Air (or Have Not Have)

'You have been so kind.'

Kwan looked sombre. 'We have been through a lot together.'

'Oh! You could say that ten times and it would still not be enough!'

'But we came through.'

'We came through.'

Kwan hugged her. 'You can still stay, you know.'

Mae touched her arm. 'I really do not know what I would have done if my friend Wing Kwan had not been so kind. There would have been nowhere else for me to go. But the time comes, even with family, when one must leave.'

Kwan nodded.

So Mae took her one carpetbag, and another bag of food and fuel, and set out across the courtyard. Her slippers scrunched on the snow, and her breath rose up as vaporous as a fading memory. She knew Kwan would be watching from her diwan. Mae held up a hand and waved goodbye without looking back.

The Wang household was the first door she passed, on the corner of upper and lower streets.

It had been her home through most of her childhood. Mae stopped and looked at the doorstep. The single step would always get muddy and she and her older sister did not want anyone to think of them as dirty, so every day for ten years they had scrubbed it. The water in the plastic bucket was always cold.

Mae now brushed the snow off the step with her slipper. Here, in this house, Mae had slept in one tiny bedroom with two sisters. Their mother had slept on cushions on the diwan. Her brother and an uncle shared a room. The Iron Aunt kept the main bedchamber for herself. It was a fatherless house full of work and worry.

Mae realized she felt guilty for neglecting her mother. She felt a sullen resentment that her mother had not been to see her. She felt awkwardness and she felt a kind of twist of triumph. She felt many things she did not like herself feeling.

Come on Mae, she told herself. She knocked on the front door.

Her sister-in-law opened it, to a sudden swelling sound from within of a baby wailing. Her sister-in-law's face drooped and then froze, mouth open.

'Li-liang, may I come in?' Mae heard herself ringing a sweet little bell voice, which was designed to put rude people in the wrong.

'Uh… Mae. Hello.' Her sister-in-law was not an independent person. If there was a surprise, she could take no action without Ju-mei. 'Ju-mei!' she shouted. 'Your sister is here!'

And still outside in the snow, Mae thought, smiling like a row of tinkling windchimes.

My family really is as bad as I think they are, she decided.

The sister-in-law stepped back out of view, leaving the door hanging open and Mae standing outside. Mae heard steps.

Her brother Ju-mei's voice was dim. 'Why is the door open?'

Mae was not in a tolerant mood. 'Because your wife does not want to invite me in and does not have the courage to slam it in my face,' said Mae.

'I had my baby to look after!' said Young Mrs Wang..

Ju-mei swelled suddenly into the doorway. He needed a shave, his shirt was untucked, and Mae knew: They did not want me to see them as ordinary, scruffy, and so hated answering the door. That is the Wang family way: to be rude in order to preserve good appearances. I am probably the same.

'I am moving back into my old house,' Mae announced. 'I can afford to rent it from my friend Sunni Haseem.'

Ju-mei snorted. Friend? Haseem? And yet there was doubt. What if they were friends again?

'My business will move back there as well.' Mae kept smiling. 'I am sure you will be pleased that it is doing very well. And since the house has so long been in the family Chung, I was wondering if Old Mr Chung and my brother-in-law Mr Chung Siao would not like to occupy it with me.' Mae smiled. 'So. You see, I have not come to trouble you. I really wish to speak to the Chung family.'

'And not your own family,' growled Ju-mei.

'My own family does not invite me into their house, even when it is snowing. From that, I conclude I am not welcome. I do not wish to intrude.'

Ju-mei was very angry with her. 'Very well,' he said – and closed the door in Mae's face.

Mae heard a singsong wailing from behind the wooden door. That, she realized, would be Mama. She had time to wonder if Ju-mei had actually wished to spare Mae a scene with Mama. Mama presented her life as a continuing tragic opera.

Then the door was flung open, and Mae's mother, wearing her Quivering Flower face, stood trembling in the doorway. She held her head back with defiant pride.

'How dare you! How dare you show your face at my doorway!'

'Mother, you're being silly,' said Mae.

'You talk to me! You judge me! When you have behaved as no woman should behave. When you brought shame to me – yes, me. What do you think people are saying about me: "There she goes, the woman who cannot control her wild daughter, who brings down respectable life in the village." I cannot believe you would do that to me!'

'I didn't do it to you, Mother, I did it to myself.'

'Everything you do, you do to me. When your father was killed…'

Here we go, sighed Mae.

You can tell the truth so often that it becomes a lie.

Mae had not spent a day in her mother's presence without Mama telling yet again the full story of how their brave father was shot by the Communists, and how she was left alone in the world with three young babies. Then followed the sacrifice, the work, and the endless worry, only to be repaid with desertion and coldness. Then – and this was best of all – how she had never complained, was always silent, had left the past behind her, but now… now, because of Mae's behaviour, was forced to speak of what had been left behind.

'You! You! You have made me cry, you have made me remember, you have broken my triumph over these terrible memories!'

'I need to speak to Mr Chung,' repeated Mae.

