Dragonfly Dreams Read online

  “What smells so awful?” Ma couldn’t see Da’s cigarette because of the cloth over her eyes.

  Da moved to the other side of the room. Instead of sitting, he paced back and forth, still talking about the Tans.

  “I told Mr. Tan when she starts spitting up blood—that’s when he should get worried.”

  Ma sat up, leaning against the back of the sofa. “Did you say TB? I’m terrified of getting TB,” she said. “I’ve lost so much weight it would take me out in no time.”

  Ma’s voice didn’t have much force. Her face was gray and her cheeks sunken. I couldn’t tell under her padded clothes how thin she was, but I could see it in her face.

  “He doesn’t know if she has TB, because when he took her to the hospital, they refused her. They said Mr. Tan refused to cooperate with the Japanese, so they refused to help him.” Da blew the smoke away from where Ma was. “Only those Chinese who collaborate with the Japanese can get medicine. They will pay for their crimes when the war is over!”

  I wanted to cry out, why isn’t it over already?! The war, the quarantine—all of it kept me captive. But I didn’t say anything, just kept my thoughts throbbing inside my head because I knew there were no answers. I knew for certain that I couldn’t stand it much longer.

  All I said was, “I wish I had an orange,” as if talking to myself.

  Ma reacted immediately. “Nini, stop that useless thinking. You know there are no oranges. Wanting them only makes things worse.”

  Ma had always loved oranges, but Amah said she couldn’t find any, and apples cost a hundred dollars each. Eggs or milk or meat were out of the question. But worst of all, we had no soap or coal to heat water. I never thought I would miss soap and hadn’t had a bath in weeks. My hair was greasy and my back itched. I tried to scratch through my padded clothes, but it didn’t help. I thought rolling on the floor might help.

  This time Da was irritated with me. “Nini, quit that! You look like a dog scratching its back. Go outside if you want to act like a dog!”

  Ma came to my rescue. When Da was irritable and fidgety like this, she usually tried to think of something he could do.

  “I think we can abandon the quarantine now. Why don’t you check on the Tans? See if there is anything we can do for them?”

  That’s good, I thought—send Da outside. He likes to be outside, and he likes to talk to people.

  Then Ma turned on me. “Nini, isn’t it time to resume your reading sessions with Auntie Boxin? You haven’t read to her in weeks. I think you were halfway through Oliver Twist, weren’t you?”

  Now I squirmed like a dog again, this time wanting to hide under the sofa, but I knew it was useless to resist. Ma would see to it one way or the other. Maybe Auntie Boxin will be asleep, I thought as I plodded up the stairs. Unfortunately, Auntie Boxin was delighted to see me.

  Before I got sick, I had come regularly. I dreaded these reading sessions at first. Her room was closed off to keep the warmth in, which made it smell like sour underwear. I found I could fight off the feeling of being suffocated by reading the story with exaggeration. After doing that for a while, I got caught up in the story and forgot about the smell and the stuffiness.

  Isabella was glad to see me too, and when I told her Da was going to see the Tans, she said she was going out too, just for a little fresh air. For Isabella and Da, the end of the quarantine meant going outside—for me, it meant reading to Auntie Boxin in her stuffy room. That isn’t fair!

  The heavy volume of Oliver Twist was still on the footstool where I had left it. The footstool was where I sat when I read. I picked up the book and pushed the footstool with my foot farther away from Auntie Boxin’s bed.

  “Where are you going?” Auntie Boxin said, motioning me to come closer.

  “I need to stay near the door—in case Ma calls,” I said. But the real reason was I wanted to sneak away when Auntie Boxin fell asleep.

  I flipped through the pages trying to find my place in the book, but I couldn’t. Frustrated at trying to find where I left off, I decided to start at the beginning. I liked the part where Oliver is in the workhouse with the other orphans, and he approaches the workhouse master, Mr. Bumble, with his empty bowl and asks for more gruel, “Please, sir, I want some more.”

  That’s what I wanted to say every day, but for me there was no workhouse master to say it to.

  “You’ve already read that part.”

