“In the summer when I was a girl, my mama, aunties, my sisters, and all my girl cousins used to sleep outside on mats just like this,” Mama remembers, speaking low so as not to disturb our hostess, who rests on a raised platform by the stove. “You’ve never met my sisters, but we were a lot like the two of you.” She laughs ruefully. “We loved each other and we knew how to argue. But on those summer nights when we were out under the sky we didn’t fight. We listened to my mother tell us stories.”
Outside cicadas hum. From the far distance comes the concussion of bombs being dropped on our home city. The explosions reverberate through the ground and into our bodies. When May whimpers, Mama says, “I guess you’re not too old to hear one now …”
“Oh, yes, Mama, please,” May urges. “Tell us the one about the moon sisters.”
Mama reaches over and pats May lovingly. “In ancient days,” she begins in a voice that transports me back to my childhood, “two sisters lived on the moon. They were wonderful girls.” I wait, knowing exactly what she’ll say next. “They were beautiful like May—slender as bamboo, graceful as willow branches swaying in the breeze, with faces like the oval seeds of a melon. And they were clever and industrious like Pearl—embroidering their lily shoes with ten thousand stitches. All night the sisters embroidered, using their seventy embroidery needles. Their fame grew, and soon people on earth gathered to stare at them.”
I know by heart the fate that awaits the two mythical sisters, but I feel Mama wants us to hear the story differently tonight.
“The two sisters knew the rules for maidenly conduct,” she goes on. “No man should see them. No man should stare at them. Each night, they became more and more unhappy. The older sister had an idea. We shall change places with our brother.’ The younger sister wasn’t so sure, for she had a tiny bit of vanity in her, but it was her duty to follow her jie jie’s instructions. The sisters put on their most beautiful red gowns embroidered with dragons dashing through fiery blooms and went to visit their brother, who lived in the sun. They asked to trade places with him.”
May, who’s always liked this part, picks up the story. “‘More people walk the earth by day than by night,’ their brother scoffed. ‘You will have more eyes on you than ever before.’”
“The sisters wept, much like you used to, May, when you wanted something from your father,” Mama continues.
Here I am, lying on a dirt floor in some hovel, listening to my mother trying to comfort us with childhood stories, and my heart wrinkles with bitter thoughts. How can Mama talk about Baba so easily? As bad as he is—was?—shouldn’t she be grieving? And, worse, how can she choose this time to remind me that I’m less precious to him? Even when I cried, Baba never gave in to my tears. I shake my head, trying to expel the unkind thoughts I have about my father when I should be worrying about him, and telling myself that I’m too tired and scared to be thinking properly. But it hurts, even in this moment of hardship, to know I’m not as loved as my sister.
“The brother adored his sisters and finally agreed to change places with them,” Mama says. “The sisters packed u
p their embroidery needles and went to their new home. Down on earth, the people looked up and saw a man in the moon. ‘Where are the sisters?’ they asked. ‘Where have they gone?’ Now when anyone looks at the sun, the sisters use their seventy embroidery needles to stab at those who dare to stare too long. Those who refuse to turn away go blind.”
May lets her breath out slowly. I know her so well. In moments she’ll be asleep. From the platform in the corner, our hostess grunts. Did she not like the story either? I ache all over, and now my heart aches too. I close my eyes to keep the tears from falling.
Soaring Through the Night Sky
THE NEXT MORNING, the woman boils water so we can wash our faces and hands. She makes tea and gives us each another bowl of jook. She smears more of her country medicine on our feet. She gives us old but clean footbinding cloths to use as bandages. Then she follows us outside and helps my mother back into the wheelbarrow. Mama tries to pay her, but she waves it away, refusing even to look at us again she’s so insulted.
All that morning we walk. Mist hovers above the fields. The smell of rice cooking over straw fires wafts to us from the villages we pass. May’s green hat and my hat with the feathers—both saved during Old Man Louie’s rampage—were carefully packed, so as the day wears on our skin parches and burns. Eventually May and I join Mama in the wheelbarrow. Our pusher never complains, never threatens to abandon us, never asks for more money. He stoically just keeps putting one foot in front of the other.
