Part 8 (1/2)
Moon Orchid ht, but she seemed stiff and frozen
”You're just tired from the ride Put some blood into your cheeks,” Brave Orchid said, and pinched her sister's withered face She held her sister's elbow and slapped the inside of her arm If she had had time, she would have hit until the black and red dots broke out on the skin; that was the tiredness co out As she hit, she kept an eye on the rearview , his uncle after hi in his hand ”Faster Faster,” her son was saying He opened the car door ”Here she is,” he said to his uncle ”I'll see you later” And he ran on down the street
The two old ladies saw a man, authoritative in his dark western suit, start to fill the front of the car He had black hair and no wrinkles He looked and smelled like an American Suddenly the to boys to older girls, who baby-sat their husbands their whole lives Either that or, in this ghost country, a man could somehow keep his youth
”Where's the accident?” he said in Chinese ”What is this? You don't have a broken leg”
Neither woman spoke Brave Orchid held her words back She would not let herself interfere with thisabsence
”What is it?” he asked ”What's wrong?” These women had such awful faces ”What is it, Grandmothers?”
”Grandmother?” Brave Orchid shouted ”This is your wife I am your sister-in-law”
Moon Orchid started to whinized her ”You,” he said ”What are you doing here?”
But all she did was open and shut herout
”Why are you here?” he asked, eyes wide Moon Orchid covered her face with one hand and motioned no with the other
Brave Orchid could not keep silent Obviously he was not glad to see his wife ”I sent for her,” she burst out ”I got her name on the Red Cross list, and I sent her the plane ticket I wrote her every day and gave her the heart to come I told her hoelcome she would be, how her family would welcome her, how her husband would welcome her I did what you, the husband, had time to do in these last thirty years”
He looked directly at Moon Orchid the way the savages looked, looking for lies ”What do you want?” he asked She shrank fro
”You weren't supposed to coainst the toe had been cast ”It's aYou don't have the hardness for this country I have a new life”
”What about ht Brave Orchid ”Well said Said with no guile”
”I have a neife,” said the man
”She's only your second wife,” said Brave Orchid ”This is your real wife”
”In this country a et rid of that creature in your office?” asked Brave Orchid
He looked at Moon Orchid Again the rude Ahter I'll et arrested if the A like an American” He talked like a child born here
”How could you ruin her old age?” said Brave Orchid
”She has had food She has had servants Her daughter went to college There wasn't anything she thought of that she couldn't buy I have been a good husband”
”You made her live like a ”
”That's not true Obviously the villagers haven't stoned her She's not wearingThe family didn't send her away to work Look at her She'd never fit into an Auests who come inside my house to eat” He turned to Moon Orchid, ”You can't talk to them You can barely talk to me”
Moon Orchid was so ashamed, she held her hands over her face She wished she could also hide her dappled hands Her husband looked like one of the ghosts passing the car s, and she host frohosts, and they had becoo back to China then?” Brave Orchid was asking
”I wouldn't wish that on anyone She may stay, but I do not want her in hter, and I don't want either of you co on the glass So quickly that theya finger to his mouth for just a moment: he had never told his American wife that he had a wife in China, and they ?” she asked ”Do you need help? The appoint up”
”No No,” he said ”This woman fainted in the street I'll be up soon”
They spoke to each other in English
The two old wo wo too now,” said the husband
”Why didn't you write to tell her once and for all you weren't co for her?” Brave Orchid asked
”I don't know,” he said ”It's as if I had turned into a different person The new life around me was so complete; it pulled o”
”The least you can do,” said Brave Orchid, ”is invite us to lunch Aren't you inviting us to lunch? Don't you owe us a lunch? At a good restaurant?” She would not let hiht them lunch, and when Brave Orchid's son came back to the car, he had to wait for thehter's house, but though she lived in Los Angeles, she never saw her husband again ”Oh, well,” said Brave Orchid ”We're all under the sa the same moment” Brave Orchid and her son drove back north, Brave Orchid sitting in the back seat the whole way
Several months went by with no letter fro, she had written every other week At last Brave Orchid telephoned long distance to find out as happening ”I can't talk now,” Moon Orchid whispered ”They're listening Hang up quickly before they trace you” Moon Orchid hung up on Brave Orchid before the minutes she had paid for expired
That week a letter ca that Moon Orchid had becohosts plotting on her life She had been creeping along the baseboards and peeping out s Then she had asked her daughter to help her find an apart Her daughter visited her every day, but Moon Orchid kept telling her, ”Don't cohosts will follow you toyour house”
Brave Orchid phoned her niece and told her to send her mother north immediately, where there were no Mexicans, she said ”This fear is an illness,” she told her niece ”I will cure her” (”Long ago,” she explained to her children, ”when the emperors had four wives, the ho lost in battle was sent to the Northern Palace Her feet would sink little prints into the snow”) Brave Orchid sat on a bench at the Greyhound station to wait for her sister Her children had not come with her because the bus station was only a five-block walk froainst her, she dozed under the fluorescent lights until her sister's bus pulled into the terhtly to the railing for old people Brave Orchid felt the tears break inside her chest for the old feet that stepped one at a ti loose, like a hollowed frog's, as if she had shrunken inside it Her clothes bagged, not fitting sharply anyuise,” she said Brave Orchid put her arive her body war the walk hoirls
The house was one away to school; the jade trees were inside for the winter Along walls and on top of tables, jade trees, whose trunks were as thick as ankles, stood stoutly, green now and without the pink skin the sun gave the
”I am so afraid,” said Moon Orchid
”There is no one after you,” said Brave Orchid ”No Mexicans”
”I saw some in the Greyhound station,” said Moon Orchid
”No No, those were Filipinos” She held her sister's earlobes and began the healing chant for being unafraid ”There are no Mexicans after you,” she said
”I know I got away fro on the bus”
”Yes, you escaped on the bus with the , when Moon Orchid seemed quieter, her sister probed into the cause of this trouble
”What made you think anyone was after you?”