  Auntie Boxin’s eyes, which had been closed, popped open and stared right at me. Her hair was brushed back, but a few strands dropped loosely against her face.

  “But I like this part. Don’t you?” I knew it was rude to talk back, but I didn’t care.

  “It makes me sad.” Her head fell back into the pillow. “When I was his age, my father died. My mother had to raise my sister and me alone. I was afraid of being an orphan.” She coughed a deep, crackling cough. I backed a little further away from her bed.

  “Get me a handkerchief,” she croaked and motioned toward the dresser next to her bed.

  I held my breath all the way to the dresser and jerked opened the top drawer, which came almost all the way out. I spied something in the back—a stack of old Chinese money from before the war. The Japanese made us use a different kind of money.

  Why hadn’t Auntie Boxin turned in these notes? I wondered. Now they were no good. She could have bought food with this money!

  I let out my breath and sucked in more air in a gulp. I picked up a handkerchief with two fingers and slammed the drawer shut. Even though Amah boiled Auntie Boxin’s handkerchiefs, they were dingy and stained. I barely touched it as I handed it to Auntie Boxin and held my breath, stepping back quickly.

  She coughed a deep and painful cough and spit something dark into the handkerchief. She saw me staring at it.

  “It’s nothing,” she said, folding the handkerchief in her hand and hiding it under the blanket. “Now continue reading from where you stopped the last time you were here. It’s chapter eighteen.”

  The time seemed to go so slowly. Auntie Boxin’s eyes closed again, and I read as long as I could. When I thought she was asleep, I lowered my voice and kept talking as I eased my way toward the door.

  “Where are you going, Nini?”

  Startled by her voice, I tripped over the stool and the book went crashing to the floor, landing upside down, pages crushed against the spine.

  “Don’t harm Mr. Charles Dickens!” Auntie Boxin leaned forward from the pillow and fixed me with a glare. “Continue reading!” Auntie Boxin’s head fell back as if she were exhausted, but I was the one who had been reading out loud for an hour.

  I righted the stool and sat on it again, picking up the book and thumbing through the pages.

  As soon as Mei-mei and Weilin were well, the quarantine ended for all of us, and Amah went into a frenzy, scrubbing everything, even without soap, from top to bottom.

  Amah scolded me, “Don’t you know—it’s New Years?” She always chided me for not knowing Chinese things, but that morning she tried to solicit my help. “You must get ready, clean the house, sweep away bad luck, paint red characters on the door.”

  “But we don’t have any paint,” I objected.

  “And make dumplings.”

  “We don’t have any flour either.”

  “You are just more trouble for me,” she groaned and continued scrubbing the floor.

  “I have to read to Auntie Boxin.” I was glad to have an excuse to get out of Amah’s way and headed upstairs.

  “Umph,” Amah pouted.

  Isabella had already cleaned up Auntie Boxin’s room and thanked me for coming a little early. She said she would help Amah by going to the market. She knew the market had more things at New Years, and I knew she was just using that as an excuse to get out.

  I felt trapped. I picked up the heavy book and plopped down on the foots
tool.

  As soon as Isabella left, Auntie Boxin started coughing again. She held the handkerchief to her mouth and spit up something. She pointed with the other hand to the door and croaked, “Get my medicine.”

  “Where?’ I asked.

  She waved her hand again toward the door and mumbled something as she coughed uncontrollably.

  “In the kitchen?” I asked.

  She nodded as she folded the damp and darkened handkerchief. “On the . . . the . . . shelf,” she choked out.

  Auntie Boxin’s apartment had a kitchen, but it was closed off because Amah did all the cooking downstairs. Compared to Auntie Boxin’s room, the kitchen was freezing. My eyes moved quickly around the room—all sorts of jars, bottles, and containers, but I couldn’t tell which was her medicine.

  I began to panic. People with TB spit up blood. What if Auntie Boxin has tuberculosis? Will we all get it? Will we all die?

  I didn’t want to go back into her bedroom. I started moving jars around and opening all the cupboards, not caring what I was looking for, just delaying going back.

