Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [54]
Why haven’t I thought to come here before now? I have to find out if any of the Hus are still alive. The houses on this lane look very different from others I’ve seen. I’ve grown accustomed to laundry hanging on poles projected from windows, draped across bushes like blankets of dirty snow, or flopped over fences and walls. There are no secrets in the New China. Everyone knows everyone else just by walking past the laundry—how old the people are who live in the house, their sex, if they’re poor or slightly better off. But outside the Hus’ house I see no padded pants, patched jackets, baggy underpants, or the limp socks that would indicate that anyone lives here. There’s no laundry whatsoever. Instead, the rosebushes still have a few blooms and a mulberry tree offers shade.
I stride up the walkway and ring the bell. An elegant woman with bound feet opens the door. I’d know her anywhere. It’s Madame Hu. I’ve heard about the stay-oners—those who had the money and power to leave when they had the chance but didn’t. Madame Hu is one of those. Twenty years have passed, but she recognizes me right away too. Both of us stand there, laughing and crying at the impossibility of it all.
“Come in, come in.” She waves me inside and leads me to the salon. It’s like I’m stepping back in time. The Hu family’s belongings are all still here and beautifully kept. The room is filled with low-slung velvet chairs and couches. The geometric design of the tile floor is clean and polished.
Madame Hu sways to a chair on her bound feet. My breath catches as memories of my mother fill my mind and heart. Madame Hu rings a bell, and a servant appears. “We’ll need tea,” Madame Hu orders. Then she turns to me. “Do you still like chrysanthemum tea, or would you prefer something different?”
Of course, she’d remember that. When May was still a baby, Mama used to bring me here for tea. I’d listen to the two women gossip, and they’d let me have some of their tea sweetened with two spoonfuls of sugar. I felt very grown-up when I was with them.
“I’d love some chrysanthemum tea,” I say.
The servant backs out of the room. For a long moment, Auntie Hu, as May and I called her as a courtesy when we were girls, and I stare at each other. What does she see when she looks at me? Disappointment that I’m dressed in my common worker uniform, or does she see past the clothes to the person I’ve become? When I look at her—and I’ll admit it, I’m staring hard, soaking her in—it’s as though I’m seeing my mother, if she’d lived. Auntie Hu is tiny not from age or hardship but because she and Mama were petite. (How I remember their concern when I kept growing, eventually becoming taller than they were, taller than my father. I remember overhearing fretful conversations about whether I would ever find a husband with my unpleasing and unfeminine height.)
Auntie Hu was always fashion and style conscious, again just like Mama, and she’s still beautifully dressed. She wears a dark blue silk tunic closed by intricate frog buttons at her neck, across her breast, and down her side. Her jewelry is exquisite—finely carved jade and gold earrings, a brooch, and a simple necklace. I glance at her feet, and they too are just as I remember them—immaculately cared for and dressed in embroidered