Excerpt:  My Half of the Sky

Excerpt from uncorrected proof

Chapter Nine
The Best Fish Sauce

I went in the back room.  Why hadn't I been more attentive?  What could I do to make the demons in Madame Tsui Ping's mind go away?  The demons that insisted she was a spy whose books, like Gone with the Wind, Call of the Wild, and The Old Man and the Sea must be filled with secrets from Evil America. 

Last week's Fashion Fortune lay on the card table next to Feng Gu's lunch tin.  Perhaps showing Madame Tsui Ping the latest styles would bump her heart out of the past.  Then again, maybe she'd think I was joking.  How could I have mumbled a hundred and fifty yuan?

Maybe Madame Tsui Ping was just hungry.  Waipo often said an empty stomach could make you mad.  I looked through my purse.  My wallet rested against the tea-shop brochure Feng Gu had given me yesterday.  Feng Gu had  even pointed out the English paragraph on the back, as if to say she wasn't so dumb.  I looked in my wallet.  Empty.  Perhaps I had some small notes in the bottom of my purse.  Notes I could use to buy Madame Tsui Ping a pork bun, a treat. 

The growing crowd of voices trading theories and gossip filtered all the way into the back.  Madame Tsui Ping's cane bashed on the floor as if punctuating their thoughts.  Then I heard a loud crash.  I rushed out front to see the old woman pull down the last of the tea bins.

The crazy old teacher sat surrounded by piles of tea.  She'd knocked all the containers down, including the golden ten-yuan-per-kilo tea.  She used her cane like a giant spoon and stirred the leaves together, as if making soup.

"This is all your fault." Feng Gu glared and pointed her trembling finger at me.

I had a momentary desire to run out the front door.  But the crowd of onlookers now blocked the entrance to the shop.  I sat down on the cold floor next to Madame Tsui Ping.  Grit scraped my thighs. My heart thumped so hard it was difficult to breathe. I had to help this woman somehow.

“You must be hungry, after all your efforts."  I dropped my purse in between us.  I dug inside.  I was sure I had at least one note.  "Would you like a pork bun? The woman across the street makes the best pork buns around.”

Madame Tsui Ping joined me, digging in my purse. My dry well. Perhaps she thought this was a game.  I didn't mind.  She had stopped rocking back and forth, stopped staring so far away. 

"I just need wu mao," I said.

A little boy wearing a dirty shirt and mud-stained pants rushed next to my feet.  Madame Tsui Ping's grandchild?  He grabbed a handful of tea.  

“Shoo,” Feng Gu yelled.  "Get out!"

Madame Tsui Ping put her hands up, as if fearful Feng Gu would hit her.   She began to rock back and forth again. The boy dodged through the crowd. 

"You, too."  Feng Gu cried.  "Go.  Just get out."

I looked up expecting to see another dirty little boy, but she was looking directly at me. Shame filled my entire being. 

“No bad feelings, you understand,”  Feng Gu said, as if trying to remember she had the manners of a shop owner.  She smiled, revealing all of her jumbled brown teeth.  “But I have a business to run.  It may not be a great intellectual challenge.  But you've gotta pay attention. A hundred and fifty yuan.  What the hell were--- I mean, I mean no bad feelings. Just leave."

I had made such a mess of this simple job.  My eyes prickled.  I reached for my purse.

"I found it."  Madame Tsui Ping cried, grabbing onto the strap of my purse.  She extracted the tea pamphlet.  Then she dropped it.  "Just joking." 

"It's okay," I said, patting her papery skin.  "We don't need the wu mao right now."

"I found it." She grabbed the pamphlet again.  "Just joking."  She held the pamphlet up, bringing the English portion so close to her face the paper almost touched her nose.    

I stood, brushing grit and stray tea leaves from my pants.  Strange how something that happened so long ago continued to haunt the old woman–and now me.  Nobody talked about the Cultural Revolution anymore.  Father used that period, when the uneducated were given jobs as doctors and engineers, and the educated were sent off to the farms to do hard labor, as a reason why I shouldn’t be educated.  That, and the fact I was a girl and would scare off any potential mate. 

He and Waipo had argued in whispers, as if transported back to Revolution times, when a wrong word traveling on a breeze to the nearest child’s ears meant trouble.  A knock on your door at night, a search through your possessions that revealed something anti-establishment, a public shaming that led to death or suicide.  Now the Cultural Revolution had cost me this job.   

