Mingmei Yip - Petals from the Sky

The government put us in a temporary house, and two weeks later Father went into the hospital and never came back. They told us that he died of a heart attack.

To make ends meet, I tutored school kids every afternoon after I finished my classes at college. My mother worked at home, supplying meals. One time Mother had her biggest source of business ruined. The order was for a twelve-person birthday banquet for an octogenarian. His son, who’d heard from a relative about my mother’s delicious home cooking, had canceled a restaurant reservation in order to place an order with her.

The twelve-course banquet was a big thing for us, both for the money and the opportunity for my mother to show off her culinary skill. Mother spent three days planning the menu and purchasing the ingredients. She even bought a new wok. “This is a banquet dish, so I have to use a banquet wok.” She smiled, weighing the huge, shiny utensil in her hand.

That day, in order to finish the dishes in time for delivery that evening, Mother woke up at five-thirty in the morning, washed, dressed, put on her new apron, then burned incense to whatever gods and goddesses she could conjure up in her mind to get their blessings. The whole day I stood by to help-cutting up meats and vegetables, mixing ingredients and sauces, passing mixing bowls, oil, condiments, knives, chopsticks.

Finally, we had everything finished by six-thirty, half an hour before the old man’s servant was to come to pick up the dishes. We kept staring at the clock and waiting anxiously while relishing the praise and the thought of the five hundred dollars that would mean so much to us.

The servant was an angry-looking young man with a crude face and rude manner. One by one, my mother handed him the dishes for him to put into two big baskets. Right after Mother had given him the shark fin soup, he turned around, lifted off the lid, and spat into the velvety liquid.

I caught sight of him.

“What are you doing?” I shouted, then turned to Mother. “Ma, he spat into your soup!”

“What?” Mother’s eyes shot daggers.

The young man made a face. “That’s none of your business! This is for the old man. I hate him!”

“But that’s my soup!” Mother yelled.

“So what?” he shot back. “He’s the one who’ll eat it, so why don’t you mind your own business!”

“That’s just what I’m doing right now!” Mother yanked his sleeve. “You dead boy, give me back my soup!”

“No! Now this is the old man’s birthday soup. Ha, ha!”

Mother kept yanking his sleeve until some of the soup spilled on the floor and she slipped and fell, knocking over the young man and the baskets of food. All the dishes splashed and shattered on the floor.

“Oh, Meng Ning, “Michael exclaimed. “That’s terrible.”

I went on. “I helped Mother up and immediately we began to clean up the mess. When we finished, we realized the young man had already gone.”

“Then what happened?” Michael asked.

“The old man’s son called and we told him the truth. Furious, he hung up the phone. Three appetizers had not been packed, but we couldn’t even eat them for dinner, for Mother said to eat someone else’s ruined birthday meal would bring bad luck for years-not that we didn’t have enough as it was. So although we felt exhausted and our stomachs ached with hunger, we threw the food away. Worse, we lost a lot of money in preparing the food and buying the wok, for the young man had left without paying us. That evening we deliberately went to bed early so as to ignore the complaints of our empty stomachs. To comfort me, Mother said, ‘Maybe we’ll have a wonderful dinner in our dreams.’”

After I finished, Michael reached to touch my face. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.” He took my hand, kissed my palm, and ran the tip of his tongue along it. “And I’ll make it all up to you, if you’re willing to be my-Meng Ning, can you be my refuge, my temple?”

Yes. And I, the reincarnation of Guan Yin, would be his guardian goddess. But I swallowed my thoughts.

“Michael,” I asked, “you’re not upset at me that I…turned you down?”

“I was devastated. But deep down I believed you love me. I just thought something was bothering you, maybe another man in your life.”

“Not a man, but a woman.”

He looked at me curiously. “A woman?”

“I’ve always wanted to be a nun like my idol Yi Kong, and swore I wouldn’t let any man into my life! Not until you…found your way there.”

“How could I help falling in love with you?”

“But you looked calm when…”

“That evening after the concert, I only excused myself to the men’s room to get ahold of myself. When I came out to meet you again in the lobby, I forced myself to act normal-I didn’t want to feel or act like a failure.”

“Is that true?” I felt tenderness rising in me.

“Meng Ning, then why did you-”

“Because I thought you were not serious about me.”

“Oh, of course I am serious about you! I hope someday you’ll realize how deeply I love you.” Michael’s eyes glistened. “Meng Ning, you looked so beautiful, so full of life when you hurried to line up at the registration counter.”

I was glad to hear that, but I was pretty sure that I had also been sweating, and my hair was unkempt. Hadn’t he noticed that?

“I asked you to come see me in New York because I wanted to have you near me. I also needed to do whatever I could to make you change your mind about turning me down.”

Michael must have assumed I’d already said yes, because we were soon settled in the comfort of the bedroom. Then, to my surprise, he pulled out a pink jacket from a bag and wrapped it around my body, very carefully, as if I were made of fine porcelain. The silk-which felt voluptuous on my skin-was finely decorated in satin stitches depicting butterflies, bats, and floral sprays. To enhance its beauty even more, its cuffs were embroidered with flowering chrysanthemums done in bright green, purple, and gold and silver threads. With my fingertips, I traced the texture of its embroidery while blinking back tears.

I had never been treated so nicely by a man. Though I believed my father loved me, he had never brought me gifts. Instead, he would steal things from me-gold, silver, antique statues given by the villagers who thought I was the reincarnation of Guan Yin-to pawn them for money to gamble.

Now I wanted to say something to Michael, but swelling in my throat stifled my voice.

Finally I said, running my hands over the jacket he had just given me, “Michael, this must be very expensive?”

He ignored my question. “I know what it’s like to be deprived-I don’t want you to be anymore.” He looked sad for a moment, then, “Meng Ning, I want you to be happy.”

A long silence, then he pulled me to him, tilted my face, and looked deeply into my eyes. “Meng Ning, will you marry me?”

Pushing my doubt about trusting a man and marriage to the back of my mind, I uttered a soft, “Yes.”

Not long after, we made love in his bed, playing hide-and-seek with my naked body under the embroidered jacket.

Two days later, my left hand looked different-adorned with a solitary diamond the size of a lentil. Walking hand in hand with Michael on Fifth Avenue, I kept moving my hand, marveling how such a small surface could give out so many sparkles, like the shimmering of ships’ lights on the sea.

“This diamond is flawless,” the saleswoman at Tiffany had said, shifting it under the light. “Look at its fire, so brilliant that it’d blind your eyes!”

When Michael had been paying with his credit card, another saleswoman nudged my elbow while motioning to him. “Hey, lucky girl, this man must really fucking love you to buy you this.”