Their divine fires, p.1
Their Divine Fires, page 1
Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
an imprint of Workman Publishing
a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
1290 Avenue of the Americas,
New York, NY 10104
The Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill name and logo are registered trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
© 2024 by Wendy Chen. All rights reserved.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024003555
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024003556
E3-20240326-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
The Zhang Family Tree
PART ONE: LIUYANG A Pair of Silver Scissors
The Arrival of a Stranger
The Girl Who Was the Hungry Ghost
A Trip Down the River
A Longed-For Reunion
What Was Promised
The One Who Brought Disaster
The Brother Who Returned Home
The One Who Could Never Return Again
PART TWO: NANJING The Bell That Calls the Dead
The One Who Cries
The Ones in Love
What Was Confessed
Sent Down to the Countryside
Ways to Accompany the Dead
A Dance Interlude: Beijing
PART THREE: MASSACHUSETTS The Stranger from China
Forever Red
The Birthmark That Was Also a Scar
What Is Inherited
The Choice She Made
PART FOUR: BEIJING What Is Left Behind
A House Made of Paper
The East Is Red
The Torn Photograph
A Birthday for the Future
Acknowledgments
Discover More
for Jun,
whose light shines the brightest
Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.
Tap here to learn more.
The Zhang Family Tree
PART ONE
LIUYANG
1917–1939
A Pair of Silver Scissors
“DON’T BE AFRAID, Mei Mei. Hold the scissors like this.”
But Mei Mei still hesitated. As she stood in the field, she watched the water ripple in the pond. The carp swam up to bite the surface with their hungry little mouths.
Da Ge bent down to grasp her hand within his. He showed her how to adjust her grip. Mei Mei stared at his long fingers enclosing hers, the ink stains on his fingertips. Her elder brother had the hands of a scholar.
“Mei Mei. Are you listening?” Da Ge touched her cheeks and she could see his dark eyes, framed by thick, sharply angled brows. “Do it quickly. In one cut.” Da Ge’s hand left her.
Mei Mei glanced at the house behind her. Inside, Ma Ma was wrapping the dumplings. Ba Ba was in his office, making medicines. Ge Ge was studying for his middle school exams. They did not know what she was about to do. But Da Ge did not give her time to doubt. He turned and knelt in front of her, baring the pale nape of his neck and his long, black braid. She touched it with the back of her hand.
Mei Mei wondered if he would feel pain when she cut his hair. Would it hurt him? Would it hurt her? Could she bear to do it?
The mountains at the edge of the horizon were gradually darkening in the evening light. Ma Ma had once told her the mountains were the ridges of a dragon’s back—a dragon that guarded them. Mei Mei had often been comforted by the thought, but today, there was something threatening about its shape.
Da Ge’s face was in shadow as he spoke. “You’d like the city, Mei Mei. Just outside the south gate, there is a mountain called Miaogao. If you climb to the very top, you can see all of Changsha.”
Mei Mei had tried many times to imagine the city that had transformed her brother. Lately, he carried himself differently—taller and sharper, like a reflection in the blade of a knife.
“When I first arrived, I saw the strangest thing in the Xiang River. There was an orange cloud floating right in the middle of the water. If you ever come to visit, I’ll take you to see it. They call it Juzi Isle—the island planted with a thousand orange trees. When you stand on the bank under the turning wind, you can almost smell the oranges flowering on the branch. The sight is like something out of a dream.”
Da Ge fell silent. Then, he looked at her. “Mei Mei, will you do it? For me?”
Mei Mei softened. This was Da Ge, who had told her stories deep into the night. Da Ge, who had carried her on his steady shoulders. Da Ge, who had prayed beside her to their ancestors.
She looked down at the scissors in her hand, at how they burned under the setting sun, a silver fire setting her alight. Swiftly, she grabbed his braid with one hand, and with the other, she brought the scissors up to the nape of his neck.
She cut.
She half-expected Da Ge to cry out in pain, but he was silent. Was it done? Just like that? The braid was a heavy weight in her hand, and now Mei Mei wanted more. To cut the sun from the sky. Cut the light from the water. Cut the earth between the two of them.
“Thank you, Mei Mei.” Da Ge felt the shorn ends of his hair, then rose to his feet. He took the braid and flung it into the pond. At first, the fish swarmed around it, biting eagerly. But soon, the braid sunk, disappearing into the depths. Da Ge began to laugh, his eyes glittering with tears. He picked Mei Mei up and swung her around, and the scissors fell.
Da Ge’s hair tossed loosely around his face, and Mei Mei’s heart eased. She couldn’t help but return his smile. She had never felt closer to her brother.
But suddenly, there was another pair of hands on her, wresting her away.
“What have you done? What have you done?” Ma Ma, who always spoke softly, was almost shouting now. Her eyes were wide, and her breath came fast. All of her voice, her entire body, was an accusation.
