Phoebe Lin
Short Story 2
The Porcelain Girl
YiHan was nine years old when she discovered that love can kill. The first way love killed was from its absence, as the absence of love bred heartbreak. The second way love killed was from its presence, as the presence of love bred foolishness. And while love discriminates between those who love and those who don’t, death never does. It simply takes, and takes, and takes.
Leaning against the wooden doorway of her home, YiHan stood to listen to the sing-song voices and dancing laughter of her classmates ringing through the forests of Laoling. Their voices like bits of colored glass spinning in the sunlight, flickering patterns onto the sleepy gray patchwork of cement houses and the blankets of white snow. Their delighted shouts bounced off of the tree barks, skirted from branch to branch, and winded through rocks and fallen trees. Framed by the large entrance, YiHan appeared fragile and small, lavishly dressed in a silk embroidered jacket. She was like the favorite porcelain doll of a young girl, with her round, white face, and delicate body meticulously cared for. Her toes wiggled in her small beaded slippers, her fingers tugged at the stiffness of the sleeves, and her eyes followed the fragmented limbs and bodies dashing between the trees.
A boy with a shaved head, forehead sprinkled with crystal beads of sweat, and a cotton unbuttoned blue jacket hanging from one shoulder emerged from the dense thicket of trees and ran to the doorway where YiHan was standing. He stood panting for a few moments at the foot of the steps, bent over, and clutched his stomach.
“YiHan, come play with us,” he said, “What are you doing standing there like that, scared to ruin your xīn yīfú?”
“It’s not that! My mother wants me to help her make cōng yóu bǐng for dinner.” She scowled as the boy took a few steps closer.
“Ha ha! You’re not helping with anything. If you’re afraid of ruining your clothes, just say so! Besides, won’t your grandfather simply buy you three more new outfits anyway?”
“I won’t keep talking to you, HaoBing. Kuài qù wán.” When the boy didn’t budge, YiHan picked up the sides of the long skirt, turned around, and walked, balancing carefully on her toes, as she had observed some of the older women in the village doing.
“Ha ha ha. Can’t you even walk right?” The boy continued to mock from behind her. “YiHan! YiHan! Wait!” He called, but she paid no attention as she lifted her head higher and disappeared into the kitchen.
Though HaoBing was the only one out of the village children who still invited YiHan out to play, she regularly refused his offers. If there was any desire in YiHan to run wild in the woods with her fellow classmates, it was impeccably suppressed for reasons of pride or for fear, masked by a plethora of busy excuses. Apart from the recent lack of invitations from the other children, which put her much at ease, YiHan had also begun to notice that few of her mother’s friends frequented their home anymore. When the other women of the village used to come, they would come bearing baskets overflowing with oranges and fresh vegetables from their farms, the newest and most modern knitting patterns, and cooking tips on making medicinal stews and better tasting noodles. From their pockets emerged sweets and small knotted trinkets which YiHan and her sisters shyly accepted. Her mother would lead them to sit in the parlor to chat and YiHan would pour their most expensive tea into the delicate porcelain teacups laced with patterns of golden string that her father purchased from the far city of Shanghai. It wasn’t until after several sips of tea and meaningless talk about the daily hum of life that the women would begin to reveal the most cherished treasures. These bits of village gossip and news were always carefully guarded, wrapped, folded, and tucked deep within only to be brought out, unraveled, and shared at the particular and precise moment. YiHan, would quietly crouch in the cascades of light and listen. At times, she even discovered she held her breath. This was YiHan’s favorite part of the afternoon, when she was able to rest her feet from standing to wash dishes, to hang the laundry, and to look after the nagging needs of her two younger sisters. It was her time to listen and diappear. Her mother’s friends rarely noticed YiHan was there and talked freely about which impatient couples hastily got engaged and shouldn’t have, which poor girls were still unmarried and should be, and what young love was on the scene.
