Candlelight Bridge, page 7
The day before the Ching Ming Festival, a year after his bride’s death, Yan Chi rose early to walk through his village, hoping to avoid people. Because Mei Yin died before the wedding, he still lived in the House of Waiting Grooms, but he walked to his father’s house for breakfast each morning. Drizzle again entombed the eleven villages. Here in Bok Nan, pine smoke from cooking fires clawed the mist like ghostly fingers as women in every house began their long day preparing feasts for the ancestors. Ching Ming was a festival of opposites: it meant Clear Bright yet brought only clouds; it was a time to plant for spring’s rebirth yet also to feed the dead.
Mei Yin once stalked his heart, but now memories of her life, or even her grim death, prompted little feeling in him. He didn’t romanticize the past. Yet, since her death, the covert glances of his cousins told him that his stoicism made others uneasy. They seemed to see it as stoniness of heart rather than acceptance of reality.
These days the only memory that brought tears to his eyes was his last encounter with Hong Kong’s salt sea air. He yearned to return to Victoria Harbor and set sail across The Peaceful Ocean bound for The Beautiful Country, America. There, he imagined riding a train through the Wild West, in search of the bison carved into his lost American rifle, legendary creatures even his brother had never seen, cousins to the Kei Lun. But even with Mei Yin gone, his parents expected him to stay home and work the farm. And now that she’d been gone a year, they also expected him to accept a new bride to work with him.
He approached his father’s house, where his mother wailed a muk yu song that burst through her open kitchen door, mixed with sounds of pounding, chopping, and sizzling. Her cooking songs were always chaotic, scattered with her moody interpretations of their family story:
The willow branch, hung bright and green,
awaits death at the door.
Though I am bent and dried with age,
young men come home once more.
It was enough to make him consider turning back. He sighed and ducked under the young willow branch hung over the door to welcome Grandpa’s spirit, only to recoil when he saw a disembodied head floating in a veil of smoke. His first thought was, Mei Yin? But her half-remembered voice chided him, You don’t believe in ghosts, remember? His eyes adjusted to the dimness, revealing it was only Mama’s square head poised over a steaming wok as she stirred hot water, rice, and bits of pork to make their morning juk. Once a famed beauty, in the years since his baby brother’s death, a permanent frown split her forehead, lines spread from there like cracked mud, and gray hairs sprang from the stern bun at her neck. Her song wasn’t wrong.
“What’re you staring at?” she accused.
“The prettiest mama in all Gong Hau.” He offered a dimpled smile.
She snorted. “And you’re the blindest son. Come here.” She took his cheeks between her hands, peered into his eyes, then gave a mournful shake of her head as if it hurt to look at him.
“I know you’re happy to see me,” he said, though he wasn’t so sure. “You can’t fool me.”
“Hmph, anyone can fool you.” She waved a hand as if to erase her words and start over. “I’m only sad to see you alone. I’ll be happier once the matchmaker finds your new bride.”
Unexpected rage flushed through him. “Maybe the matchmaker is letting my first bride finish her journey to the afterlife before replacing her.”
“Hush! How dare you talk to me this way? As if I’m responsible for her death.”
“No, I’m responsible, Mama. I should’ve run straight to the cave to save her, not wasted time going to Hong Kong for the money.”
She turned to punish her garlic cloves with brusque little chops. “Nobody thinks that.”
“Everybody thinks that. They whisper, ‘He left with a rifle but came back with a head.’”
She turned back to him, jaw clenched, tears in her eyes. “Let them dare say it to me!”
“To the fiercest mother in Gong Hau? Nobody would dare.” He clapped a hand over her shoulder, uncomfortable staying angry with her.
She covered his hand with hers, patted it, and flung it away. Then she turned to the largest bowl on her crowded counter and stirred its contents with a wooden spoon, declaring an end to the subject. He refused to be dismissed, leaning over her to inhale the smells of childhood: red bean curd, five-spice powder, soy, oyster sauce, and honey, folded with fat bites of barbecued pork. All to create the filling for his favorite steamed buns: cha siu baau. He knew better than to compliment her cooking—she’d scold him for making the ancestors jealous.
