Three Sisters (18 page)

"Are you kidding?" Qiaoqiao asked. "That's my older brother, Guo Zuo. He works in an automobile factory in the provincial capital." Now Yuxiu knew: Qiaoqiao had an older brother who worked in an automobile factory.

Before Yuxiu could learn any more, Yumi came home and spotted the two girls with their heads together, holding something secretively. They were never that intimate with her. What were they looking at so intently? Her curiosity piqued, she leaned over to get a look. But Qiaoqiao must have had eyes in the back of her head because—
bang!
—she slammed the photo album shut, stood up, turned, and walked off alone to her room.

Rebuffed in front of Yuxiu, Yumi spun around and went quickly to her own room, where she leaned unhappily against the window and silently observed Yuxiu, who noticed the look on her sister's face through the window—it was a mixture of humiliation, anger, and helplessness. Instead of lowering her eyelids, Yuxiu looked off in another direction so she wouldn't have to see that sight.
It's none of my business,
she told herself. But as Yumi saw it, Yuxiu was being provocative.

"Yuxiu," Qiaoqiao yelled from her room. "Come here!"

Yuxiu headed to the east room, first shaking her head as a sign of reluctance—for Yumi's benefit, obviously.
This has to stop,
Yumi said to herself, alone at the window.
I can't let Yuxiu keep living off of one person and helping another.

Yumi held her feelings in until it was time to make dinner. She went into the kitchen and looked out into the yard—it was empty. After a few perfunctory swipes on the counter with a dishcloth, she turned to her sister. "Yuxiu," she said, "you're my sister." Coming out of the blue like that, anyone hearing this would not know what to make of it. But as she picked up a large spoon to stir the rice porridge, Yuxiu knew what was on Yumi's mind; she could hear it in her voice. The sudden comment may have sounded forceful, a strict warning, but it seemed weak. The atmosphere in the kitchen took a strange turn that would test both sisters' tolerance.

Without looking up, Yuxiu kept stirring the porridge and said, after pausing a moment to think, "I'll listen to you. Tell me what to do, and I'll do it." But what sounded submissive was actually a honey-coated rebuke. She had gained the advantage by feigning innocence and had turned the tables on Yumi, who was stuck for a response. What could she tell Yuxiu to do with Qiaoqiao in the picture? What could she
dare
ask her to do? She stood there, dishcloth in hand, stymied. A long moment passed before she said to herself,
All right, Yuxiu, go ahead, do what you want.

On the surface it had been a trivial dispute, but one of enormous significance, especially for Yuxiu, for whom it was a turning point. Yumi had sounded the alarm for Yuxiu, only to discover that it was actually sounding for herself. Undeniably, the day would come when Yuxiu would openly defy her.

One of Yuxiu's tasks was to shop for the day's groceries. Seldom feeling obliged to rush home, she took advantage of the outings to wander around town, often gravitating to the supply and marketing co-op. It was her favorite spot. In the past, when she lived in Wang Family Village, she had always gone to the co-op simply to linger and take in its ambiance. Well-suited to people seeking a place to rest or be a tourist, it owed its attraction in part to well-stocked shelves, but even the process of buying something was itself interesting. The cashier sat high above the salesclerks, who stood beside a steel cable, each with its own metal clasp. When a clerk wrote out a sales ticket or was given cash, she clasped it onto the cable and flung it upward like a tiny locomotive making its way up a suspended track, all the way up to the cashier. A moment later, the little locomotive whizzed its way back, carrying change or a receipt. Magical, inscrutable, wondrous.

Yuxiu carried a secret in her heart from when she was a little girl filled with envy: She had a fascination with the cashier sitting high above the others. The woman had been sitting in that spot for years, and the way she clicked her abacus fascinated Yuxiu. Her fingers reminded Yuxiu of a butterfly or a bewitched moth that skimmed the surface of water then darted off. When the woman's fingers stopped, they looked like a dragonfly resting lightly on a lotus leaf, creating indescribable beauty. So soft it seemed to contain no bones, the cashier's hand formed Yuxiu's childhood dream. Too bad she isn't pretty. Wouldn't it be wonderful, she often mused, if she could sit up there one day?

