Candlelight Bridge, page 10
She emerged into a world split in two: half of it naked blue sky, the other half billowing brown clouds. Mamá tilted toward the wagon, carrying Graciela. Candelita parted wind with her arms as if swimming. She understood what had driven her mother into the open: the tarp felt like a trap. Out here, despite flaying dust and flying branches, she could distinguish between dark in one direction and light in the other, could hope to escape what she could still see.
Mamá, in command again, hurled Graciela into the wagon’s rear and then beckoned Candelita. Mamá stood firm, feet planted, knees bent, as if she’d stand there forever if that was how long her elder daughter needed to reach her. Candelita couldn’t resist one last look over her shoulder. She’d never seen the ocean, but here was her first wave, a tidal wave of sand about to swallow them whole. It was exhilarating, and the reason she would distrust beauty ever after, because of the deadly power it could hide. She lurched into outstretched arms, Mamá launched her inside, Candelita hauled up Mamá in turn, and together they wrestled the flap shut behind them.
They were tucking themselves among crates and sacks, when the rear flap opened again to reveal Miguel. His mouth opened wide, shouting, but they couldn’t hear him over the wind.
He scrambled inside and screamed in their faces, “It’s not safe in here! The wind—”
“I can’t go back!” Mamá said.
They were still arguing when the wagon bucked, gave a thunderous crack, tipped onto two wheels, and flung Candelita into the air, along with two questions: Will I die? and How much will it hurt? The next instant was chaos, though later she swore she could see Graciela’s squeezed-shut eyelashes, the yellow fringe on Mamá’s blue rebozo, the spray of blood from Miguel’s nose as a can struck it. She bounced into canvas, bit her tongue, got smacked in the eye, and flopped to earth. Sticky liquid oozed down her forehead. Blood? She rubbed it away and squinted at her fingertips: not red but gold. What was it?
“Are you alive, queridas?!” Mamá pulled a stunned Graciela from a jumble of jars. Two broken ones leaked the same liquid-gold Candelita wiped from her eyes. It smelled sweet.
She licked a finger, held it up, and burst out laughing. “It’s honey!”
Nobody else laughed.
A string of curses behind a barrel announced Miguel was still alive. “I told you!”
“Nobody asked you to follow us,” she said.
He ducked his head out the rear flap, shouted, “¡Chingado!” and started to climb out into a flickering black-and-blue blur. Grains of sand flew inside, stinging her skin like broken glass.
She grabbed his heel to haul him back. “You’ll be killed!”
He yelled in her ear, “They’re going the wrong way!” Then his eyes lit with a revelation. He dug into his pocket, pulled out a flash of silver, put it to his lips, and leaned outside to blow a long, high-pitched note into the storm’s roar. The whistle he’d won at the Grito de Dolores festival. He blew and blew, until a creature made of sand climbed into the felled wagon.
Lalo! Graciela threw her arms around his neck. Papá and Benito followed. A horsetail of dust swatted them all before they lashed the flap shut.
Everyone shifted to make room for each other in the tumbled, broken, shrunken space. Miguel sat as far as possible from Benito, who moved a box to make a seat for Mamá. The dim light darkened from amber to charcoal.
Mamá removed Graciela’s bandana and doused it with water from her gourd. “I’m going to cover your eyes.”
Graciela pushed it away. “I want to see!”
Mamá pushed back. “Soon it’ll be too dark to see and angry sand will come in.”
Graciela gave in and let Mamá wrap the wet bandana around her eyes, nose, and mouth. Like a mummy. Everyone followed her lead, binding their heads in darkness.
Candelita wanted to cry, but other sensations crowded out tears: her aching eye socket, skin sticky with sand and honey, suffocating cloth sucking in and out of her mouth. She couldn’t hear her family, only the screeching wind. One astonishing gust sent the wagon sliding at least a foot. Arms enfolded her, and she recognized the ropy muscles were Papá’s. He squeezed too tight, but she resisted the urge to squirm free, terrified a current would lasso her and toss her into the sudden night, alone. If death took her, she wanted Papá to come too—she didn’t care if it was selfish.