Madame Tsui Ping murmured something. How would Feng Gu take care of this woman by herself?  Why did I care?

"What did she say?"  Feng Gu nudged me.

"I don't know," I said. 

Now what would I tell Mother?  I'd held her hands that morning and promised her we'd find a way out of Father's latest debt.  She was counting on me.

"I thought you were educated." Feng Gu threw her short hair back.  "Knew English."

Educated.  Yes.  Educated.  So educated and still unable to hold up my portion of the sky.  I bent over Madame Tsui Ping.  She had stopped rocking back and forth.  Her eyes were focused on the pamphlet.  

"We have problem here," she said in English.

"What?"  Feng Gu barked.

"A problem," I translated.

"Right here."  Madame Tsui Ping tapped the pamphlet. 

What was she talking about?  Her eyes shone with the light of discovery, of tapping into something she'd forgotten she was good at.

“Good Luck and Prosperity Tea Company harvests tea on its northern tea plantations twice a year, in summer and in winter,” Madame Tsui Ping read, her voice more confident with each word, as if reading before a class of children.  

The two young women at the front giggled at this dirty woman sitting on the floor, speaking foreign sounds.  The rest of the group joined in.  Feng Gu pretended to listen to Madame Tsui Ping, but her eyes roamed about at all that tea on the floor.  How much money did each bin of tea cost?  Would Feng Gu charge me for everything?  Was I destined to be a well digger like Father?

I hung onto Madame Tsui Ping's every word, waiting for this old English Teacher to tell us the problem here.  To return to our world. I didn’t hear one. Maybe she was traveling into another darkened cave of the past. Was reliving her days when she stood at the front of a room and read the classics.  

“Never mind,” Feng Gu said, waving a dismissive arm at me.  "Really." 

She looked up and over the crowd, searching for her father.  Would he know how to deal with the old woman?  Or would his efforts to help his daughter be as effective as a boy aiming his slingshot at a bus? Madame Tsui Ping laughed again, so hard her whole body shook. 

“The summer harvest is the --” Madame Tsui Ping pointed to the pamphlet.  “S-w-e-a-test.  Get it?  Summer?  Sweat?”    

I peered over Madame Tsui Ping's shoulder.  She was right.  That's what the pamphlet said.

English had lots of those confusing spellings.  Like "beet" and "beat" and "feet" and "feat" and "meet" and "meat."   It would be easy to mix up "sweet" and "sweat."  In fact, the writer probably thought she was clever, having spelled the word with an a, showing off  her ability to mix the vowels.  Madame Tsui Ping wasn't so crazy after all.

“What is it?”  Feng Gu stuck her mushroom nose in between us.

I showed the spelling to Feng Gu.  Her eyes remained as blank as the stares of the crowd. She didn't get it. 

“Madame Tsui Ping is a fine editor,” I said, nodding my head with great exaggeration and smiling at the old woman.  

"Of course she is," Feng Gu agreed.  "I knew that already. Didn't I tell you she was an English teacher? Didn't I tell you a lot of things?"

"You didn't tell me," Madame Tsui Ping said.  "Help me up from here. An old teacher shouldn't be left here on the floor like this to hear such things."

Feng Gu's eyes widened.  Her mouth parted.  This was our chance to get the lady off the floor.

"Well, you heard the teacher,” Feng Gu said, grabbing the delivery man at the front of the crowd to help us.  The three of us pushed and pulled, trying to get Tsui Ping to her feet, or at least to one of the chairs.  She alternated between giggling like a schoolgirl and weeping. 

“Tea, anyone?” Madame Tsui Ping smiled, when her bottom finally reached the stool.  She looked about the room, as if it were her own great hall. 

“No, thanks," the delivery man said.  "I have to get back to work.”

He hurried over to his motorcycle, fired up the engine, and backed into the crowd, before Feng Gu could ask for more assistance.  The rest of the crowd dispersed, now that there was nothing to look at but piles and piles of tea.

“My, this place is a mess.”  Madame Tsui Ping shook her head.  “No rain for weeks--and now this.  A typhoon.”  She giggled and picked at leaves that had stuck to the sweat on her legs.

“Yes, indeed.”  Feng Gu looked over at me as if I were the strong wind that had blown all the canisters off the wall.  "Can my helper take you to the bus?"

