Mingmei Yip - Petals from the Sky

I smiled at Michael before I dug my fork into the lobster. Still so fresh and alive, it looked as if he (I liked to think the lobster was a he and the shrimp a she) was just out of the ocean. Bad karma. Both for myself and for “him,” I thought, while spearing a juicy piece and putting it into my mouth.

Was it my mother or my father?

“Good?” Michael asked.

“Couldn’t be better.” I licked my lips.

We arrived home at eleven. Riding up in the elevator with our bodies touching, I was aware of Michael’s desire. The floor indicator seemed to blink forever. When it finally read twenty-eight, Michael took my hand and we walked out. He found his key, opened the door, and let us in. Soundlessly he closed the door, and, without a word, led me straight into the bedroom. Knowing what he was going to do to me in a while, my heart flipped to allegro tempo.

He took off his tie and jacket and tossed them over a chair, then came over to embrace me. He nibbled my earlobe and kissed my neck while his arms closed around me, his hands reaching to unzip my dress.

“Michael”-I was still not used to being so intimate with a man-“please turn off the light.”

“But, Meng Ning-”

“Michael, please.” I insisted until he gave in.

Instantly, dimness fell over the room, with only the moonlight illuminating one side of his face. Eyes intent in the dim light, his hands worked to take off my dress and peel off my stockings. When he tried to unhook my bra, I pulled his hands away. The disappointment on his face pained me, but I felt too shy to be naked-I wasn’t even used to looking at my own nude reflection in the mirror.

“Meng Ning, let me-”

“Maybe later,” I said, disentangling from his grasp, then swiftly jumping into bed and pulling the sheet over me.

Michael’s eyes never left me while he was unbuttoning his shirt, pulling off his pants, and slipping off his underpants. Though fully covered, I felt completely exposed by his stare.

It was the first time I had seen him, or any other man, totally naked. I almost let out a cry-he had so much hair! Like a teenager scrutinizing the painting of a nude for the first time, I anxiously studied his body. My gaze consumed his profile, his broad chest, the long stretch of his thighs and legs, the pleasing curve of his hips, until it finally fell on that which I’d been avoiding looking at. Did he feel pain that it swelled so much? What would happen if it kept ballooning? I remembered the unspeakable sensation I’d experienced from this swelling under the watchful moon on the remote island of Cheung Chau. I felt my color rising and pulled my eyes away.

Bathed in the moonlight streaming in from the window, Michael’s skin appeared ivory, while his face glowed. He came toward me as if his movements were connected to roots deep under the earth. Then, swiftly, he slipped into bed next to me. I felt his cologne and body warmth filling up the air underneath the bedsheet when the honking of a car slashed the air outside the window.

I immediately turned my back to him.

“Meng Ning…” Michael’s voice was filled with desire as he again reached to unhook my bra.

A vortex of heat stirred inside me. It grew as his large hand slowly peeled off my panties.

I was now completely naked, lying in bed with my body cupping against a man’s. His hair pricked my skin while his hand sent nervous impulses from my shoulders down my hips. As he nibbled me, I could feel his lashes tickling my neck.

If Mother touched my forehead now, she’d certainly scream, “Watch out, Meng Ning! You have a high fever!”

Michael tried to pull down the bedsheet; I immediately pulled it back. “No, Michael-”

“Please.” Slowly he turned me over to face him, his voice painfully pleading and seductive, his eyes glowing like emeralds under a search light. “Let me see your body.”

“Then you have to close the blinds.”

“No. I want to see you under the moon.”

Neither did I want to keep out the moon, but I felt too shy. I begged repeatedly until he unwillingly slipped out of bed and went to the window. While my eyes traced the curves of his back and hips outlined against the moonlight, my body was subsumed with a burning sensation-almost as I’d felt when watching the fire in the Fragrant Spirit Temple.

He swiftly climbed back in. Now in the dark, with his strong body curling against mine, his invisible hands and lips went free in their adventures. I felt him cup and caress my breasts, hold my lips with his, kiss, suck, and tease my nipples. His lips were soft yet burning. His hands made me feel beautiful and sexy under their touch. Seemingly understanding well the desire of my body, they made me moan and squirm. I felt flustered, scared, pained, happy, and fascinated all at once. My mother’s comment about my father’s poems arose in my mind:

With good poems you never quite know how you feel. Sometimes sad, sometimes happy, sometimes sweet, sometimes sour, sometimes bitter, sometimes generous. Sometimes you feel and sometimes you don’t… When your heart is like a knocked-over shelf of condiments spilling a hundred different flavors and feelings, then the poem is a very good poem. Your father’s poems can do just that.

This was exactly how I felt now. If this lovemaking could be translated into a poem, I was sure it would surpass those put together by Father.

Now, while my body descended into agony from the overwhelming sensations, Michael seemed not the least in a hurry to further satisfy me. He savored every bit of my body, including the small area covered by black hair that I had been scared of and avoided looking at before.

“You,” he whispered while kissing ardently, “my moon enchantress.”

He took my hand, spread it open, laid himself in my small palm, then gently closed my fingers one by one. I felt it keep growing under my touch like a fluffy chick, until suddenly it fell from my hand and, as effortlessly as a fish, slipped inside me-shattering my world of nuns and goddesses and sutras and temples.

The sunlight was sprinkling in the room when I woke up. Lying comfortably under the covers of Michael’s bed, I watched him as he still slept. His lashes trembled slightly and his eyes fidgeted under his lids. Was he having a sweet dream or an erotic one? As I listened to him breathe and watched his chest rise and fall, my heart was filled with a tenderness and warmth I’d never felt.

I tried to touch him, but my hand stopped in midair. Let him sleep more, a voice at the back of my mind said. Right then, a shaft of sunlight broke through the cracks of the blind and splashed his face. Slowly he opened his eyes and reached for me; I felt my body melt like a burning candle.

Later, I sat on a stool in Michael’s small kitchen and watched his practiced fingers stir-fry eggs with mushrooms, butter toast, squeeze oranges, boil water. Many men’s hands seemed hideous and unfeeling to me, but Michael’s were graceful, like fish in water. I felt something stir inside-perhaps a sort of recognition. Surely we had met somewhere before. In a past life. Or lives. Was he the fish, and I the water?

Michael carefully planned out our first two days together in New York: today we’d go to the Asia Society, the Metropolitan Museum, walk for a while, and have dinner in Chinatown. Later in the week he’d take me to a reception at the Met and I would at last meet Professor Fulton, who, Michael told me, was recovering rapidly from his stroke.

We started by appreciating the Buddhist art at the Asia Society, but I suddenly felt very hungry from the jet lag and suggested to Michael that we skip the Met and go straight to Chinatown for dinner. When the taxi pulled to a stop at Canal Street, the distinctive Chinese cooking smells began to waft into my nostrils. After less than five minutes’ walking, I spotted a sign in Chinese: DUMPLING HOUSE-ALL THE DUMPLINGS YOU WANT. A poster in the window listed them all: mixed vegetable, pork and vegetable, shrimp and cabbage, shredded beef and scallion. Steamed, panfried, in soup, in all kinds of sauce…Feeling an irresistible pull, I grabbed Michael’s elbow and steered him inside.