Occasionally, YiHan would hear her name come into the conversation. She would sit up, straighten out her jacket, and revel in the praise from the lips of the mothers in the neighborhood. They would tell her mother how they longed for a daughter such as YiHan. If only they had a daughter like YiHan, their houses would actually stay clean. With a daughter like YiHan, they would be able to rest once in a while and not have to constantly attend to the children and if YiHan lived in their houses, the gray hairs on their heads would not sprout as often and their hearts would never pain them in the night. They joked with her mother in these conversations over tea to rent out the little maid YiHan to them. Her mother would always look toward YiHan, who thought she truly chose an inconspicuous spot this time, smile and say.
“YiHan is my little help. My tiense angel sent from God.”
Nowadays, these occurrences were rare. YiHan occupied her afternoons with attempts to replicate the complex knitting patterns and complete the household duties which were ever increasing as the days passed. Ever since her father had been away on his business trip to Shanghai, her mother had been showing signs of fatigue and restlessness. She would venture outdoors only to return a few minutes later stating she had forgotten why she went outside. She sat staring out into the darkness of the evening and when YiHan asked her what she was looking at, she would reply, at the children playing, or the birds chirping, when the children had already left and the bird’s had stopped singing hours ago. Through a stranger’s eyes, it was not hard to see that FengLi was once the most beautiful woman in the village, with her gentle almond shaped eyes, boldly arched eyebrows, graceful sloping shoulders, and smooth, flawless knees. However, time had worn the edges of her smiling eyes, and worry lines crossed over her cracked lips. Her once graceful shoulders, jutted and angular, and her knees were roughed with labor. In the mornings, YiHan was now the one to wake her mother up.
One evening much like any other, the children played hide and seek between the trees with the warm glow of the red sun on their backs, YiHan was asked by her mother to bring a pot of hot soup to HuaFei’s house to thank her for the medicines she brought them the previous week. HuaFei was not one of YiHan’s favorites amongst her mother’s friends. The old woman often beckoned YiHan to keep her company for hours and her slow movements grew impatience like a thorn bush in YiHan’s heart. As all the houses in the village were spread out between the expanses of forest and the plots of farmland, HuaFei’s house which was only four houses away, was quite a distance away. But YiHan, seeing the dullness in her mother’s eyes and the paleness of her face made her fear that the journey for her mother would be too taxing, despite her mother’s assertions that her health was returning. And thus, YiHan set out with the pot of soup in both hands and plowed through the heavy snow. She arrived just as the last rays of light tucked behind the horizon and HuaFei welcomed her in. As YiHan was setting the soup down on the table, she lowered herself onto the stool and huddled in front of the stove for warmth. Drifting from the next room were the strained voices of HuaFei and her cousin who had been staying here for a few months now. Their voices were lowered in nervous tension and tinged with concern, but still audible. As with the conversations over tea, YiHan, sitting on the stool, hid behind the doorway of the kitchen and listened.
“Poor FengLi, her sickness seems to be getting worse.”
“Yes, every time I visit, her face has new lines and her headaches are coming almost daily.”
“It must be because of that worthless man of hers. He’s forgotten all about her and is now married to a younger woman.”
“I am telling you, all they want are boys. FengLi’s three girls are perfectly alright, especially that YiHan. Little angel, always looking out for FengLi and her sisters.”
“Even the women are a problem. What is it with the petty, superstitious women in this town, spreading rumors about FengLi’s misfortune? The women of this generation can’t keep their mouths shut. Can’t they see her health is waning? And yet they abandon her at a time like this.”
