Waiting Between the Trees
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Ying-Ying St. ClairMy daughter has put me ii of rooms in her new house.
"This is the guest bedroom," Lena said in her proud Ameri way.
I smiled. But to ese ways of thinking, the guest bedroom is the best bedroom, where she and her husband sleep. I do not tell her this. Her wisdom is like a bottomless pond. You throw stones in and they sink into the darkness and dissolve. Her eyes looking back do not refleything.
I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is part of mine. But when she was born, she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore. And now I must tell her everything about my past. It is the only way to pee her skin and pull her to where she be saved.
This room has ceilings that slope dow<tt></tt>nward toward the pillow of my bed. Its walls close in like a coffin. I should remind my daughter not to put any babies in this room. But I know she will not listen. She has already said she does not want any babies. She and her husband are too busy drawing places that someone else will build and someone else will live in. I ot say the Ameri word that she and her husband are. It is an ugly word.
"Arty-tecky," I once pronou to my sister-in-law.
My daughter had laughed when she heard this. When she was a child, I should have slapped her more often for disrespect. But now it is too late. Now she and her husband give me moo add to my so-so security. So the burning feeling I have in my hand sometimes, I must pull it bato my heart and keep it inside.
What good does it do to draw fancy buildings and then live ihat is useless? My daughter has money, but everything in her house is for looking, not even food-looking. Look at this end table. It is heavy white marble on skinny black legs. A person must always think not to put a heavy bag on this table or it will break. The only thing that sit oable is a tall black vase. The vase is like a spider leg, so thin only one flower be put in. If you shake the table, the vase and flower will fall down.
All around this house I see the signs. My daughter looks but does not see. This is a house that will break into pieces. How do I know? I have always known a thing before it happens.
When I was a young girl in Wushi, I was lihai. Wild and stubborn. I wore a smirk on my face. Too good to listen. I was small and pretty. I had ti which made me very vain. If a pair of silk slippers became dusty, I threw them away. I wore costly imported calfskin shoes with little heels. I broke many pairs and ruined many stogs running across the cobblestone courtyard.
I often unraveled my hair and wore it loose. My mother would look at my wild tangles and se: "Aii-ya, Ying-ying, you are like the lady ghosts at the bottom of the lake."
These were the ladies who drowheir shame and floated in living peoples houses with their hair uo show their everlasting despair. My mother said I would bring shame into the house, but I only giggled as she tried to tuck my hair up with long pins. She loved me too much to get angry. I was like her. That was why she named me Ying-ying, Clear Refle.
We were one of the richest families in Wushi. We had many rooms, each filled with big, heavy tables. On each table was a jade jar sealed airtight with a jade lid. Each jar held unfiltered British cigarettes, always the right amount. Not too muot too little. The jars were made just for these cigarettes. I thought nothing of these jars. They were junk in my mind. Once my brothers and I stole a jar and poured the cigarettes out onto the streets. We ran down to a large hole that had opened up ireet, where underh water flowed. There we squatted along with the children who lived by the gutter. We scooped up cups of dirty water, hoping to find a fish or unknown treasure. We found nothing, and soon our clothes were washed over with mud and we were unreizable from the children who lived oreets.
We had many riches in that house. Silk rugs and jewels. Rare bowls and carved ivory. But when I think ba that house, and it is not often, I think of that jade jar, the muddied treasure I did not know I was holding in my hand.
There is ahing I remember clearly about that house.
I was sixteen. It was the night my you aunt got married. She and her new husband had already retired to the room they would share in the big house with her new mother-in-law and the rest of her new family.
Many of the visiting family members li our house, sitting around the big table in the main room, everybody laughing ais, peeling es, and laughing more. A man from aown was seated with us, a friend of my aunts new husband. He was older than my oldest brother, so I called him Uncle. His face was reddened from drinking whiskey.
"Ying-ying," he called hoarsely to me as he rose from his chair. "Maybe you are still hungry, isnt it so?"
