Gold Boy, Emerald Girl

Sweeping Past

THEY HAD BECOME sworn sisters in Ailin’s backyard fifty years earlier, Ailin being the oldest of the three and the one to come up with the idea. They were twelve going on thirteen, their bodies just beginning to fill the gray Mao jackets handed down from their mothers. By then sworn sisterhood, like many other traditions, had been labeled as a noxious feudal legacy, and they had to bribe a neighbor’s daughter to take Ailin’s younger siblings to the marketplace for sugar canes so that the three girls could be free of prying eyes — it would take the little ones a sweet long time to chew from one end of the sugar canes to the other. Mei had stolen some yam liquor from her father’s cabinet, and they each took a sip of the strong liquid before pouring it on the ground. “Let the heaven and the earth be the witnesses of the beginning of the rest of our lives,” Ailin read a pledge she had adapted from old novels in which men and women chose their sworn brotherhood and sisterhood beyond the bond of blood, and Mei and Lan repeated after her that they, sworn sisters from now on, would stick through thick and thin till the day they were to leave the earthly world together.

Later they went to the only photographer in town to have a picture taken. They were in their best outfits: moon white blouses with bows of the same color tied on the ends of their braids, pants with soft-colored floral prints. The photographer, a bachelor in his late thirties, watched the three girls giggle with excitement as he adjusted the lamps, and was moved by something in the girls’ faces that was beyond their understanding. In the final prints, he wrote, with a fine-brush pen, a line from an ancient poem: As innocent as new blossoms, unaware of the time sweeping past like a river. Embarrassed yet unable to bring themselves to confront the photographer, the girls pretended that they did not notice the annotation to their sworn sisterhood.

Nine years later, the photographer, with his German-made cameras as evidence for his being a capitalist spy, was the first one in town to be beaten to death by the young Red Guards. By then Mei and Lan were both expecting their first babies, and Ailin, pressured by the other two’s achievements, rushed into marriage with a man whom she had barely known and would take years to fall in love with. He was not the first man the matchmaker had introduced to her, nor was his family the one best able to afford good betrothal gifts, but it was like the old saying: The one to show up at the right time beats the earlier risers.

On the morning of the wedding, while her two sworn sisters helped Ailin make up her face, she remembered, to her surprise, where the long and gentle fingers of the photographer had touched her chin when he had adjusted the angle of her face years ago. If she closed her eyes she could almost feel the momentary coolness when she was shielded from the bright light of the lamps, big and small, by his raised arms. Remember what the photographer wrote on our picture, Ailin asked, and then said how true it was that time swept past when they were the least prepared. Mei and Lan, both glowing in their new motherhood, laughed at Ailin for being a sentimentalist. Wait until this very night to discover what you haven’t known about life, said Mei, always the most outspoken one, without lowering her voice; Lan blushed but then agreed with a coy smile, and for a moment Ailin was intimidated by a looming void of which her two sworn sisters seemed unaware.

THE PICTURE WAS buried with a few pieces of her maiden clothes in a trunk that had been rarely opened in her married life, and when it was uncovered again, it was not by Ailin but by Ying, Ailin’s fourteen-year-old granddaughter on her summer holiday from Lisbon. Who were these girls? Ying asked her grandmother as she put aside the picture and tried on a blouse from the trunk. The moon white silk fabric had taken on a dull yellow hue, just like the faded picture from fifty years ago, but she seemed to be impressed by herself in the old-fashioned blouse. She parted her hair, dyed reddish yellow, in the middle and braided it, but the hair was unruly from her perm, and after a few trials she let go and focused on a tortoiseshell comb missing a few teeth.

They had been best friends, she and the other two girls, Ailin said, but did not explain the ritual of sworn sisterhood for fear of being laughed at, which happened sometimes when she talked about the past with her granddaughter. Ying picked up the picture again and studied it. Sweet, she said, as one would speak of a puppy.

