Li Ang - The Lost Garden

As she went on, Mother’s voice regained its usual cheerfulness.

“You’re a grown-up now, Ayako, so I can tell you this with a sense of relief.”

“I understand, Okasan,” Yinghong said with dutiful respect.

Shortly after they got back together, he left space between them in his Rolls Royce. On hot summer days, she was in the habit of wearing her long hair up, secured in the back with hairpins. But in the car, with its arctic air-conditioning blasting, she removed the pins and shook her head to let the long tresses cascade down like a waterfall. It now covered her exposed shoulders and back, and the inside of the car was infused with the clean orchid fragrance of the newly washed hair.

She knew he was fond of seeing her hair loose like that. As expected, he was unable to keep from reaching over to grasp her hair.

“I like women with unshaven underarms,” he whispered almost incoherently. “Taiwanese women these days like to imitate the foreigners and shave the hair under their arms. They say that social etiquette demands it.”

She responded with an alluring smile, which he took as an encouragement.

“You have so much black and soft hair,” he continued. “I wonder what your body hair is like …”

Like him, she was becoming aroused, but she sat up with an exaggerated gesture of determination. He stopped touching her hair, which she gathered and pinned up again.

“My uncle says that sales are going well at the development project you two are working on,” she said to change the subject, but leaned slightly into his arms.

“You’ve been clever ever since childhood, but a bit of a busybody. Your hands are good at learning whatever you want to do, and family and friends called you jiapo , meaning you like to meddle in others’ business.” Mother often said to her.

Mudan would not allow her to help with work around Lotus Garden, except when she had permission from her mother. But Yinghong enjoyed pitching in with household chores, particularly during holidays and festivals, when they needed to prepare sacrifices, slaughter chickens and ducks, steam rice cakes, and fry sweet desserts. Naturally she usually made a mess, which so annoyed Mudan that the maid felt like striking out, but couldn’t, so she’d sit by the stove, stewing in her anger, ignoring Mother’s summons.

Each year, when Mudan’s husband, Luohan, returned from his hometown of Dingfanpo, a village not far from Lucheng, he brought back broods of chicks and ducklings. The fuzzy little birds would be kept in a small hilly spot outside Lotus Garden. Yinghong would check on them several times a day, each time secretly taking uncooked rice for them. The way she littered the place with rice, Mudan could not stop mumbling “Amita Buddha, what a crime!” over the wastefulness. When the chicks and ducklings grew bigger, their soft downy feather turning stiff until they were ugly, they no longer appealed to Yinghong, who stopped paying them any attention.

Some time passed before she was reminded of the chickens and ducks, so she strolled into the duck pens, where she was met by a large duck with a red head and crimson face, typical of the local breed. She reached out to touch it, but before she made contact, she was given a vicious peck. The shock and pain sent her scurrying, leaving the pen door unlatched and setting loose all the ducks, which now chased after her. Making a rumbling “heh-heh” sound, they waddled unrelenting on her heels.

All she could do was let out a loud wail.

The pecking had broken the skin but drew no blood, and soon it was just a painful bruise that took a week to disappear. With winter solstice came the season for tonics, and the ducks were slaughtered one by one. Most of the time, Luohan was in charge of slitting the throats to bleed the birds; Mudan would then dunk them in scalding water to make plucking them easier. That year Yinghong helped Mudan pluck the guilty bird clean, while cursing angrily:

“I’m going to pluck your feathers till you’re dead and gone. Now do you feel like pecking me again?”

Her mother just smiled and let her be. That was how Yinghong earned the right to pluck feathers when they slaughtered chickens and ducks. Mudan considered her an inconvenience, but could not chase her away, letting her play all she wanted, until her clothes were soaked. Mudan had to help her change, which naturally drew more complaints from the maid.

After New Year’s came the next festival on the ninth day of the first lunar month, the birthday of the Heavenly King, a major festival in Lucheng that required five separate sacrificial items: two fish, two chickens, two ducks, a pig’s head, and duck eggs. The preparation was too much for Mudan alone, who had to take care of other chores after fishing one of the ducks out of the scalding hot water. Later, when she returned to work on the duck, she found that Yinghong had beaten her to it by plucking the bird clean.

“You naughty girl! What a cursed girl. The duck for the Heavenly King’s birthday must have tail feathers. You naughty, naughty girl. How are we supposed to offer it after you’ve plucked out all the feathers? What a cursed girl.”

The enraged Mudan picked up a broom nearby and came after Yinghong, who froze on the spot, for she’d never seen Mudan so angry before. The maid raised the broom, but could not bring herself to beat Yinghong, so she let it fall from her hands, cursing her the whole time.

The clamor brought Mother, who was cleaning the sacrificial table upstairs. After hearing both sides, she said in a gentle tone but with a serious look:

“Make sure you ask for permission next time, understand?”

Yinghong nodded, but couldn’t keep from defending herself.

“I’ll just put the feathers back,” she muttered.

“Put them back? Go ahead, see if you can!” Mudan said, her voice raised.

Yinghong squatted by the duck, picked up some of the feathers, and tried to stick them onto its tail. The pores on the warm duck had shrunk, making it impossible to stick in the feathers with their soft, thin, hollow quills.

“I’ve never heard of people sticking feathers back on a bird,” Mudan muttered. “How can we offer a duck with a naked butt to the Heavenly King?”

Now Yinghong was in a true panic.

“It’s all right. We’ll try some others.”

Mother crouched beside her and began to rummage through the pile of feathers. Soon she found some fierce-looking wing feathers, with solid quills, which were easily inserted into the duck’s tail.

“Never in my life have I seen anyone replace tail feathers with wing feathers to offer to the Heavenly King. That’s ridiculous.” Mudan still would not let her off the hook.

“That’s all right,” Mother said to Mudan in a light-hearted tone. She smiled at Yinghong. “It’s fine now.”

By dusk, all the sacrificial items had been washed clean; the chickens, the pig’s head, and the duck eggs, along with the ducks, were neatly placed in a large iron wok resting on a big stove, where they were parboiled and then fished out. With steam still rising from the birds, Mother removed the feathers she’d stuck in earlier and replaced them with several tail feathers she’d washed that afternoon. The tail feathers, which had been boiled in hot water, went in easily through pores now enlarged, once the duck was cooked through.

After a long afternoon of trepidation, Yinghong was finally able to smile. And she never again forgot to keep the tail feathers on sacrificial ducks for the Heavenly King’s birthday. Her mother commented lightly: