulders and propped me up. Tears of fear, pain, exhaustion, and pent-up emotion rolled down my cheeks, my Buddhist robe, and spilled onto Michael’s. Some young nuns in the front court inspected us with curious eyes.

Finally I stopped crying. “I’m sorry, Michael,” I said. He was still holding me; I didn’t care anymore about the nuns.

Michael took my hand and led me back to his dormitory. It was embarrassing to be standing in front of him in my torn robe. So when he said I needed to take off my stockings for him to clean the scraped skin, I hesitated.

He seemed amused, then pointed toward the exit. “There’s the bathroom.”

Although I saw no one in the dormitory besides us, I still didn’t want to use a men’s room. Finally I backed up against the wall. I lifted up my skirt at the back, found the rim of my panty hose, and pulled them down over my knees and past my shins, feeling the nylon scrape my flesh. Then I peeled the shreds first off one foot and then the other. Now my thighs, legs, and feet were bare; a pool of heat swelled inside me.

I sat while Michael examined my knee and ankle. Then he went to the sink, got a cup of water, and poured it slowly over my leg, rinsing off the gray streaks of dirt. I gasped.

He looked up and touched my arm. “Relax, Meng Ning; you’re fine. I won’t hurt you. Trust me.”

I did. And I was surprised. For I had never thought of trusting a man before. I’d only trusted Yi Kong and Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. But now, although my breath was shallow and my heart raced, I felt secure in front of this man kneeling before me and tending my feet with his skillful doctor’s hands. I battled tears and watched him bandage my knee with his clean, white handkerchief. He looked totally focused as if giving full expression to his Buddha mind.

After he had finished bandaging my knee, Michael began to examine my swollen toes. He lifted them and squeezed them lightly one by one, asking me whether they hurt.

I nodded. “Not terribly, just a little.”

“Don’t worry. Your toes are not broken and the swelling will be gone in a few days.”

My knee, ankle, and feet looked much better now and the pain had also stopped. Fortunately, only my robe was torn and stained with blood; my dress underneath was fine. I didn’t want to explain about the retreat or the fire to Mother when I got home.

Finally, still dazed, I went back to my dormitory to change, wash, and gather my belongings. Michael and I met later at the main temple gate and we exchanged phone numbers and addresses. He insisted on taking me home; I thought I should refuse—he had already done so much for everyone—but I had no energy—nor desire—to do so.

It took us almost two hours to travel from Lantau Island back to the city. First we took the ferry to Central, then from there took the MTR to Cheung Sha Wan, two blocks from my apartment. When we had climbed up to the street, I politely turned down his offer to walk with me.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. I didn’t want to risk running into Mother with a
gweilo
by my side—I was too tired to explain.

It was almost eleven when I arrived home. Luckily Mother was asleep, and I went straight to my room to change and rest. Unable to unwind, I lay in bed and looked out the window. Suspended in the royal blue sky, the silver moon peeked at me through a few scattered clouds. Su Dongpo’s poem popped into my mind. “Even a thousand miles apart, the same moon shines over us all.”

What was Michael doing now in the Kowloon Hotel? Sleeping? Watching TV? Or staring at the same moon and thinking of me? I closed my eyes….

Under the pearlescent moonlight, the scarred nun wandered around the Golden Lotus Temple where Yi Kong resided. She looked up at the window of Yi Kong’s dormitory and wailed, “Shifu, please give me your beautiful face! And your fingers! Those long, elegant fingers!”

Yi Kong materialized by the window and threw down a pillow. “Go to sleep, fool!” she said in her silvery voice. “Your scar is your best friend, not your enemy. Let go! Detach! That’s what you can learn from it.”

Just after Yi Kong had snapped shut the window, she threw it wide open again and looked down at the scarred nun with frightened eyes, screaming, “Help! Help! Fire!”

Scarred Nun sneered back, “Let go! Detach! The fire is your best friend; you should learn nonattachment from it!” Then she sauntered away, leaving Yi Kong on fire.

I snapped back into my bedroom, sweating heavily. Mother burst in; her face looked as if the Japanese were again invading Hong Kong.

“Come! Meng Ning, run!”

“What?”

“Didn’t you just scream
fire
?”

“Ma, it’s just a bad dream. I’m fine.” I looked at her concerned face and suddenly felt very tender.

Mother put her plump hand on my forehead. “Meng Ning, you look tired. You need a big, healthy breakfast,” she said, then disappeared into the kitchen. Her cheerful whistle pierced through the clanking of pots and pans into my ears.

The tune was “One Day When We were Young.”

That was my parents’ love song. Before he became a gambler, Father was a poet and scholar who taught school in Hualian, a town in Taiwan. Mother, his student, was nine and Father nineteen when they first met. Mother told me the moment their eyes met, she knew their fates were linked. She always boasted how handsome Father looked with his clean white shirt and thick, cropped hair, how he charmed all his students with his humor and erudition, how all the girls in his class had a crush on him, while his torchlike eyes always sought only hers. “Tall and handsome like a Hollywood star, that’s how your father’s friends described him.”

A year later, Grandmother moved the whole family to Taipei. Grandfather had died, and Grandmother believed that only in a big city would she have a chance to lift herself from poverty and give her children a better future. Mother and Father lost contact with each other.

One day, eight years later, when Mother went as usual to help in Grandmother’s store after school, she saw a man chatting with Grandma while choosing gold jewelry from the glass counter. The familiar voice made her heart jump.

“Oh,” she muttered to herself, “Goddess of Mercy, let this be
him!
” Then she called on all the gods and goddesses she’d never believed in to grant her wish.

Grandmother chided her. “Mei Lin, what are you mumbling about over there? Come here and help.”

The man turned around and their eyes locked.

Mother screamed, “Teacher Du!”

“Ah, so this is the Teacher Du you used to talk about all the time,” said her mother. “Now congratulate Teacher Du, for he’s getting married in three weeks. He’s here to buy gold for his bride.”

Instead of congratulating Teacher Du, Mother burst into tears and ran out of the store.

“Mei Lin, let me explain!” Father chased after her out into the street where they fell into each other’s arms.

At first they had no idea what to do. Finally, a week later, they thought of an easy way out of Father’s engagement to the other girl—they just gathered a few belongings, some cash, and boarded a ship to Hong Kong. A year later, at nineteen, Mother gave birth to me. After that, Father and Mother continued to live together without ever getting married. I’d always thought this was because my parents felt guilty about the jilted girl, for her humiliation, her broken heart. Yet I’d never learned the truth, for whenever I asked what happened to the girl, they’d always avoided my question by talking about something else.

Mother never quite got over the fact that she hadn’t had a fancy wedding nor gold-framed wedding pictures. Father, on the other hand, seemed quite proud of the situation. Once, when I was small, he told me, “Ning Ning, since your mother and I were never really married, you’re an illegitimate child. But you know what? That’s also the reason you’re exceptionally handsome and intelligent.”

“Baba, I don’t understand.” I meant my being illegitimate and intelligent and handsome at the same time.

Father smiled mischievously. “Of course you don’t. You’re still a child. Go ask your mother. I’ve already explained it to her a hundred times.”

Mother’s deft hands stopped in the midst of her knitting. She measured the small red sweater against my back, lowering her voice. “Ahhh…it’s because—because when a couple makes a child in a secret way, so to speak, they’re, well…ahh, more intense. They give more energy to the child when they do, well…
that thing,
you understand? They throw out more
qi,
more everything. That’s why you’re so beautiful and smart. Lucky child, because you got double what other people have. Double, you understand?”

I didn’t.

“Well,” Mother snapped, “then go back to your father and ask him!” She resumed her knitting in allegro tempo, lowering her head.

Sometimes I felt glad that the other girl hadn’t married Father. Because not only would she have lost face when Father cheated on her after they were married, she’d probably have also lost all the gold that he would have bought her for the wedding. Could she, like Mother, have survived merely on the memory of a song sung one wonderful morning in May? I knew Father had taught “One Day When We Were Young” to his students in his English class, but Mother said, “Actually, your father wanted to teach it only to me, but he didn’t want the others to know of his feelings, so he taught it to the whole class.”

Breakfast was finally ready. I sat down to eat and Mother sat opposite me to read her newspaper. On the table, I found three boiled eggs, two thick pieces of ham, and coffee with milk.

