Excerpt:  My Half of the Sky

Excerpt from uncorrected proof

Chapter Six
A Useless Stick

Old Man Chen's daughter, Feng Gu was the same woman I remembered from the one time I'd visited this shop.  She had a small nose, which stuck up like a wild mushroom.  Her nose wrinkled with distaste as she gestured for me to sit across from her in the center of the shop.

I sat on the cherry wood stool she indicated.  Behind me, there was a back room for storage.  A few boxes of tea stood stacked against the wall.  A simple cot rested in the corner.  Above the door hung a black framed ancestral photograph of a young boy.  A youthful picture of Old Man Chen's father or grandfather? 

In the front room, next to this cherry wood table, a desk held a worn abacus and a brass weight.  An upright fan shook its head back and forth at us.  Tea bins lined the wall. No expensive high-tech digital weighing machines, calculators or cash registers like they had in the big city of Xiamen.  No air-conditioning.  Father said the shop was losing money.  But she hadn't thrown money away in the most obvious ways.

Feng Gu poured me a cup of tea.  Some of the liquid sloshed over the side.  She didn't notice.

"Thank you," I said and moved my legs a bit, as the pool of tea dripped off the side of the table.  "This is a lovely table."

"My great grandfather carved it," she said.  Her voice was high pitched, like and actress in an opera.

A rag hung on the side of a bucket.  Would she be offended if I wiped the spill? Would cleaning up after this woman be part of my job?  I grabbed the rag.

"He enjoyed carving," Feng Gu said.  "He made that, too."  She pointed over my head with her stubby tea-stained fingers.

I looked up from where I swiped the spill.  Cobwebs dangled from the corner of the ceiling.  An old wooden sign hung on the wall.   It read:  "Life is like Tea; first it's bitter, than it's sweet."

"Nice," I said.  Madame Paper Cutter certainly held such a saying in her heart. What would she have to say about Feng Gu?

Madame Paper Cutter.  She would wonder where I was this morning.  I'd have to go by the park, perhaps at lunchtime, if I had a long enough break, and tell her of my new job.  Perhaps I could bring her a sample.

"So, we have two harvests," Feng Gu said.  "One in winter and one in summer."

I never knew that.  I took a notepad from my purse and wrote that fact down.  If I was to learn the business, I better take notes. 

"The winter harvest is bitter.  We export that crap-" Feng Gu looked at my notepad and stopped herself.  "We export those low grade leaves to Japan."

"Japan?"  I asked and circled the word.  Would Mei Ling drink bitter tea?  I'd have to make sure to send her some of these high quality leaves.  "I have a friend--"

"Yes, my cousin works there, too," Feng Gu said.  "Just sent home some money for the shop.

And still the shop was losing money?  Perhaps this cousin was just paying back money he owed.  Had Feng Gu sponsored many relatives?  Was that where all their profits went?  Or was her father as unlucky with the tiles as mine?  Then again, at her age, perhaps her husband was the one who tossed the money out faster than she could gather it. 

"My cousin was lucky," Feng Gu said, leaning across the table, so close her hot breath on my ear made my neck itch.  "It's getting harder and harder to go overseas these days.  The man next door who repairs bicycles.  You know the one whose hair is balding at the top even though he's not even thirty?"

I nodded.  I wasn't sure who he was.  But that didn't seem to matter.

"He paid 50K in US money for a fake marriage to a Japanese."

"Whaaa-," I said.  I knew getting overseas was expensive.  Mei Ling mentioned she'd paid 20K.  Surely Feng Gu exaggerated.

"No, that wasn't the worst part.  When he got to the airport."  Feng Gu tapped my pad with her short finger.  "His 'fiancé' wasn't there to meet him."

"Whaaa--" I said again.  "That's terrible."   

"The Japs--" Feng Gu stopped herself again.  "The Japanese immigration sent him back."

"And the fiancé?"
"Who knows?"  Feng Gu stroked her shoulder-length hair.  "Probably went on a shopping trip with that 50K."

"He didn't get any of his money back?"  I asked.  "Wasn't there a guarantee?"

“Yes."  She laughed, showing a mouthful of crooked teeth stained the color of tea steeped too long.  "A guarantee that he will taste acid every time he thinks about that moment at the airport."

I drew circles on my notepad.  Perhaps discussing other people's monetary disasters made Feng Gu feel less of a failure.  It made me nervous.  Mei Ling was scheduled to leave any day now with a Snakehead.  She had been guaranteed safe passage and a job for her 20K US.  Surely, she would fare better than Baldy next door.

"He always comes by for a free cup of tea."  Feng Gu tapped my hand.  "Don't give him the good stuff, though.  He can't tell the difference between the top of the line and mosquito piss--"  She coughed.  "Our less expensive grade."