Yuxiu would make herself up like a lovely snake crossing a river, a sight for everyone in the commune, young and old, when she slithered around. An ambitious child who harbored secret plans, she'd believed with all her heart that she would not spend her whole life in Wang Family Village, that she would not hang herself from that particular tree. She'd always had faith in her plans for the future. Now, of course, that faith had died; her plans would not pan out after all. And so for her, the supply and marketing co-op was a place of shattered dreams and a broken heart. But people are strange creatures, because sometimes they actually develop a fondness for just such a place and cling desperately to it with no thought of ever leaving.

Unhappy that Yuxiu liked to loiter and waste time doing nothing, especially at the co-op, Yumi told her to stay away from the place. Yuxiu asked why. Yumi's answer was simple and straightforward: "It's no place for you."

Yumi's hard work in bed was not wasted effort. Sex is like that; you reap what you sow. She was pregnant. She didn't tell anyone, but she could feel the changes in her body, things she'd never felt before. More than being just the addition of something inside, the changes affected her entire body so deeply that it felt as if she had been reborn as a different person.

Emboldened by this development, she enjoyed increased confidence in her dealings with Qiaoqiao. Naturally, she did not openly display her newly felt sense of authority, especially in her face. Instead, she held it inside her, where it took on qualities of magnanimity, steadiness, and self-assurance. After the child was born, Yumi would stop feeling inferior and put upon in front of Qiaoqiao even if the girl's father continued to back her in all matters. Both children would be his, and it would be unthinkable for him to be close to one child and distant from the other—or to state a preference. That simply would not happen. Once you held your own child in your arms, that sort of distinction was not possible. A mother's value rests with her son, as they say. The problem was Yuxiu, and Yumi needed to watch her carefully. Who did Yuxiu side with? Where did she stand? Her position in all this would figure prominently in Yumi's future and in her fate.

Yumi decided to be magnanimous, only to discover that, to her surprise, Yuxiu had begun moving in a new direction. She was spending less time at home, always running off to somewhere, usually in the afternoon. Yumi knew that her sister was not one to sit around and wait for things to happen, and it only took a few days of keeping a close eye on her to see what she was up to. As soon as Yuxiu had free time, she was off to the bookkeeper's office, where she had grown cozy with bookkeeper Tang, a comrade well into her forties whom everyone nonetheless called Little Tang. She had chubby cheeks and fair skin, the sort of face that proclaimed springtime the year round. She was like a sunflower, quick to smile and as likable as she could be. Yuxiu called her Little Tang like everyone else, but made it unique by adding the word "aunty"—Aunty Little Tang—thereby displaying her familiarity with proper etiquette. This created a special bond between them.

Needing to know what had turned her sister and Little Tang into bosom buddies, Yumi strolled over to a spot outside the bookkeeper's window one day, and there they were: Yuxiu and Little Tang, each sitting in front of half a watermelon and scooping out tiny pieces with paper clips. They saved the seeds by tossing them onto the glass-covered desk. They nibbled and talked and laughed, taking pains to keep the noise down, whispering even though they assumed there was no one else around. Obviously, theirs was an uncommon friendship. Yuxiu, her back to the window, was oblivious to the watchful look in Yumi's eyes. It was bookkeeper Tang who spotted her outside the window. She stood up and said to Yumi: "Come in, Mrs. Guo, have some watermelon." There was so little melon left that the invitation was meant as a courtesy. But it did not seem false to Yumi, who actually felt rather good about it. To her surprise, people who lived and worked in the compound were given to calling her Mrs. Guo behind her back. It was a refined form of address. Rising water lifts the boat, and Yumi was struck by a sense that her identity had changed. She smiled.

"Yuxiu," she said to her sister, "why don't you invite Little Tang over to the house sometime?" That was, she felt, just the right thing to say, for it affirmed her status, as it was something only "Mrs. Guo" could legitimately say. Feeling extremely flattered, Little Tang smiled as she manipulated the melon seed in her mouth with her tongue, twisting her face out of shape.

On the way back home, Yumi realized why she'd been smelling melon seeds in the kitchen lately.
That's where they came from. And when they're ready, she runs to bookkeeper Tang's office to share them and talk
some more. That is what's been going on.
Apparently, Yuxiu was like a black snow-boot cat, welcomed everywhere she showed up. Active and social, she'd put roots down all over the compound in a matter of days. If this kept up, what would she need a big sister for? How was Yumi going to control her? Extreme care was called for. Yumi began to worry, and was right to do so.