Her mother by now was wracked with sobs, and Ju-mei was holding her, patting her and glowering at Mae.

'You see-hee-hee!' her mother sobbed. 'She cannot admit she was wrong!'

'I was wrong,' said Mae.

'You see! She has no remorse!'

'It was a disruptive thing I did.'

'She has no feeling. She has not been to see me once! She was staying next door, and she would not deign to see me! She does not care that I am old and sick and alone!'

Suddenly, Siao in his T-shirt had inserted himself sideways past the Wangs, and his steady face was wrinkled in an embarrassed smile. There was no accusation in the face at all. Mae saw at once: He had absolutely had his fill of the Wangs. She also saw his Karz blue-grey eyes, and his fine dark beard, and his slim workman's arms. She found herself thinking: He has grown up.

'Come home?' Mae asked him.

Siao nodded yes, very slightly. 'It would be pleasant to be in my old house,' he said.

'I am sorry for what happened,' Mae said.

Siao stayed smiling and calm, while his shoulders equivocated. 'It was a terrible thing you did.'

Mae nodded. Yes.

Siao turned back to the doorway. 'Mr Wang…' he began. 'I must speak to my father.'

'You cannot go back with that woman after what she has done!' roared Mr Ju-mei.

Siao rocked slightly in place. 'I am so grateful for what you have done for us, but I am aware that we cannot stay as guests for ever. It is a burden for you. Please, I am very cold, we all are, can we not simply ask Mae to come inside?'

'Never!' wailed her mother.

Ju-mei stood up straight. 'You heard what my mother said.'

His wife chipped in: 'The baby is freezing.'

Siao nodded once, politely, and smiling, stepped inside. 'Just a moment, Mae, I will not be long,' he said, bowing slightly. He closed the door.

When he opened it again, he had Old Mr Chung with him. The old man looked confused now. He had on a filthy quilted jacket, with his box of tools. 'Is it a job?' he asked, looking eager.

Still in his T-shirt, Siao stepped outside with his father into the snow and closed the door after him.

'Your family has been very generous to us,' he said to Mae. Mae saw his bare arms and took off her coat and put it around Siao's shoulders.

They were all cold. Mae spoke quickly: 'The house is restored to you as long as I can pay rent. The business is now in the barn. How are you, Old Mr Chung-sir?'

'Ready. Ready,' the old man said, stepping in place as if held back by a harness. 'They are driving me crazy.'

'Father, that is rude.'

Old Mr Chung looked at Mae. 'I know they are your family…'

Mae heard herself say, 'You are my family. Whatever was between me and Joe, I always loved his family.'

The old man blinked. 'We loved you.'

The door blurted open like an awkward remark. Ju-mei stood glowering at the door. 'You keep a poor old man outside!' he accused Mae.

'Then perhaps you can let us inside,' said Mae.

Mae won. Reluctantly Ju-mei admitted her. Her mother sat enthroned and avoiding her gaze. Young Mrs Wang had taken the baby elsewhere. The inside of the house, as always, was as empty and as clean as an iceberg. The tiny brazier did nothing to warm it. On the wall was the framed photograph of all of them as children, and another photograph of her father, so familiar that it looked nothing like him.

Mae's mother cowered in black trousers and jacket and a long flowered scarf. She looked tiny and frail and unhappy. There is nothing in her to be frightened of, Mae thought. Then she thought: Frightened?

Siao said, bowing, 'We have decided to take Mae's kind offer.' Something in the way he said it made Mae realize: Siao is head of the family now. Joe's going has been good for him.

Ju-mei glowered. 'I cannot believe you will accept any help from that woman.'

'We have taken much already from her family who owed us nothing and were so kind to make space for us in their home,' said Siao. 'We are impoverished and through our own efforts have lost everything we inherited. At least this way, there may be some small illusion that we live in our own home.'

Ju-mei glowered at Mae. 'Your sentiments are noble, Siao, and I can only add that I am deeply ashamed that my own sister has left you in such a terrible situation. You have been an ideal guest…'

Ah, thought Mae, they've all been driving each other crazy.

'… and I feel that as a mark of my respect and affection for you that I will assist in carrying your cases and goods.'

He wants to see what is going on, thought Mae.

And he did. Ju-mei went into the barn and saw the giant weaver with its lights and display, and its speaking voice. His eyes boggled.

'You make money from this?'

Mae used her little formula: five hundred collars at ten dollars each.

Ju-mei looked so forlorn that part of Mae wanted to hug him. He looked like such a disappointed little boy: he pouted and looked sad and yearning, and hung his head. Ju-mei had always thought that if someone had something, they had got it by stealing it from him.

'Tuh. Who will work for a woman like you?'

'About half the village,' chuckled Siao, 'since it makes them so much money. Your sister has appeared in the New York Times' He even gave his sister-in-law a little hug about the shoulders.

'Hmm. And you think you can run a business of this size by yourself?'

'Oh, I do not think that,' said Mae, ringing her little bell voice. 'I know I can. So I will not be needing your help.'