A
warm offshore breeze did nothing to quell the stench from the
floating city, and Chien Feng's face reflected his distaste at being
on his father-in-law's ancient boat. He looked around. As far as his
eye could see, the harbor was wall-to-wall junks and sampans. People
hopped from one boat to another, on their way to work or shop or to
visit friends. In the distance rose the skyscrapers of Hong Kong, but
here in Aberdeen harbor, daily life bore little sign of the influence
of corporate globalization. The smell of cooking: onions, cabbage,
garlic mixed with the oily odor of diesel fuel, while the stench of
human waste floating under and around the boats was enough to make
Feng queasy.
Yee-ling,
Feng's wife, let go of their daughter's hand, and the little girl
dodged a small basket of apples as she ran silently to greet her
grandfather. Four-year-old Xiao threw her thin arms about the old
man's legs, nearly toppling him.
“There,
there, my little iris blossom,” Grandfather welcomed her. “Have
you come to play music with me today?”
Xiao
bobbed her head, the straight black flyaway hair lifting in the
breeze. She looked up at him with a grin then cast an anxious look
back at her parents. Grandfather patted her head and told her to come
below and see if she could master the strings on the ruan,
and she went with him willingly. Grandfather bowed briefly in the
direction of Feng and his daughter, who returned the obeisance.
Feng
looked at his wife as she watched her daughter and father vanish into
the interior of the junk.
“You
look so tired,” Feng said. “This cannot go on.”
Yee-ling
flinched. “Not now. Let's not discuss this now.”
“Now,”
he insisted. “Xiao is getting worse. She screamed all night.
You are exhausted and so am I. My work at the factory is suffering.
The neighbors are all angry with us, too. Our daughter needs help but
she will not allow us to help her.”
“She
blames us,” Yee-ling said quickly. “For the operation
that separated her from Mei. For Mei's death.”
“But
what could we have done?” Feng argued. “Let both of them
die? We had to choose one. We should have done it when they were
first born. Not waited until they developed separate personalities.”
Yee-ling
shook her head. “They were too weak; we would have lost them
both. The doctors said so.”
“We
have lost them both anyway. Xiao will not let us close to her. She is
not like other children. Please, you must see. We have to give her to
the agency people. The Americans will adopt her. They can provide
much for her that we cannot. Special care. All the time. And she will
like to be away from us.”
“But
she is my daughter.” Yee-ling's face was a mask of pain and
fatigue.
“This
daughter is killing you. Do you see how much weight you have lost?
When did you last sleep? Do you not see how she is torturing us
emotionally? She may not understand, she may not mean to, but we
cannot reach her. Yee-ling, we can petition the government to allow
us another child,” Feng insisted. “They will be in our
favor, I am sure. I spoke to the district administrator –.”
He stopped when he saw the look on his wife's face.
“You
are making this decision without me? You want to me to send away my
daughter when I have lost one child already?”
Feng's
impatience melted with compassion. His heart ached for the beautiful
wife who was being destroyed by her love for a child who either would
not or could not return even a little of that love.
“And
if you decide we must keep Xiao, you make the decision for both of
us, is that not true? Look, we both lost Mei. And if you look at the
way Xiao has been ever since: completely mute except for the
screaming at night, being forced to eat, rejecting us at every turn,
happy to be with anyone but us – can you honestly say that
giving her to the American couple would be a bad thing for any of us?
Xiao could live a normal life, perhaps even begin to speak again. You
and I, Yee-ling, we could find our own lives again. And we could have
another child, a normal child.”
He
stopped as Yee-ling's face was drowned in tears. He put his arms
around her, something he disliked doing in public, but her pain was
so acute and he just wanted...
“I
just want things to be like they were,” he whispered into her
ear. “I want to see you smile. I want to watch you sleep
peacefully. I want to be able to go to the factory and not feel that
I have abandoned you to a monster.”
Yee-ling
looked up, startled. “A monster?”
Feng
almost took the word back, almost. Then he said, “She is
torturing us. Maybe not deliberately, not consciously, but isn't it
torture all the same?”
Yee-ling's
tears fell again and slowly she nodded. “But she is my
daughter. How can I let her go?” It wasn't a refusal to send
Xiao away, Feng knew. His wife was asking how to cope with the guilt
after sending her away. Her resistance had crumbled, more so because
of her exhaustion than to the weight of his arguments.
“She
can be someone else's daughter. While she remains with us, she cannot
be our daughter. She is our jailer.”
Yee-ling
was very still in his arms but at last he felt her nod, felt the
tension melt from her body.
“All
right,” she whispered. “Yes. I know it is best for her.
But will it truly be better for us, too? Can it ever be better?”
He
cupped her face in his hands, using his thumbs to wipe away her
tears. “It is already better,” he told her. She smiled
weakly.
Her
father's voice shattered the small moment of peace.
“My
daughter, where is Xiao? Where is my little iris blossom?”
Yee-ling's father stood at the hatch that led below.
Yee-ling
twisted around to face her father. “What?”
“Xiao?
I sent her up to bring down that basket of apples. Where is she?”
His question ended on a note of panic as he hobbled around the deck,
searching for the thin child who did not answer his cries..
Yee-ling
stared helplessly, a keening sound beginning to build in her throat.
Feng looked around. As far as his eye could see, the harbor was
wall-to-wall junks and sampans. As far as his eye could see, he could
not see his daughter.
©
2010
Naomi
Johnson
is a retired financial analyst with an unused degree in criminology.
Her stories have appeared online in Southern
Cross Review,
A
Twist of Noir,
and Powder
Burn Flash,
and will appear in a forthcoming issue of CrimeFactory.
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