“Ma, you seldom cook Western dishes. Why an American breakfast today?”

“Because America is rich, just like its breakfast. You need more energy,” she answered without looking up from her paper, then, “
Ai-ya!
Yesterday a monastery was on fire!”

I stopped chewing; she went on reading. “Hmm…lucky nobody’s hurt…because an American and a Chinese doctor helped people leave through windows.”

My heart raced. Mother continued, “This
gweilo
doctor graduated from Zhong Hok Kin Si…and a Dr. Du…”

I snatched the paper from Mother despite her protest. The headline of the article read: “Seven-Day Buddhist Retreat in Fragrant Spirit Temple Canceled Because of Fire. People Saved by an American Buddha, Nobody Killed, Only Slight Injuries.”

The article went on to describe the fire, the panic, and the damage. At the end, it said:

The American doctor, Buddha Michael Fuller, thirty-eight, who saved many lives, is a neurologist graduated from Johns Hopkins University, and currently works in New York Hospital.

A participant at the retreat, Dr. Fuller took refuge as a lay Buddhist in the Shanghai Jade Buddha Temple and was given the lay Buddhist name Fangxia Zizai. Monks and nuns from the temple expressed immense thanks to Dr. Fuller and Dr. Du, a Chinese lay woman attending the retreat.

I spilled coffee on my name in the newspaper to smear the ink before I handed it back to Mother. Then I gobbled down my breakfast. It must have been the temple that had given the newspaper our names. And it must have been the gossipy newspaper that had put them together.

Memories of Michael holding the child, carrying and lifting me through the temple window, and tending my knee played slowly in my mind. Men had rarely held particular interest for me, but now when I thought of him and his Buddhist name Fangxia Zizai, which means Let-Go-and-Be-Carefree, I felt something stir inside me. And I was afraid….

8

The Same Moon Shines Over Us All

I
peeked at Mother, who was still completely immersed in her gossip-column reading. Judging from the cheerful lifting of her lips, I assumed it must be something really juicy. Yet sadness engulfed me, for I knew well this had been the same expression she’d worn when she’d listened to Father’s
tianyan miyu
—sugared words and honeyed language. She had willingly let Father cheat her and cheat on her, though she’d always prided herself on being extremely careful.

So careful that she’d spend an extra dollar, an extra half hour, and an extra half mile riding a tram to the particular market where, according to her, not only did the pork cost one dollar less, but also weighed one
liang
more.

“If you’re careful, you can steer your ship for ten thousand years.”

“But, Ma,” I’d argue, “what’s the point of steering a ship for ten thousand years when we’re even lucky to have eighty years to live?”

Mother’s tongue would click away as if it were rolling in oil. “Ah, insolent girl. It’s the philosophy, the wisdom behind it.” Then she would pour out words while picking up her favorite dish, fatty pork, with her chopsticks. “Let’s say your grandmother taught me to be careful, and now I teach you. While in the future you’ll teach your daughter, and in the far future my granddaughter will teach my great-granddaughter…then all the generations added up together will be ten thousand years of wisdom, or more, right?”

But Mother was careful only in words, not in deeds. While she would warn me not to open doors to strangers, she’d let salesmen into our apartment, serve them tea, and let herself be sweet-talked into buying expensive kitchen equipment that she’d never learn how to use, and which cost her a whole month’s food money. While she’d tell me not to drink any beverage offered at a friend’s house, she’d happily toss down a dollar onto a street stall and pick up a filthy glass swirling with unidentifiable liquid.

And despite her incessantly cautioning me to beware of handsome, honey-lipped, flower-hearted men, she had blindly loved Father and willingly let herself be cheated by him.

Father had charmed her, not only with his good looks, but also with the numerous love poems he had written her. In his slick calligraphy, he’d write them on fancy rice paper printed with flowers and birds or sprinkled with simulated gold flakes. Occasionally he’d also write them on photographs of himself that he had sent her. Above the poems he would add, “To dear Mei Lin, remembering our eight years’ separation”—then below, “Forever yours, Du Wei.”