If her granddaughter was home for stories Ailin would tell her stories, but she knew that even though the girl acted nonchalant when her childhood friends admired the pictures she brought home, in which she posed in an exotic city with stately buildings, grand statues, and blue harbors with white boats, Ying already had too many stories of her own to shoulder. Five years earlier, after the death of Ailin’s husband, her only son had decided to emigrate to Portugal, and Ailin, knowing that her opinion was the last thing sought from her, had given him the money he had requested without voicing any doubt. Ailin had thought of suggesting that they could leave their only daughter for her to raise, but Ying had been the one most eager to leave for a foreign life.

She was a good helper in the restaurant, Ailin’s son soon called to report, and became even more useful when she picked up Portuguese and learned to deal with the paperwork and officials for her parents. Every summer she came back to Ailin’s home for two weeks of vacation, an award for her contribution to the prospering restaurant, but apart from quietly showing off her new life to friends and neighbors, Ying was also in charge of purchasing handmade tablecloths and napkins, decorated with the embroidery the province had been known for in the past thousand years and still cheap if one knew which village to go to.

Life was good, and the business had never been better, Ying reported every summer, with fewer details each year, and Ailin learned not to ask for more than what was provided. If the girl wanted to tell stories, Ailin was all ears, but Ying was at an age where the line between the real and the imagined was blurred, and the tales she thought impressive invariably bored Ailin, though she was careful not to show it.

TOWARD THE END of Ying’s stay the girl brought home a poster-sized print of Ailin’s picture with her sworn sisters. The store had Photoshopped it for better effect, Ying explained. The three girls in the sepia-toned print smiled dreamily, as if a shared mystery had cast a mist that separated them from the rest of the world. What was this for? Ailin asked, and the girl replied that the picture was to be part of the new decorations for a section of the restaurant divided from the main floor. There were other pictures she had gathered, too, Ying said, old photos she had sought from her friends’ parents, and the store would have them ready in a day or two.

Ailin looked at the picture. She was sitting on a stone bench, her knees drawn to her body and clasped in both hands, as directed by the photographer. Look slightly upward as if being summoned, he had told her, though by whom he had not said. Mei and Lan stood behind her, each placing a hand on her shoulders and pointing the other hand to where all three were expected to look. All of it had been staged, and the painting of bamboo trees and waterfall on the background curtain, already faded fifty years ago, was recognizable perhaps only to Ailin’s eyes now. Still, the long-forgotten details came back with the enlarged images: The coiled ends of her braids, slightly burned even though it was hard to see in the picture, were the result of impatient curling with a pair of hot tongs; the jasmine blossoms in their top button holes were from Mei’s neighbor, a boy their age with a shy smile who liked to offer Mei the blooming flowers from his mother’s garden, but before any fruitful connection could be made from all the fragrant presents, the boy had to move away when his widowed mother remarried into another province; Lan, the prettiest of the three, had to be begged once and again by the photographer not to turn her face away, though if looking closely, one could detect the shying away of her face from the lens, and the photographer had skillfully caught her eyes just before she had averted them.

“How much does it cost to make this?” Ailin asked as she fingered the fabric of the print.

Ying gave Ailin a number that took her aback, and Ailin commented that despite the amount of money spent, the picture looked even older than it was.

“That’s the effect I need.”

“Did you talk to your parents before making this?”

“Why should I?” Ying said. “They’ll love it if I tell them that this is what the guests have been asking for. Besides, they say the restaurant will be mine someday, so why can’t I make the decision now?”

Ailin thought about lecturing her granddaughter on filial respect, but Ying would only roll her eyes and laugh at her outdated and useless wisdom. “I don’t see why anyone wants to look at some girls from ages ago while eating at your restaurant.”

“All three of you look very young and innocent. Very Chinese.”

“We certainly didn’t take the picture to entertain some foreign devils,” Ailin said dolefully.

“But you don’t mind, do you?” Ying said. “And your friends — will you not tell them about this? I don’t want them to come to me and ask to be paid.”