Time stopped, but the storm didn’t. It shoveled sand around them like a gravedigger. Maybe they were already dead. That would be so sad, she thought, just when she was getting excited about going to the cities at the border, where sometimes girls finished school.
10. The Kei Lun
Ching Ming Night, 1911 – Toisan County, China
Yan Chi stopped at the intersection of the village paths, before the pale outstretched arms of the banyan tree, and cocked his ear to the insect murmur of night. That’s when he heard the straw shoes skitter to a halt behind him. If he didn’t believe in ghosts before, now he—wondered. Mei Yin had followed him all day.
This time he didn’t look back, not sure whether he hoped she’d be there or not. He looked up at the sky, but rainclouds once again hid their constellation: the Cowherd and Weaver Girl, separated by the Silver River. Her breath parted the air near his ear, whispering without words, asking him not to leave.
But it was she who’d left him! Angry, he turned to confront her.
He didn’t see her this time, only smelled her. She always smelled of rain—but then it always rained at Ching Ming. He scolded the relentless mist: “Why did you return to your father’s house before our wedding? Why didn’t you stay in the House of Waiting Brides like other girls?”
She gave no reply. Maybe he was sleepwalking. How would he know the difference? He tried to shake himself awake. Everything looked the same. He walked on. The footsteps resumed following. Each time he stopped, they stopped. Each time he continued, so did they. His heart would have led him on in any case: to the Git Ngon graveyard, where Mei Yin lay buried in two pieces, head forever separated from her body.
Her grave was easy to find, covered in more offerings than the graves of ancestors who had achieved ripe old age. This wasn’t a measure of her standing in the Ma village, he knew, but of her family’s fear she might haunt them as a hungry ghost, bitter over her unlucky life. Flowers, egg yolks, tea, fruit, the ash and tallow of burnt candles and incense, laid in rows like bribes. He pushed aside a bundle of joss sticks and knelt. The mud soaked his pants and chilled his knees.
He traced a finger over her name, engraved above four words: “respectful daughter, loyal sister.” Nowhere did it say, “raped fiancée, murdered bride.” As far as the future would know, she’d never been his beloved. As far as the present was concerned, her death was a mercy. If she had lived, her lost maidenhood would have shamed not only her but also her family, village, and groom. He understood why people could blame their loved ones for suffering a bad fate: it frightened them less than admitting they had no control over their own lives.
Her headstone should have felt cold in the night air, but it radiated heat. “Mei Yin?” he rasped. He heard rustling and held his breath in case she answered. Then…nothing. He closed his eyes to pray, in his own fashion, a prayer without words, only an image: Mei Yin leaping across the Milky Way, from star to star, moving toward him. She was laughing. He heard it, not gentle as rain but shameless as thunder. He longed to touch her, to taste her, to enter her. To reclaim the wedding night the bandits stole from them. The smell of rain on her skin overwhelmed him. He opened his eyes.
That’s when he saw it, crouched atop her gravestone. The Kei Lun.
He told himself it was a hallucination. Then why did he feel the heat when it opened its mouth and roared a roiling spout of fire? Why did he feel a rush of air when its thick ox tail whipped behind it? Yan Chi’s ban zau shriveled at the sight of long, sharp, yellow teeth circling the beast’s cavernous mouth. Its gold mane flared a warning. The night flashed with its shimmering blue dragon scales and blood-red tongue. The Kei Lun’s eyes glowed like twin fires as it leapt off the gravestone toward him.
He ran away, fast as he could, and left Mei Yin behind.
He splashed through rice paddies and tripped across muddy fields, falling more than once. But he didn’t slow to a walk until homes came into sight.
He’d finally done right by his lost bride, leaving her alone in the graveyard where she belonged. He understood now: by dying before she married him, she’d escaped a lonely fate. Because, much as he loved her, deep down he’d always intended to leave.
The Kei Lun was a protector of the kind-hearted, who only pursued evil men. The Kei Lun had come for him.
He turned to look back the way he’d come. Both Kei Lun and Mei Yin were gone. He was alone. Maybe that wasn’t a curse, like everyone else thought. Maybe it was an open door.
