The First Excellence: Fa-Ling's Map (27 page)

The old wooden table still stood against the other wall, wedged in between two floor-to-ceiling shelves. The short-wave radio no longer sat on its top, though, having been replaced by a plastic vase filled with fake blue flowers that stood beside a small silver CD player.

Fa-ling pulled out the ancient vinyl-upholstered, chrome-legged chair and sat at the table, barely aware of her own thoughts as she leaned on her elbows.

This was the room that had saved her life at the expense of her soul. A fair trade, and one she would make again without a moment’s hesitation, but not without the requisite feelings of shame that accompanied such a decision. Still, she would do it again, would have no choice, really, faced with the same set of circumstances and the same responsibility towards her baby sister. There was no point second guessing her actions at this late date.

She closed her eyes, the static memory of the short-wave radio filling her mind. Xiao was partial to the BBC, though Fa-ling wasn’t clear on whether he spoke English. She had never thought about it at the time, but in retrospect she guessed he must have, because she would usually find him listening intently with the volume turned low, compulsively fiddling with the tuner in a vain attempt to minimise the crackling distortion.

She was four the first time she followed her hunger into the pantry. There he sat at the table, like a spider on its web, waiting for a creature to fly into its trap. He had seemed old even then. He must be ancient now, if he was still alive.

“
Hello,” he had said, his grin displaying a set of teeth that would frighten a dragon.

She’d hesitated, standing on the threshold of the open door for endless moments, her fear battling against the overwhelming hunger pains.

“
Would you like some grapes?” he said. He stood and opened one of the fridge doors, taking out a bowl of purple grapes that gleamed at her. Her mouth began to water, but still she stood, hovering in the doorway and wishing the bowl of grapes would float out of Xiao’s hand and toward her. She was ready to take flight the moment she had her hands on the food.

Spellbound, Fa-ling watched Xiao place the bowl on the table in front of the only chair. “Come,” he said. “You look hungry.”

She approached the table. He laughed. He lifted her into the air and sat on the chair, so she was perched on his knee.

Afraid the bowl of fruit might vanish at any moment, she grabbed two fistfuls, shoving one into her mouth to the delight of the horrid ‘caretaker’.

“
Yes,” he said, “eat, little one. You’ll never have nice tits if you don’t eat.” He stood and carried her to the refrigerators, pulling out muffins, chilled meat and fish, and a bunch of bananas. Then he put the dishes on the table beside the grapes and sat again on the chair.

The juice of the fruit ran down Fa-ling’s chin. She gobbled everything in sight, hiding two bananas in her shirt to mash for baby Fa-dao. As she shoved bits of food into her mouth and pockets, Xiao took his own pleasure, invading her body with his hands and pressing himself against her skinny bottom.

So began their demonic arrangement, a contract forged in shame and secrecy. Every afternoon after classes, when Shujia was gone to visit friends or to do her shopping, Fa-ling would leave Fa-dao in her crib in the infant ward and make her way down to the basement to visit Xiao. She would demand an extra bottle of formula or some thick congee to take back for her sister, and would invariably fill her pockets with meat, biscuits and fruit which she would hide under her bed, filling her stomach in her tiny room when everyone else was asleep.

Fa-ling’s visits to the pantry continued for the next four years. Fa-ling and Fa-dao amazed their teachers with their physical and mental development. Because Fa-ling was no longer starved to the point of distraction, she was able to focus on her lessons and soon rose to the top of the class. Shujia came to believe the sisters possessed superior genes. Despite the inadequate meals served by the Sunshine Rooster Home for Orphaned Children, their faces glowed and their hair, though unkempt, grew thick and lush.

The years passed. Little Fa-dao was soon four-years-old and ready to begin taking lessons. Fa-ling had already become the first favourite of the head Administrator, Shujia.

She could not understand, though, why Fa-ling was so protective of her younger sister. At eight years old, Fa-ling behaved like a mother, insisting Fa-dao sit beside her in class, and never encouraging the child to play with children her own age.