The girl was too young to worry about such things, Ailin thought, saddened by the fact that her granddaughter had less space and time to dream than Ailin herself had once had at this age. She would not let the secret out to her friends, Ailin replied, but Ying looked doubtful.

“But you may forget,” she said. “I know what it’s like with old people. You make a promise one day and the next day the promise means nothing because you have all this time on your hands and you need to tell them every bit of news.”

“I’ll never see them again.”

“Are they dead?”

They did not live in town, though neither had moved very far away. The distances could be covered easily by a two-hour bus ride, but Ailin had not sent word to Mei and Lan about her husband’s funeral. It had occurred to Ailin before that similar losses might have been kept from her as well, though she had always believed that in the case of a death among the three, the news would find its way to the other two. On what ground to be so blindly confident? she pondered now, and Ying, studying Ailin with a detached sympathy, asked again if her friends had died on her. They were probably still in good health, Ailin replied; only they no longer talked. But why? Ying pressed. Circumstances, Ailin said, and added that fifty years was a long time to keep up.

Ying seemed dissatisfied with the answer. “You don’t stop being a friend because of circumstances,” she said. She herself stayed close to a couple of friends through Internet phone calls, birthday cards, and days spent together on her holidays. Every summer she gave the friends presents she bought with money she earned, clothes and shoes said to be in fashion in Europe.

Life was crowded with many small worries that could replace a friendship with indifference — meals to be prepared, diapers to be changed and washed, critical in-laws and bosses to appease, illness and exhaustion to recover from — and beyond that there was what the photographer had called the sweeping past of time, but Ying was right that one did not discard the sworn sisterhood due to some minor changes in circumstances. “Something happened to us a while ago,” Ailin said finally. “I told a very bad joke, and neither of them wanted to be my friend anymore.”

“A triangle can be unforgiving and unstable for friendship,” Ying said. “What kind of joke was it?”

“They both had their first babies before I had your father — a boy and a girl, so I suggested that they arrange a marriage between the kids,” Ailin said. “It was meant to be a joke.”

“And of course one of the families took it more seriously than the other. It was a silly joke, if you ask me, but it was sillier to stop being friends because of the joke. So don’t blame yourself, Nana,” Ying said. Ailin had never seen her granddaughter act brusquely protective, but perhaps it was what was required of her when she had to speak for herself as well as for her parents. “There would’ve been no trouble in the world if not for the stupid people who make stupid mistakes,” Ying added.

Only it had not been proposed as a joke, nor had it been received as one. The two babies were born a day apart, both as beautiful as their mothers. There would be more children coming to the three families, but the first two were special. Their mothers were sworn sisters, and what could be a better destination than a marriage, so that the two children would continue loving each other beyond playmates, beyond brother and sister? It made sense when a marriage was semiofficially arranged for the two babies; it made Mei and Lan happier that Ailin had been the one to propose it — they worried about her feeling left out, she could see, and with more enthusiasm than either mother she prepared a lavish meal for the small ceremony. None of the three husbands attended the ceremony, treating it with dismissive amusement, as a harmless feminine fantasy. The three men got along all right, but they would not have chosen to be friends if not for their wives; none of them had been told about the sworn sisterhood.

“What happened?” Ying asked. “Did one of the families change their mind?”

“Something horrible happened,” Ailin said. “The boy killed the girl by accident.”

Ying gave a low cry but the shock was at once replaced by fascination. “When did that happen? Why did he do that? How old were they?”

“Not much older than you,” Ailin said, and right away regretted making the connection. “They were sixteen. They went out for a field trip all by themselves and he strangled her by accident.”

Ying made some exclamation in a foreign tongue. “That could not be an accident. He could’ve pushed her into a river by accident, but strangling? How could that happen by accident?”

Ailin shook her head. There had not been much to ask from the boy. The fact that he had ripped her blouse had been enough. The two children had known all their lives about the existence of a marriage arrangement; naturally the boy had expectations, but the girl fought and scratched his face and arms, perhaps out of fear of the urgent rudeness that had turned the boy into an unrecognizable creature.

