Mingmei Yip - Song of the Silk Road

I put the vase on the grave, half closed my eyes, and channeled my energy. Ten minutes later I felt hit by an emotion both raw and totally unexpected. Then I found myself muttering to the buried stranger despite myself.

“Father, here’s your daughter, Lily Lin, who comes to pay her respects. Although we never met, I believe we must be linked in spirit. A link that stretches between us, no matter what happens, and no matter where we are. Please, now that we’ve finally met, stay with me and guide me.

“I’m very sorry that we could not meet when you were in the flesh. But this was the will of heaven. Now I must move on and finish my tasks on this Red Dust before I see you someday in heaven. Thank you, whoever and wherever you are.”

I surprised myself speaking so intimately to someone I’d never met. With unsteady hands, I took out a handkerchief to wipe the dust from the grave, then pulled off the weeds surrounding it as tears flooded down my cheeks. Then, just as I was turning to leave, it started to rain. Big drops of water pelted down like beans, hitting me hard, almost hurting me. Mist formed a curtain, blurring the grave and the flowers; raindrops ran down Wang Jin’s picture as if he were crying with me. Just then, seemingly pushed by some invisible force, the vase was knocked over, crashed onto the ground, and shattered into myriad shards.

I cast one last look at the face that I imagined was struggling hard to talk to me but couldn’t utter a word. Soaking wet and legs trembling, I dashed back toward the waiting car.

Inside the vehicle, I was wiping my face with a tissue when Lo asked, “How’s your father?”

“Why do you talk about Wang Jin as if he still lives in the yang world?”

“Because that’s the way your mother likes to talk about him.”

“Is he really dead? Did he fake it and is actually hiding somewhere?”

“No, trust me, he’s as dead as the last Chinese emperor. Your mother has been waiting so long and so desperately to have a big family reunion that she tries to think of him as being alive.”

“Did they love each other that much?”

“Your mother is a very passionate woman. Her power to love and hate is like a giant’s breath.”

“Mr. Lo, how do you know so much about her?”

Lo didn’t respond but stared out of the window at the sobbing sky.

At Lo’s urging, I visited Mindy Madison almost every day. She was anxiously hoping to hear that her verdict had been annulled and her cancer in remission. Lo was working hard on both, preparing documents for the court and concocting for her the tea using the snow lotuses I’d brought back from the Mountains of Heaven, according to Lop Nor’s recipe.

During each of our conversations, Madison revealed something more about her life, her love for Wang Jin and her relationship with Mayfong, my Hong Kong mother implausibly turned into my aunt.

One day she showed me a picture of herself and my young mother holding a baby.

“See?” She pointed at the chubby face. “That’s you. Such a good baby. You rarely cried, always smiled, and slept through the night without fuss.”

Then she sighed heavily. “Hai, Lily, someday when you have children of your own, you’ll understand a mother’s love. And the pain when she’s not able to see and hold her dear one.”

She was right. I tried but couldn’t feel any love for any of my yet-to-be-born or never-to-have children.

Madison’s searching eyes bored deeply into mine. “My daughter, do you have a boyfriend?”

“Hmm… yes and no.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I have, or maybe had, two serious boyfriends. One has no future with me, while the other too much.”

“How’s that?”

“Because one is already married with a child and the other is much younger than I. Chris always says he’ll divorce his wife and marry me, but so far it’s just talk. Alex wants to marry me, but he’s eight years my junior, still a student, and has difficult parents who don’t approve of me.”

I went on to tell my on-and-off relationship with Chris, my traveling with Alex on the Silk Road, and some of my ex-boyfriends.

After I finished, Madison said, “Alex is the one. Go find him.”

“But he’s so much younger. Maybe he’ll get tired of me and take up with a girl his own age.”

“My daughter, you’re brave enough to undertake this arduous trip but not to marry someone just because he’s younger?”

Of course she was right, but I didn’t respond.

She asked, “Maybe you love this Chris more?”

