Red Skies (The Tales of the Scavenger's Daughters) (5 page)

She leaned back in the seat to take the pressure off her aching feet. She had to admit, it was nice not to stand around and wait for a taxi to take her to her bus stop.

“Rough day?” Max asked after setting his camera gear in the floor at his feet.

Mari nodded. “Lately it’s always a rough day.”

“Don’t you have someone to help you with all that? It seems like a lot for one person—especially one as small as you. I hate to say it, but I can tell that camel is a handful.”

She looked at him, but his intense gaze told her he didn’t mean anything flirtatious by it, he was truly curious. “I used to, but my husband got hurt and now he can’t work. I’m just handling things until he gets better. Then he’ll be back and take charge again.” She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. These days, she wondered if Bolin would ever be well enough to leave their apartment. She couldn’t even get him off the couch.

“I’m sorry to hear that. How did he get hurt?”

Mari took a deep breath. The truth would make her husband look like an idiot. But a lie would make her feel like one—so the truth it was.

“You see how stubborn Chu Chu is, right? Well, he never likes to be ridden. We do good just to get him to stand still so we can get the photo shots.”

“Aw, that camel isn’t so bad. Looks to me like he’s just old and tired. I can imagine when I’m a senior citizen, I won’t want a bunch of people on my back either,” Max said and winked at her.

“He is old. But he’s not
that
old. Anyway, he was being obstinate one day about going to his shelter, and Bolin—my husband—got angry and leapt on his back, then kicked at him as though he was riding a bull. Chu Chu started charging, then stopped dead in his tracks and threw Bolin over his head. Since then, my husband’s been in agony because his back really hasn’t healed.”

That made her think of Bolin’s medication, and she felt a flush of guilt that he was waiting for her.

“Man, that sounds awful. Can’t the doctors do anything for him?” Max asked.

Mari reached in her bag, rummaging for the pills. “They say his back is not broken—it was just strained. They gave him these pills—hold on, I can’t remember the name.”

She pulled the bag closer to the window for more light and opened it wide. The pills were not there. “Oh no. I hope I didn’t drop his medicine. It was in my bag last night—I’m sure of it.”

“Look again,” Max urged her. “We can go back if we need to look at the wall.”

She rummaged some more. She vividly remembered putting the bottle back in her bag the night before. She was always careful. The pills were strong, and she didn’t want Bolin getting them and taking more than he should.

“They aren’t here. I hope they fell out last night and are at my house.” She knew Bolin would have no reason to think she’d left them behind, so he wouldn’t look for them. She just hoped she got to them before he stumbled over the bottle.

The driver pulled to the curb, and they got out of the car. Instead of heading to her regular bus stop, she followed Max to the noodle shop.

Inside they sat at a corner table, and Mari tried to hide her smile at Max’s somewhat intelligible attempt at ordering
cha
and the special of the day,
Běijīng ji
a
oz
i
. The server—a small-framed and shy girl—watched him talk then turned to Mari for translation. She complied and reiterated that they wanted green tea and dumplings. Max threw his hands in the air as the waitress walked away, scribbling their order on her pad.

“What? Isn’t that what I just said?”

He looked so incredulous that Mari let out a laugh, then covered her mouth. She nodded. “It’s your face. You are too white. She doesn’t expect Chinese to come from you, so her ears aren’t attuned to it. But yes, you said it correctly.”

He rolled his eyes. “I was in here yesterday, and they understood me just fine.”

But then he smiled, and Mari knew he wasn’t really upset. She liked that in him. Most of the foreigners she dealt with got frustrated and short tempered when they couldn’t be understood or things didn’t go their way. She’d seen more than one stomp away, cursing to themselves that they’d ever come to China, reactions usually brought about after they’d become winded while walking along the wall, or when too many souvenir hawkers had pushed them past their limits. What some didn’t understand was the difference between selling five postcard packets or none might mean the difference between feeding their family that night or going hungry. Jobs weren’t easy to come by in China, and tapping into the foreign tourist market was usually one of the last resorts for those who couldn’t find other, less frustrating work.

“Where did you learn to speak Chinese?” Mari asked.

Max dropped his eyes to the plastic menu on the table and played with the curled-up corner. “My daughter.”

“Oh, is she a teacher?”

He looked up at her, and Mari thought she saw a flash of pain before he camouflaged it with a smile. “No, not officially. But since she became old enough to speak, she’s been infatuated with China. We—well, really
she
—decided we’d try to learn to speak the language, and eventually, we’d come here.”

“Did you also have a formal teacher?”

Max let out a small chuckle. “No, but believe me, my girl is relentless when she sets her mind to something. She probably taught me more than any teacher could. She made up these crazy little flash cards and pasted them all over the house—labeling every item in sight with the Chinese word. At dinner several times a week we weren’t allowed to use English; we could only speak Chinese. She’s a tough little cookie, and I found out fast that if I wanted my dinner, I had to focus. There were nights I went hungry for hours until I learned the proper words for
pass me the chicken
.”

