Songs Of Willow Frost: A Novel Part 7

"I brought a few things for your mother, out of respect for your father." He reached into a leather briefcase and withdrew a small statue of T'ang Ming Huang, the patron saint of Chinese opera. He held it up for her approval. She nodded and watched him place the clay figurine on the shrine near the casket, next to offerings of food, money, and smoldering joss paper.

"And I've had this for some time, but I'd rather it belong to your family now." He held out an opera mask with both hands. "It was ..."

"My mother's." Liu Song took the mask, gently, looking at the ornate design-dramatic features painted in red, green, and black.

"This is the one she wore ..."

"As Zhuangzi's wife," Colin said with a polite smile.

Liu Song touched the wooden mask as though she were caressing her mother's cheek. She brought it to her nose, and for a moment she thought it even smelled like her mother's perfume, or at least the greasy black eye makeup that she wore.

"The art director took ill," Colin said. "So I offered to take it home and replace the straps on the back. I was eager to do anything to impress your father. But then the fire-I know your father looked for another venue ..."

"And then the quarantines."

Colin frowned and nodded. "I was unable to return it. I sent letters to Leo-your stepfather. I told him that I had something that belonged to your mother, but either he never received the missives or he never bothered to reply."

Liu Song knew the answer. She thanked him, then excused herself for a moment and walked to her mother's open casket, lingering, looking at her ah-ma's hands. Her fingers, which had been long and graceful, now looked aged, withered. Liu Song reached out to touch them, but stopped an inch away when she felt the absence of warmth and noticed that her mother's favorite ring had been removed-the ring that she had been given by Liu Song's father after they were wed. Her mother had continued to wear it, since Uncle Leo never gave her a new one.

Liu Song held the mask and ground her teeth, her heart pounding, angry and laden with guilt-she shook her head and wondered why she hadn't cried. What kind of shameful daughter was she? She should be on her knees in a pool of tears, pulling out her hair and screaming. Instead she drifted to her bedroom, unnoticed, a specter in a room full of shadows. She hid the mask in the valise under her bed with her mother's other precious possessions, a photo of her father, her mother's favorite brooch, her brother's empty cologne bottle, and odds and ends from a life she was orphaned from.

When she returned to the living room, her heart sank as she realized the young man was gone; his chair and teacup were empty. She felt more alone than before.

Most of the visitors had left or were in the process of leaving, all but a handful of men that Uncle Leo had selected as pallbearers, toothless men who worked in his laundry. None of them had known Liu Song, or her parents. If they seemed unaffected by their duties, the three wailers more than made up for their stoic expressions. As the casket was slowly closed, the three old women cried and screamed hysterically, their shoulders heaving with a crescendo of violent sobs. Uncle Leo covered his ears and yawned.

Liu Song took one final look at her mother's face and then stepped back.

"Goodbye, Ah-ma," she whispered.

Everyone turned their backs since it was terribly unlucky to watch a coffin being nailed shut. All but Liu Song, who numbly watched a white-haired man in an old suit swing a small hammer again and again. The pounding reminded her of the rhythmic sound of coiled bedsprings.

Liu Song watched each nail sink deeper.

I'm already cloaked in bad luck, what more can be done to me? she thought. I have no one else-no one left to lose. I have nothing.

As Liu Song stared at the casket, she imagined her mother inside, her eyes opening again, filled with tears. Her mother's cracked lips, her frail voice urging, pleading, "Run away, Liu Song. Run away."

Big Mother.

(1921).

After Liu Song's mother was lowered into the ground, Uncle Leo went out to dinner with his family and friends. He didn't bother to invite Liu Song, so she stayed at the cemetery and picked wildflowers. She placed them on the tiny slab of marble that marked her mother's grave. As she regarded the elaborate, towering headstones to the left and right of her mother's humble plot, she tried to remember how her ah-ma had looked when she left for her performance-so alive, so vibrant, larger than life; no stage seemed too grand for her. But now there was no audience, no curtain call. Now her ah-ma would remain in the wings, the backstage of a sodden hill, a forgotten bit player, forever.

