Pearl Buck - East Wind - West Wind

“I have come to live with my lady’s son and to serve her grandson.”

My brother asked her,

“But do you not know that I am no longer accounted my mother’s son?”

Wang Da Ma answered obstinately, grasping the bundle and the basket firmly in either hand,

“Now then! Do you stand there and say that? Did I not take you from your mother’s arms into these arms when you were scarce a foot in length and as naked as a fish? Have you not fed from my breasts? What you were born, that you are, and your son is your son. Let it be as I say!”

My brother said he scarcely knew what to reply. It is true that she has known us all our lives and is more to us than a servant. While he hesitated she moved her bundle and her basket into the little hall, and grumbling and panting, for she grows old and fat now, she fumbled within herself for her purse. When she had found it she turned to quarrel mightily with the wheelbarrow man over the price of the fare, and thus she established herself as in her home.

This she has done for my mother’s sake. It is absurd to notice over-much the behavior of a servant, nevertheless my brother laughs with an edge of tenderness in his laughter when he speaks of her. He is pleased that she is come and that in her arms his son will sleep and play.

This morning she came to pay her respects to me, and she was as always. One would think she had lived with my brother in this foreign house for years, although I know she is secretly astonished at many things. My brother says she pretends to notice nothing strange, although she distrusts especially the stairs, and nothing will induce her to climb them, for the first time, in the presence of others. But to-day she told me that she could not swallow the changes that have taken place in my mother’s house.

She said that the fat concubine has become the First Lady in my mother’s place. It has been declared in the ancestral hall before the sacred tablets. She walks proudly about clad in red and purple, and on her fingers are many rings. She has even moved into my mother’s rooms! Hearing Wang Da Ma tell of this, I know I can never go there again. Ah, my mother!

He is tender to her, his wife, more tender now than ever since he has given up everything for her sake. He who has lived in ease all his life on his father’s wealth has now become poor. But he has learned how to make her happy.

Yesterday when I went to see her she looked up from a page on which she was writing long twisting flowing lines. When I came into the room with my son she looked up smiling as she always does when she sees the child.

“I am writing to my mother,” she said, her eyes suddenly illumined as they are when she smiles. “I can tell her everything at last. I shall tell her that I have hung yellow curtains at the windows and that there is a bowl of golden narcissus on the table. I shall tell her that to-day I have lined a little basket with pink silk for him to sleep in — silk the color of American apple-blossoms! She will see through every word and know how happy — how happy I am, at last!”

Have you ever seen a lovely valley, My Sister, gray beneath a heavy sky? Then suddenly the clouds part, and sunshine pours down, and life and color start out joyous and shouting from every point of that valley. It is so with her now. Her eyes are things alive in themselves for joy, and her voice is a continual song.

Her lips are never still. They are always curving and moving with little smiles and fragments of quick laughter. She is really very beautiful. I have always doubted her beauty before, because it was not like anything I had seen, but now I perceive it clearly. Storm and sullenness have gone from her eyes. They are blue like the sea under a bright sky.

As for my brother, now that he has done what he decided to do, he is quiet and grave and content. He is a man.

When I think that these two have left, each of them, a world for the other’s sake, I am humbled before such love. The fruit of it will be a precious fruit — as marvelous as jade.

As for their child, I am moved in two ways. He will have his own world to make. Being of neither East nor West purely, he will be rejected of each, for none will understand him. But I think, if he has the strength of both his parents, he will understand both worlds, and so overcome.

But this is only as I think, when I watch my brother and his wife. I am only a woman. I must speak to my husband of it, since he is wise, and he knows without being told where the truth lies.

Ah, but this I do know! I long to behold their child. I wish him to be a brother to my son.

THE FOREIGN ONE SINGS. Hour after hour songs bubble from her heart to her lips, and she is gay with a joy amazing. I, who have borne a son, rejoice with her, and in our common human experience we are knit together. We sew upon the clothes, little Chinese clothes. When she ponders upon what colors to choose she knits her brows above her smiling lips and she questions herself thus,

“Now if his eyes are black he will need this scarlet, but if his eyes are gray, he must have rose-pink. Will his eyes be black or gray, little sister?” She turns her laughing eyes to me.

Then I, smiling back, inquire,

“What color are they already in your heart?”

And she says, flushing and suddenly shy before me,

“They are black, always; let us take the scarlet.”

“Scarlet is the color of joy,” I tell her, “and it always is suitable for a son.”

Together we know that we have chosen wisely.

I showed her then the tiny first clothes of my son, and together we placed the patterns upon the scarlet flowered satin and upon the soft scarlet silk. I myself have embroidered the little tiger-faced shoes. On such tasks we have grown near, each to the other. I have forgotten that she was ever strange. She has become my sister. I have learned to call her name. Mary — Mary!

When all was complete she made a little set of foreign clothes such as I had never seen for simplicity and fineness. I marveled at the gossamer cloth. The minute sleeves were set into the long, skirt-like robe with lace more fine than embroidery, and the cloth, though not silk, was as soft as mist. I asked her,

“How will you know when to clothe him in these?”

She smiled and patted my cheek swiftly. She has sweet, coaxing ways now that she is gay.

“Six days of the week he shall be his father’s child, but on the seventh I shall dress him in linen and lace, and he shall be American.” Then she was suddenly grave. “At first I thought I could make him wholly Chinese, but now I know that I must give him America also, for it is myself. He will belong to both sides of the world, my little sister — to you and to me both.”

I smiled again at her. I see how it is that she has drawn my brother’s heart out of him and holds it fast!

Now has their child come to us, My Sister! I have received him in my arms from the hands of Wang Da Ma. Murmuring and laughing with pride she gave him to me. I gazed upon him with eagerness.

He is a man child, a child of strength and vigor. It is true that he is not beautiful as my son is beautiful. A son like my husband’s and mine could not be born a second time. But the son of my brother and of my sister is not like any other. He has the great bones and the lusty vigor of the West. But his hair and his eyes are black like ours, and his skin, though clear as jade, is dark. I can see already that in his eyes and about his lips is a look of my own mother. With what a mingling of pain and gladness do I see it!

Yet to my sister I did not speak of the likeness. I bore her child to her laughing. I said,

“See what thou hast done, my sister! Into this tiny knot hast thou tied two worlds!”