“No. But I’m in debt since my parents died. Chris helps by buying me meals and paying for small things. I’m grateful for that. That’s why when I was offered this million-dollar trip, I jumped at it, thinking it’d be my big breakthrough before I turned thirty.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

The long silence was awkward, so I changed the subject. “Tell me more about my mother and you.”

“You mean your aunt and me.”

I avoided her gaze and stared at her hands, wrinkled and twisted like a pair of week-old citrons.

“In China, I wrote many letters to Mayfong asking about you, but her answer was always just a line or two stating that you were growing fast and doing fine.

“Then one day out of the blue I got her letter announcing this horrible news—that you died from pneumonia. She warned me not to come back to Hong Kong for your funeral because the Hong Kong government had been vehemently tracking down illegal immigrants. After that, she never wrote again.”

I remained silent, shocked yet perversely fascinated by her incredible account of my dear mother’s cruelty and betrayal, which, like her, I’d never known existed.

“Then how did you suddenly know that I was alive to find me?”

“Last year I just happened to read your fake father’s—I mean old man’s—obituary in a newspaper. I was shocked to see that among the long list of his many offspring, your name was there but not framed in black—meaning that you were alive after all. I immediately asked Lo to locate you.”

It took me long moments to digest this real-life drama and the incomprehensible human heart. “It seems Lo does everything for you. You must pay him a lot.”

“Only in the beginning. Now he does it for free.”

“A lawyer, for free?”

She didn’t answer me, but picked up the manila envelope, pulled out some more pictures, and handed them to me. “Look at these.”

They all showed a young and pretty Mindy Madison posing with different men along different parts of the Silk Road.

The first picture showed her in hat and boots bestride a camel, her expression defiant and her two pigtails dangling. The second one showed her washing her long, shiny black hair by a pond in a ruined town—the one where Alex and I had located her hair—her white teeth gleaming under the sun and her tanned face smiling a heart-opening smile. She looked so healthy and ripe that I think any man would want to take a bite of her—a shoulder, an arm, a neck, a cheek. The third picture, to my surprise, was her posing in front of the Turpan Museum with Floating Cloud, or Chen Dong, looking quite unmonklike with a full head of hair.

I looked up and caught her gaze. “How many lovers did you have?”

“You mean had or have?”

“Have? What do you mean…”

A faint smile glowed on her face. “Hmm… never mind.”

“You mean you still have a boyfriend now?”

“I can’t tell you now. Anyway, you’ll find out sooner or later.”

Her smile deepened, her tanned, wrinkled face like an old etching. “I was pretty, adventurous, and defiant, so I just attracted men like butterflies to flowers. My daughter, that’s the trait of mine that you have, so men also flock to you like bees to honey. As you know, Mayfong was just the opposite. She didn’t even have the courage to leave the house, let alone journey to the Silk Road or the Taklamakan.”

True, my mother’s whole life could be summed up by one big picture depicting her small frame fussing over windows, rooms, kitchens, toilets—hers as well as other people’s. I’d invited her many times to come to New York to see me, but her answer was always no, because the trip was too expensive and her work demanding and never-ending, blah, blah, blah…. I never understood what she feared would happen if the floors and toilets were left unscrubbed for just a few days. Would they overflow with excrement?

Hai, now I started to truly believe that Mindy Madison, or Cai Mindi, was indeed my mother. I also started to understand why my mother Cai Mayfong had worked so hard as if she actually enjoyed being miserable. Knowing what I now did, I wondered, did she make herself suffer to atone for her inconsolable guilt at taking me away from her sister?

My prison mother spoke, breaking my thought. “My only regret in life is that I don’t have much time with you. The other things don’t matter after all.”

“Don’t you regret that you stole all the treasures?”

“They were returned to where they belong. But you’ll be still be my daughter even after I die. I only wish I’d had you for longer, much longer.”

These words hit me so hard that tears rolled down my cheeks.

The strange woman who claimed to be, or was, my mother squeezed my hand. “Lily, I know you’ve suffered, but I’m sure you’ll be rewarded for your good deeds.”

“What good deeds? I just did it for the money, which I won’t even get.”