***
He hunched over his knees to catch his breath, then looked up to see where his feet had carried him. Not back to his village but Mei Yin’s village, to her father’s Western style mansion, to stand before its majestic double doors perched with painted birds. Not to see her father but her brother. Bing Sam was his natural ally for what he must do next.
The time had come to talk to his friend, to remind him he had a full life ahead even if his father didn’t. Old Mr. Ma still suffered headaches, ringing in one ear, and difficulty moving his left arm where the bandits tore his shoulder. Yan Chi was sorry for his misfortune, but it left an opening for him: to accompany Bing Sam to America in his father’s place.
He strode up to the oversized doors, lifted one of the gold rings, and knocked. Though the house stood two fat stories tall, the right-hand door flew open in almost no time. Bing Sam stepped out of the dark house in a rumpled robe, finger to his lips, and gently shut the door behind him. Despite his crazed hair, he looked wide awake. But he remained silent and led Yan Chi to the Git Ngon village pond, so they could talk without waking anyone.
Yan Chi raised a brow. “Waiting up for someone?”
“Only for sleep. It takes longer to arrive than before.”
“That makes sense.” For the first time since he’d cradled Mei Yin’s severed head in his arms, he looked his friend in the eyes. When had they grown dull as an old man’s eyes?
Bing Sam cleared his throat. “Why have you come at this hour? Is everything all right?”
“No. Nothing has been right for a year. I’ve become a ghost…or less than that. At Ching Ming people talk to their ghosts, but nobody in Gong Hau speaks to me since your sister died.”
“Don’t you think I know that? It’s the same for me.”
“It is?” How had he failed to notice this?
“I was at the cave too, remember?”
“But nobody blames you.”
“Maybe not. But they’re afraid of catching my bad luck.”
Yan Chi nodded understanding. “Then I propose we give them what they want.”
“Which is?”
“For us to leave the eleven villages and take our bad luck with us.”
“Where will we go?”
He gave Bing Sam an astonished look. “America of course.”
“You forget, we’ve lost everything. Where will we get money for our passage?”
“I’ve decided to take my inheritance early.” He braced himself, ready for objections.
Instead, Bing Sam folded his arms and said, “I’m listening.”
Yan Chi wasn’t sure his plan would work, only that he must answer Gold Mountain’s call. What would he do when he got there? Who cared? Anything must be better than wasting his life here, trudging muddy fields that didn’t yield enough food, watching from a lonely tower for bandits who didn’t return, waiting for redemption that never came.
11. In the Wagon
1911 – Chihuahua, Mexico
The wind fell to an unsettling hum, like notes on an untuned guitar. In the dark, Candelita heard coughs and groans, then a snap and hiss, followed by the smell of a burnt match. Padre Eladio said hell stank like that. She tugged her bandana from her eyes, revealing Mamá’s face haloed in the glow of a lantern—which explained the lit match. Benito set the lantern on a box and turned up the flame till it smoked. Her family’s faces were a shocked patchwork of dirt, surrounded by dented cans and broken bottles. She smiled. If this was hell, at least they were together.
Papá looked from Benito to Miguel, his face stern. “Miguel, apologize to Señor Chung.”
Miguel looked down. “Sorry I kicked you when you wouldn’t let me out of the tarp. I understand you only wanted to protect me…Señor Chung.”
Benito nodded. “You only wanted to reach your mother and sisters. And you saved us.”
She hadn’t thought of that. If not for Miguel’s stupid whistle, Papá, Benito, and Lalo might’ve been lost forever.
“Can we go outside?” Graciela asked.
“When the sun returns,” Benito said.
Graciela set her elbows on her thighs and her cheeks on her fists. “Tell us a story!”
He chuckled, the way people always did before they knew her sister’s demands were serious. Then he leaned back to study his battered audience.
They leaned toward him, musky with fear, waiting for him to deliver escape.