"Oh, no," Madame Tsui Ping said.  "I couldn't leave you with this mess."

"Don't worry," Feng Gu said, helping her up and leading her to the door.

"Of course not," she said. She picked a tea leaf from her elbow and held it up.  "Did I ever tell you two ladies about the time I helped my father at the market?"

"I look forward to hearing that next time," Feng Gu said, patting Madame Tsui Ping's arm so hard I thought she'd make a bruise.  "See you--"

"When summer changed to autumn, the mornings got so dark.  I couldn't see, I tell you."  Madame Tsui Ping  came back into the center of the room, standing on a pile of tea leaves.  She pointed at her swollen feet, her toenails thick and yellow.  "I couldn't even see my own two feet, it was so dark."

"That must have been frightening," I said. 

Feng Gu glared at me.  She gave a slight shake of her head as if to say "Don't encourage her."

"Actually, I didn't mind so much," Madame Tsui Ping said.  "We all walk in the dark.  We just don't know it.  Yes, we all walk in the dark."

Feng Gu's rolled her eyes.  I refrained from uttering a word. 

"One morning, I was so tired--or maybe I wasn't really concentrating.  Who knows?"  Madame Tsui Ping laughed until she had tears in her eyes.  "I walked my bicycle right off the side of the road into a ditch.  The entire basket of fish hooked to the back spilled everywhere."

She surveyed the pile of tea, as if staring into a ditch filled with fish.  She rubbed her eyes.  Shook her head.

"How horrible," I said.  I imagined young Madame Tsui Ping in charge of the day's catch.  What would she say to her father?  That his fish was now sewage? 

Madame Tsui Ping latched onto our arms and pulled us together.

"Everything will be just fine,"  she whispered fiercely. Spittle formed at the edges of her lips.  She gestured to the tea.  “Don't worry about this.”

“We won't worry,” Feng Gu said, patting her on the shoulder and steering her in the direction of the bus depot.

As soon as Madame Tsui Ping was out of sight, Feng Gu sighed so loudly the walls of the shop groaned. 

“Well, we survived that," she said.

I went to the back to retrieve a broom.  She had said "we."  Maybe, despite Feng Gu's sharp edge, she appreciated not bearing this business alone.  I looked over at the black-and-white picture of the ancestor.  I was no better helper than he.  In fact, I was worse.

"What is it?" Feng Gu yelped.

I rushed out  front. Madame Tsui Ping was back.  She had tears streaming down her cheeks.  

“Can my helper take you to the bus depot?” Feng Gu motioned with her arm for me to come help. 

"No, no," Madame Tsui Ping said.  "It's just I forgot to tell you the most important part of the story.  The reason I told you the story in the first place."  She chuckled long and hard, more tears running down her face.  "Customers all commented on how it was the most unique fish sauce they'd ever tasted."  

"This is a disaster."  Feng Gu threw down the telephone receiver.  She'd been on the phone for many minutes, trying to order more tea for the next morning.  "Even Golden Supplies wants double the price, if I need the tea by tomorrow."

I picked up my purse from the floor and draped it over a stool.  I had swept all the tea into one neat pile.  I was out of line making suggestions to the boss.  But then, I sensed I didn't have many days left in this shop.  As soon as Feng Gu calculated all that I had lost I would be gone.

"Maybe you should forget it," I said.

"This isn't like some paper you can just decide not to write," she said, shaking her finger at me like a stick, her nose high in the air.  "Some test you can decide not to take." Had she been denied an education?  Was that what gave her such a sharp edge?  "Some class you can decide not to go to.  If I don't have tea, I don't have a business."  She sighed,  banging her hand on the side of the desk.  "No business."

Despite her bitter edge, I felt sadness for her.  She kept this ship afloat all on her own.  Now the ship was sinking. 

"Remember, what Madame Tsui Ping said?" I suggested.  Perhaps she hadn't been listening.  Perhaps she didn't think the situation applied to her.

"How could I forget?" Feng Gu said.  "In fact, the whole town probably knows about Tsui Ping by now.  That's why I can't get a good price on the tea." 

I picked up a dustpan full of tea and dumped the contents back into the bin.

"What are you doing?" she asked.  "Go on and dump that out in the alley."

"It was the most unique fish sauce the customers had ever tasted," I said.  I picked up another dustpan full of tea. 