Yuxiu was spending time with Little Tang neither for the melon seeds nor for the conversation. No, she had other plans. She needed a skill, and that is precisely what she could learn from Aunty Little Tang. What she'd do once she'd mastered the abacus wasn't clear, and only time would tell. But a skill, any skill, opened doors, and Yuxiu knew she had to plan for her future. Relying on Yumi was definitely not the answer, nor did it appeal to her.

She chose not to reveal her plan to Little Tang for fear that Yumi would find out about it and would not be supportive. Better to observe and learn on the sly. She knew she could do it. Her knitting skills had been formed the same way. She hadn't taken any special lessons in the basic stitch, the knit and purl, the cross stitch, the V stitch, the spiral stitch, or the Albanian stitch. After quietly and covertly observing others, she had picked it all up with ease and then had produced finer knitting than anyone. She had a sharp mind and nimble fingers. But the abacus presented a special challenge. After Yuxiu spent several days observing, the clicking sounds came through clearly enough, but she could not quite figure out what was happening. Imagine her surprise when Little Tang brought up the subject on her own.

"Yuxiu," she said one day, "why don't I teach you how to have some fun with an abacus?"

That was totally unexpected, and Yuxiu blurted out, "I'm too dumb to learn something like that, don't you think? Besides, what good would it do me?"

Little Tang smiled. "It'll be a nice diversion for me," she said. And so it began.

Not wanting to be too ambitious, Yuxiu said she'd worry about addition and subtraction first. She asked Little Tang to leave multiplication and division for another time since she didn't know how to do them even on paper.

Little Tang told her not to worry, that adding and subtracting were all that she needed. She didn't know how to divide either and had never found any need to learn. She said that adding a little here and taking away a little there was, in a nutshell, what bookkeeping was all about. That comment told Yuxiu that Little Tang likely knew what Yuxiu had in mind. Since the bookkeeper didn't bring it up, Yuxiu knew she'd better not either.

Yuxiu was a quick study, but this was actually not her first contact with an abacus. Her third grade math teacher had introduced the class to a large model abacus that hung from the blackboard with the beads tied with string to keep them in place. But Yuxiu had lost interest after the first lesson and had spent the rest of the time in whispered conversations with the other students. Having a clear goal is the only way to learn something, Yuxiu was thinking. That's what makes it interesting.

Little Tang discovered that Yuxiu was not only smart, but she had a first-rate memory as well; she soaked up knowledge and it stuck. The complicated rhyming words for the abacus were a case in point: Yuxiu had them memorized within days, much faster than Little Tang had been able to do.

"I have a good teacher," Yuxiu said in response to Little Tang's praise. Any teacher lucky enough to have a bright apprentice often displays more enthusiasm than the apprentice. Little Tang expected Yuxiu to come by every day, and when she didn't, she let her disappointment show.

From the beginning, the master-apprentice relationship was secondary to the friendship. Little Tang began inviting Yuxiu to her home near the government-run rice mill. On her first visit, as they entered the mill compound, Yuxiu saw a sheet-metal smokestack attached to a generator room; it was, she discovered, the source of a sound she had been hearing every night. Each cloud of steam that belched from the smokestack made a distinctive popping sound. Little Tang showed Yuxiu around her house with obvious delight, especially the bedroom, where she proudly pointed out her Red Lantern transistor radio, her Butterfly sewing machine, and her Three Fives alarm clock, all highly prized, Shanghai-produced status symbols that designated their owners as well-off. They meant nothing to Yuxiu, who could not tell good products from bad. Trying to enlighten her was like talking to a brick wall, but none of that lessened Little Tang's enthusiasm.

For their conversations, Little Tang and Yuxiu preferred the bedroom over the living room. They'd sit on the bed and talk quietly about nothing in particular, and Yuxiu was struck by how quickly their friendship had blossomed. Despite the difference in ages, they were soon more than casual friends. Little Tang even revealed some shortcomings of her husband and her child to Yuxiu, who, sensible girl that she was, defended them against Little Tang's criticisms with quick words of praise. That, of course, delighted Little Tang. "Ai," she'd sigh fretfully, "you don't know what they're like." It was a meaningless comment since Yuxiu had not met either of them.