Liu Song walked home alone in the rain, down King Street, beneath a blizzard of painted signs and hanging lanterns. As she pa.s.sed the Twin Dragons Restaurant, she could see Uncle Leo and his family through the rain-streaked gla.s.s, sitting at round tables, crowded with platters of food on spinning lazy Susans. But instead of eating tofu, boiled white chicken, and jai choy, the heavenly vegetables one would normally eat after a funeral, the mourners laughed as they feasted on roast duck with ginger and chives, oily rock cod, served whole, and tureens of oxtail soup. They were enjoying a celebratory dinner. Liu Song smelled sesame oil and heard the sizzle and pinging of a cast-iron wok in the kitchen as more dishes were brought out, but she had no appet.i.te. Her belly was full of grief. She had feasted on the bitter rind of sorrow.

At home, she left the lights off. She donned a nightgown and then crawled into bed, tucking her head beneath the covers. She imagined the blankets were shovelfuls of dirt, burying herself in darkness as her wet hair dampened the sheets. She curled up so tightly she could feel the beat of her heart, her blood pulsing in her legs. She slapped her face and pinched her cheeks, hoping to make herself cry-wis.h.i.+ng the knot of grief inside her chest could be expelled, cut off, cauterized. She'd watched her mother slip away, one piece, one touch, and one memory at a time. Liu Song had lived for the past four years in a state of perpetual mourning-maybe she'd already exhausted a lifetime supply of tears.

As she drifted to sleep she thought about the comfort of the earth, the ground, where her family had all been laid to rest. Then her thoughts drifted to the strange young man-her father's understudy. She wondered how old he must be, perhaps in his mid-twenties, too old, perhaps. She doubted he would call on her again. Why would he? Though she certainly entertained the notion of finding him-just to see him perform, of course. She could allow herself that. She knew that a schoolgirl crush was foolish, but the theater community was small, compet.i.tive, and well connected-there had even been talk in the newspaper of building a Chinese opera house. If Colin Kwan was in town, she could find him. That wouldn't be too desperate, would it? As she slept, she dreamt of her father, strong and pa.s.sionate, wearing the mask and gown of a qing yi-a n.o.blewoman, exuding grace and virtue. And she fantasized about her parents bringing the young understudy to America as Liu Song's tutor-and suitor, for an arranged marriage that would play out onstage, in three acts plus an encore. But as much as she wanted it to be a hero's story, even in a dream, she knew that tale could only end in tragedy.

With her family gone she was certain no man would want her. Her parents would have discouraged all of the Chinese-born suitors, knowing that if she married one of them she risked losing her status as an American-born citizen. Plus the students who spoke Mandarin had always looked down on her, while the Cantonese men all wanted wives born in China-versed in the traditions of submission and subservience. They regarded her as too tall; or too skinny, her eyes were too round, or she was too ugly, too modern, too American. And no one wanted a shameful performer for a daughter-in-law.

But this is only Act One, she thought, still dreaming.

In a lucid state, she wondered what it might be like to see Colin perform to a packed house-perhaps she'd join him in front of the footlights one day at the Moore Theatre or the Palace up north, in Vancouver, where she first saw her father perform. The notion of klieg lights and plush velvet curtains only made her ache for her mother-for her family. And when she imagined Colin onstage, she also saw her father, and then her uncle. Drunk with sadness, she felt a stranger's breath on her neck and turned her head, sure that she was still dreaming, until she felt the covers pulled back and smelled barley wine, and ginger, and sesame oil. She sensed thick fingers, tugging, rending the fabric of her bedclothes. She felt a calloused hand over her mouth as a man's knees parted hers. "M'h'gi bng ngoh!" Her scream for help was m.u.f.fled as she struggled to fight him off. Liu Song stared at the shadowy tin ceiling, horrified. She felt pain and grief, shock and sorrow, and crus.h.i.+ng, suffocating humiliation amid the bristling whiskers on his chin, the hair on his legs, and the sweaty folds of his unwashed skin. She felt him tugging on the wide elastic of her sanitary belt, pausing, then pulling it aside. She thrashed with all her might, hysterically, but she was almost as small as her mother. She felt stabbing pain, tearing, but she couldn't cry. She closed her eyes and was someplace else-someone else, an actress in a silent film. She was Pearl White in Perils of Pauline, tied to a train track as a hulking steam locomotive chugged through a cloud of coal smoke, bearing down on her. Then the scene faded to black.