I looked around the table, smiling at everyone because of this special attention given to me. I thought he would pull a special treat from a large sack he was reag into. I hoped for some sweetened cookies. But he pulled out a watermelon and put it oable with a loud pung.
"Kai gwa?"—Opeermelon—he said, poising a large knife over the perfect fruit.
Then he sank the knife in with a mighty push and his huge mouth roared a laugh so big I could see all the way back to his gold teeth. Everyo the table laughed loudly. My face burned from embarrassment, because at that time I did not uand.
Yes, it is true I was a wild girl, but I was i. I did not know what an evil thing he did whe open that watermelon. I did not uand until six months later when I was married to this man and he hissed drunkenly to me that he was ready to kai gwa.
This was a man so bad that even today I ot speak his name. Why d<u></u>id I marry this man? It was because the night after my you aunts wedding, I began to know a thing before it happened.
Most of the relatives had left the m. And by the evening, my half-sisters and I were bored. We were sitting at the same large table, drinking tea aing roasted watermelon seeds. My half-sisters gossiped loudly, while I sat crag seeds and laying their flesh in a pile.
My half-sisters were all dreaming of being married to worthless young boys from families not as good as ours. My half-sisters did not know how to reach very high food thing. They were the daughters of my fathers es. I was the daughter of my fathers wife.
"His mother will treat you like a servant…" chided one half-sister upon hearing the others choice.
"A madness on his uncles side…" retorted the other half-sister.
Wheired of teasing one ahey asked me whom I wao marry.
"I know of no one," I told them haughtily.
It was not that boys did not i me. I knew how to attract attention and be admired. But I was too vain to think any one boy was good enough for me.
Those were the thoughts in my head. But thoughts are of two kinds. Some are seeds that are planted when you are born, placed there by your father and mother and their aors before them. And some thoughts are planted by others. Maybe it was the watermelon seeds I was eating: I thought of that laughing man from the night before. And just then, a large wind blew in from the north and the flower oable split from its stem and fell at my feet.
This is the truth. It was as if a knife had cut the flowers head off as a sign. Right then, I knew I would marry this man. It was not with joy that I thought this, but wonderment that I could know it.
And soon I began to hear this maioned by my father and uncle and aunts new husband. At dinner his name ooned into my bowl along with my soup. I found him staring at me across from my uncles courtyard, hu-huing, "See, she ot turn away. She is already mine."
True enough, I did not turn away. I fought his eyes with mine. I listeo him with my nose held high, sniffing the stink of his words wheold me my father would not likely give the dowry he required. I pushed so hard to keep him from my thoughts that I fell into a marriage bed with him.
My daughter does not know that I was married to this man so long ago, twenty years before she was even born.
She does not know how beautiful I was when I married this man. I was far more pretty than my daughter, who has try feet and a large nose like her fathers.
Even today, my skin is still smooth, my figure like a girls. But there are deep lines in my mouth where I used to wear smiles. And my poor feet, onall and pretty! Now they are swollen, callused, and cracked at the heels. My eyes, sht and flashy at sixteen, are now yellow-stained, clouded.
But I still see almost everything clearly. When I want to remember, it is like looking into a bowl and finding the last grains of rice you did not finish.
There was an afternoon on Tai Lake soon after this man and I married. I remember this is when I came to love him. This man had turned my face toward the late-afternoon sun. He held my and stroked my cheek and said, "Ying-ying, you have tiger eyes. They gather fire in the day. At night they shine golden."
I did not laugh, even though this oem he said very badly. I cried with ho joy. I had a swimming feeling in my heart like a creature thrashing to get out and wanting to stay in at the same time. That is how much I came to love this man. This is how it is when a person joins your body and there is a part of your mind that swims to join that person against your will.
I became a strao myself. I retty for him. If I put slippers on my feet, it was to choose a pair that I knew would please him. I brushed my hair y-imes a night t luck to our marital bed, in hopes of ceiving a son.
