Do Not Say We Have Nothing Read online

  “Is it a good letter?”

  Ma set the pages down. Her eyelids looked swollen. “It’s not what I expected.”

  I ran my finger across the envelope and began to decipher the name on the return address. It surprised me. “A woman?” I asked, suddenly afraid.

  My mother nodded.

  “She has a request,” Ma said, taking the envelope from me and shoving it beneath some papers. I moved closer as if she was a vase about to slide off the table, but Ma’s puffy eyes conveyed an unexpected emotion. Comfort? Or maybe, and to my astonishment, joy. Ma continued: “She’s asking for a favour.”

  “Will you read the letter to me?”

  Ma pinched the bridge of her own nose. “The whole thing is really long. She says she hasn’t seen your father in many years. But, once, they were like family.” She hesitated on the word family. “She says her husband was your father’s composition teacher at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. But they lost touch with one another. During the difficult years.”

  “What difficult years?” I began to suspect that any favour would involve American dollars or a new refrigerator, and feared that Ma would be taken advantage of.

  “Before you were born. The 1960s. Back when your father was a music student.” Ma looked down with an unreadable expression. “She says that your father made contact with them last year. Ba wrote to her from Hong Kong a few days before he died.”

  A string of questions rose in me. I knew I shouldn’t pester her but at last, because I wished only to understand, I said, “Who is she? What’s her name?”

  “Her surname is Deng.”

  “But her given name.”

  Ma opened her mouth but no words came out. Finally, she looked me straight in the eye and said, “Her given name is Li-ling.”

  She had the same name as me, only it had been written in simplified Chinese. I reached for the letter. Ma put her hand firmly over mine. Forestalling my next question, she lunged ahead. “These thirty pages are about the present not the past. Deng Li-ling’s daughter arrived in Toronto but her passport can’t be used. Her daughter has nowhere to go, she needs our help. Her daughter…” Nimbly, Ma slid the letter into its envelope. “Her daughter will come and live with us for a little while. Do you understand? This letter is about the present.”

  I felt sideways and upside down. Why would a stranger live with us?

  “Her daughter’s name is Ai-ming,” Ma said, trying to lead me back. “I’m going to telephone now and arrange for her to come.”

  “Are we the same age?”

  Ma looked confused. “No, she must be at least nineteen years old, she’s a student. Deng Li-ling says that her daughter…she says that Ai-ming got into trouble in Beijing during the Tiananmen demonstrations. She ran away.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Enough,” my mother said. “That’s all you need to know.”

  “No! I need to know more.”

  Exasperated, Ma slammed the dictionary shut. “Who brought you up? You’re too young to be this nosy!”

  “But–”

  “Enough.”

  —

  Ma waited until I was in bed before she made the telephone call. She spoke in her mother tongue, Cantonese, with brief interjections of Mandarin, and I could hear, even through the closed door, how she hesitated over the tones which had never come naturally to her.

  “Is it very cold where you are?” I heard Ma say.

  And then: “The Greyhound ticket will be waiting for you at…”

  I took off my glasses and stared out the blurred window. Rain appeared like snow. Ma’s voice sounded foreign to me.

  After a long period of silence I re-hooked my glasses over my ears, climbed out of bed and went out. Ma had a pen in her hand and a stack of bills before her, as if waiting for dictation. She saw me and said, “Where are your slippers?”

  I said didn’t know.

  Ma exploded. “Go to bed, Girl! Why can’t you understand? I just want some peace! You never leave me alone, you watch me and watch me as if you think I’ll…” She slapped the pen down. Some piece of it snapped off and ran along the floor. “You think I’m going to leave? You think I’m as selfish as he is? That I would ever abandon you and hurt you like he did?” There was a long, violent outburst in Cantonese, then: “Just go to bed!”

  She looked so aged and fragile sitting there, with her old, heavy dictionary.

  I fled to the bathroom, slammed the door, opened it, slammed it harder, and burst into tears. I ran water in the tub, realizing that what I really wanted was, in fact, to go to bed. My sobs turned to hiccups, and when the hiccups finally stopped, all I heard was water gushing down. Perched on the edge of the tub, I watched my feet distort beneath the surface. My pale legs folded away as I submerged.

