Mingmei Yip - Song of the Silk Road

After I emptied both jars, Lo handed me two garlands and I dropped them onto the sea one by one. As if the flowers had thoughts and emotions, they impatiently rode the waves as if to catch up with my parents, to show the way for them with their rainbow-colored aura.

“Now throw this one, too.” Lo’s emotion-filled voice rose next to my ear as he put a third garland into my hands.

“Another one?”

“This one’s for the fish so they’ll stay away.”

Although I didn’t see the logic behind this, I fully complied, grateful for his consideration and compassion.

I stared at the ashes, petals, and waves until my dustlike parents were completely gone from sight. From now on, there would be no more meetings—happy or unhappy—in this Red Dust.

When we were back in the city, Lo asked, if I was not too tired, could he take me out.

Sitting across from the officious lawyer inside a small café, it was the first time that I had a clear sense of this enigmatic man. In his fifties, with a slight build and neat appearance, he could have passed as a professor or a consultant. Lo was a man of important words and a serious nature.

I ordered black coffee to match my mood, and Lo ordered mineral water, to match his blank mood, I guessed.

After our drinks arrived and we took our first meditative sip, he said, “Miss Lin, I’m very relieved that finally your parents had their proper burial.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lo. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without your help.”

He paused to sip his water, then, “This doesn’t mean your mother’s business is over. Now that all items have been returned to the government and the chip from the terracotta soldier tested, we must continue to fight to have her name cleared.”

“Thanks for doing all this for my mother. I hope you’re paid accordingly”—my voice had a slight taint of bitterness as I swallowed the rest of my sentence—“since I’m not.”

“She was broke. I have not been paid for a long time.”

I had wondered why he was so nice. Weren’t lawyers greedy and their devotion decided by their clients’ bank accounts?

As if guessing what I was thinking, he said, “Miss Lin, you may be shocked when I tell you…” He stopped, tearing up.

Seconds passed before I asked gingerly, “Yes?”

He looked as if he was struggling very hard to say something extremely painful. Finally, “I’ve been in love with Miss Madison for a long time.”

“What?” Another lover, my mother?

Ignoring my shock, he continued as he dabbed the corners of his eyes with a napkin. “She was a very attractive woman, determined and courageous. Unfortunately when you met her, her beauty had been destroyed by her cancer, her incarceration, and her long legal struggle. In her prime she was so energetic that she made everyone around her feel confident and hopeful. I was but one of her many admirers.”

This seemingly emotionless man had been grieving all along.

“Are you married?”

“I was, but I divorced after my ex-wife found out about my infatuation with Mindi. I never married again.”

A man with a broken heart.

“That’s why you try your best to help me?”

He nodded.

“You’re still in love with her, aren’t you?”

“After her, I find other women uninteresting. Although Mindi never really loved me back, we did have an affair.”

So he was the boyfriend that my mother had referred to!

“You mean… until her death?”

He nodded.

Various perverse questions flashed through my mind: How could a man be still attracted to a cancer-ravaged ghost of a woman? Did they have sex? Where, in the prison cell? In what positions, the hanging-upside-down-lotus?

Moments of silence passed before he took out a worn notebook and handed it to me. “Here’s the diary your mother kept during her trip on the Silk Road. You may find it of interest.”

“Are you lending it to me or can I keep it?”

“It’s yours. So you can know your mother better.”

I flipped through a few pages here and there, not really reading, just trying to feel my mother’s lingering spirit through her neatly formed characters and intimate words.

After another long silence, Lo asked, “Miss Lin, what are you going to do now?”

“There’s nothing more for me here. I guess I will go back to New York and try to finish my novel. After that, try to get an agent and a publisher. But that’s really a long shot. A distant dream, I have to admit.”

He looked at me deeply. “Don’t be discouraged. Just keep at it and you’ll succeed; you’ve got your mother’s fighting spirit.” He paused before he spoke again. “And her beauty.”