Instead, he said, “You work too hard, Mama!”
“You’re not helping, lazy! Move-move-move! You’re in my way.”
He stepped left just as she tried to slip past him in that direction. Then he dodged right, only to cut her off again.
She grabbed his arms and dragged him to the table. “Sit-sit-sit.” Then she set out the steaming teapot and two cups for morning cha.
“What about Baba?”
“The second one’s for him,” she said, then shouted at the ceiling, “if he ever gets out of bed! I have too much to do.” With that she scurried out of the house.
She hadn’t always been so moody. When he was small, he’d wrap his arms and legs around her leg and cry, “Don’t go!” She’d walk away with him riding atop her foot, pretending not to notice him till she swung him up into her arms and they both burst into giggles. Each year made her harder to charm.
This time, he was glad she left. It would be easier to convince Baba to put off this betrothal business. He wanted not a new bride but a new life.
***
The moment Mama left, a creak announced Baba sneaking down the ladder from the loft. Yan Chi used to sleep up there near his parents till he turned fourteen and moved to the House of Waiting Grooms. Nobody slept in the newer downstairs bedroom, which they’d partitioned off for his parents to live in so Yan Chi and Mei Yin could take the loft. Now his father stepped before the door of the unused room and winked, one eye disappearing in a tree-knot of wrinkles.
Yan Chi laughed. “Hoping to escape the Ching Ming storm, Baba?”
“Your mama stirs up the kind of storm no mortal man can outrun.”
“So you hide like a mouse?”
Baba shook his head. “Have you seen what she does to mice?” He pointed to a gouge in the floor.
Yan Chi chuckled. “You think we’ll finish planting rice today?” He poured the tea.
Baba sat down, took a long sip, and said, “I don’t see why not. There’s not much left to do—and I’m not as old as I look. When you’re my age, you’ll be lucky to have half my stamina.”
“Maybe I won’t arrive at your age by the same road.”
Baba set down his cup and wiped a wet tea leaf from the rim. “What road then? You know we can’t afford to send another paper son to America.”
This threw Yan Chi. He hadn’t expected his scheme to be dismissed before he ever proposed it. “Why not?” he blurted. “My brother sends home plenty of money.”
“True. But buying the name of an American son is expensive, especially at your age, already twenty-one. And when I’m gone, someone must take my place, to care for our ancestors and their land.” Baba spoke not in anger but as one who instructs a beloved yet errant child.
“Nei hai ngaam ge,” Yan Chi conceded the point though inside he still bristled.
His father reached out and rubbed his arm, and this fleeting approval calmed him.
Baba let go his arm the moment Mama bustled inside, clutching to her chest a dripping silver carp from the pond. “It always rains at Ching Ming,” she chuckled, shaking drops from her glistening hair. Yan Chi laughed obediently though he didn’t find the saying funny anymore. She gutted the carp and dumped it into a pot of boiling water, but it made a reflexive leap to the floor. Stupid ghost fish didn’t know it was dead. She bent, grasped head and tail, forced her captive back in the pot, and slammed the lid, leaning on it till the stove stopped rattling. She turned to the men with a triumphant grin. Mama was only half his size, but she still frightened him.
She scurried to ladle juk into their bowls, then resumed cooking for the dead. Yan Chi and Baba slurped their rice porridge as fast as possible. When Mama bent over the wok stove to hurl more wood into the fire, Baba saw his chance. He slipped out the door unnoticed. But Yan Chi couldn’t resist sneaking a boiled egg from the counter.
“Aiya! That’s for the ancestors! You want bad luck? Out-out-out!” Mama grabbed the dried willow branch she’d cut to sweep the family tombs and used it to sweep him out the door.
He ran to catch up to Baba. Together, they headed to the rice paddies and hitched the ancient ox to the plow. Baba insisted on doing the plowing himself, and Yan Chi didn’t argue, though the sight made him itch with irritation: Baba’s chest curved inward and the ox’s back swayed downward as the plodding pair strained to push the single-blade plow through heavy mud.
Yan Chi snatched up a tray of rice seedlings and stepped into the next paddy. Lowered a seedling through ankle-deep water, pushed it into mud, and stepped forward to push in another. For him, Ching Ming conjured neither reverence for the dead nor the promise of new life, merely another year burying his youth and unearthing disappointment.