"So, Mr. Bald--" I drew another circle.  "The man next door gets the inexpensive stuff?"

"Oh, not just him," Feng Gu said.  "You have to be sensitive to each customer." 

I coughed.  I didn't remember her being sensitive to my presence the one time I'd come to buy tea.  Perhaps she'd changed.

"Unless a customer really knows his tea, don't bother giving him the good stuff."  Feng Gu used her hand to flip her hair back on either side, as if she had long, long tresses.  "And then there's Madame Tsui Ping.  She would think she was being poisoned if you gave her the good stuff."

"Why is that?" I asked.  Was this another exaggeration?  Perhaps that was Feng Gu's way.

"Although."  Feng Gu tapped her head and smiled.  "She had an education--like you." 

Feng Gu spit out those last words as if Madame Tsui Ping and I had done something dirty.  Heat rose to my face.  What was I doing, trying to be a good student in this rundown teashop?  I put my notepad and pen back in my purse.

"During the Cultural Revolution, the woman was accused of being a spy for Evil America."

"Ai-ya," I said.  "Why?"

"She taught English.  She had a lot of English books in her house."

"What a shame," I said.  Many educated people had been persecuted then.  Each story was a sad tale.  Especially those of the teachers.

"Yes," Feng Gu said.  "She lost her job.  They burned her evil books.  Now she grows patriotic cabbage.  She drinks piss-poor-- the less expensive grade tea."

Feng Gu stood up to show me the different grades of tea.  I followed.  This was certainly easier than standing in the park with my sign.

Waves of heat engulfed me as we stood away from the purring of the fan.  Feng Gu had an edge to her.  A high-pitched edge.  She seemed bitter like the first taste of tea.  I missed the friendly chatter with Madame Paper Cutter. 

All morning, Feng Gu giggled over my inability to weigh the tea with a brass measure, pointed out my error in sealing the bags too close, and barked at my slowness with the abacus.  At the same time, she stroked her hair and told stories about the customers.  So, by the time we sat down at the cherry wood table for a mid-morning cup of tea, I felt saturated.  My ears hot.  Infected. 

"Yes, and you need to watch yourself," Feng Gu said, appraising me as I emptied the cold tea in the bucket.  "Especially with that long hair of yours."

"Why is that?"  Should I have put my hair up? Employees in some of the newer stores did that.

"The owner of Golden Dance Club," Feng Gu said, nodding her head up and down and pursing her lips.  "Oh, he's harmless, if you know how to handle him."

What did that mean?  Was that why Feng Gu's hair was short?  Would I have to cut mine?

"He has a roving eye."  Feng Gu leaned forward, her elbows on her knees.  "In fact, he has so many women he doesn't know where to spread his seed next." 

Like an overenthusiastic farmer.  How did some people have so many possible mates?  I had difficulty finding just one.

I sprinkled some fresh tea leaves in the pot.

"That's too much," Feng Gu said, pulling on her hair.  "You don't need that much.  You're wasting leaves."

 I took a few leaves out.  Counted how many.  Feng Gu appeared to be counting with me.

"Now, that's not enough."  She wiggled on her stool, obviously wanting to reach across and fix the tea herself.

I counted out a few into my hand.  I put those back in the pot.  I stood to go into the back for hot water.  But Feng Gu's lips were tight as if she had just bit into a sour plum.

"This isn't science class.  You just need to feel the right amount."  Feng Gu waved her hand towards the teapot.  "Put a tad more back."

I stopped counting.  I added a tad more.  Had I added enough tea leaves?

"I'm going to the outhouse," Feng Gu said, standing up and heading for the back door.  Perhaps she couldn't bear to watch me any longer. 

After filling the teapot with hot water, I settled back down and pulled out my notepad.  I mulled over the information I'd learned about the shop so far.  They exported tea to Japan.  They had income from relatives overseas.  Their tea wasn't so overpriced people wouldn't purchase it.  In fact, the tea tasted elegant.  But where were all the customers?  And what was I doing here?  No.  No.  I didn't want to beat the ungrateful thoughts out of that blanket again.  

I put the notepad away and took out my scissors and a fast-food advertisement.  I needed something mindless and quiet.  I needed my cuttings.  My fingers glided to the sharp point of the scissors.  The sharp point. 