I was amazed to see him blush.

In the hotel, I stayed up most of the night reading my mother’s journal. When I finished, I finally understood why so many men were attracted to her. Maybe some mothers live through their daughters, but for me it had been the opposite. It was to relive parts of my mother’s life that I had taken my long, arduous journey along the Silk Road. She had found an unusual way to stimulate her daughter’s personal growth.

There were so many passages in her journal that I savored, such as this one:

August 3

I might be the first woman who traversed the “Go-In-But-Never-Come-Out” Taklamakan Desert alone. If I lived in the West, pictures of me pulling my belongings on a sled would be all over newspapers and magazines. But in China no one even knows about my existence, or my deed, and I have to keep it this way.

I keep thinking of death here in this harsh desert. If I “never come out,” then I will be like one of the billions of grains of sand, shifting in the soughing wind with not even ghosts for company. Yet even in this empty place, I always think of my little Lily who was two months old when I left Hong Kong to go back to China.

Three days later, Lo told me that because Mindy Madison had passed away, the government decided to drop all accusations against her. But as expected, the three million dollars were not to be released. I asked why, and his answer was: It’s not a smart thing to challenge the government by asking why. Anyway, since I knew nothing about the Chinese legal system and had no connections there, I finally accepted that the best thing for me was to keep my mouth shut, return to the States, and move on with life.

Manhattan, which I had always thought was the most sophisticated city on earth, now seemed bland in comparison to the Silk Road cities where I’d traveled. Indeed, back home everything looked so ordinary that my Silk Road adventures seemed to have happened in another life. But since there was no three million dollars I had no choice but to return to my tiny studio near Union Square.

As soon as I arrived home I dialed Alex’s number, hoping his comforting voice and endearing words would ease my transition back into my normal life. But, as before, no one answered the phone. I even tried calling the registrar’s office at Columbia University and asked for Alex’s phone and address. However, other than confirming him as a graduate student there, they refused to provide any further information, citing confidentiality.

Where was he? Had he gone back to China to look for me? Very unlikely. Then the scenario I most dreaded popped into my mind: Maybe this time Alex had really fallen passionately in love with another girl his own age!

Depressed at the thought, I called Chris instead.

He sounded so ecstatic that I, disappointed by Alex’s disappearance, felt wanted again.

“Darling Lily, I’m so glad to hear your voice! You’ve really been torturing me by being away so long. I’m sure you’ve got a lot to tell. Can I come over tonight?”

I thought for a while. “Chris, how come you’re so available all the time? Where are Jenny and Preston?”

“You know, Lily, you’ve been away a long time. What do you think I did without you all this time? I spent my time with my family. I took my son to McDonald’s, the zoo, movies, ball games, shopping.”

“Was Jenny involved?”

“Of course, she’s his mother.”

“That means you don’t actually need me.”

“Oh, Lily, don’t be difficult. Of course I do.”

“Did you have another woman, I mean other than Jenny, while I was away?” I felt a little uncomfortable asking this. For I could not really consider myself faithful to him since, even setting aside the hanging-upside-down-lotus, I’d been with Alex in China.

He sighed. “Please, Lily. No other woman, only my family.”

“So you have sex with her?”

There was some silence before he said, his voice like a deflated balloon expelling its last puff of air, “What do you expect? You were away for so long, did you expect me to turn into a monk? Please, can I come over tonight?”

“You still haven’t answered my question. What will you tell Jenny about where you are going?”

“I don’t need to report everything to her. Besides, I’ve been a family man for six long months. I’m entitled to a break.”

“I can’t see you tonight,” I said, thinking of Alex and wanting to wait for him.

“Are you serious?” He raised his voice. “Then why did you call, to tease me?”

“Maybe just a courtesy call for an old friend,” I said, then hung up and unplugged the phone.

At six in the evening, heavy knocks at the door woke me from my nap. I rushed to the door and saw my former professor through the peephole.