Mari laughed at the story he painted, and Max stopped.

“Your laugh. It’s so—how do I say this?—infectious. It sounds like music.”

Mari felt her cheeks burning, and she realized that she hadn’t laughed in such a long time. “
Xie xie
. That’s what my husband used to tell me.”

Max was quiet for a minute, then started back in about his daughter. “Honestly, my daughter took to Chinese much better than me. But then, she was the most determined to learn. By six years old, she could say her colors, numbers, and even speak some simple sentences. By seven she could name every object in the house with its Chinese name. By eight, she’d stop Asian people at the store or wherever and ask them if they could speak Mandarin, then delight them with her own gift.”

The waiter came and set two mugs and a steaming carafe of tea on the table. Mari picked it up and poured Max a cup. “I’m sure they were very intrigued. Were they American, like your daughter?”

“Oh, they were intrigued, all right. I don’t know if they were American, but most of them were enchanted at the way she interacted with strangers. And it made me so proud, I felt like busting each time she did it. China was her thing—at nine, she’d recount hours of history and legends. Her mama used to tell her if she spent just half the time working on her math that she did reading about China, that’d she be a genius by high school. But she wasn’t interested in math—her mind was on seeing the Great Wall and visiting Xi’an and the soldiers.”

Mari watched as he enamored her with stories of his daughter, then suddenly he stopped talking and brought his tea to his lips. For a moment he’d looked happy and excited, but now he shielded his eyes from her and was stone quiet.

“Why didn’t you bring her here with you, if coming to China was her dream?” she asked.

Max stared out the front windows a moment, then set his cup down and stood, looking from one corner of the shop to the other. “Is there a bathroom in here?”

Mari pointed at the far wall. “Yes, just over there.”

“I’ll be back,” Max said, his voice grave, as he walked away.

Mari watched his suddenly stiff back and wondered what had changed his mood so abruptly.

She stared out the window at the corner that the girl, An Ni, had stood at several nights ago. She hadn’t seen her since, but she had thought of her often and even dreamed of her the night before. In the dream, An Ni had beckoned her closer, pulling at her to get to her ear as if to tell her a secret.

Mari was startled out of her thoughts by the clattering of dishes as the waitress returned and placed the two bowls of dumplings on the table. She left chopsticks, and Mari asked her to bring a few spoons just as Max returned.

He sat down across from her and cleared his throat. “Are you available as a guide?”

Mari picked up a dumpling with her chopsticks and sucked the juice from it, then swallowed it. “A guide?”

“Yes, as you can see, my Chinese isn’t that great—even with the relentless lessons from my daughter—and I’m planning on visiting a few more sites and could use someone to translate the history there.” He lifted his bowl and slurped the broth, looking like a local to Mari as he waited for her answer.

“But I have to work at the Wall,” she finally said, though to be honest, she dreaded each morning that she trekked to the shed, retrieved Chu Chu, then led him up the Wall to face another exhausting day.

“Let your camel rest. Maybe that’ll put him in better spirits. Work a few days for me, and I’ll pay what you’d make at the Wall.”

Mari hesitated, thinking. If she accepted his offer, she could make some extra money, maybe even enough to catch up the bills, and Bolin never needed to know.

Max plucked a business card from his wallet and, holding both corners, presented it to her. She appreciated that he took the extra effort to do it the Chinese way, holding it with both thumbs outward, and she accepted it, then read it.

“Keep my card and call me tonight if you decide to take me up on my offer,” Max said, then stood. He peeled a pink bill from the stack of money he pulled from his pocket, and he laid it on the table.

“You want to wait for your change?” Mari said, pointing to the bill. “It won’t be even half that. She’ll bring you back some money.”

“I don’t want anything back,” Max said. “The rest is for that waitress. She looks like she could use it.”

Mari picked her bag up from the floor, and with one last look at the money on the table—more than she’d made all day—she followed Max out the door. She couldn’t help but shake her head. Foreigners and their hastiness to part with their money always amazed her.

Max watched as Mari walked away, her tousled hair swinging to the sway of her hips. He’d met a lot of women in China and thus far, none of them had piqued his interest like this one. And it wasn’t anything sexual. He wasn’t looking for that complication in his life, and as far as he could predict, never would again. But this girl, there was just something about her—something deep and perhaps haunting. Something familiar. He’d been drawn to her from the very moment he’d seen her dragging her stubborn camel. And if he was being truthful with himself, he thought maybe he’d seen his own broken spirit in the mirror of her eyes. He’d love to know more, but he didn’t want to intrude on her privacy. Maybe like him, her demons were too many to tell. Yet it was startling to him, this feeling of wanting to connect with another human being after the last few years of such self-imposed isolation.