Over the years, Mother carefully pressed the poems in her diary together with the daisies or irises or roses she had bought from wet, smelly, slippery markets or picked from public parks. From time to time, she’d take the poems out to read, or recopy them with brush and ink, imitating Father’s calligraphy. Although I was deeply moved by these romantic acts, they also made me sad.

For Father had never written those poems. He had plagiarized them from ancient poets.

I could never pin down Father’s real feelings for Mother. One time when I’d asked him how he had courted her, he looked surprised. “I didn’t court your mother,” he said, lowering his voice, “it’s she who chased after me.” Then he told me a different version of the gold-store story. There, when they had run into each other, he had not recognized her at all. “How could I?” He frowned and looked surprised. “She was nine years old when we were in Hualian, but when we met again in Taipei she’d grown into a young woman.” “Besides,” Father added, “how could I remember her puppy love when she was nine and me nineteen?” But then when I asked him why he had dumped his fiancée for Mother, he suddenly changed the subject to talk about the weather. Had he actually been after Grandmother’s gold?

One evening, a few weeks after Father’s death, Mother decided to bind into a book all the poems he had written her. I helped her work on the project at our dining table.

Although the room was hot, Mother told me not to turn on the fan, for fear the wind would blow off the papers.

I gathered poems from her different diaries; Mother pasted the dried flowers onto a hard board to be used as the cover of the collection. As we were cutting, pasting, and binding, now and then Mother would hum “One Day When We Were Young,” then recite the poems Father had written her as if he were still hovering somewhere in the house, meanwhile quietly wiping away a tear or two.

I peeked at her. “Ma, do you understand Baba’s poems?”

Mother frowned. “Meng Ning, you don’t understand a poem; you feel it.”

“Then how do you feel?”

Mother frowned deeper. “If I can tell you how I feel, then your father’s poems aren’t very good. With good poems you never quite know how you feel. Sometimes sad, sometimes happy, sometimes sweet, sometimes sour, sometimes bitter, sometimes generous. Sometimes you feel and sometimes you don’t.” She paused, her eyes losing their focus. “When your heart is like a knocked-over shelf of condiments spilling a hundred different flavors and feelings, then the poem is a very good poem. Your father’s poems can do just that.”

Suddenly Mother stood up, went to the window, opened it, and pointed outside. “Meng Ning, look at the moon, so bright and beautiful tonight. I wonder what your father is doing over there right now.” Then she sighed. “
Hai!
He knew this moment would come when he wrote, ‘A thousand miles apart, the same moon shines over us all.’”

She meditated awhile on the moon, then came back to sit down by me. “Your father was such a great poet, and he was psychic. He knew that the moon would bring him and me together.”

I swallowed hard. Didn’t she know this was not Father’s poem, but Su Dongpo’s?

Mother took a picture on top of the pile of papers and handed it to me, her eyes misted. “Your father when we met again after our eight years’ separation.”

The brownish, hand-tinted photograph showed a very young and handsome Father. His hair was pomaded and slicked back in the fashion of the forties, while his eyes, large, sparkling, and dreamy, seemed to radiate pleasure and passion. He looked eager to show off, with his generous smile, his sensuous lips, and gleaming white teeth. Mother had told me, repeatedly, he was so handsome that many people had mistaken him for a movie star. A Hollywood, American movie star. “Kar Gay Bo,” she said proudly. Clark Gable. Looking at Father’s picture, I could understand why, despite his dishonesty, Mother could never gather enough strength to resist him.

Although my parents had lived together for more than twenty years, Mother had never really captured Father, for he was as slippery as a snake—just when you thought you might get a hold of him, he had already vanished into the depth of the bush. Sometimes this made me think that maybe in life you should never try to capture what you really want. For at the moment when you’re holding the conquest in your hands, your victory only signifies the beginning of the end. Maybe only the ignorant will hold on. The wise will either let go or simply live with imperfection as it is. Or, maybe, in her own way, Mother truly felt happy with Father. For this romantic love was the only dream she had in life; without it, she’d be like a flower without the sun, a beauty without a mirror. Softly, Mother began to recite the poem written on the picture:

“Eight years blurred between life and death;

Even as I try not to think, I can’t forget.

A solitary grave a thousand miles away has no way to express its melancholy.

