Mingmei Yip - Song of the Silk Road

“Destroy? Please don’t! Can’t I keep them?” Fake or not, they were beautiful pieces, and I’d gone through a lot to get them—the mountain path with no stairs, the hanging-upside-down-lotus, my sane performance of insanity to trick Floating Cloud.

Lo laughed. “Don’t even think about it. Now give me the piece of clay you scraped from the terracotta soldier and the herbs.”

I handed them over. When he was staring at the clay, I asked, “What’s the use of this tiny bit of dirt?”

Lo cast me a chiding glance. “This is enough to prove the soldier is a fake and that Miss Madison didn’t, nor have any intention to, steal it in the first place. So, after the clay is proven fake and the two museum pieces genuine, the government will not detain her anymore, let alone execute her.”

Next, Lo, to my surprise, not only examined the snow lotuses but also rubbed them against his nose and sniffed them with great affection. “You have no idea how important this is for your mother. Snow Lotus is the number one Chinese herb to cure cancer and prolong life. If she can be released from prison and recover, it’ll be a happy ending.”

Happy ending? Definitely not for me, three million dollars poorer than I’d expected to be.

He gave me a stern look. “So my advice is, be loving to your mother. That’s the reason you were told to read the Filial Piety Classic at the Stele Forest at the start of your trip—to remind you to be filial.”

Oh… that’s the reason. But I was filial to my mother, the one who had raised me in Hong Kong. Now my head was spinning at these revelations, and I felt too confused to argue.

The next day, Lo arranged a car to take us to the prison. Again he led me into the hellish institution and went through all the procedures with me, but after that, he took his leave.

“You’re not coming with me?”

“No. Today it’s your private meeting with Miss Madison. I’ll be waiting in the car.” He handed me a thermos he’d been carrying. “This is the snow lotus decoction for your mother. Make sure she drinks it all.”

Today Mindy Madison still looked weak but seemingly in slightly better spirits. I realized how I must seem to her eyes—suspicious, cold, heartless, stubborn. But could I be blamed? I had to deal with a stranger who not only plummeted into my life as my newly revealed mother but also was a cancer victim, a criminal, a death row prisoner—and whose mess I was now supposed to clean up.

Madison’s haunting eyes, hollow in her paper-white face, stared at me like a famished child’s. My heart sank. I’d never seen anyone so pale. It was clear that her blood, her qi , and her soul itself were all draining fast as she was about to pass from this body and this life to the next.

I handed her the thermos. “Mr. Lo said for you to drink all of it.”

She took it, poured the liquid into a filthy plastic cup, and faithfully downed its contents in long, noisy sips.

After that, she reached to hold my hand, and this time I let her. That was the least I could do for a person approaching the end of this journey. So I was willing to let her absorb my life’s vibrancy and my body’s warmth as she was losing hers.

“I know it’s difficult for you to accept me as your mother,” she said in her smoke-thin voice.

I avoided her hungry-ghost gaze as I felt her hand icy cold like that of a skeleton in a medical lab. “But you are not my mother.”

“I understand your feelings. Maybe emotionally I’m not, but by flesh and blood I am.”

“If flesh and blood mean so much to you, then why did you abandon me?” I asked, withdrawing my hand.

“I didn’t abandon you. I chose someone I trusted and loved to care for you, but my sister, Cai Mayfong, violated that trust. I’m very, very sorry, my daughter.”

“Daughter? Since when did you carry out your motherly duty? And why this meeting? What more do you want to say except sorry and more sorry?”

“Please, Lily, I beg you, don’t act so antagonistic. I’m a dying woman who wants to right the greatest wrong she ever did. Time is slipping through my fingers as they numbly count my remaining days. I don’t have long. So, can you forgive me?”

It took some moments before I reluctantly nodded, just for the sake of getting this over with. “All right, then, why don’t you explain how and why you let your sister raise me.” Despite the deepened pain on her face, I could not stop myself from being mean.

She went on. “As you know, Mayfong was older than me. In 1964, she managed to get into Hong Kong, then saved up the money to pay a snakehead to bring me in a year later. When I arrived, I realized that she had a relationship with a much older man who paid for her living and actually lent her money to bring me in.

“The old man did not visit often, having to divide his time with his wife and children. But soon after my arrival, he announced his intention to take both Mayfong and me as wives number two and three. I was shocked by this ridiculous proposal, and even more so by my sister’s consent and her urging me to do the same.

“From that day on, our relationship cooled. Mayfong warned me that if I turned down the old man’s proposal, she’d lose favor with him and we’d be in financial trouble. I was so unhappy that I cried most of the nights. Though I’d never told my sister, I had hoped that Wang Jin, my lover in Beijing, would be able to join me in Hong Kong.

“Two months later, as I tried to focus on my new job of weaving wigs in a factory, Wang Jin came to Hong Kong. He had started a business smuggling art and wanted to make contacts to sell it in the British Colony. For a week, I told my boss I was sick so I could stay with Wang Jin in a motel. Because Mayfong disliked him, I lied to her that I had to work overtime and would stay overnight at the factory that week.

“That was the happiest time of my life. But my happiness was short-lived. A week after Wang Jin’s departure, I was waiting for my sister to come home for dinner when the old man arrived without prior notice. Seeing that I was alone in the apartment, he forced me to have sex with him.”

“I’m sorry…. What did your sister say about this?”

“I never told her.”

“No? Why not?”

“ Hai , you’re so naïve, my daughter. You think I can just blast to her face that her sugar daddy raped me?”

“But that’s the truth!”

She sighed. “Sometimes it’s better not to learn the truth. Anyway, Mayfong might not have believed a single word I said and thought I was the one who’d seduced him. So I swallowed the pain like bitter melon and kept my mouth shut.”

Slowly I tried to let Madison’s words sink in. How much was truth and how much was made up? Human nature can be so ugly and human relationships so complicated. Can’t one just live a simple, happy life without all the calculations and machinations?

Her smokelike voice rose again in the smelly cell. “Anyway, two months later I found out that I was pregnant—”

“Then who’s the…?”

“I had no idea then. It was not until I was six months pregnant and could no longer hide it under loose clothes that I told Mayfong about my secret meetings with Wang Jin. As the Chinese say, ‘No good fortune ever arrives doubly and no misfortune singly.’ Two weeks later I got the devastating news that Wang Jin was hospitalized for a liver infection.

“I wanted to go back to care for him and give birth to you. But Mayfong insisted that I stay to give birth in Hong Kong so she could tend to me. Then, before I could make up my mind, you came into this world three weeks early. This time Mayfong urged me to go back to take care of Wang Jin and leave you with her. So I went back to China, while not having the slightest idea that I’d never see you or Hong Kong again.”