“Did he rape her?”

The girl’s ease with voicing the word unsettled Ailin. At fourteen, she and her sworn sisters had not known much of the cruelty life had in store. “He didn’t mean to harm her,” Ailin said in his defense. She had always loved the boy, a most generous big brother for her own son, six years younger; she had been selfishly relieved that he was not old enough to understand the situation when the scandalous murder filled the local newspapers.

“But he killed her. I bet this was how it happened. He wanted to have sex, and she didn’t want to. He got out of control,” Ying said. “Did he get a death sentence?”

Ailin nodded.

“He made a stupid mistake but perhaps not enough for a death sentence,” Ying said. “But of course this is China — a life for a life.”

It was the same thing Lan had said when Ailin had begged her to show some leniency toward Mei’s son. A life for a life, Lan said, not meeting Ailin’s eyes; why should she think of giving the boy a future when her daughter had no future left? Unable to reply, Ailin lit some incense in front of the girl’s black-framed picture and prayed to her for a change of heart on her parents’ side; in the picture the girl had Lan’s beautiful features and bashful smile, and Ailin wondered if there had been another boy whom all three of them had not been aware of to account for the girl’s vehement resistance.

Look what you’ve got us all into, Mei yelled to Ailin outside the courthouse after the sentence had been read. As Mei was screaming in Ailin’s face, Lan, winning yet having nothing to share with her sworn sisters anymore, hastened past them with averted eyes. It was the last time Ailin had seen either of her sworn sisters. The news of both families moving away was reported to her by her husband long after they had left; he had clumsily frolicked with their son in the backyard afterward so that she could remain undisturbed in her mourning.

Ying studied the girls in the picture again and asked Ailin to point out the one with the murdered daughter and the one with the murderer son. “I wonder which one of your friends hates the other more,” she said.

“They don’t hate each other as much as you imagine,” Ailin said. She had owed Mei a son and herself a daughter — Lan had written back ten years later when Ailin had sent her a letter, hoping to renew their connection — and no matter what excuse Ailin would find for herself, she was the only one of the three to be indebted. “They both blamed me,” Ailin finished.

Ying replied that it was ridiculous for Ailin’s friends to think so, and that Ailin herself must be crazy to take on responsibilities that she had no business claiming. Ailin shook her head and did not argue with the girl, who, despite having accumulated wisdom beyond her age, was too young to understand that hatred, as much as love, did not come out of reason but out of a mindless nudge of a force beyond one’s awareness. That Mei and Lan had lost their children would not be enough for them to keep their hatred alive. It had been Ailin’s idea to arrange the marriage; it had been her idea to become sworn sisters in the first place.

Ying seemed eager to continue the argument with Ailin, yet Ailin was not in the mood anymore to offer the girl a chance to dispute what she did not understand. Had Ailin not been stubborn in holding on to her girlhood so that no man could replace her sworn sisters, she might well have got married and had a baby at the same time as Mei and Lan; it could have been Ailin’s son who was arranged to marry Lan’s daughter, and he might or might not have got the three families into the tragedy even if the girl decided not to honor the arrangement. Ying might have not been born but there might’ve been another girl in her place, with her name, who would perhaps be content in living her life out in the provincial town, but how could Ailin make the girl understand that all the existences surrounding her, solid and reasonable though they seemed to be, could be changed if the fantasy of a lifelong sisterhood had not occurred to Ailin on that spring afternoon fifty years ago?

After waiting in vain for a long moment, Ying looked defeated. “Well, if they hate you as much as you say, the more reason there is to put up the picture so they will be looked at in my restaurant while they don’t know it,” she said.

And they could smile on the wall into the indifferent eyes of foreign strangers, as if time had stopped at the photographer’s cramped studio fifty years ago, Ailin thought, and turned away from the poster before her sworn sisters caught a glimpse of her moist eyes.