The reason was that Fa-ling had begun to notice a subtle yet undeniable shift in Xiao’s attention, away from her and toward Fa-dao. Fa-ling was walking a fine line. She became increasingly precocious in her behaviour towards the janitor, allowing him to take more and more liberties. Still, every day he asked about Fa-dao, and something in his voice sent off a current of warning to Fa-ling.

No one, no matter how big or how frightening, was going to mess with Fa-dao.

As fate would have it, the situation never came to involve little Fa-dao in that way. Destiny stepped in, as it sometimes does, and took control of its two key players. One hot August afternoon Shujia decided to alter her routine and take a bath before going out to shop. As she was dressing, she couldn’t remember whether she had already stocked up her supply of Deer Infant Formula, the dry, unappealing powder used to make milk for the babies in her charge.

Not wanting to waste the money or go out of her way unnecessarily, she decided to check the supply in the pantry first.

That was the day — that was the very door Xiao had closed so as to hide his actions from prying eyes. He had been so lost in his own passion he did not hear the door open until it was too late, until Shujia let out a loud gasp, falling against the doorframe with her hand over her mouth, and until Fa-ling lifted her mouth from its guilty task, staring at Shujia through eyes that had not been so afraid since the night of the big moon four years earlier, when Ma-ma had left her alone on the mountain with Baby Fa-dao.

The scene that followed Shujia’s discovery in the pantry lived on in nightmarish flashbacks. The headmistress flew into a rage, grabbing a broom from beside the door and beating Xiao as he tried to cover his head with his arms. Not satisfied she was making her point, she began to beat his naked bottom, and even launched several blows onto his limp manhood.

Then she turned on Fa-ling, who still cowered speechlessly under the table, her pockets filled with the fruits of her labour.

Shrieking, Shujia threw the broom against the pantry shelves and grabbed Fa-ling by her left arm, pulling her out from under the table. The terrified child tried desperately to pull away, but Shujia would not be controlled. Still holding onto Fa-ling’s upper left arm, she used this leverage to slam the child against the table over and over, until finally she felt the fragile young bone snap in her hand and was forced to stem the tide of her rage.

“
Out!” she shouted at Xiao. Then she lifted the crying Fa-ling and carried her to her own quarters, where she used the orphanage’s third-rate medical supplies to fashion a splint and wrapped the arm tightly in bandages to set.

The whole time she was tending to Fa-ling, she rained verbal abuse on the child, calling her ‘whore’ and ‘peasant dirt’, and telling her there would be no more special treatment for Fa-ling and her sister, no more secret meals and no more help with lessons.

Finally Shujia’s verbal abuse subsided and was replaced with repeated demands that Fa-ling keep the events of that day a secret. She warned Fa-ling if she ever told what had happened, no one would believe her. She would be outcast forever and would have no hope of one day finding a home.

For the next year, Fa-ling and her sister suffered the inadequate diet of the orphanage, wasting away into two shells of what they had been. Shujia seldom if ever spoke to either girl, though Fa-ling struggled desperately to gain her attention through academic excellence. When, in 1994, the Republic opened its doors to International adoption, Shujia finally saw her chance to eradicate her mistake. She became involved in the program, and when a couple made an early application to adopt older children, siblings if possible, Shujia jumped at the chance to foist the sisters onto the Canadian parents.

So Li Fa-ling and Li Fa-dao, named ‘Li’ after the River where they had been found, became Fa-ling and Daphne, the daughters of Bernice and Gabriel MacLeod, a Canadian couple who had previously lost two sons to a house fire. Fa-ling clung to her Chinese name, which meant ‘the law’ or ‘the true path’, but her sister was eager to forget the past and embraced her new English name.

Years later, Fa-ling understood it was
shame
that drove Shujia’s behaviour on that day. She was ashamed to have allowed such a thing to happen to one of her girls, and she was ashamed to have been duped by her favourite student, her protégée.