WHEN THE BED finally stopped shaking, Uncle Leo groaned and stood up, out of breath. He put on his bathrobe and slippers. "Stay in bed. Don't get up until sunrise." He patted her arm and touched her hair as if to make sure she was still there in the dark.

Liu Song closed her eyes and didn't move or make a sound.

As she heard the door close behind him, she lay there, paralyzed, her mind telling herself that it didn't really happen. Her aching body told her otherwise. Finally she pulled the covers up to her face, then smelled Uncle Leo's odor and tossed the bedding aside. She rolled to her side, clutching her pillow. She curled her trembling body around it.

She opened her eyes and saw a waning orb through the curtains, reflecting glittering moonlight around her bedroom, her ceiling, dotting the walls. She looked down and saw that the mirror on her nightstand had tipped over and smashed on the wooden floor. s.h.i.+ny bits of bad luck lay scattered around her bed as though a tiny shooting star had crashed to Earth, shattering upon impact.

LIU SONG WOKE up startled, terrified. She felt someone kicking her bed, and she opened her tired eyes as someone slapped her face.

"Wake up," a woman's raspy voice said.

Liu Song looked around the darkened room. A faint glow of sunlight was coming through the drawn curtains. Maybe it was all a dream-a nightmare, she thought.

"Ah-ma, is that you?" Liu Song whispered.

The woman stepped back.

"Ah-ma?"

The woman shook her head.

"Leo told me how lazy and disobedient you are. No wonder your mother died. She'd still be alive if you'd taken better care of her. Now get up and clean this mess before you make breakfast."

Liu Song sat up slowly, aching. Confused by the portly woman standing in front of her. She wore her dark hair up in a tight bun that barely hid streaks of gray, and her excessive makeup failed to conceal her wrinkles, or her moles and acne scars.

The woman leaned in so close that Liu Song could smell the tobacco on her breath and see the dark stains on her teeth and swollen gums.

"Clean yourself up," the woman said. "And wash the blood off your sheets."

Liu Song wrapped the covers around her waist. "Who are you?"

The woman looked down her nose, proudly.

"I'm Leo's first wife-from Canton. Your mother was only second wife."

Liu Song struggled to comprehend as the woman held out a thick hand that looked like it belonged to a meat cutter, with stubby, dirty fingernails. She proudly showed off the gold and jade wedding band that had once belonged to Liu Song's parents.

"From now on, I'm Big Mother. But you may call me Auntie Eng."

Plucked.

(1921).

Uncle Leo sat at the table as though it were any other morning, practicing his English by reading a copy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He smoked a bent cigarette and coughed. Then he cleared his throat and leaned over to hawk phlegm into the sink as Liu Song tried to wash dishes while she waited for water to boil for congee. Her mother had always made the sticky rice porridge with onions and slices of pickled tofu, but Uncle Leo liked it plain. He couldn't taste anything but his Chesterfield anyway, Liu Song thought, as she kept quiet, unsure of what to say, suffering in silence, looking over her shoulder for any sign of Auntie Eng.

Meanwhile Uncle Leo read to himself, out loud, and complained about the newspaper. "William Hearst buys paper, then doubles price," he grumbled, not wanting to have to go to the Ning Yeung a.s.sociation, where he could read the news for free.

As he folded the pages, Liu Song heard a woman in the alley chattering in Cantonese, along with a terrible squawking that ominously fell silent. She heard the creak of the screen door and scrubbed the dishes faster. As her strange new stepmother walked back in, Liu Song noticed that the woman was holding a long carving knife. Her hands and the blade were covered in blood and bits of feathers. Liu Song stepped back as Auntie Eng mumbled and dropped the knife into the dishwater. Then she rinsed her hands before drying them on her baggy pants.

"When you're done with breakfast, you need to boil a big pot of water so you can pluck that chicken. Do it outside, and don't feed any stray dogs."

"Chicken?" Liu Song asked.

"It's hanging in the alley," Auntie Eng said. "Let it bleed out into the bucket, then gut it, boil it, and then pluck, pluck, pluck. Keep the feathers in a bag."

Liu Song had never been to China, let alone Taichan or Canton. She'd been up and down the West Coast of the United States, but not across the mountains to Yakima or Ellensburg-similar farm country, where children her age knew how to properly clean and dress a bird.

"I'll be late for cla.s.s ..."

Auntie Eng looked at Leo and cursed in Cantonese.