“How could you cut your hair? How could you dishonor yourself, dishonor us, this way?” Ma Ma trembled as she looked at Da Ge. “When you cut your hair, you are cutting into the body we have given you. The one our ancestors have given you. You are cutting yourself away from us.”
Mei Mei got up from the ground. She wanted to stand between the two of them, and she wanted to shrink away.
“I am not dishonoring any of us.” Da Ge looked resolutely into Ma Ma’s eyes. “The braid is our shame, a symbol of the Manchus. When we cut our hair, we are cutting it away. Honoring our country, our mothers, and our fathers.”
Ma Ma let out a bitter laugh. “You want to be like them? Is that it? Those foreign devils?”
Mei Mei had never seen her so angry. She was like a creature from a story, one who came out of the wild, earthy places.
“No, Ma Ma. It is time to let go of the old values.” Da Ge looked at her earnestly. “You said so yourself when Ba Ba wanted to bind Mei Mei’s feet. You said all should walk freely upon the earth.”
Ma Ma said nothing.
Mei Mei tugged on her mother’s shirt. She moved between them. “It was me. I did it.”
But neither was listening. Ma Ma pushed her away. Above her, they continued to fight, filling the sky with their voices. She pressed her hands against her ears and went to the dark place. The place that was safe, deep inside her. There, it was peaceful, like the pond filled with strands of slowly falling hair.
When Mei Mei opened her eyes again, she was alone next to the pond. Only the scissors remained, glinting through the blades of grass in the moonlight. She picked them up and held them before beginning to cut again.
THE NEXT MORNING, Da Ge was gone, having left before sunrise to return to Changsha. Ba Ba smeared Mei Mei’s palm with a pungent yellow ointment, then wrapped a fresh bandage around her hand.
“You must not be like Da Ge. You must not learn from him. Next time, you will not touch the scissors. Do you understand?” Her father’s voice was firm, his gaze forbidding. Though Da Ge had inherited the thick brows and wide, square jawline of their father, Ba Ba’s features held a severity within them that had only sharpened over time.
Mei Mei nodded, ashamed. She had thought Ma Ma and Ba Ba would be angry with her, too, for cutting her hair—just as angry as they were at Da Ge. But instead, they were only sad, and now she had no desire to touch the scissors again.
Mei Mei fidgeted in the chair. “Ba Ba, how long will you be gone this time?”
Her father’s eyes gentled. “For several days—perhaps even a week. I must tend to a little boy who is terribly ill.” Ba Ba ki
Her father sometimes spent up to a week on the road making his rounds to the houses of the sick in neighboring villages in Liuyang. He brought them pills and pastes in dark little jars. Mei Mei often watched him work, grinding the dried snakeskins, the dark grains of musk, or the red seedpods in the mortar until they turned into powder. A few times, Ba Ba had taken her along on shorter day trips. He would place her in front of him on the back of his mule and point out sights such as the giant stone turtle, frozen forever in time as punishment by the Heavens. “This is your chance to see the world,” Ba Ba would tell her, “before you settle down and get married.”
But Mei Mei didn’t ever want to get married if it meant she could never see the world again.
The houses they went to were sometimes large, fine manors; other times, they were little more than shoddy hovels leaning against the trees. Ba Ba treated his patients all the same, and he charged only what the family could afford.
Mei Mei was scared of the patients who were dressed in rags, so skinny they seemed carved out of wood rather than flesh. Once, she even saw a young child half her size breathe one long breath, and then no more. But her father told her there was nothing to be frightened of. In this life, they are the unfortunate ones, he told her. But in the next life, they may be reincarnated into a lord or lady. It all depended on the karma one accumulated through good deeds.
She didn’t want to be reincarnated as a beggar or maybe—if she was particularly bad—a cicada. She wanted to be a dragon in her next life. But to do so, she had to be good.
DURING BREAKFAST, MEI Mei observed her mother quietly from across the table. Usually, Mei Mei loved breakfast with just the two of them, in the golden spill of the morning when Ge Ge had already gone to school. But today, Ma Ma had been like a stone buried under snow.
“Are you still angry, Ma Ma?”
“No,” Ma Ma said, though a frown lingered around the corners of her mouth.
Mei Mei had always been told that she looked just like her mother. Their noses were both rounded at the tip. Their double eyelids folded exactly the same. Their pointed chins were mirror images. They had the same red birthmark on their chest—the size and shape of a thumbprint. But Mei Mei had a gangly build to her that Ma Ma did not. A certain sharpness to her elbows and knees. A knobbiness in her knuckles and toes. If Mei Mei was the branch of a tree, her mother was the root. Mei Mei hoped that one day she would grow into her mother’s grace. That her wrinkles, too—when she gained them—would make her seem as if she were always on the edge of a smile. But inside, Ma Ma was steely at her core.
