“Let’s take a break,” she would suggest. “I’ll play you my favorite tune.”
Carie’s music never failed to cheer me up. When Carie was in a good mood, she would sing duets with me. I loved the sound we made together. If I began to get an idea about heaven, it was through singing with Carie.
“Willow, how I wish that I could take you to see America,” Carie said one day.
Carie spoke about her homeland. She said that she didn’t mean to live in China forever. It was her duty as a Christian wife to follow Absalom to China and set up her tent in the small town of Chin-kiang. It was not her choice, she emphasized.
I asked Pearl if she shared her mother’s feelings.
“Well, China feels more like home to me than America,” she replied matter-of-factly. Pearl hadn’t been to America since she was three months old. “ America is my mother’s real home and she says it’s mine too.” She paused and then added, “ America is where Mother comes from and where she wishes she could return.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“I have no idea where I will end up eventually.”
I asked if she missed America. She laughed. “How could I miss something I have no idea of?” I asked if she knew her relatives in America. “I know their names,” she replied, “but I don’t know them personally. My parents talk about my aunts, uncles, and my cousins. They are strangers to me. The only people I know besides my parents and sister are your people. I am afraid that one day my father will decide to return to America. I can’t imagine leaving China.”
I looked at her, trying to picture the moment of such a departure.
“In a way it is sad that my mother is not like her husband,” Pearl resumed after a while. “Absalom’s home is where God’s work is. He doesn’t care where he lives, be it America or China. My mother lives with a broken heart. As far as she is concerned, her life is as an exile. She holds on to her piano, because it is from her home.”
I had noticed the way Carie cared for her piano. Its legs were in slippers-Carie raised the piano from the packed earth to protect it from moisture. In Chin-kiang water came into the rooms at the end of each rainy season. Wooden furniture had to be put on bricks. We laid planks from room to room when the water was too high. Carie’s biggest concern was that mold would eventually destroy her piano.
We practiced for the Christmas performance. Carie had translated the lyrics from English to Chinese. Although I was literate in neither language, I liked the English version better. I told Carie that the sound of “Silent Night” in Chinese was not as beautiful as in English. Carie replied, “The beauty of a song shouldn’t matter as much as its message.”
Absalom had his highest attendance ever-the children’s singing drew people in from the streets on Christmas Eve. For the first time, I saw a big smile on Absalom’s face. To celebrate, he got rid of his fake Chinese queue and let his shoulder-length brown hair hang down. It took the crowd a while to get used to his new Western-man look. Papa told NaiNai that Absalom needed the success. He had returned from a rough tour recently. While Absalom was preaching in a neighboring village, he was beaten by folks who had never seen a foreigner in their lives and who thought that Absalom was there to do harm. Dogs were let out to chase him away.
Pearl showed me Carie’s yard. “Mother is determined to create an American garden. She brought plants from America. This is dogwood and that is a Lincoln rose, Mother’s favorite.”
“This looks like a Chinese butterfly flower.” I pointed at the dogwood. “And the Lincoln rose must be a cousin of the peony.”
“I am sure there is some sort of connection. Mother said God created nature the same way he did humans. What we see is God’s generosity.”
“Do you really believe in God, Pearl?” I asked.
“I do,” she said. “But you know me. I am also Chinese. Part of me can’t talk to my parents, not that they care.”
“Do you get confused too?” I asked carefully. “I mean, about God?”
She kicked a rock off the road. “It hurts me that God doesn’t respond to my mother’s prayers.”
“Is your mother mad at God?”
“Mother is angry at Father, not at God,” Pearl explained. “She is still unable to accept the deaths of my four brothers.”
“Is that why she doesn’t preach, even though her Chinese is much better than Absalom’s?” I asked.
Pearl nodded. “Mother wants to have faith in Father’s work, but she can’t convince herself. She told me that she has a hard time staying on the sunny side.”
“Your mother shows the goodness of God to us.”
“Mother says that she helps others because it helps in healing herself.”
“A woman hides her broken arm inside her sleeve,” I told Pearl, repeating something NaiNai had said. “Your mother abandoned her parents for her crazy husband.”
Pearl and I discovered that God had a strange way of making things work for Carie. At first she wasn’t able to get people to join Absalom’s church, but when she started to help the locals, attending their sick and dying, administering Western medicines for humans and animals while refusing money or gifts, the locals began to crowd the church.
Carie was concerned that I had become a distraction to Pearl ’s study. Absalom disagreed. He told her, “ Pearl is doing a great service to the Lord when she takes the opportunity to influence her friend.”
To encourage my friendship with his daughter, Absalom gave me gifts such as a picture of Christ by his own hand. Absalom put Pearl to work with me using his own translation of the Bible. We fooled around instead. Pearl had a hard time concentrating on doing God’s work. Only when we saw Absalom’s shadow passing by the window did we recite the Bible in dramatic, loud voices.
Carie set new rules for Pearl about spending time with me. She was only allowed to play after she completed her studying. Carie taught Pearl at home herself. Pearl was also given Chinese lessons by Mr. Kung, a chopstick-thin Chinese man in his fifties. I sat by Pearl ’s door and waited patiently. I noticed that Pearl often went ahead of Mr. Kung. She finished the novel All Men Are Brothers before the lesson even started. Pearl had told me that the novel was about a group of poor peasants who were driven into desperate situations and became bandits. In the story, they seek justice and become heroes. Mr. Kung was impressed that Pearl had memorized the novel’s one hundred and eight characters, but he criticized Pearl the way any Chinese teacher would. “A truly smart person…” Mr. Kung paused and smoothed his goat beard with his thumb and first finger before continuing, “… is the kind of person clever enough to hide her brilliance.”
“Yes, Mr. Kung,” Pearl answered humbly, and winked at me.
Papa celebrated the day Absalom made him a “Clergy.”
“I thought my best luck would be to become the church’s gateman.” Papa wept as he sat on the doorsill.
NaiNai was overwhelmed with happiness. “Promise me, son, you will honor Absalom by weathering the storms with him.”
Papa promised like a son of true piety. He told NaiNai that Absalom had started training him to be in charge of the Chin-kiang church.
“What will Master Absalom do when you take over?” NaiNai questioned.
“Absalom will work on expansion. He plans to go deep into the countryside.”
Papa told NaiNai that although he felt honored, he was having difficulty committing himself to God.
“Absalom has assigned a dog to be in charge of catching mice,”
NaiNai sighed. She worried that her son would let Absalom down.
Papa tried his best to play the part. He said that he would never admit that he was in it for the money. Papa told NaiNai that his promotion came as a result of Absalom’s fight with another man of God.
“Is there another God’s man?” NaiNai and I asked.