In the late afternoon, just as the day before, he turns down a pathway toward a farm that seems even poorer than the last one. The wife sorts seeds with a sleeping baby tied to her back. A couple of sickly children do other chores with extreme lassitude. The husband looks us over, calculating how much he should charge. When his eyes find my mother’s feet, he grins toothlessly. We pay more than we should for some dry patties made from ground corn.
Mama and May fall asleep before I do. I stare at the ceiling. I listen to a rat skitter along the walls of the room, stopping to gnaw on this and that. My whole life I was spoiled with what I ate, what I wore, where I slept, how I moved from one place to another. Now I think how easy it would be for May, my mother, me, and people like us—privileged and cared for—to die out here on the road. We don’t know what it means to get by on almost nothing. We don’t know what it takes to survive day to day. But the family that lives here and the woman who took us in last night do. When you don’t have much, having less isn’t so bad.
The next morning we walk around a village that’s been burned to the ground. On the road we see those who tried unsuccessfully to escape: men bayoneted and shot, babies abandoned, and women, wearing only tunics, with the bottom halves of their bodies exposed and their bloody legs splayed at odd angles. Just after noon, we pass dead Chinese soldiers moldering in the hot sun. One is curled into a ball. The back of his hand rests in his mouth as if in his last moments he was biting back pain.
How far have we gone? I don’t know. Maybe fifteen miles a day? How far do we have to go? None of us knows that either. But we have to keep going and hope that we don’t encounter any Japanese before we reach the Grand Canal.
That evening, our pusher repeats his pattern of turning down a dirt path toward a shack, only this time the people are gone, as though they just stepped out. But all of their belongings seem to be here, including their chickens and ducks. Our pusher rummages through the shelves until he finds a jar of salted turnips. We watch—useless and helpless—as he makes the rice. How is it that after three full days together we still don’t know his name? He’s older than May and me but younger than my mother. Still, we call him Boy, and he responds with the respect his low position requires. After we’ve eaten, he looks around until he finds some mosquito incense, which he lights. Then he goes outside to sleep by the wheelbarrow. We go into the other room, which has a bed made from two sawhorses and three wooden planks. Mats stretch across the boards, and a quilt stuffed with cotton batting lies at the foot of the bed. It’s too hot to sleep under the quilt, but we roll it out over the mats so we’ll have a little padding between our bones and hardness.
That night the Japanese come. We hear the scuffling of their boots, their harsh, guttural voices, and the wheelbarrow pusher’s cries for mercy. Whether on purpose or not, his suffering and death give us time to hide. But we’re in a two-room shack. Where can we conceal ourselves? Mama tells us to take the planks from the sawhorses and lean them against the wall.
“Slide in behind,” she orders. May and I look at each other. What’s Mama thinking? “Do it!” she hisses. “Do it now!”
Once May and I get behind the planks, Mama reaches in. She holds her bride-price bag and our papers wrapped in silk. “Take these.”
“Mama—”
“Shhh!”
She grabs my hand and wraps it around the bag and package. We hear her scrape one of the sawhorses across the floor. The planks push up against my sister and me, forcing us to turn our faces to the side. That’s how tight a space Mama has made. But we’re hardly hidden. It will be only a matter of time before the soldiers find us.
“Stay here,” she whispers. “Don’t come out no matter what you hear.” She grabs my wrist and shakes it. She switches to the Sze Yup dialect, not wanting May to understand. “I mean it, Pearl. Stay here. Don’t let your sister move from this place.”
We hear Mama leave the room and shut the door. Next to me May takes shallow breaths. Each exhale falls on my face warm and moist. My heart thumps in my chest.
From the other room we hear the door being kicked open, the stomp of boots, loud military voices, and soon enough Mama pleading and bargaining with the soldiers. At one point, the door to this room swings open. Lantern light flickers in from the sides of our hiding place. Mama screams—sharp and shrill—the door shuts, and the light goes away.
“Mama,” May mewls.