Scarring Jasmine-Chapter Forty One News

12/19/2024 Thursday32-45F Cloudy

“Dear Sister,

Mother and I were thrilled to receive your letter. Hearing that you are in Shanghai and living by embroidering with your own hands, I feel so proud of you. That is amazing! In the past I could never have imagined that my little sister one day would do her own business and make her own money! 

Of course, mother doesn’t like it. That’s just her way; she is always disapproving. Sometimes I joked that she was out of date; she shrugged and didn’t agree. But I believe that is the truth.

How is Shanghai? Everything sounds great. I never went there before, but as you are there, my chance of visiting it has increased tremendously.

It has been more than two years since we lost contact with you. Two years ago, one day in June, Zhao came to our house, asking us about whether you had come or not. After getting a no from us, he looked so desperate. To me, I always thought that Zhao was a strong-minded streetwise man, but that day he acted very differently; he seemed to have been destroyed.

He told us that you had cut up your face and left him two days before; but he didn’t explain to us about why it had happened. Within those two days, he and his men had searched every street of Suzhou for you, but they found nothing. Thus, he considered us his last straw. He said that he felt so guilty about what had happened to our father and me; and because of the guilt he always tried to avoid seeing us. My mother kept scolding him, saying that he must have killed you; I just couldn’t stop her. Perhaps he didn’t know how to cherish a woman, but I was positive that his love for you was genuine. He knelt on the floor, letting my mother slap his face and kick him; he didn’t defend himself at all from the beginning to the end. 

Jasmine, I don’t know how to explain it to you--I never really hated him. Even though he caused our misfortune in an indirect way, I still believe that it wasn’t his intention. As I told you before, intention and consequences are different. So, I choose to forgive him. While seeing him kneeling there, with that guilty helpless look, I felt sorrowful and sorry for him. 

He left our home late that evening, as bewildered as a homeless dog which had been caught in a rainstorm.

Since then, we also had started to look for you at our end, but just couldn’t find any valuable information. Last Autumn Zhao visited our house again, brought us fifty thousand silver coins as the return of Pox-Faced A San’s extortion, and told us that A San had died. But I think his main purpose was checking for your information; he bid me forward his words to you if one day I saw you or heard from you: ‘I won’t come to bother you anymore. All I want you to know is: The Peach Blossom Dock house is built; I will wait for you there.’

He didn’t tell me what the story behind it was; he said that you would understand it. Anyway, sister, as your brother, I don’t want to influence you with my opinion; but if you have no one to care about now, and if he is worthy of another chance, please do consider him. Mother told me that she wouldn’t forgive him, but she didn’t like you to remain alone either. If you choose him, eventually she will accept it. Perhaps because I am a soft-hearted empathetic man, I can’t bear to think about his swollen, cried eyes. I saw him once before by chance on the street, of course he didn’t see me; he sat in his car, with a cool and majestic expression on his face; while in our house, he looked so ragged and broken. They were entirely two different personas; how could I put his two sides together?

Sorry for these sentimental words, I should tell you something great as well. At the end of last year, I remarried. Her name is A Xiang, a country girl; I met her at her house on a stormy summer day on my way home from a fabric supplier. The storm came unexpectedly, so I and my cart driver had to stop midway in a village. Her house had a large eave so we sheltered under it. Her father saw us, invited us to come into the house, and offered us hot tea. She set a fire pan for us to dry our clothes. During those two hours, she didn’t speak a word, but always wore a soft smile on her face. When I arrived at our house, I had decided that she was the woman I wanted.

I think I have told you before that I never liked Gao; since we bought back our Moye Lane house with Qian’s betrothal money, mother tried very hard to persuade me to take Gao back. ‘After all, you two have already raised a child; you should keep your family complete.’ She said. But I refused. I told her that it was an absolute mistake that nine years ago I compromised to father in marrying Gao; I wouldn’t repeat the same mistake again. Afterward Gao remarried someone else; finally, mother became quiet.