I fear, when we meet, my face will be dusty and my hair white.”

“That’s how he wrote to express his grief for our eight years’ separation,” Mother said. Then she looked lost in thought. “Your father was such a genius; he had such deep feelings. If people could appreciate poetry today…he’d be famous, very famous….”

It saddened me to see how the years had caused Mother’s lips to droop helplessly at the corners and her eyes to lose their luster. Too, it saddened me to know the truth that, again, this poem was not written by Father but by Su Dongpo, the great Song dynasty poet. Worse, Father had changed the original “ten years” of Su’s poem to suit his eight years’ separation from Mother. It broke my heart that Mother could not see the truth, even when it was bared right in front of her eyes. To her, believing
is
seeing, rather than the reverse. Or did she deliberately choose to be blind?

Suddenly, a strong wind blew from the window and the rice papers scattered on the floor in a flurry. Mother stooped to pick them up, embarrassing me with her plump torso and her awkward pose.

“Quick, Meng Ning, close the windows! And be careful not to trample on your father’s poems!”

I went up to the windows and saw, to my surprise, that what brightly shone outside the window was not the moon, but a streetlamp.

The phone’s trilling jolted me awake from my reverie; I snatched it up. “Hello.”

“Can I speak to Meng Ning, please.”

“Michael?” My heart raced.

“Yes. Meng Ning.” A pause, then, “Are you all right? I called last night, but nobody answered the phone. I was worried about you.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Michael. I didn’t hear anything. Mother must have turned off the phone. Sometimes she doesn’t want to be bothered. I’m fine.”

“Your knee and ankle…you want me to come over and change the bandages for you?”

“No thanks. I think I can manage,” I said, feeling a tug at my heart and suppressing it.

He asked whether I would like to go to the hospital with him to visit Yi Kong and other patients from the fire.

I was glad he’d asked, and suddenly ashamed. How could I have forgotten to think of my mentor, who not only had taught me Buddhism and Zen painting, but also had given me free meals and even lent me money for my father’s funeral?

Michael was waiting for me by the entrance of Kwong Wah Hospital when I arrived at five-thirty in the afternoon. We bought some fruit and juice at a street stall outside, then walked into the lobby.

Yi Kong slept, with two nuns sitting at her bedside—the eye-twitching nun and a young novice. Once I’d put the gift on the chest beside the bed, they signaled us to go outside.

When we were in the corridor, they both exclaimed, “
A Mi Tuo Fo!
Praise to the Merciful Buddha! Thank you so much for what you two have done.” Although I remembered them from the retreat, I’d never asked their names. The eye-twitching nun was Lonely Journey and the young nun No Dust. Lonely Journey told us Yi Kong was only exhausted from the fire and worried about the damage caused, but she was otherwise fine.

Michael asked how the fire started. No Dust frowned. “An eight-year-old boy did it.” Her voice grew angry. “He is the naughtiest in our orphanage, can never be disciplined. Yesterday he stole some meat from who knows where and tried to cook it behind the Meditation Hall, but he fell asleep. We only learned about the cause this morning when another orphan came to tell us. He hasn’t come himself to apologize.”

No Dust paused. “This boy came to our orphanage after his father stabbed his mother to death and none of his relatives were willing to take him, fearing he’d bring bad luck into their houses. We took him, and now see what he’s done to us.” Then she widened her eyes. “Bad boy! The fire could have killed the Venerable Yi Kong!”

Michael spoke, his voice sad. “He’s just a boy. It’s just his ignorance, and…it’s hard to be an orphan.”

The two nuns smiled, looking embarrassed, then began to talk about other things. Toward the end of our conversation, Lonely Journey told me that Yi Kong wished to see me after she was out of the hospital.

Michael and I headed toward the Yau Ma Tei MTR station on Waterloo Road. The broad street was crowded with hurrying people and speeding cars. As we passed the YMCA, I saw our reflections in the glass door. Michael looked spirited in his green shirt and khaki pants, his hair slightly mussed by the breeze. While I, in my white blouse and long skirt (to cover my scraped knee), looked like a child beside him. Then I noticed we were holding hands. Feeling my color rise, I immediately withdrew mine. Michael seemed not to notice. “Meng Ning, would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”