  Ba, in my memory, came back to me. He pushed a cassette into the tape player, told me to roll down the windows, and we sailed down Main Street and along Great Northern Way, blaring Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, performed by Glenn Gould with Leopold Stokowski conducting. Tumbling notes cascaded down and infinitely up, and my father conducted with his right hand while steering with his left. I heard his humming, melodic and percussive, DA! DA-de-de-de DA!

  Da, da, da! I had the sensation that, as we paraded triumphantly across Vancouver, the first movement was being created not by Beethoven, but by my father. His hand moved in the shape of 4/4 time, the cliff-hanging thrill between the fourth beat and the first,

  and I wondered what it could mean that a man who had once been famous, who had performed in Beijing before Mao Zedong himself, did not even keep a piano in his own home? That he made his living by working in a shop? In fact, though I begged for violin lessons, my father always said no. And yet here we were, crossing the city embraced by this victorious music, so that the past, Beethoven’s and my father’s, was never dead but only reverberated beneath the windshield, then rose and covered us like the sun.

  The Buick was gone; Ma had sold it. She had always been the tougher one, like the cactus in the living room, the only house-plant to survive Ba’s departure. To live, my father had needed more. The bath water lapped over me. Embarrassed by the waste, I wrenched the tap closed. My father had once said that music was full of silences. He had left nothing for me, no letter, no message. Not a word.

  Ma knocked at the door.

  “Marie,” she said. She turned the handle but it was locked. “Li-ling, are you okay?”

  A long moment passed.

  The truth was that I had loved my father more. The realization came to me in the same breath I knew, unquestionably, that my father must have been in great pain, and that my mother would never, ever abandon me. She, too, had loved him. Weeping, I rested my hands on the surface of the water. “I just needed to take a bath.”

  “Oh,” she said. Her voice seemed to echo inside the tub itself. “Don’t get cold in there.”

  She tried the door again but it was still locked.

  “We’ll be okay,” she said finally.

  I wanted, more than anything, to wake us both from this dream. Instead, helplessly, I splashed water over my tears and nodded. “I know.”

  I listened to the sound of her slippers diminish as they padded away.

  —

  On the 16th of December, 1990, Ma came home in a taxi with a new daughter who wore no coat, only a thick scarf, a woollen sweater, blue jeans and canvas shoes. I had never met a Chinese girl before — that is, one who, like my father, came from real mainland China. A pair of grey mittens dangled from a string around her neck and swayed in nervous rhythm against her legs. The fringed ends of her blue scarf fell one in front and one behind, like a scholar’s. The rain was falling hard, and she walked with her head down, holding a medium-sized suitcase that appeared to be empty. She was pale and her hair had the gleam of the sea.

  Casually I opened the door and widened my eyes as if I was not expecting visitors.

  “Girl,” Ma said. “Take the suitcase. Hurry u
p.”

  Ai-ming stepped inside and paused on the edge of the doormat. When I reached for the suitcase, my hand accidentally touched hers, but she didn’t draw back. Instead, her other hand reached out and lightly covered mine. She gazed right at me, with such openness and curiosity that, out of shyness, I closed my eyes.

  “Ai-ming,” Ma was saying. “Let me introduce you. This is my Girl.”

  I pulled away and opened my eyes again.

  Ma, taking off her coat, glanced first at me and then at the room. The brown sofa with its three camel-coloured stripes had seen better days, but I had spruced it up with all the flowery pillows and stuffed animals from my bed. I had also turned on the television in order to give this room the appearance of liveliness. Ma nodded vigorously at me. “Girl, greet your aunt.”

  “Really, it’s okay if you call me Ai-ming. Please. I really, mmm, prefer it.”

  To placate them both, I said, “Hello.”

  Just as I suspected, the suitcase was very light. With my free hand, I moved to take Ai-ming’s coat, remembering too late she didn’t have one. My arm wavered in the air like a question mark. She reached out, grasped my hand and firmly shook it.

