her
parents a much bigger house than the Woos', and now the Fengs were telling everyone about the important Hong Kong businessman who wanted to marry her.
The Woos thought the least their daughter could do was marry someone rich enough to support them, have children, and be happy. Instead she was a policeman. Bad was having a policeman for a daughter. Beyond bad was betraying the entire Han people, whose history stretched back thousands of years. Sai knew very well her daughter was lying about where she was when she wasn't on duty. They knew she was doing monkey business with someone who smelled too sweet to be a man.
Ja Fa wanted to admonish and scold her out of her foolishness, but Sai knew that scolding had no effect on this bad seed. Something stronger than talk was needed to save her daughter. They went into consultation with Chinese experts, one in Chinatown and one in New Jersey, to find out what intervention would work. The question Sai wanted answered was how April had become vulnerable to possession by a foreigner.
A highly regarded young man in Chinatown, recently arrived from China with much knowledge and hair sticking straight up about three inches from the top of his head, charged them a hundred dollars to tell them about the energy flow in the spring cycle. Spring was the cycle they happened to be in at the moment, and this young homeopathic doctor was certain that energy flow was the cause of April's excessive heat.
In very lofty terms he explained how the heart is the root of life, the seat of both intelligence and the
shen
—spirit. The heart's element is fire, he told them. It is called the
taiyang
of the yang and is considered yang. He explained that the lungs were the root of the body's
qi,
and the storage place of
po
—courage. Sai listened intently, trying to make sense of it.
Po
was yang and yang was masculine. Masculine was assertive. Sai believed April definitely had too much of that. She nodded. Her husband smoked a cigarette and worried about the cost.
"Po," Sai said. Too much boldness, courage.
But the young doctor shook his head. He was not interested in
po.
He told Sai, because her husband had stopped listening, that only the wisest of wise men could diagnose someone who was not present, and he should be charging her more. This brought Ja Fa out of his smoky reverie.
"Already too much," he protested.
When the clever doctor realized no more money was forthcoming, he made a quick diagnosis. He said that in spite of the extremely reasonable fee and the absent patient, he was certain that April's trouble derived from the liver.
"The liver?" Sai frowned. Hadn't he said it was the heart?
"Yes, it's the liver. The liver is the reservoir of stamina. That is the place of
hun
—intuition. The liver is in the yin location of the abdomen. It stores blood and belongs to the yang element of wood; thus it is called the
shaoyang
of yin."
Sai nodded as if she understood every word. It was just that she didn't agree. She didn't think April's problem was yin. Yin was yielding, and April was not that.
"The trouble is in your daughter's heart. But the wood element of spring corresponds to the liver. So the problem arises from her liver."
Aieeyee! Sai's head swam. How did he know that? He looked so young. His hair stuck up like Elvis Presley's, or a movie star's. Sai could see there was hair spray in it. She wondered if a young master of classical medicine should be using hair spray.
The young master interrupted her thoughts. "There are five elemental phases, five parts of the year: spring, summer, late summer, autumn, and winter. Each has its excesses and deficiencies."
Yes, yes, but what did that have to do with April's spending her nights with a Spanish man?
"In order to properly utilize the knowledge of the five elemental phases, one must calculate the arrival time of the season and observe normal and abnormal patterns. Since your daughter is ill in spring, we must calculate from the first day of spring on the Chinese calendar. If the first day of spring this year had not yet arrived but the weather was already warm—as it was this year—we must consider this an excess of fire. In your daughter's case the fire excess would humiliate the water element and damage the normalcy of the season. It would overcontrol the normal
qi
of metal. This is called
qi
yin or reckless
qi."
Ah, now they were getting somewhere. But then the young doctor of the Yellow Emperor's classic medicine started talking about the variability of heaven and earth, and Sai was confused again.
He said she must bring April to him so he could take her pulse. If she was in a truly advanced state of reckless
qi,
the radial pulse could be as much as five times as large as normal. At that point her yin will have collapsed.
"And if both the carotid and radial pulses are five times larger than normal, this condition is called
guan le
or obstructed. That means yin and yang have become extreme and stagnant. The prenatal and postnatal
ging
essence
qi
have become exhausted; the eventual consequence is death."
Sai swooned and nearly fell off her chair. Was April's heart beating five times as fast as normal? Sai had no idea. But then the young master reassured her again. For another hundred dollars she could obtain a powder that would slow down April's heart and save her life. This seemed an unavoidable expense. Sai figured if she could save April's life she could get the money back from her when she was well.
Neither Sai nor Ja Fa was entirely satisfied with this diagnosis, however. They felt they needed a second opinion and took the PATH train to New Jersey, where they spent Tuesday night with the Dong family and consulted another well-known Chinese doctor. This one inspired greater confidence in spite of charging a much lower fee. Me Nan was a bargain at only twenty-five dollars. She was one of the so-called barefoot doctors, also just recently arrived in this country, but she worked in a cleaning service during the week and had a boyfriend with only one hand. His other hand was made of wood and covered with a black glove that made him look very official when he opened the door of their apartment.
Me Nan gave Sai a cup of tea and asked many questions about April. She wanted to know the quality of her hair, its thickness and vibrancy. The color of her face and the tone of her flesh. She also wanted to know what else was going on in April's life, in addition to the Mexican police boyfriend, that might also be contributing to the impairment of her judgment.