“Women are cruel, and men are selfish. Where have all the decent human beings disappeared to? “
It was a moonless night. Darkness enveloped every corner and crevice, occupied every space, and weighed heavy on YiHan’s small, fragile soul. The songs of the children were replaced by the haunting silence and the crunch of her footsteps breaking through the hardened surface of the snow. The small circle of light from the lantern HuaFei gave her barely lit anything past her feet and was just as cold and heartless of a friend as the night. What hid within the shadows of the houses and in the thickets of the forest? What lurked for her in the vast space ahead which was not illuminated? What more secrets about her life was she to discover? And what other lies was she forced to believe about her father? The voices played over in her head at least a hundred times. She examined it from every angle, tried to make sense of the puzzling words. And the only possibility, the only conclusion she came up with was the horrifying truth that her father left her mother because she and her sisters were girls. Because her mother was unable give her father a boy.
And YiHan understood the reason for the emptiness in her mother’s eyes when she told her that her father was on a business trip in Shanghai. She understood why she often found her mother sitting by herself in her room, staring at nothing in particular. She understood why her mother no longer sang as she washed the clothes. She understood the condition of a broken heart.
YiHan continued to tread through the snow, dragging her tiny feet through the heavy snow, paying no attention to which way she walked, not bothering to wipe the droplets of tears from her white face. Snow began falling from the sky again, dusting the branches of the trees, the rooftops of houses, and her little wool hat and silken shoulders.
She sat down at the next stoop she came across, placed her lantern down and stared into the empty sky. From the darkness, a form was emerging. YiHan gripped the steps firmly. Was this death coming to claim her? Slowly, the top of a head was visible, then, little arms swinging at the sides, and then the frantic legs. HaoBing waved his arms at her as he shouted something that was indistinguishable. He tripped, fell, pushed himself back up and continued running towards her.
“YiHan! YiHan! Your mother, your mother is really sick! Where have you been this whole time? She is calling for you!” YiHan could tell he must have been running nonstop from her house all the way here. He gasped for breath, and reached out to pull her hand. “Get up! Your mother’s sick! Do you hear me? It is really serious!” But the words just whizzed past YiHan. She sat frozen, unable to move. This time, HaoBing grabbed her arm, pulled her up and started dashing. She realized she had forgotten to take the lantern, but when she looked back, it was only a tiny flickering speck in the darkness, a lone star in the vast expanse. They ran, cutting through the cold night, to the sound of their labored breathing.
The oil lamps cast long, disfigured shadows across the slab grey walls. Its glowing fire danced like mischievous spirits across her mother’s pale face, above the weighty layers of cotton and silk. Her sisters kneeled next to the mat, heads bowed in solitude. Hesitant, YiHan tipped one delicate foot into the hostile unfamiliarity of the tiny square bedroom. Would the delicate balance keeping her mother alive be disturbed by her presence? Her mother opened her eyes, and when she caught sight of YiHan in the doorway, she whispered her name. She moved closer, one foot in front of the next, until the tip of her foot came upon the edge of the mat. The face she saw was not her mother’s – frail and weak, crossed with the lines of time, so small and forgotten in the unsteady light. She could not remember what her mother’s smile looked like.
“YiHan, come closer. I want to see your face.” Her voice was just a little more than a whisper. She joined her sisters in kneeling, took her mother’s hand and held on.
“Ma, ze me hui se? What happened?”
“You know that I’ve been sick for a while now. Tonight, the winter wind isn’t being so kind.” She looked toward her two younger daughters, and to HaoBing who stood in front of the doorway, his body half illuminated by the lamp light. “Haobing, take xiao Wei and xiao Yeu into the kitchen for a moment, I want to talk with YiHan.”
HaoBing looked up, surprised that he was being addressed. Then with only a moment’s pause, he took the hands of YiHan’s sisters, “Lai” he said and led them out of the room.
“YiHan,YiHan, my angel, I want you to listen carefully.” YiHan nodded her head, afraid that in opening her mouth, tears would come spilling out of her eyes. “Tonight, I am very sick, and if anything should happen to me where I can’t take care of you and your sisters…” YiHan shook her head violently. “Listen. If anything should happen, you need to contact your father, he’s in Shanghai, and you need to tell him to come get you and your sisters and move with him to Shanghai. Do you understand?”