  I opened a bottom cupboard and found only moldy old sacks. I started to close the cupboard door, but some writing on a sack caught my eye. Da had continued my Chinese lessons, so I could read many characters now. I turned one of the sacks to see the writing more clearly.

  Is this really flour! There was enough for months of dumplings. I hoisted one of the sacks that felt as heavy as bricks and rushed into Auntie Boxin’s room.

  “Look! Look! Auntie Boxin! We have flour for New Years!” I shouted.

  Auntie Boxin sat up in bed. “How dare you! That’s mine! Don’t touch it!” Then she began coughing uncontrollably.

  “But it’s New Years!” I cried. “Why can’t we use it? It’s just what Amah needs to make dumplings.” I had barely said the word amah when Auntie Boxin’s face turned red.

  “Do not give it to her! She stole my silver.”

  I was stunned. Did Auntie Boxin not understand that Amah had nothing to do with the robbery? She had been angry at Amah all this time!

  “Amah didn’t steal your silver, Auntie Boxin,” I exclaimed. “Your servant helped the robber, not Amah! Amah tried to stop the robber.”

  Auntie Boxin had held on to this flour because she was mad at Amah and now the flour was probably too stale and moldy to eat. What a waste! Her misunderstanding and refusal to forgive Amah had denied us what we needed so badly.

  “Not just Amah.” Auntie Boxin strained to tell me something. “Once . . . my mother spilled rice in the dirt.” She choked out the words. “My sister and I picked up every grain, every grain,” she repeated. “Dirt and all. It was all we had to eat.” She coughed again. “I kept this flour. I knew I wouldn’t starve as long as I had it.”

  Tears stung my eyes. I didn’t know about Auntie Boxin’s childhood, that she had been so poor she almost starved. But still I was angry.

  “Auntie Boxin, this flour is spoiled . . . and . . . and . . .” I stammered, remembering what I had found in the drawer. “And you have so much money!”

  “I had money!” she huffed. “My husband had money!” She squeezed the handkerchief in her hand. “If I couldn’t keep him, I could keep his money!”

  I felt emboldened and said, “You must forgive Amah, Auntie Boxin. You must forgive her. It’s New Years. Amah told me that New Years is the time to forgive people. Auntie Boxin, you must forgive Amah and give her this flour for New Year’s.”

  She shook her fist with the bloody handkerchief at me, “Take it!” She cried in her raspy voice, “Take it to Amah!”

  Amah cried when I brought her the sacks of flour. I couldn’t tell if she was crying out of joy for the flour or sorrow because it was spoiled. When she opened the sack, the flour smelled rancid and moldy. I could see little wormy bugs wiggling around in it. Amah pinched one with her fingers and shook her head.

  Amah got to work. I helped her sift the flour with a tightly woven basket. She cut up wild onions from the field and garlic she had grown and dried. She mixed the onions and garlic with a few vegetables for the filling. She made a dough with the flour and rolled it and cut it into circles. She put a spoonful of the vegetable filling onto each circle and then folded it over and pinched the edges. First, she boiled them, then fried them.

  “That will kill any bugs,” she said, “and besides, it won’t hurt us if we do eat them.”

  Isabella came home from the market with a few things for Amah, and red paper, banners, and a lantern. I helped her hang the lantern. She showed Mei-mei how to make Chinese paper cuts with the red paper, and they hung them on the windows. Da had taught me how to write the characters for happiness, long life, and prosperity—Fu Lu Shou. I wrote them on the banners and hung them around the room.

  That night we celebrated the New Year with jiaozi, dumplings that signified a good wish for our family. The garlic and onions hid the taste of the spoiled flour, at least to our eager tongues. We took the dumplings to Auntie Boxin and thanked her for the gift. When Amah brought her the bowl of jiaozi, I saw tears in Auntie Boxin’s eyes. We wished her health and a good year.

  Ma, Da, Mei-mei, Weilin, Isabella and I gathered round the table with anticipation. It was the Year of the Monkey, and Mei-mei put the brass monkey in the center of the table, decorated with her Chinese paper cuts. Amah had said anyone born in the Year of the Monkey was intelligent, well-liked, and successful in every way. Mei-mei was grinning, but she was not born in the Year of the Monkey—I was!