"I can't believe you," she said.  "No, I take that back.  I can't believe Father.  What made him think I'd benefit from having a college graduate helping me?  He might as well have sent me the village idiot."

"We can call it the Professor's Medley," I persisted.  "After Professor Tsui Ping."

“What’s a medley?"  She asked.  "Some kind of disaster?"

“No, no."  Poor Feng Gu.  She did her best, without help from anyone.  Her father, despite her calls for help, had chosen to stay and finish whatever his "business" was.  Perhaps he took his game of Mahjong as seriously as Father.  "A medley is a mixture.”

“Why would we mix up dirty tea, then tell the customers that's what we've done?" Feng Gu shook her head.  "Do you think Tsui Ping told her customers that the fish sauce she sold was fish mixed with ditch water?"

“It’s not just mixing."  I cleared my throat.  "It’s a fine mixture, an elegant mixture."  I stirred the leaves in the bin with my free hand, pulled out a stray hair.

“That’s ridiculous.”  Feng Gu grabbed the dustpan from me.  "You stop by tomorrow.  By then, I'll have worked out the bill for all of this."

"Fine," I said.  "I'm sorry.  I really am."

I went into the back room to collect my lunch tin.  My hands, which had reassured Mother just hours before, felt like dull, dead branches. Useless. A fire hazard.  I grabbed the  tin with trembling fingers.  I headed for the back exit.   

"What are you doing here?"  Feng Gu's voice was sharp, angry.  I paused at the door. 

A man's voice replied.  Deep, soft.  Had her father finally left his house of tiles?  How could she speak to her elders that way?

"You're too late."  Her voice was nervous.  "You're always late for everything."

Well almost everything.  There was still the matter of what to do with the new employee--me.  But, I didn't stay for my public shaming.  I went out the door. 

The thick smell of incense from the Eternal Happiness store filled the alley. A woman walked by, her high heels tapping lightly on the pavement.  The sound was like laughter--like those young ladies in the crowd today giggling at Madame Tsui Ping. The woman carried her small boy in one arm, held a bag of fish in the other.  What would be so wrong with mixing the tea?  Certainly it was different than selling people sewage sauce.  People would rinse the tea once before drinking a pot anyway.  Any sweat from Madame Tsui Ping's bottom, any dirt from the floor, would wash away.   But Feng Gu was stubborn.  The only good ideas were hers--not those of some foolish college graduate.  Father would be so disappointed in me.  Here I had studied four years and had lost the job he'd found me, had nothing to offer, not even wu mao in my purse.  I felt for the strap.  My purse.  I'd left the bag on the stool in the front room of the teashop. 

I stood still and closed my eyes.  I didn't want to go back in that shop, especially with Feng Gu's father now there.  But, I felt as if Waipo were near, reminding me of my manners.  "Of course,  you should at least thank Feng Gu's father for offering you the opportunity.  Apologize for the disaster.  That would be the right thing to do."  A gentle breeze like the hand of Waipo urged me back towards the shop. 

I hurried through the back room certain that if I stopped to listen I would lose what little nerve I had.  I raced out front.  A strange tickling started in the lower part of my back and traveled down my knees.  A snatch of blue cotton.  A white T-shirt.  That tall muscular body.  The Man in Blue was just leaving.  What had he been doing here? 

Feng Gu sat at the cherry wood table, her eyes no longer focused on the heaps of tea.  Her eyes not apparently focused on anything.  I approached the table.

She jumped.  "You're still here? What are you doing here?"

"I forgot my purse," I explained, picking the leather bag off the stool.  "Besides, I thought I heard voices.  I thought Madame Tsui Ping might have returned."

She stared into her empty teacup.  Was she recalling each gesture, each word the Man in Blue had made?  Did her heart beat like big war drums?

"So," I said.  "I guess I didn't hear any customers."

"No."  She grabbed the rag from the side of the bucket and wiped at the table.  "No Madame Tsui Ping.  No customers buying tea.  No business.  No business at all."

"Tomorrow," I said, remembering Madame Paper Cutter's handwriting.  The two characters that gave such hope. 

"Word's out about the incident with Madame Tsui Ping." Feng Gu pulled on her hair and shook her head.

"Tomorrow," I whispered to myself, like a prayer to the Gods.

© 2006 Jana McBurney-Lin, All Rights Reserved

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