At the time, though, crying herself to sleep in Shujia’s bed, Fa-ling was aware only of her own shame. She had, after all, struck a bargain with the devil. She had been a willing accomplice from the start, thrilling in the extra food that kept her and Fa-dao alive.

**

A shuffle outside of the pantry door made her turn, although from her angle she could not quite see into the kitchen. No matter. The unmistakable sound of footsteps brought Shujia to the doorway.

“
I thought I’d find you here,” the headmistress said.

Fa-ling studied her face for signs of a shared memory, for any indication she recalled that horrible day. Unfortunately the event was forever lodged in Fa-ling’s own mind, renewed in vivid colour with every twinge and every minor ache in her left arm.

Shujia had aged. Lines of grey marked her hair, but she was still beautiful, in an icy, unbending way.

“
Why are you here?” she said. “This is not your place anymore.”

“
This was never my place,” Fa-ling said, “but I often have trouble remembering that. I needed to come, to see this room again. I needed to tell you…I needed to let you know how much you hurt me.”

“
Me? I didn’t hurt you. It was that bastard, Xiao. He was the one who abused you.”

“
Yes. He abused me. He damaged me in ways I may never understand. It was you, though, who hurt me the most. That final year…” Fa-ling paused, the effort to control her emotion almost too great, “that last year when we were here, you turned your back on me. Until then, I had always imagined you were fond of me. It made it easier, having no mother, to think you believed I was worthwhile. When you took that away from me, you took everything.”

“
You deceived me.”

“
I was a child. You were an adult. If you had fed us enough, I would not have been forced to sell myself for a handful of grapes.”

“
You don’t know what you are talking about. You think I make a fortune, doing this lousy job? What thanks do I get? A hundred ungrateful adults who never visit except to spit on me. Go back to Canada, Li Fa-ling. The past is gone. Xiao is dead.”

Xiao is dead.
That’s what Shujia said. Was it true? If it was, how did that change things? Fa-ling stared at the older woman, taking a moment to digest this bit of news.

Finally, without warning, she got up.

“
Good-bye, Shujia,” she said, sliding past the headmistress. “Thank you for looking after us.”

The adoption group’s trip to the Yiling Caves was an exercise in forced exuberance. After the scare of the previous night, all ten parents opted to carry their babies rather than to use strollers, which made the trip through Yiling Park to visit the Buddha more difficult than it should have been. It did work out well, though, for the two hour walk through the caves, which involved climbing up and down hundreds of narrow, wet stairs in the multi-coloured but weak artificial light.

The caves were spectacular, an assortment of weird and unexpected shapes that had formed naturally as stalagmites and stalactites. Coloured lights were aimed at the natural forms, revealing here a dragon-headed turtle and there a crane, and elsewhere a female Buddha.

Guy Kader carried Mei Mei in a piggy-back-pack. He did not try to stay beside Paula, who wandered off in various directions and was seldom content to walk near him. Communication between them had slowed to a trickle of essential questions and answers.

In the back of his mind, a plan was taking shape, forming slowly like the natural sculptures of the Yiling Caves. He had thought he loved Paula far too much to ever leave her, but now that he had Mei Mei he was no longer sure of his feelings.

Maybe Guy was just afraid of being alone. With Mei Mei, he would no longer be alone. Could he really stand silently by and watch Paula abdicate her role as mother, raising Mei Mei in an environment of neglect and mistrust?

He couldn’t take action now. To do so would mean the adoption would be off and Mei Mei would be sent back to the orphanage, or the foster home, or wherever the State chose to send her. She might be matched to another family, or she might be considered a ‘reject’ and be passed over for adoption altogether.

Mei Mei was their responsibility, his and Paula’s, and he wasn’t going to let his narcissistic wife ignore this most basic duty. No, they were going to see this thing through. They would take Mei Mei with them to Canada, where they would live as a family in their house for at least the next year. They would pull themselves together and pass the six-month social worker visit, and the twelve-month visit, when the final adoption approvals would be granted. After that, Mei Mei’s status as their daughter and as a Canadian citizen would be indisputable.