Hainan Dao

Book II Chapter 07

HAINAN DAO BOOK II

CHAPTER 07

It was the summer of 1948. In two months, Ahbi was going to be two years old.

The sun had already set, and Shuying was in their bedroom, folding up the clothes that she had just brought in off the clothesline. Days were long on the Island, but she never noticed it. She was always too busy to notice it.

She looked away from her hands for a moment, as they continued with the task on their own. She didn’t need to watch them. They knew what they were doing. Instead, her eyes were focused on something not on the bed at all but beside it, a baby girl seated at a wooden desk, applying her will to a figure she was drawing on a piece of paper, with her brows furrowed and her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth. Shuying smiled and continued to fold the clothes. She shuffled over to place some of them into a dresser.

She didn’t know her husband had been watching her from the doorway.

“Shuying…”

She turned around. She smiled. “Oh, it’s you! What are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting you until late.”

“Baba!” Ahbi jumped out of her desk and attacked her father, ramming herself into his legs. He picked her up and they spun around and nearly fell.

Shuying laughed and went back to work.

Yixi eased over to sit down by the edge of the bed. He seated the baby in his lap. Gazing up into her father’s face, Ahbi scrunched up her eyes and began picking away at his chin. He pouted his lips at her. He poked at her nose. The baby became instantly fascinated by the ring on his finger and began twisting it around and around. He laughed. He glanced up.

His wife had her back to him. She was finishing up with the folding and putting the last of it away. He watched her. His eyes lingered on her waist, and how it would twist like it was going to break and fall off every time she bent down toward the bed. And the way her hair swayed with her every movement and seemed so heavy, like bells or ripened lichee, and he wondered that her neck was not tired.

He sighed.

Hearing it, she turned around. She sidled up to the bed and glanced into her husband’s face. “What’s wrong?”

He breathed in her presence, as she sat there, still, a twisted knot of anticipation. In his mind, he played back and tasted again the sweetness of her question, and the hundreds of other questions that she had not asked, but were there now, trailing out of her eyes and hanging in the air as dew drops. His eyes traced out the lines of her blouse that clung to the crevices on her body and he knew he would make all the right choices in his life.

“Husband, what’s wrong?”

His eyes widened. “What? Me? Nothing.”

“There’s something wrong. I can tell. Don’t lie to me, now. You know I can tell.”

Yixi’s eyes were uncertain, but only for a moment. He shook his head. “It’s nothing, really. I was just over to see Mother…”

“Oh…” Shuying nodded. She sighed. “How is she breathing now?”

“Good. A little better anyway. She told me to say thank-you.”

“That’s all right.”

“She woke up and saw the soup, but you weren’t there.”

“Oh.” She smiled. “She was sleeping when I went in. I didn’t wake her.”

He nodded. He pulled his finger away from the baby. He handed her to his wife.