After breakfast, Ma Ma braided Mei Mei’s hair in two neat plaits and bound them tightly at their ends with string. Usually, Mei Mei wore her hair in two buns on the top of her head, but with the new, jagged cuts she had made, she could no longer. The braids, however, disguised the places where her hair was choppy and short. When she was finished, Ma Ma knelt and placed her hands on Mei Mei’s knees. Then, she looked intently at Mei Mei and smoothed down her hair with both hands.
Ma Ma brushed a finger against the tip of her nose. “I’ve been thinking of what your brother said yesterday.” Ma Ma took Mei Mei’s bandaged hand in hers. “Mei Mei, would you like to attend school?”
“School?” Mei Mei’s heart began to race. She had always wanted to follow her brothers to school—the place that occupied Da Ge and Ge Ge’s days and filled them with such stories. But the one time she had asked to go with her brothers, Ba Ba had laughed—not unkindly—and Ma Ma had shaken her head. “That is a place for boys,” Ba Ba said. Afterward, Da Ge had caught her crying. When she told him of their parents’ refusal, he had sat her at his desk and began to teach her characters.
Lighting an oil lamp, Da Ge had cleared a space on the table and laid out a sheet of paper. From a drawer, he pulled out a flat, rectangular stone with a shallow well. He carefully filled the well halfway with water, then ground the inkstone against it. The water slowly blackened.
Da Ge dipped the tip of his brush into the ink and made a series of quick strokes on the paper.
“Do you recognize this character?” Da Ge asked.
Mei Mei studied the marks. The ink was lighter in places where it had already dried but dark and glossy in others. She looked up at her elder brother and shook her head.
“Zhang. Our family name.” Da Ge seemed disappointed but did not blame her. “I taught you once, a long time ago. It’s natural you might have forgotten.” Her brother wrote down another two characters. “Yun, for the clouds across the sky. Hong, for red, for happiness.”
Da Ge taught her more words. His name—Yunli. Ge Ge’s—Yunjun. The ink splashed down on the paper, one after another, like drops of rain. Before long, the paper was covered with Da Ge’s slender, precise marks and Mei Mei’s clumsy ones, some that bled into the other.
When they finished practicing, Da Ge stared down at her. “These are our names, Mei Mei. The ones that no one can ever take away from you. In them, there is the history of our family. For example, the Yun that marks us as siblings. The character you will never lose, even when you marry.”
“Like my birthmark,” Mei Mei said. This, she understood. It was the mark on her chest, Ma Ma had explained, that was passed down from mothers to daughters in their family. It came from an old legend in her bloodline—from a story that told of a daughter who had been lost in the mountains. Years later, when her mother found her again, a matching mark bloomed on both their chests—so they would never lose each other again.
“It is our history that sets us apart from other families,” Da Ge said. “History that sets others apart from us.” Da Ge was frowning now. “And when you marry, any name you take will have its own history. A history you can never part from, not even in death. That is why, Mei Mei, you must choose carefully. If only for your own sake.”
But ever since Da Ge left for Changsha for his studies, there had been no one to teach her. So now, with every passing day, she could feel herself forgetting the words she had so painstakingly memorized.
Mei Mei looked up at her mother. “I want to go.”
OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, Ma Ma opened the umbrella over them both. The road they took was wide and pooled with sunlight, the air still cool from yesterday’s rain. The trees that lined the road buzzed with cicadas. In the fields, men and women waded through the damp earth.
Ma Ma took her hand. Mei Mei tried to hide the trembling excitement of her body. She didn’t want her mother to think she was scared. She didn’t want her mother to change her mind. She took careful, steady steps and kept her gaze fixed straight ahead. In the distance, half-obscured with fog, the dragon continued to sleep, curled around the outskirts of Liuyang.
By the time they reached the schoolhouse, rain was pouring upon their umbrella. It streamed down the black tiled roof of the schoolhouse like hair. They walked up the stone steps of the entryway and continued down a long, musty hallway that echoed with the shouts of the students in their classrooms.
Ma Ma and Mei Mei stepped into one of the classrooms. The room was crowded with boys Mei Mei’s age—crowded with their chatter. Mei Mei looked at their faces, but her Ge Ge was not among them. He was in another classroom with other fourteen-year-old boys, laughing perhaps, as these boys were.
Ma Ma led her to the front, where an old man with a long white beard was standing. His coarse, dark robes added an air of solemnity, and to Mei Mei, he seemed like an immortal from a story, one who would be found walking barefoot through a bamboo forest, disguised as a humble teacher.
“Master Song,” Ma Ma said, greeting him respectfully, “this is my daughter. The one I spoke to you about.” Ma Ma smiled at the old man. “She’s ten years old and very smart for her age. Her elder brother has already been teaching her how to read basic characters.”
Master Song peered down at Mei Mei. “So, this is the little mei mei of Doctor Zhang’s family.”
“I was hoping,” Ma Ma said, “she could join your class.”
Master Song’s brows drew together, and after a pause, he said, “I have heard that other villages are opening schools for girls.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps you could find a place for her there.”
