Mingmei Yip - The Nine Fold Heaven

“When the person came here to sell the knife he boasted about it to me.”

“Wasn’t he afraid you’ll tell the police?”

He chuckled. “Mister, you think I’m so stupid? I have a wife and eight children at home!”

“But this is fast!”

“It’s smart to get rid of evidence as quickly as possible. Besides, those people always need money.”

He studied me curiously. “Why do you want this knife so much?” This time I chuckled. “Ha, you think I’m paying you so much to ask questions? Remember your wife and children at home.”

Now looking scared, he silently wrapped the knife for me and handed it over.

Without saying more, I walked out of the store, feeling the knife safe inside my jacket pocket. Though I had lost Gao forever from this life, I felt some comfort that I now had a token to remember our love. Walking, the fortune-teller’s lot appeared in my mind:

When I arrived back in the hotel room, all jumped up to greet me—Jinjin in his father’s arms and Peiling, looking happy and relieved.

Peiling exclaimed, “Big Sister, glad you’re back! Bao… Jinjin is glad you are back also.”

Jinying asked, his voice still worried, “What took you so long?”

“The cemetery is a long way out from the city and the driver got lost coming back. Then I had to argue with him about the fare. But I am here and soon we will be on our way to our new life together in Hong Kong.”

I leaned over to kiss Jinjin’s cheek, then Peiling’s, then Jinying’s lips, feeling happy and sad at the same time.

Since then, twenty years have slipped through my fingers like water rushing down a gorge.

Jinjin has grown to be a handsome young man. My once-forbidden lover turned legitimate husband still looks as handsome as ever—at least to me.

Jinying and I had experienced many ups and downs before we married and some after that. But we are happy together.

Looking back, I am glad I never let go of my determination to have a family and a peaceful life. I must admit, however, that without my skeleton woman’s cunning, it would never have happened.

The fortune I had been given in the temple in Diamond Hill turned out to be right:

And:

I believe it is my spy’s fearlessness which has enabled me to finally, despite all the difficulties, get my family back together.

After we moved to Hong Kong, we found a specialist who performed surgery on Peiling’s left eye. Now she can go around by herself without a stick, and even read large print. She is a social worker at the Bright Vision Center for blind people.

However, she never married and still lives with us. Men have been interested in her, but she never gives them any encouragement. I’ve tried to find someone for her, but she usually turned down any sheungtai, matchmaking “double ‘look” meetings, that I might arrange. To humor her big sister, she went a few times, but just sat there without smiling, or even answering the man’s, or his parents’, questions. No man can court a living statue like this. I ask her why she is not interested in men, but she just shrugs, saying, “Big Sister, I want to help others like you helped me.”

With an excuse like this, what more could a sister say?

Jinjin, instead of becoming a concert pianist or an opera singer as his father wished, is now studying law at Hong Kong University—to Jinying’s ostensible disappointment but secret pride.

As for myself, I’m retired from the stage and now teach singing here in Hong Kong.

Jinjin, when he was growing up, often asked us, “Ma, tell me about when you and Father were gangsters together in Shanghai.”

I told him that we were never gangsters ourselves, but he seemed to like to think we were.

Then, one day when he was older, he asked me how Jinying and I met. I suspected what was on his mind.

“Why would you want to know that?”

“Because I think I’m…”

I couldn’t believe my son actually looked embarrassed.

“What, son? Are you in love?”

I studied Jinjin’s guileless eyes, reawakening my memories of my husband as a young man. I felt nostalgia for our risky encounters and stolen moments of love, though over the years, these have been replaced by quieter affection that I value even more.

I felt myself smile.

“Ma, please don’t laugh at me….”

“Son, why would I do that? And why do you keep stammering today?”

I admit it pleases me that Jinjin has grown up to be as naive as his father was at the same age. Of course, it’s not that I want my son to be stupid or vulnerable. It’s because as his mother, I hope he will never experience all the evil and cruelty that I was forced to witness as a pawn on a gangster’s chessboard. I hope I’ve already settled our family’s karmic accounts with all the sufferings I endured so that he will never go through what I did.

“Ma, I have a girl who I really like, so…”

Of course I had guessed this was the reason for his embarrassment. So my little Jinjin had a girl in his heart? My baby had finally grown up!

I asked calmly, “Tell me about her.”

His face flushed an embarrassing pink.

I couldn’t help but burst out giggling like a teenager. It took me a few seconds of sheer willpower to calm myself.

“Your father’s and my story is very long and complicated. I really don’t know where to start.”

“Then I’ll ask him when he comes home.”

“Jinjin, we did things no one must know. I told your father not to tell you until we’re so old it doesn’t matter.”

Now I hear Jinying’s key in the door. He comes in, kisses me, hugs Jinjin, and sets down his briefcase filled with legal documents. Jinying finally ended up practicing law—and very successfully—because he knew he couldn’t make a real living by singing. Besides, he was not going to waste his expensive Harvard lawyer’s education. Of course I want to know more about Jinjin’s girlfriend, but I know he won’t talk more about her in front of his father. Then Jinying tells us that he has a new, very important client, and suggests that we all go out to dinner to celebrate. Peiling joins us at the restaurant and we all enjoy a lively meal of Peking duck, concubine chicken, and steamed fish in ginger and scallion.

Happy as I am, my thoughts return to the bad old days in Shanghai. Wang and Lung are long gone, and I shed no tears over either. Gao is gone, too, and although I no longer grieve for him, he is often present in my thoughts. I never had a picture of Gao, so instead set out a small Buddha statute to remember him by. Sometimes, I put fruit and a cup of tea as offerings to his departed soul. But I am the only one who knows whom these are for…

I never forget the fortune teller’s advice: When you can longer be with the person you cherish, you can keep him forever alive in your memory.

And there are the two whose fates remain a mystery—Edward Miller and Shadow. I’d heard Miller returned to America and then was posted to Egypt, but I’d also heard he’d been killed in Shanghai. I’ve never been able to find out which.

Shadow had told me not to try to find her, but for a long time I still hoped. I attended every magic show I heard about, but she was never one of the performers. Though I fear that she came to a sad end, I hope she found a man to love her and now has the two daughters and two sons she’d dreamed about.