The night he plahe baby, I again knew a thing before it happened. I k was a boy. I could see this little boy in my womb. He had my husbands eyes, large and wide apart. He had long tapered fingers, fat earlobes, and slick hair that rose high to reveal a large forehead.
It is because I had so much joy then that I came to have so much hate. But even when I was my happiest, I had a worry that started right above my brow, where you know a thing. This worry later trickled down to my heart, where you feel a thing and it bees true.
My husband started to take many busirips to the north. These trips began soon after we married, but they became longer after the baby ut in my womb. I remembered that the north wind had blown lud my husband my way, so at night when he was away, I opened wide my bedroom windows, even on cold nights, to blow his spirit a back my way.
What I did not know is that the north wind is the coldest. It pees the heart and takes the warmth away. The wind gathered such a force that it blew my husband past my bedroom and out the back door. I found out from my you aunt that he had left me to live with an opera singer.
Later still, when I overcame my grief and came to have nothing in my heart but loathing despair, my you aunt told me of others. Dancers and Ameri ladies. Prostitutes. A girl cousin younger even than I was. She left mysteriously for Hong Kong soon after my husband disappeared.
So I will tell Lena of my shame. That I was rid pretty. I was too good for any one man. That I became abandoned goods. I will tell her that at eighteen the prettiness drained from my cheeks. That I thought of throwing myself in the lake like the other ladies of shame. And I will tell her of the baby I killed because I came to hate this man so much.
I took this baby from my womb before it could be born. This was not a bad thing to do in a back then, to kill a baby before it is born. But even then, I thought it was bad, because my body flowed with terrible revenge as the juices of this mans firstborn son poured from me.
When the nurses asked what they should do with the lifeless baby, I hurled a neer at them and said to it like a fish and throw it in the lake. My daughter thinks I do not know what it means to not want a baby.
When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She ha<dfn></dfn>s no chuming, no inside knowing of things. If she had chuming, she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear.
I was born in the year of the Tiger. It was a very bad year to be born, a very good year to be a Tiger. That was the year a very bad spirit ehe world. People in the tryside died like chis on a hot summer day. People iy became shadows, went into their homes and disappeared. Babies were born and did not get fatter. The flesh fell off their bones in days and they died.
The bad spirit stayed in the world for four years. But I came from a spirit even stronger, and I lived. This is what my mother told me when I was old enough to know why I was so heartstrong in my ways.
Theold me why a tiger is gold and black. It has two ways. The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with ing, hiding its gold between trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to e. I did not learn to use my black side until after the bad ma me.
I became like the ladies of the lake. I threw white clothes over the mirrors in my bedroom so I did not have to see my grief. I lost my strength, so I could not even lift my hands to place pins in my hair. And then I floated like a dead leaf oer until I drifted out of my mother-in-laws house and bay family home.
I went to the try outside of Shanghai to live with a sed cousins family. I stayed in this try home for ten years. If you ask me what I did during these long years, I only say I waited betweerees. I had one eye asleep, the other open and watg.
I did not work. My cousins family treated me well because I was the daughter of the family who supported them. The house was shabby, crowded with three families. It was not a fort to be there, and that is what I wanted. Babies crawled on the floor with the mice. Chis came in and out like my relatives graceless peasant guests. We all ate i amidst the h grease. And the flies! If you left a bowl with even a few grains of rice, you would find it covered with hungry flies so thick it looked like a living bowl of black bean soup. This is how poor the try was.
After ten years, I was ready. I was no lirl but a strange woman. A still-married woman with no husband. I went to the city with both eyes open. It was as if the bowl of black flies had been poured out onto the streets. Everywhere there were people moving, unknown men pushing against unknown women and no one g.
With the money from my family, I bought fresh clothes, modern straight suits. I y long hair in the mahat was stylish, like a young boy. I was so tired of doing nothing for so many years I decided to work. I became a shopgirl.
I did not o learn to flatter women. I khe words they wao hear. A tiger make a soft prrrn-prrn noise deep within its chest and make even rabbits feel safe and tent.
Even though I was a grown woman, I became pretty again. This was a gift. I wore clothes far better and more expehan what was sold iore. And this made women buy the cheap clothes, because they thought they could look as pretty as I.
It was at this shop, w like a peasant, that I met Clifford St. Clair. He was a large, pale Ameri man who bought the stores cheap-style clothes ahem overseas. It was his hat made me know I would marry him.
"Mistah Saint Clair," he said in English wheroduced himself to me.
And then he added in his thick, flat ese, "Like the angel of light."
I her liked him nor disliked him. I thought him her attractive nor unattractive. But this I knew. I knew he was the sign that the black side of me would soon go away.
Saint courted me for four years in his strange way. Even though I was not the owner of the shop, he always greeted me, shaking hands, holding them too long. From his palms water aloured, even after we married. He was and pleasant. But he smelled like a fner, a lamb-smell stink that ever be washed away.
I was not unkind. But he was kechi, too polite. He bought me cheap gifts: a glass figurine, a prickly brooch of cut glass, a silver-colored cigarette lighter. Saint acted as if these gifts were nothing, as if he were a rich maing a poor try girl to things we had never seen in a.
But I saw his look as he watched me open the boxes. Anxious and eager to please. He did not know that such things were nothing to me, that I was raised with riches he could not even imagine.
I always accepted these gifts graciously, alrotesting just enough, not too little, not too much. I did not ence him. But because I khis man would someday be my husband, I put these worthless tris carefully into a box, ing each with tissue. I khat someday he would ask to see them again.
Lena thinks Saint saved me from the poor try village that I said I was from. She is right. She is wrong. My daughter does not know that Saint had to atiently for four years like a dog in front of a butcher shop.
How is it that I finally came out a him marry me? I was waiting for the sign I knew would e. I had to wait until 1946.
A letter came from Tientsin, not from my family, who thought I was dead. It was from my you aunt. Even before I opehe letter I knew. My husband was dead. He had long since left his opera singer. He was with some worthless girl, a young servant. But she had a strong spirit and was reckless, more so than even he. Wheried to leave her, she had already sharpened her lo kit knife.
I thought this man had long ago drained everything from my heart. But now something strong and bitter flowed and made me feel another emptiness in a place I didnt know was there. I cursed this man alo藏书网ud so he could hear. You had dog eyes. You jumped and followed whoever called you. Now you chase your own tail.
So I decided. I decided to let Saint marry me. So easy for me. I was the daughter of my fathers wife. I spoke in a trembly voice. I became pale, ill, and more thin. I let myself bee a wounded animal. I let the hunter e to me and turo a tiger ghost. I willingly gave up my chi, the spirit that caused me so much pain.
Now I was a tiger that her pounor lay waitiweerees. I became an unseen spirit.
Saint took me to America, where I lived in houses smaller than the one in the try. I wore large Ameri clothes. I did servants tasks. I learhe Western ways. I tried to speak with a thick tongue. I raised a daughter, watg her from another shore. I accepted her Ameri ways.
With all these things, I did not care. I had no spirit.
I tell my daughter that I loved her father? This was a man who rubbed my feet at night. He praised the food that I cooked. He cried holy when I brought out the tris I had saved for the right day, the day he gave me my daughter, a tiger girl.
How could I not love this man? But it was the love of a ghost. Arms that encircled but did not touch. A bowl full of rice but without my appetite to eat it. No hunger. No fullness.
Now Saint is a ghost. He and I ow love equally. He knows the things I have been hiding all these years. Now I must tell my daughter everything. That she is the daughter of a ghost. She has no chi. This is my greatest shame. How I leave this world without leaving her my spirit?
So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happehe pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it bees hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fieress e back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to pee my daughters tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.
I hear my daughter speaking to her husband downstairs. They say words that mean nothing. They sit in a room with no life in it.
I know a thing before it happens. She will hear the vase and table crashing to the floor. She will e up the stairs and into my room. Her eyes will see nothing in the darkness, where I am waitiweerees.
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