Mingmei Yip - Petals from the Sky

But not Michael. He said, “I think the nun looks like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s so pretty and lively. She just…makes me think of you.” He smiled suggestively, then said, “I think people shouldn’t stay inside the empty gate if it’s against their nature to be monks or nuns.”

His words sent a tremor across my chest. Had he realized that I’d always wanted to be a nun? But before I could respond, he eyed me askance and said, “When I first got seriously interested in Buddhism, I thought of becoming a monk. But I realized that it’s not for me.”

I felt myself starting to blush. He went on: “I once read a Japanese legend about an immortal. One day when he flew above a river, he happened to look down and see a pretty woman washing clothes by stamping her feet on the garments. Her beautiful legs dazzled him so much that he instantly lost his magical power and fell to earth. But he had no regrets about becoming mortal-he’d realized that if a man has no taste for women, he has no life.” Michael’s expression turned mischievous. “So, if I’d become a monk I’d have been like him.”

As I wondered what to say to this, the light dimmed and the curtain began to rise. Michael turned back to look at the stage.

The flute led the other instruments in a lyrical melody as the second play opened. In a garden, the Daoist nun Wonderful Eternity played the qin under the moonlight, her hair wrapped up in a tight bun and tied with a long, flowing white ribbon. A handsome but effete-looking scholar hid behind the imaginary temple gate and listened intently to her playing. A smile bloomed on his face as he watched her fingers glide on the strings like butterflies drifting from flower to flower.

When the nun had finished, the scholar stepped forward and bowed, introducing himself as a poet and qin player. They exchanged small talk about music and poetry, then the nun invited him to play. The scholar seated himself, paused in meditation, put his fingers on the strings, and began to sing, “In the clear morning, the turtledove flies home by himself, feeling lonesome because he has no wife. Single for such a long time, I feel lonely, oh so lonely…”

While I concentrated on the scholar’s quivering voice and the vibrato of the fiddle imitating the subtle inflection of the qin, I felt my stomach whipped by some delicate emotions. Onstage, the scholar stole a glance at the nun to see her reaction.

I peeked at Michael; he was also looking at me. I lost myself in his face for a few moments, battling an urge to kiss his intense, searching eyes. The wailing of a flute broke the spell of our stares and I turned my attention back to the events onstage.

Now the scholar stepped out of the nun’s garden as she sang to herself, “I deliberately put on a harsh expression, and talked as if I didn’t understand his insinuation of love. How can I, being a nun, accept his love?” Her voice turned anxious. “But, while pretending not to understand his love, my heart aches with desire for his tenderness!”

The nun bent her slim torso to watch the scholar’s departing back, her eyes flickering with longing and melancholy. “Ah, look at the moon, casting a lonely shadow on him, as well as on me…”

My mind began to drift. Was a nun’s life that lonely? Yes, according to Mother’s description of No Name’s existence. No Name had passed endless nights in her bare room inside the walled nunnery, with only the faint glow of a solitary lamp, the echoes of her own monotonous chanting, the tedious beating of the wooden fish…and emptiness. Endless emptiness, which had become so haunting and overwhelming that it had finally taken her last breath on earth.

Yet my mentor Yi Kong’s life seemed to me quite the opposite of No Name’s. Yi Kong meditated and chanted, but she also lectured and traveled extensively, painted, took photographs, collected art-and large donations. A celebrity surrounded by admirers and followers, she was never lonely.

Which nun’s life painted a truer picture of life within the empty gate-Yi Kong’s or No Name’s?

I couldn’t be sure. I was only sure that as a woman, Yi Kong had a higher vision of her life than just to let a man in, get married, and have children.

But Mother said, “Higher vision? Nonsense! What kind of vision can be higher for a woman than to get married and raise children? That’s her heavenly duty!”

But heavenly duty can turn to hell, as when Mother lost her baby-my chubby little brother-who’d died at three days old. Mother told me little brother had looked perfectly healthy with bright eyes, ruddy cheeks, and a full head of hair, even when his tiny body, the size of a small thermos, lay motionless in an equally tiny crib. He was sick, of what nobody knew. In the column for cause of death on his death certificate, the doctor only put down one character: Unknown. As if little brother’s life, and death, were not worth any deeper concern beyond this one word.

As a child, I thought maybe my little brother just didn’t want to be born into the world. This thought made me sad, because, had he lived, he would have enjoyed my tenderest love. I’d have sung him lullabies to sweeten his dreams; told him heroic tales to strengthen his character; knitted him warm sweaters when cold wind began to blow from the north; cooked him hot, tonic soup and wholesome meals when his stomach rumbled hungrily; loved him with all my being and soul and shared with him my heart’s deepest secrets.

I guessed that Mother secretly thought little brother’s death came as a punishment for her love with Father. Other times she’d think that little brother had actually died of malnutrition because she didn’t have enough milk to feed him. Because Father, his money lost to the gambling house, hadn’t brought enough food home to feed her in the first place. However, this didn’t keep Mother from questioning all the gods and goddesses about why they’d planted such a beautiful seed on earth, but had crushed its chance to grow, flower, and bear fruit.

But Father thought about another kind of chance, as in gambling: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. He even wrote a poem. “I call it chance”:

Sometimes you win

Sometimes you lose.

My baby boy born and gone.

Like the gold on the gambling table.

In life there’s no take two.

Gambling has a different rule:

Nobody knows if luck’s up or down.

Today I lose; tomorrow I’ll win

Keep going; there’s always another round.

When I was small, Father would whisper this poem into my ear. “Ning Ning, this is a secret between you and me only.” Then he’d hold my hand, whirl me around and around, and begin to sing, “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose…” Toward the end, his voice would trickle like water dripping from the tap-“So just keep going, there’s another round, another round”-until I collapsed in his arms in giggles. I couldn’t believe that I used to be so happy to hear Father sing this poem. Now I felt sick…

And a touch on my thigh. Michael slipped me a piece of paper-a handwritten haiku:

These thirty-eight years

All empty now.

Can the rest be full?

Followed by:

I love you. Meng Ning, will you marry me?

Startled, I didn’t know how to react. As if sensing my emotions, the music now suddenly became stormy with a cacophony of drums, cymbals, flutes, fiddles, and a frantic beating of the wooden fish. Michael took my hand in his; I felt its warmth, but also my own confusion. Slowly I withdrew myself, feeling sad, guilty, and uncertain.

A long pause.

I lowered my head and whispered a soft, “No.”

Right then the curtain fell and the opera ended amid waves of applause crashing out at the performers. When the crowd began to disperse, Michael excused himself to go to the men’s room. Although he looked calm and poised when he came back, I noticed the red in his eyes and his wet hair.