"No more school," he said. "With your ah-ma gone we can finally put an end to that foolishness. School!" Uncle Leo practically snorted. "You're a girl. The teachers' time is better spent on boys. I called and told them you're not coming back. What do you think you're going to do anyway? Hah?"

"I didn't go to school," Auntie Eng said proudly. "And look at me."

Liu Song wasn't sure if she was expected to answer. She regarded the stern expressions of Uncle Leo and his hardscrabble wife. Then Liu Song stared at the floor.

"When you're done with cooking and cleaning the bird," Uncle Leo continued from behind his paper, "you can go to the music store. I told b.u.t.terman-or whatever his name is-that you'd be able to work full-time, for a while at least. Why he was so grateful, I'll never know. Just don't be late to help make dinner."

Liu Song's parents both had eight years of formal schooling, followed by long apprentices.h.i.+ps in the theater. They prized education. Not going to school-not graduating-had been unthinkable. Plus Liu Song would miss her friends, even the ones who were closed off to her, and especially poor Mildred. Liu Song would miss the teachers, the library, even the gossipy girls in the lavatory. She wouldn't even have a chance to clean out her locker. She wouldn't even be able to say goodbye.

Saddened, Liu Song took a piece of black ribbon and tied it around her right arm-a sign of mourning, for the loss of her mother, her family, her childhood, her innocence.

At least I have a job, she thought, a place to go, far, far away from here.

LIU SONG ACHED as she walked to b.u.t.terfield's in her mother's old French leather heels. Her insides were sore and her fingers raw from boiling and plucking. She'd barely been able to keep her hands steady enough to apply her makeup. She put on mascara, half-expecting to burst into tears at any moment. She'd been violated by that disgusting, smirking man-robbed of her childhood. Yet all morning she kept wondering what she had done to bring this upon herself. Was she complicit somehow? Did she deserve his attention? She shook her head, struggling to ignore such guilty thoughts. This was his doing. She didn't ask for this. And she didn't care how successful he was as a businessman; he wasn't human in her eyes. There were plenty of yellow cabs in the neighborhood-loose women who flaunted themselves: flappers, floozies, and painted women who would give any man a ride.

She kept walking, kept grieving. "Who will want me now?" Liu Song asked whatever G.o.ds might be listening. All she heard was stray dogs barking in an alley, the bra.s.s bells of an electric streetcar, and a man in coveralls who stood on an apple crate shouting about uniting workers, revolution, and Trotskyism. That and the hollow, tinny sound of a piano, coming from a radio display at Grayson's Appliance.

As Liu Song walked, her senses were numb. She couldn't grasp the concept of coming home to the apartment without her ah-ma waiting there. She felt angry, abandoned, but also mournful and longing. Her family had been a whirlwind of chaos, at home, onstage, backstage, in storefronts, for as long as she could remember. Her heart reeled as she imagined her mother, widowed amid the hysteria of the Spanish flu. But that was why her mother had married Uncle Leo, Liu Song reasoned. She must have been desperate and needed someone. He took control of her belongings, her meager savings. And she found a provider-a businessman instead of a showman. But did she know that she was marrying him as second wife? Did it even matter? Some men had spouses back in China whom they didn't see for decades. They took another wife almost out of necessity. All that was important to them was the provision of a son. But her ah-ma took ill and never produced an heir. And by Auntie Eng's age it was evident that she was barren.

As men stopped what they were doing, whipping their heads around to watch her pa.s.s, Liu Song looked away, didn't smile. She s.h.i.+mmied to move her dress lower on her hips. She felt naked. She was nothing but a wanton reflection of her mother in a fun house mirror-her ah-ma's grace and simple beauty distorted to hideous proportions as she realized that there were plenty of men who wanted her-for a moment, but not for a lifetime.

At b.u.t.terfield's she stopped and stared sadly at her appearance in the window. Her hairstyle, bangs cut across the front, long tresses hanging loose about her face-it was the style of a virtuous unmarried girl. But what was she now? She was nothing. She belonged to Uncle Leo and Auntie Eng.

I have to leave, she thought. But where can I go? And who but my stepparents would even care? She was filled with hate, but most of her violent emotions were directed at the lowly person she'd become.