When I mentioned A Xiang to mother, she got angry with me. She announced that she refused to have a peasant girl as daughter-in-law, and that even though I was a cripple, I still should consider myself a city man. I was used to the way she thinks; I also knew what kind of woman suited me, so I sent my proposal to her family anyway. Perhaps because we had a large house in downtown and I was running a small fabric shop; and perhaps because she and her family also liked me, my proposal wasn’t rejected because of my disability. Now she is pregnant, the due date will be this November. I am very excited; I will be a father again. Mother is happy too; in spite of the fact that she never told me, I knew that gradually she became very fond of A Xiang. I must admit proudly that my wife is a remarkable woman, a natural for managing home and taking care of the family. I am sure you will like her when you see her.

My fabric business is just so-so. I can’t ascribe it only to the bad economics. I know that I can never be a good businessman like father, like Uncle Xiao, like Zhao. But it really doesn’t matter. I can earn enough money to feed my family; my mother is healthy; I have a great wife and daughter and am going to have another child; my younger sister becomes an independent lady in Shanghai. What else should I expect? A man can’t be too greedy.

If all the suffering was meant to lead me to where I am now, then it was worthwhile.

Gee, I almost forgot to tell you something strange. Do you still remember Yu? Yu Wang. Two weeks ago, before I received your letter, he visited our home. It was surprising, wasn’t it? Since you two were divorced five years ago, we had never contacted each other. He was shocked to see me crippled; of course, I didn’t tell him the true reason but simply explained that it was caused by an accidental fall. Then he said that he was in Shanghai as well, working as a building designer; and he asked about you. All we told him was you had divorced again and left Suzhou, but no-one knew where you went. Before we parted, he handed me a letter entrusting me to give it to you whenever I could. I enclosed it here.

This letter has gotten too long, and the night is getting deep. Please allow me to stop it here. Just one more question: How to deal with Zhao’s fifty thousand silver coins? I don’t know whether I should take them or not. I leave the decision to you.

Please do write back to us at your convenience. We all miss you.

 

Ps: Zhao shouldn’t be a concern for you if you want to come back home, but still, it’s up to you.

Your Brother,

Mumei”

Jasmine found Yu’s letter. It was sealed, nothing was written on the envelope. With trembling fingers and a violently beating heart, she tore the envelope open, and unfolded the paper in it: It was a pencil sketch of her face, about ten inches tall by seven inches wide. At the bottom of the sketch, wrote a few lines of words, of which the handwriting was very stylish: 

“For Jasmine, done by Yu. 

How are you? This sketch is how I remember you. Please write back to me.”

Then there was another small line specifically underlined as Yu’s address in Shanghai.

She examined the sketch; each line, each detail was vivid. It was her; it looked exactly like her, her two years ago uncut face! She reached out for a small round mirror standing on the trestle table facing the wall and held it in her hands. The bottom half of the mirror was covered with a layer of thin white rice paper; she trembled, hesitated, then tore the paper off. Her full face, which she hadn’t had courage to see for a long time, reflected in the mirror. Starting from her cheekbone and across her whole left cheek, there was a two and half to three-inch-long pink scar, which was so visible that everyone’s attention would be caught by it upon seeing her. She was a cracked vase both inside and outside; thus she was worthless. 

“How he remembered me was my face; now I have lost it, I shouldn’t let him see me again. Even if I contact him, what’s the good for both of us except for a stir in our lives? He never loved me before, not even to mention about my disfigurement now. Rather than to expose an ugly fact, keeping a beautiful memory is the best choice.”

The light in her eyes was put out. She laid the mirror on the table facing down, re-folded the sketch paper, and wedged it into the small space between the coal stove and kettle. The edges of the paper turned yellow first, soon became darker; all of a sudden flames burst out and swallowed the whole paper. She watched the flames becoming lower and lower until they left only one piece of ash. 

The night began to fall.

“Dear brother,” She wrote the next day, “thanks for telling me so many things, I am very happy for you and my new sister-in-law. I will continue to stay in Shanghai; and next year when time allows, I will go visit the family. About those fifty thousand silver coins, they are our father’s money. We should reserve five thousand for Aunt Xue, then please keep the rest yourself, either for your business, or for the children’s future education, or as the fund to purchase back father’s shops which we couldn’t do last time…”