Stoop, push, step. Stoop, push, step.
7. Horse Thieves
1910 – Chihuahua, Mexico
This time, Candelita’s mother refused to hand her a knife. She insisted on battling the prickly pear cactus alone. “No sense both of us tearing our skin,” Mamá said, though she still tried to teach her how to harvest nopales without getting scratched: raising her knife in one rag-covered fist, gripping a thorny pad in the other, severing it at the joint. But Candelita’s attention fixed on the nearby hut where Papá and a one-armed man sat atop sacks of grain murmuring urgently.
The one-armed man was her father’s primo, letting them stay the night with him here in the outskirts of Corralitos in the Sierra Madre foothills. He’d lost his left arm in a cave-in at the silver mine up the canyon, a mine called Candelaria, like her. He gestured as he talked, and his stump twitched with the same nervous rhythm as his uninjured arm. It looked like a twist of chorizo. She couldn’t recall his name, only Lalo’s nickname for him: Primo Chorizito. She’d scolded Lalo, but Primo Chorizito overheard and clapped the boy’s back with a hearty laugh.
Whatever Papá was saying now had the opposite effect. Why was Primo frowning so hard? If only Mamá would stop talking so she could hear them.
She gave up on both parents and followed a splashing sound to its source: the cool green throat of the arroyo beyond the hut, where Lalo and Graciela were stalking frogs. In a shallow pool between twisted oaks, Lalo crouched, still and silent. His hands shot out and trapped one. He stared into its bulging eyes till it squirmed free, then wagged a finger after it, “We’ll meet again, Señor Rana!” Graciela chased the escapee, sending more frogs hopping. Lalo clapped a palm to his forehead. “You’re scaring them away!” He gave up, laughing, and splashed with her. Candelita hiked her skirt to join the hunt just as a loud clatter rolled down the canyon.
She looked up to see Miguel sprinting toward them through the canyon’s stream, waving his arms, shouting, “Someone’s coming!”
This is it, she thought, not knowing what it might be, only that it terrified her. She picked up Graciela, Miguel picked up Lalo, and they ducked into the brush. They held their breath, peering between branches. A mud-spattered Appaloosa and rider flew round a bend in the stream, hooves kicking up spray. The horse charged toward the hut at the canyon’s mouth, where her father and Primo Chorizito leapt to their feet.
The breathless young rider pulled to a stop and, between gasps, shouted from astride the horse, “Papá…a journalist named Guerrero…and a band of rebels…stole the train from Juárez.”
The rider’s excitement suggested this was good news. But the way Papá chewed his cheek and Primo twitched his chorizo arm, she knew the news worried them.
“How many, mijo?” Primo asked the rider, apparently his son.
The son shook his head. “Maybe a dozen, maybe a hundred. They’re at the mine.”
“Then they’ll be here in a couple of hours!”
“No. They’re dynamiting the bridges so the federales can’t follow. That’s how I beat them here. But they could arrive by nightfall.”
His father told him to alert the town, and he galloped away.
Mamá walked toward them, dragging her bag of freshly scraped nopales like an afterthought. Only then did Miguel lead the children out of the bushes. All four siblings stared at Mamá, waiting. Back home, she would’ve told them what to do. Here, she looked to Papá. His gaze brushed the top of each child’s head. “We’re leaving.”
Primo offered food and ammunition. Papá accepted the food but refused the bullets. “You’ll need those. As for us, we’ll either make it to Ascensión or we won’t.” Primo then drew a map in the dirt with a stick. Papá hunkered down to watch.
Lalo tried to join them, but Mamá shepherded him and the other children toward the shack. “¡Apúrate! Get your things.”
Miguel hung back. “I’m staying to fight.” He turned to Papá and raised a fist in the air. “¡Viva la revolución! Better to die in battle like a man than hide in the desert like a mouse.”
Papá charged at him, but Mamá was faster. She stepped between them and slapped Miguel so hard he staggered. She pressed her palm to her mouth, eyes brimming and voice shaking as she said, “We are your people!” She had spanked them all before, but neither she nor Papá ever hit any of them in the face, till now.