She allowed a glimmer of hope to s.h.i.+ne in the corners of her wasted heart. But she knew it was desperation, nothing more. She thought of the strange, gentle man who'd appeared at her mother's wake. Colin still favored her parents. He was the only one who could appreciate her many losses.

"Turn around!" she heard a man's voice shout.

Her heart leapt into her throat, but then she saw his reflection in the gla.s.s. A megaphone man in an open-top bus was yelling at her.

"Hey, China-girl, turn around so we can all get a better look!"

Liu Song slowly turned to face a busload of rubberneckers in tiered seats on their way to King Street for a sightseeing tour. They usually didn't stop or walk around. The rich white tourists simply cruised through the neighborhood as a guide pointed out the strange, foreign mysteries of Chinatown, the old lottery and gambling houses on Was.h.i.+ngton Street, import-export stores, curio shops, and the j.a.panese settlement. Liu Song touched the b.u.t.tons on her dress; she felt like a caged zoo animal on display.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is something you don't see every day," the tour guide said, "a nifty Chinese girl in a modern dress-isn't that the kitty's eyebrows!"

"She looks like she's dressed for a petting party," one man grumped-the way people often did when they presumed Liu Song didn't understand them.

She turned to go inside but ran directly into Mr. b.u.t.terfield, who was blocking the doorway, smoking a cigarillo, slicking back his thinning hair.

"Sing something," he said with an apologetic smile. "Might as well."

"Hey, mister," Liu Song heard a woman on the bus ask, "she speak any English?" It was a question she'd heard often, even though she dressed like an American girl. Her father had heard it too, long after he cut his queue.

"This could put us on the map-the tour map. Stay here and sing." Mr. b.u.t.terfield took her coat, and went inside and played the prelude to "When I Lost You."

As Liu Song closed her eyes and started to sing, the chatter faded away. And when she opened her eyes, she noticed the men with their jaws hanging open, and the women-their wives, their sisters and mothers-suddenly looking terribly uncomfortable, but enthralled nonetheless. The onlookers sat in silence as Liu Song crooned through Irving Berlin's. .h.i.t ballad of death and familial loss.

A newspaperman on the bus stood and held up a flashlamp that ignited as he snapped a quick photo with his Speed Graphic. Liu Song saw colored stars and could smell the smoke and burnt magnesium as he pulled out the film plate and stuffed it into a camera bag before reloading and snapping another.

Even before she'd finished, Mr. b.u.t.terfield left the piano and pushed his way onto the bus, hawking copies of sheet music and pa.s.sing out cards, boasting about how he'd discovered Liu Song's talents in Chinatown and how she'd be a star someday.

Liu Song went inside to collect herself and freshen up as the bus driver ground the gears and revved the engine. As she leaned against the long oaken counter that Mr. b.u.t.terfield kept immaculately clean, she realized how safe she felt here, amid the floor-to-ceiling racks overflowing with sheet music and the Craftsman shelving behind the counter with rows and rows of old phonographic cylinders, Pathe disk records, and perforated piano rolls. She looked up at ornately framed portraits of Irving Berlin and Al Jolson, and an old burlesque poster of Marie Lloyd. Mr. b.u.t.terfield would tear up whenever he spoke of her. "They tried to deport her for moral turpitude," he'd once said. "But she kept going, even though her voice got weaker and her shows grew shorter." Liu Song blinked as the bus driver honked twice and drove off and Mr. b.u.t.terfield returned, giddily counting the money he'd made.

"Well done, sweetheart-you blew 'em away," he said as he hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. "We must have made thirty whole dollars, and that was just from one song! Imagine if they stop here every day. You're gonna make your uncle awfully proud. Rich too." He stood at the nearest piano and played the first few bars of a victory march as she stepped away.

"My uncle?"

"Leo."

"I know who he is." Liu Song glanced outside, then back at Mr. b.u.t.terfield.

She watched as her employer counted out her portion, then tucked the money in a zippered bag that he kept beneath the counter.

"Now that you're working full-time, he wanted me to pay him directly. He said he was saving it for you-that he'd take care of you later."

Liu Song pictured herself in bed, tied down, with ropes around her wrists and ankles, like her mother, her poor, dear ah-ma. Liu Song wondered for the first time if Uncle Leo might have poisoned her ah-ma with the camphor oil. She knew he was p.r.o.ne to home remedies. Did it help, or merely hasten the inevitable?