Waipo had a story about sharp points.  She first told me that story when I complained my high school math teacher ignored my raised hand when I had the answer.  She told me that story again when another teacher moved me several rows back, despite my high grades.  Of how she used to gather rice husks in big burlap sacks to use as kindling in the kitchen stove.  The light husks when added together in a burlap sack became quite a load.  She would carry that load using a brass hook.  Everyone used a brass hook--a sturdy, sharp brass hook. One day, she stood at the rice threshers stuffing her burlap sack when a thick pointy stick scraped her bare ankle.  She kicked the stick out of the way and continued with her work.  What was a stick doing out here anyway?  When her sack was full, she tied the bundle with a piece of rope.  She reached down to the ground to grab her brass hook.   It wasn't there.  She had forgotten her brass hook.    She stood there, her burlap sack bulging, at a loss as to how to get the bundle home. Her eyes spotted that pointy stick again.  That useless pointy stick.  She reached down and picked up the stick. It might just be strong enough to hold the bundle.  She poked the sharp end through the sack and carried the bundle home.  She often told me I was like that pokey stick.  That it was no matter people didn't expect certain things from me. They would one day find a use for what I could offer.  I would eventually find my place in this world.  

I cut a round shape. This, the first cut of the baby boy with the peach Madame Paper Cutter taught me yesterday.  Yesterday, the day I rode home on the bus and saw the strange Man in Blue.  I still hung to a wisp of hope that this man was more than just one of the thousands of strangers in the village. In my heart, I hoped that Madame Paper Cutter's lessons were really predictions.  The day she gave me the lucky crane, I'd been offered the chance of a mate.  The day she gave me the peach boy of health and fertility, I'd seen the Man in Blue.  

I made some snips on the pamphlet for toes. Since the moment I'd walked down the aisle and off the bus, away from Man in Blue, I'd started looking for him.  I'd looked for him around every corner.  Expecting that, just because he filled my heart, he would fill my vision as well.  He had to.  I'd felt a connection with this man.  With those dark brown smiling eyes. 

I held the cutting up to appraise it.  Certainly the crooked figure was not of a quality to show Madame Paper Cutter.  Still, the act of cutting the little boy calmed my buzzing brain.  My ears no longer vibrated from Feng Gu's high-pitched chatter. 

"What's that?" Feng Gu returned, shaking water from her hands.  "Looks like a ball someone sliced with a razor."

"Oh--it's nothing," I said.  I put the cutting down. Poured Feng Gu a cup of tea.  "A woman in the park--"

"You didn't pay money for that?"  She whistled as she picked up the thimble full of amber liquid.  She brought the fragile cup to her rough lips.

"No, no."  There was no sense in trying to get out an explanation.  "I was just practicing."  

"You studied art?"  She spit out a mouthful of tea.  She stood over me, her mouth open as if she'd been punched.  "Father said you studied business." 

"No, no. I didn't study art," I said.  What had Father told his Mahjong buddy?   

Feng Gu dropped her teacup on the table, her eyes shifting from me to the paper cutting.  She didn't believe me. 

"Well whatever you studied, it certainly wasn't the art of tea preparation," she said, changing the subject.  "The tea can't be left to steep for more than ten minutes or it doesn't taste any good."

I often drank tea that had steeped much longer.  I'd never been bothered.  Perhaps my taste buds were not distinguishing enough.

"I can tell this has been sitting for--" She touched the side of the pot, put her head back.  "At least twelve and a half minutes.  Am I right?"

Should I have been timing the tea, all the time I'd instead been talking away my anger with Father, remembering the Man in Blue, concentrating on making this "ball with the razor slits"?

"It's a good thing."  She spit into the bucket next to the table as if to rid her taste buds of the rancid lukewarm tea.  "It's a good thing I'm not Old Man Department Store.  We'd have lost his business forever."

Her prediction of disaster reminded me of Cheng Min.  My old classmate hadn't been at home when I'd stopped by last night.  Perhaps she'd already heard that Zi Mei now carried her secret, meaning the news would soon be in everyone's ears.  Perhaps Cheng Min had already gone into hiding.

I poured the pot of tea out into the bucket.  I couldn't imagine any customer with such an unforgiving nature returning to this shop.  To Feng Gu and her Fashion Fortune.  Still, I best try to remember. Mr. Department Store was a real connoisseur, as was Mr. Farmer.  Mr. Baldy couldn't tell the difference.  Neither could that crazy teacher named Tsui Ping.  A thought tugged on the outskirts of my brain. Did any of these characters really exist?  I hadn't seen a one all morning.

I held the teapot.  Should I start over with new leaves?  We never did at home.  But, then we drank lukewarm tea sometimes too.  I looked up.

"You can use the leaves six to eight times," she instructed.  "Unless they can't tell the difference--like with Madame Tsui Ping."

I went in back to fill the teapot with hot water.  I remembered to glance at my watch.  Madame Tsui Ping, the crazy teacher.  Did she miss teaching?  Did she even remember teaching?   

The handle of the teapot felt too large.  The quiet spaces in my brain filled with noise.  My mind buzzed again.

"Are you having trouble filling the teapot," Feng Gu called.

"No, no."  

"Don't they drink tea at college," she called.