  She had a question in her eyes. Her hair, pinned back on one side, fell loosely on the other, so that she seemed forever in profile, about to turn towards me. Without letting go of my hand, she manoeuvred her shoes noiselessly off her feet, first one then the other. Pinpoints of rain glimmered on her scarf. Our lives had contracted to such a degree that I could not remember the last time a stranger had entered our home; Ai-ming’s presence made everything unfamiliar, as if the walls were crowding a few inches nearer to see her. The previous night, we had, at last, tidied Ba’s papers and notebooks, putting them into boxes and stacking the boxes under the kitchen table. Now I found the table’s surface deceitfully bare. I freed my hand, saying I would put the suitcase in her bedroom.

  Ma showed her around the apartment. I retreated to the sofa and pretended to watch the Weather Channel, which predicted rain for the rest of the week, the rest of 1990, the rest of the century, and even the remainder of all time. Their two voices ran one after the other like cable cars, interrupted now and then by silence. The intensity in the apartment crept inside me, and I had the sensation that the floor was made of paper, that there were words written everywhere I couldn’t read, and one unthinking gesture could crumple this whole place down.

  —

  We ate together, seated around the dining table. Ma had removed a leaf, transforming the table from an egg to a circle. She interrupted her own rambling to give me a look that said, Stop staring.

  Every now and then, my foot accidentally kicked one of the boxes under the table, causing Ai-ming to startle.

  “Ai-ming, do you mind the cold?” Ma said cheerily, ignoring me. “I myself never experienced winter until I came to Canada.”

  “Beijing has winter but I didn’t mind it. Actually, I grew up far away from there, in the South where it was humid and warm, and so when we moved to Beijing, the cold was new to me.”

  “I’ve never been to the capital, but I heard the dust flies in from the western deserts.”

  “It’s true.” Ai-ming nodded, smiling. “The dust would get into our clothes and hair, and even into our food.”

  Sitting directly across from her, I could see that she really was nineteen. Her eyes looked puffy and her expression reminded me, unexpectedly, of Ma’s grieving face. Sometimes, I think, you can look at a person and know they are full of words. Maybe the words are withheld due to pain or privacy, or maybe subterfuge. Maybe there are knife-edged words waiting to draw blood. I felt like both a child and a grown-up. I wanted Ma and me to be left alone but, for reasons I couldn’t explain, I also wanted to be near Ai-ming.

  “What is the ‘ming’ of Ai-ming?” I asked in English, kicking a box for emphasis. “Is it the ‘ming’ that means to understand, or the ‘ming’ that means fate?”

  They both looked at me.

  “Eat your chicken,” Ma said.

  The daughter studied me, a pleased expression on her face. She drew a shape in the air between us, 明. The sun and the moon combined to make understanding or brightness. It was an everyday word.

  “My parents wanted the idea of aì míng,” she said. “ ‘To cherish wisdom.’ But you’re right, there’s a misgiving in it. An idea that is…mmm, not cherishing fate, not quite, but accepting it.” She picked up her bowl again and pushed the tip of her chopsticks into the softness of the rice.

  Ma asked her if there was anything she needed, or if there was something she would like to do.

  Ai-ming put down her bowl. “To be honest, I feel as if it’s been a long time since I had a good night’s sleep. In Toronto, I couldn’t rest. Every few weeks I had to move.”

  “Move house?” Ma said.

  Ai-ming was trembling. “I thought…I was afraid of the police. I was frightened they would send me back. I don’t know if my mother was able to tell you everything. I hope so. In Beijing, I didn’t do anything wrong, anything criminal, but even so…In China, my aunt and uncle helped me leave and I crossed the border into Kyrgyzstan and then…you bought my ticket here. Despite everything, you helped me…I’m grateful, I’m afraid I’ll never be able to thank you as I should. I’m sorry for everything…”

  Ma looked embarrassed. “Here,” she said. “Eat something.”

  But a change had come over Ai-ming. Her hands were shaking so hard, she couldn’t manage her chopsticks. “Every day I go back and think things over but I can’t understand how I arrived here. It’s as if I’m a fugitive. At home, my mother is struggling. I’m afraid to sleep…sometimes I dream that none of this really happened but then waking up becomes a nightmare. If my mother had me with her, if only my father was alive, if only he hadn’t…but the most important thing is that I make something of myself because, right now, I have nothing. I haven’t even got a passport. I’m afraid to use the one I had before, it’s not…legal. It wasn’t mine but I had no choice. I heard that if I could get across the border into the United States, there’s an amnesty for Chinese students and I might qualify. Even if I have nothing I’ll pay everything back, I swear it. I promise.”

  “Zhí nǔ,” Ma said, leaning towards her. The words confused me. They meant “my brother’s daughter,” but Ma had no brothers.

  “I wanted to take care of them but everything changed so quickly. Everything went wrong.”

  “There’s no need to defend yourself here,” Ma said. “We’re family and these are not just words, do you understand? These are much more than words.”

  “And also,” Ai-ming said, turning pale, “I’m truly sorry for your loss.”

  My mother and Ai-ming looked at each other. “Thank you,” Ma said. The sudden tears in her eyes stilled everything inside me. Despite all we had been through, my mother rarely wept. “And I’m so sorry for yours. My husband loved your father very much.”

  —

  On the first Saturday that Ma didn’t have to work, she went downtown and came home with socks, sweaters, a pair of winter shoes and a coat. In the beginning, Ai-ming slept a great deal. She would emerge from Ma’s bedroom with jumbled hair, wearing a pair of my leggings and an old T-shirt of Ma’s. Ai-ming was afraid to go outside, so weeks passed before she wore the new shoes. The coat, however, she wore every day. In the afternoons, she read a lot, sitting at the kitchen table with a stack of my father’s books. She read with her hands in her coat pockets, and used a cleaver to keep the book flat. Her hair sometimes slid forward and blocked the light, and she would wind it up and tuck the bundle inside the neck of her sweater.

  One night, after she had been with us about a week, she asked Ma to cut her hair. It was just after Christmas, I remember. Since school was out, I spent most of my time eating chocolate Turtles in front of the television. Ma ordered me to come and spray Ai-ming’s hair with water from the plastic bottle, but I refused, saying that our guest’s hair should be left alone.
/>   The women laughed. Ai-ming said she wanted to look modern. They went into the kitchen and laid down sheets of newspaper, and Ai-ming removed her coat and climbed up onto a footstool so that her long hair could fall freely into Ma’s scissors. I was watching an episode of The A-Team and the cold swish of the scissors, as well as their giggling, made it impossible to concentrate. At the first commercial break, I went into the kitchen to check their progress.

  Ai-ming, hands folded as if she were praying, rolled her eyes towards me. Ma had cut about a third of her hair, and the long, wet ends lay on the floor like massacred sea creatures. “Oh,” I said, “how could you?”

  Ma lifted her weapon. “You’re next, Girl.”

  “Ma-li, it’s almost the New Year. Time for a haircut.” Ai-ming had difficulty saying Marie, and so had chosen the Chinese variant which, according to the dictionary, meant “charming mineral.”

  Just then, Ma detached another sizeable chunk of hair. It fluttered, as if still breathing, to the floor.

  “It’s Canadian New Year. People in Canada don’t get haircuts at New Year’s. They drink champagne.”

  Each time Ma pulled the trigger of the plastic bottle, a fine mist shrouded Ai-ming, who squeezed her eyes tight against the cold. As I watched, Ai-ming transformed before my eyes. Even the pallor of her skin began to seem less dire. When she had cut to shoulder length, Ma began shaping bangs that slanted across Ai-ming’s forehead in a decidedly chic way. She was very, very beautiful. Her eyes were dark and unclouded and the shape of her mouth was, just as the poets say, a rose against her skin. There was a flush to Ai-ming’s cheeks that had not been there an hour before, colour that spread each time Ma gazed at her for long moments, assessing her handiwork. They had forgotten all about me.

  When I went back to the other room, the credits were rolling on The A-Team. I collapsed on the couch and pulled my knees up to my chest. Festive lights shone in almost every window but ours, and I had the sensation that our apartment was under scrutiny by residents of a UFO, unsure whether to land in Vancouver or fly on. The aliens in my spaceship were asking themselves: Do they have soda? What kind of food do they eat? Maybe we should wait and return in spring? Land, I told them. People aren’t made to float through the air. Unless we know the weight of our bodies, unless we feel the force of gravity, we’ll forget what we are, we’ll lose ourselves without even noticing.