A Hundred Flowers

The beginning of the story always remained the same: Huoyi was commanded by the Emperor Yao to use his archery skills to shoot down nine of the ten suns to keep the earth from burning up. Upon completing the task, the emperor gave the famed archer a pill that granted him eternal life. Knowing its value, Huoyi left the pill at home with Chang’e when he was sent away on another mission for the emperor. From there, they story of why Chang’e swallowed the pill of immortality splintered off into different versions. So far, Tao’s favorite account was Chang’e having to protect the pill from Peng, one of Huoyi’s apprentice archers, who forcefully tried to take the pill from her. Knowing that she was unable to fight him off, her only choice was to swallow the pill herself.

This young woman had eased her pain, made her feel human again. Then, for the first time, Song told a perfect stranger about her husband, Old Hing, calling him a violent monster, an angry pig, a festering tumor. Once Song began to talk, she couldn’t stop, even with the pain.

Cheng paused for a moment and looked her up and down. “Your husband is a lucky man to have a wife so devoted to him. Of course, I too am a family man, and I hate to think of your son so upset. You must be very lonely with your husband gone; perhaps we can find a way to make this situation work, while helping each other at the same time?”

It took a moment for Kai Ying to understand what he was saying […] She felt sick to her stomach and wanted nothing more than to run out of the hot, suffocating room. Instead, [she] steadied herself and ignored his question. She held out a red envelope, which contained a hundred yuan she had saved. She knew it was the way things were done, and hoped it would be enough for this vile man.

“I’ve been such a fool,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

“My father used to say that the only fool is the man who can’t admit he’s one,” Song said. “Can’t you see Sheng knew what he was doing? It was his choice.”

“And my weakness,” Wei said. “I stood by and allowed him to be taken away in my place.”

“He knew what he was doing,” she repeated.

“I should never have put him in that position!”

“You know nothing about your own son […] and that should be your biggest regret. You’ve lived in the past for so long you can’t see what’s right in front of you. You make a mistake, an unintentional mistake. Who in this life hasn’t crossed that bridge? […] Sheng would never have allowed them to take you. He’s young and strong, he’ll survive.”

Wei told her Sun and Moon had worked for his family ever since they were young women. Before then, they’d been silk workers from the village of Shun-de. When Wei was a boy of nine or ten, Sun and Moon were already middle-aged, and had been working for his family for over twenty years. “They were as different as the sun and moon,” her father-in-law said, and laughed. “There was hardly a time when they didn’t disagree about something. They would have argued about the time of day if they’d had the time!”

When Wei was not yet fifteen, Moon fell ill. Sun devoted herself to taking care of her until she died, six months later, Afterward, Sun stayed on until she became too old, but she was never the same.

For as long as he could remember, his ma ma had always been the one to teach him about what was right and wrong […] Even when he was a very little boy, she reminded him it was important that he always be able to take care of himself. Tao had wondered why, when she and ba ba and ye ye were there to take care of him. “Because there will be a time when we aren’t […] Not now […] “but a very, very long time from now.”

[…] Tao wanted to tell her that he wasn’t ready to take care of himself yet. Instead, he pressed his lips together and held the words in […]—I’m still a little boy and it hasn’t been a very long time like you promised, so why are both ba ba and ye ye gone?

He was secretly happy Suyin was waiting for him after school. She wasn’t so sickly-looking anymore and her skin had cleared. Walking next to her, he realized she was almost as tall as his mother and thin all over. […] She usually wore a dark cotton tunic and pants and he recognized one of his mother’s sweaters that she was wearing.

Tao liked walking home with Suyin; it made him feel older. He liked the way she nodded at him without saying a word, without making a fuss the way Auntie Song did trying to help him with his books or forcing him to put on his jacket as the days grew cooler. Suyin kept things simple and to the point. If he didn’t feel like talking to her, she never pushed.

“Ready to go?” she said.

Tao nodded that he was.

Dongshan appeared different now that she was actually living there, the villas behind the tall walls no longer a mystery. They were filled with families and problems just like in Old Guangzhou. But instead of the multitude of voices screaming all at once from the crowded apartments, there was a quiet seething just below the surface in Dongshan. Upon closer scrutiny, she saw the cracks in the stone walls, the big houses crumbling slowly behind them in need of repair or paint or new tiles. All Suyin’s illusions of grandeur had suddenly disappeared. She would never be the same wide-eyed schoolgirl walking down the street for the very first time, and the thought brought both a sigh of relief and a moment of sorrow.

For the very first time since Tao had fallen from the kapok tree, she paused in front of it. It seemed as if an entire lifetime had passed in the five months since. […][Now] the tree stood skeletal, the branches remaining bare until […] the spring. […] Although Kai Ying knew it was foolish, she still dared to hope that they would all be together again by then.

Kai Ying stepped closer to the tree. At least let her hear from Wei again soon, she thought. The gash that her father-in-law had left in the trunk was a scar now, slightly deeper in color and hardly noticeable if you weren’t looking for it. Kai Ying’s fingers graced the smooth wound. She thought of it as just another example of nature’s genius; the kapok tree had healed itself.

From the kitchen, she heard Tao’s and Suyin’s voices and smiled.