I ignored the jibe.  This was just a temporary situation.  I would poke through one day. 

"I thought you got lost back there," Feng Gu said.

I sat down, glanced at my watch.  The tea had been steeping for three minutes. Only three minutes had passed. 

"You'll have to work faster than that.  You can't leave a customer out here by himself all that time.  He'll help himself to a handful of tea leaves and be gone by the time you come back."

I nodded.  Yet another rule that Feng Gu probably didn't adhere to.  What made her so uptight?

"You want to take your time?"  She stood.  "Take your time on this."

She pulled a keychain from her back pocket and moved to the desk.  She ran her hands over the dozen or more keys on the ring, picking out one, and  unlocked the middle drawer.  She removed a leather book.  A book.  Did she like to read?  I had assumed the extent of her interest in literature lay in the pages of Fashion Fortune. I picked up the pot to pour her a cup of tea.  

"Not yet."  Feng Gu held up her hand.  "Four and a half minutes. Not long enough."

Was she watching the clock? Or did she have an ingrained sense of timing? Would I ever know the exact moment to pour tea?  And, by that point, would I be as bitter as she?

She took the teapot from me and gave me the black book.  Not a novel. An accounting book.  Over the next two steepings of tea, she talked of projected earning ratios and fiscal quarters. 

"Business has been bad all year," Feng Gu concluded in a loud voice, as if talking to the ancestor in the back room, as well.  She pointed to the figures on the book in front of her.  "Father said you could help."

She didn't seem convinced.  Neither was I.  I nodded my head anyway, as if of course I was capable.

"Yes, although we received another offer of assistance from an--" She sniffed, probably stopping herself from using one of her colorful expressions.  "A persistent person who knows our situation well, Father insisted you'd know best."  She pushed her accounting book in front of me.  "Well?  What do you think?" 

Feng Gu tapped the book.  The figures added up correctly.  She was a good mathematician.  But was I to create a synopsis of their business from this?  Deduce why they were losing money?  

"Well?"  Feng Gu asked again.

"There's more going out than coming in," I said.

"I knew it," she said, pulling the book from me.  "I knew it."

She stood up, holding the book tight against her chest.  I smiled.  That had been simple.

"Are you sure you didn't study art?" she asked, obviously unimpressed with my summary of the situation. 

"I'm sure."  Heat rose to my cheeks.   

She returned the book to the drawer and picked up a copy of Fashion Fortune from next to the abacus.  She sat in front of me and flicked through the magazine.  I felt as ignored as I had the only time I'd come into this shop to buy tea.  Oh, Father.  How could I work here?

"This kind of problem," I said.  "This kind of problem takes time.  There is no quick answer."

She turned a page and studied the make-up advice as if reading a sutra.  What could I say?  All morning not one customer had come in the shop.  She had a lot of tea, delicious tea, but no customers.  Maybe she'd offended them all, as she had me so long ago.  As she attempted to do now.  People in new China expected good service. 

Then again, maybe this was an afternoon place.  Maybe customers didn't shop for tea in the morning.  I couldn't imagine why not.

"I need to watch the daily business," I said, trying to get her attention away from plucked eyebrows.  "See how things work here.  Then maybe I can make a good suggestion."

She fingered through the magazine.  Then she put her hand in her pocket and extracted a few yuan notes.  She tossed them over to me. 

"Sounds like a waste of more money to me." 

"I understand," I said.  I picked up the bills--my morning's pay?-- and went in back to collect my purse.  Perhaps this was for the better.  I wouldn't be able to take Madame Paper Cutter a sample of tea.  But, at least I'd get to work near her again.  I'd get to teach her, if no one else.  I'd go there this afternoon.  Besides, she might have an idea where Cheng Min could stay safe until the birth of her baby boy. 

I didn't relish the idea of returning home.  I could already hear Father, struggling with a shaky hand to light his cigarette, asking me to explain one more time how I only lasted two hours working at the teashop.

"I'm not paying for more than two more hours of your time--" Feng Gu tapped me on the shoulder with her rolled-up magazine.  "If you want to stick around and watch my business, that's fine."

So, I wasn't dismissed.  Yet.  I turned to her. 

What if I came up with a solution to this failing business?  But it took more than two hours?  I couldn't afford to give her free reign of my time and ideas.    

"That sounds fine," I said. She walked back towards the front room.  "Unless,"  I cleared my throat.  "Unless,  I come up with an answer to your problem.  Then you must pay all my hours."

She snorted.  "Unless the art major comes up with an answer."

She had no faith in me other than that I could make a "ball with razor slits."  But I had faith.  I put my purse back beneath the cot.  Took a deep breath. This sharp stick would be of use some day.  Surely.

© 2006 Jana McBurney-Lin, All Rights Reserved

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