Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [38]
Today’s breakfast is rice porridge, hard-boiled eggs, pickled turnip, and dumplings made with rice flour dyed green with a local water plant and stuffed with spicy vegetables and salted pork. It’s all delicious, but I don’t eat more than my share. I dip my spoon into my porridge and listen to Kumei and Yong. I’ve picked up the nuances of the local dialect and have gotten much better at speaking it.
I’m happy that Z.G. and I were sent to live with Kumei. She’s become a good friend, even though we’re still strangers in many ways. How did she get her scars? Why does she live in the villa? Who was her husband? I’ve been dying to ask these questions, but I don’t want to appear nosy. I’ve made up a story in my mind though. Kumei probably married a soldier when he passed through this area. He must have died during Liberation. Since her husband was a hero, the villagers allowed her to live in the villa, where she cares for her son and Yong, another widow, because, in the New Society, the villa has been converted to a home for widows. Maybe none of this is true, but I like the story. And I like Kumei. Her name means Bitter Sister, but she doesn’t seem bitter to me. She’s illiterate, but she hasn’t let the burdens of the past hinder her. She goes to classes in the afternoon, along with many other peasants, to be educated.
Kumei leaves her son with Yong, and the two of us set out for the fields. Z.G. stays behind in the villa. I came a long way to meet him and it’s already been a month, but he’s an enigma. He hasn’t asked much about May or even me, and I haven’t asked much about him, even though I’d like to know him better. I’m shy around him and unsure what to say. Maybe he’s shy too. Or maybe he’s unused to having a daughter. Maybe he can never feel about me the way my father Sam felt.
It’s the end of September. The air is still warm, but not as oppressive as it was when I first got here. We walk past paddies, where the rice stalks have browned. Then we begin to climb the short hill across from the villa. I keep my head down, pretending to watch for ruts or rocks in the path, while glancing surreptitiously up the hill to Tao’s house. It looks like many of the other houses—small, built from blocks of some sort, and covered with mud—except that it’s the only one angled north. The windows are just openings, as in the villa. The tile roof is low and crooked. Some rocks form a little retaining wall, creating a small terrace just outside the front door. An outdoor wood-burning stove is built onto one of the exterior walls, which can’t make it easy for Tao’s mother to cook when it rains. A wooden ladder with broken rungs lies askew on the ground, but no one has bothered to right it since I arrived. In the villa, the dried fish and pig legs hang protected in the first courtyard; here they’re haphazardly tacked on an outside wall just high enough to keep them safe from dogs and rodents. Laundry drips on a line: Tao’s undershirts, his father’s baggy pants, his mother’s dark tunics, his eight little brothers’ and sisters’ clothes. To me, the house looks very country and very romantic. My mother would be appalled, calling it a pathetic shack.
“Tao was born in the Year of the Dog,” Kumei volunteers, noticing the way I’m staring at the house. “Everyone knows the Dog and the Tiger make an ideal love match.”
“I’m not looking for a love match—”
“No, of course not. Not you. That’s why we have to walk up here every morning at the exact same time. You don’t want to see anyone in particular.”
“I don’t.”
But I do. If May could give me up so easily and if Z.G. doesn’t want to know me, then maybe Tao … Maybe I might still be worthy of love …
“Everyone likes a Dog,” Kumei continues. “A Dog knows how to get along with others and how to lick their hands. He’s loyal, even if the master is his wife. He’s good at rescuing, as everyone knows. Do you need rescuing?