  “Nini, did you know the brass monkey is the Monkey King?” Da asked. “Your mother gave him to me after my journey to the West, to New York. You see, the Monkey King made a Journey to the West, too. See his boots? He can walk on clouds. And did he cause havoc! In many ways he’s like you, Nini. He’s curious and restless and prone to outbursts, but in the long run, he served his master and brought him safely to India.”

  I turned thirteen that night even though my birthday wasn’t until December.

  We played cards and laughed and stayed up late. The next morning, I wrote calligraphy with a brush and put the banner on the door: happiness, long life, and prosperity, and I added another one—Ping An, peace.

  I wanted this to be the last winter that we were trapped inside, the last winter that China was quarantined. I wished things would return to normal, but I wanted, most of all, to see Chiyoko again.

  CHAPTER 18

  Spring 1944

  “Carry this stick,” Amah said to Mei-mei, handing her a cane she had cut last summer from the reeds in the field. Amah held a longer and stronger stick and carried some bags she had made from the flour sacks. “Let’s go now.”

  Amah was taking us to find wild greens that grew along the creek. I went ahead of them out the gate carrying nothing, glad to be going outside, even if we were foraging, as Ma called it.

  The air was nippy, and I pulled the sleeves of Ma’s old sweater down over my hands for warmth. I had outgrown my own sweaters. All I had now were Ma’s old baggy things. This sweater was made of blue-gray Scottish wool, and at one time Ma thought it was so smart looking, but by the time it came to me, it was worn and faded and had patches on the sleeves.

  I drank in the cool freshness of the early March morning. I was glad to be outside before the winds blew in the awful yellow dust that came every spring. I was ready for a break, and I set out in front of Amah and Mei-mei, heading straight for the open field.

  The field looked nothing like it had in the summer. The tall grasses where we had hidden from the boys were now beaten down by the winter rains. There were no places to hide, no secret paths, no jeweled grasshoppers to find. Broken stubble stuck up in places from the matted grass, and the hard tips poked at my feet and snagged my padded pants.

  “Not that way,” called Amah.

  I turned and saw Amah and Mei-mei headed toward a marshy area down near the c
reek on the far side of the field. In the summer, the creek was dry, but in the spring, it flowed, filling the marshes around it with water. Amah said the watercress in the creek and the shoots in the marsh were good to eat.

  When I caught up with them, Amah handed me a bag.

  “Look here,” she said, bending and pulling up a clump of matted grasses, wet and beaten down. Underneath the clump were tiny green shoots of wild millet.

  Amah tried to instruct us. “You see. Winter comes, winter goes, and new life starts. We can eat these. Pick it this way.” Amah pinched the little green shoots and put them in her bag.

  Mei-mei stood there, her bag hanging limply from one hand and her other hand holding her cane as she stared at her wet feet, the cloth shoes Amah had made squishing in the mud. She reached out for a tall stem.

  “No, no, not that one,” Amah corrected. Amah knew which shoots we could eat and which ones we couldn’t.

  I was wearing Ma’s old flats with socks. I didn’t want to get wet and have to walk back across the stubbly field with frozen feet, so I wandered off a little, avoiding the marshy area, but staying close to where the ground was drier. I could still hear Amah telling Mei-mei about her childhood in the countryside, about how she used to pick greens with her mother, how she knew where to look—stories I had heard before and didn’t want to hear again, at least not on this day, my first day in the open fields.

  I hadn’t seen a day like this in so long. There were only a few clouds in the blue sky. I wasn’t looking at my feet anymore. I was looking at the sky. I gazed out in the distance. When will the American planes come? I wondered if the planes would fly over this field. If they did, I might be the first to see them.

  I heard a rustling on the ground, and something slithered across my foot. I jumped. In a move so fast I could hardly see what happened, a black snake lunged forward and swallowed something.

  “Amah!” I shouted. “Come quickly! A snake!”