“Pues entonces…” Benito folded his hands between his knees and began: “One moonless night long ago, the stars shined so bright they could see each other from far across the sky. That night a girl star and boy star fell in love at first sight. Now, it was against the rules of heaven for stars to marry. How would travelers find their way at night if stars ran away, paired up, and gave birth to new stars?
“Well, word of their forbidden love reached the girl’s grandma, the powerful Queen of Heaven. Furious, she flung her granddaughter’s lover to earth as a shooting star.”
“I’ve seen those!” Lalo said. “Mamá says they’re God’s spears. He throws them at the devil’s snakes to stop them from making storms and wars.”
“Your mamá is wise. And most of the time those shooting stars are God’s spears. But this time, it was a boy star being punished by the Queen of Heaven.”
“Is she the Blessed Virgin?” Graciela asked.
“It’s a story,” Miguel said. “It’s not real.”
Couldn’t her family ever shut up? “What happened to the stars?” Candelita asked.
“Good question. After he fell to earth, the boy star was reborn a mortal. He became second son to a farmer and wife and forgot his old life in the sky. Meanwhile, the queen punished the girl star. She made her work at a loom day and night, weaving colorful silk into clouds.”
“Like red and purple clouds at sunset,” Candelita interrupted without thinking, then clapped both hands over her mouth.
“¡Exactamente!” They all stifled grins at Benito’s Chinese accent.
“When the boy’s parents grew old and died, he stayed with his elder brother and his brother’s wife, working as a cowherd on the family farm. But the brothers fought a lot, until the older brother threw him out.”
“I can imagine that,” Lalo said.
Miguel bumped his shoulder. “So can I.” They both laughed.
Benito smirked as if he knew all about brothers. “The elder brother refused to give the Cowherd anything except an old ox and a broken-down cart. Luckily, the Cowherd had saved enough coins to buy a tiny plot of land. The ox helped him plow it, and together they grew rice till the Cowherd could afford a herd of cows all his own.”
Benito paused as the canvas rustled and snapped in the wind. Then he continued, “Time passes differently in heaven. For the Weaver Girl, only a few lonely days had gone by. Then a group of fairies decided to fly to the mortal world to bathe in Bi Lian Lake. The fairies pitied the Weaver Girl, so they begged the queen to give her a holiday. The queen, who loved her granddaughter really, decided she’d punished her enough and let her go with them.
“That same day, for the first time, much to the Cowherd’s astonishment, the Ox spoke! You see, he used to be a star too, and when the Cowherd fell to earth, he’d followed to look after him. ‘Master,’ Ox said, ‘Go to Bi Lian Lake. You’ll find fairies bathing there. They’ll leave their dresses on a rock. Take the red one. The fairy who owns it will be your bride.’
“The Cowherd was lonely for human company. So, trusting his faithful Ox, he walked to the lake, hid amid the trees, and waited. As Ox predicted, fairies flew down from the sky.”
“What did they look like?” Candelita asked.
“They had wings in every color of the rainbow,” Benito said, “with dresses to match. Once they landed, they took off the dresses, set them on a rock, and waded into the lake.”
She bit back a grin. She used to swim naked with the other children of Mata Flores in the stream that fed the acequia.
“While the fairies splashed and laughed, the Cowherd snuck out from the trees, snatched the red dress, and darted back to hide. But he stepped on a branch, it snapped, and they spotted him. A man had seen them! They grabbed their dresses in a panic and flew back to heaven”—he smiled at Candelita—“rising from the lake like butterflies, till only the Weaver Girl remained.
“The Cowherd still had her dress, so she was embarrassed to get out of the water. Then they caught one another’s eyes, saw the starlight there, and instantly recognized each other.
“The Cowherd’s memories returned. He said, ‘I’ll give back your dress, if you’ll be my wife.’
“The Weaver Girl cried tears of joy. ‘When I saw you fall in a blaze of fire, I thought I’d never see you again. Of course I’ll be your wife.’ He handed her the dress, and she put it on as she rose from the water.
“‘But how will we hide from the queen?’ he asked.
“‘She’s not interested in Earth. She’ll never find us here.’”
Candelita gasped, but no one else reacted. Couldn’t they tell the lovers were doomed?