Miguel’s chin jutted higher, cheek crimson with her handprint, but he said nothing.
Papá rested a hand on his shoulder. “Mijo, I’m not against this fight. But as men, we protect our family first, or the rest means nothing. Do as your mother says.”
Miguel shook him off and slouched into the hut. Candelita followed. It was dim inside, sun filtered through one dusty window, but she still saw the movement he tried to hide, swiping both palms across his eyes. He lugged two bags out front and called her and Lalo to join him.
“You two carry these—”
“You’re leaving?!” Lalo’s voice rang with dismay.
“No. You’ll carry these, so I can carry Graciela.” He locked eyes with Candelita.
She wanted to protest. Her parents only ever asked her to watch the little ones. Miguel was too rough, picked on them, acted like he didn’t even like them. She carried Graciela for three days, not him. But his eyes were determined. She knew why. She nodded.
He crouched and held his arms out to Graciela.
She threw her doll at him and clung to Candelita’s waist. “No! Want my sister!”
“Mamis, we have to run far. You’re too heavy for me!” She poked Graciela’s middle.
Graciela sucked her tummy away from the offending finger, her face stricken.
Miguel picked up the doll and held it out to her.
She turned her question-mark frown on Lalo.
He nodded. “Miguel is the strongest, Gracielita. He’ll take good care of you.”
Her eyes still on Lalo, she accepted the doll from Miguel, climbed onto his back, and wrapped her arms round his neck. He wrapped his hands round her ankles.
“Don’t let go!” Candelita and Lalo said in unison—her warning Miguel, him warning Graciela.
Within minutes, burdens reshuffled, the Riveras trotted back into the desert, Candelita at the rear, eyes on Graciela.
A sudden thunder in the silence sent a hot sting of anxiety through her. She looked overhead but saw neither lightning nor clouds. Her father looked over his shoulder, and she followed his gaze to the shrinking town of Corralitos, where tiny people scurried like grains of sand stirred by wind. A column of smoke rose between the hills. “Guerrero must have blown the last bridge,” Papá said. “We should hurry. Someone might notice us and get curious.”
She and Lalo struggled to keep up with Miguel, who didn’t slow despite Graciela’s weight. The siblings formed a ragged line, wheezing in chorus. Each breath knifed her gut. The sun went down in flames, which burned away to dusk. If she fell in the dark, would they see her, or run on without noticing?
A drawn-out inhuman wail stopped them all in their tracks.
“What’s that?” Graciela asked.
“The train,” Miguel said.
The train didn’t make the playful noise she and Lalo had mimicked their first day in the desert. It howled like a beast. As if this were a signal, she sank to her knees, pressed her forehead to the earth, and clutched the invisible stab wound in her side.
“Viejo, the children can’t run anymore, and neither can I,” Mamá said.
“I’ll carry you, mija.” She looked up to see Papá kneeling before her, his face so crumpled with concern, she felt guilty for giving up.
“No hay problema.” She pressed down on his shoulders to push herself onto her feet.
The family slowed to a walk. If it was for her sake, they never said and she never asked.
A short time later she heard popping, like young wood in a cook-fire. They all turned again to stare at Corralitos, no more than a distant ember trembling in the dusk.
“What’s that?” Graciela asked again.
“Guns,” Papá said.
Miguel and Lalo used to chase through Mata Flores pretending to shoot at each other, made noises like clearing their throats until one or the other clutched his chest, fell, and groaned. This didn’t sound like that. Between gunshots, distant shouts skimmed the night air. Impossible to tell at this distance if they were raised in celebration, anger, or dismay. Maybe all three. A single shriek pierced through it all, only to be cut short. Woman? Man? Primo Chorizito?
The family staggered on until the next sound closed in: galloping hooves. She expected to see Primo’s son on his freckled Appaloosa. But this horse was red as clay except for a white blaze on his forehead. His saddle sat empty. He flew past, eyes crazed, whites showing. She’d never seen anything so beautiful. Despite his obvious distress, he ran with purpose, as if he knew where to go. Papá gave a long, low whistle as the beast vanished into the indigo twilight.
