Butterfly Tears Read online

  Butterfly Tears

  Butterfly Tears

  stories by

  Zoë S. Roy

  INANNA Publications and Education Inc.

  Toronto, Canada

  Copyright © 2009 Zoë S. Roy

  Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council

  for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program

  The publisher is also grateful for the kind support received from an Anonymous Fund at The Calgary Foundation.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Roy, Zoë S., 1953-

  Butterfly tears : stories / by Zoë S. Roy.

  (Inanna poetry and fiction series)

  ISBN 978-0-9782233-7-3

  I. Title. II. Series: Inanna poetry and fiction series

  PS8635.O94B88 2009 C813’.6 C2009-905066-8

  Cover design by Val Fullard

  Interior design by Luciana Ricciutelli

  Printed and bound in Canada

  eBook development: WildElement.ca

  Inanna Publications and Education Inc.

  210 Founders College, York University

  4700 Keele Street

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3

  Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax (416) 736-5765

  Email: [email protected]

  Website: www.yorku.ca/inanna

  Posthumously dedicated to my parents who provided a reading

  environment that stimulated my interest in literature,

  even though, following the rationale of the time, they tried to steer me

  toward science to avoid any form of persecution.

  Contents

  Butterfly Tears

  Wild Onions

  Yearning

  Frog Fishing

  A Woman of China

  Ten Yuan

  Balloons

  Twin Rivers

  Herbs

  A Mandarin Duck

  Noodles

  Gingko

  Fortune-Telling

  Life Insurance

  Jing and the caterpillar

  Acknowledgements

  Butterfly Tears

  FRIDAY NIGHT, AFTER TUCKING her five-year-old daughter in bed, Sunni tried to relax on the couch, looking for something easy to watch on television. The mahogany clock on the wall struck ten. Her husband, Paul, was late. Is he helping his students with their assignments again? She drew a breath, then curled her legs beneath her on the couch. A co-worker’s gossip popped stubbornly into her head. Could Paul be having an affair? Like her colleague’s husband was? She shook her head as if that could get rid of this unpleasant notion.

  She flipped her loose, black hair over her shoulders and stretched her arm to turn on the radio sitting on an end table. It was Radio McGill’s international music hour. She found listening to the radio deeply relaxing. As she immersed herself in the music, she closed her eyes, and allowed her mind to wander. To her surprise, she heard a familiar violin solo composed by a Chinese musician she had always been partial to. It was one of her favourites: “Liang and Zhu, Forever Lovers.” The melody was an unhurried breeze on a hot and damp night, slipping through the window and filling the air like the heady aroma of rich coffee. Sunni sank into the music’s sweetness as the memories it triggered played in her mind.

  ***

  Over three decades earlier on a summer afternoon in Guilin, China, five-year-old Sunni stood on a pile of red bricks that sat under a window

  of Guilin University’s largest one-storey dormitory. She leaned her small forehead against the windowpane, eyes wide open, trying to make out what Crazy Wen, the only person in the room, was doing. But the glass was dusty, and a blanket hanging haphazardly from the inside partially covered the window, obstructing her view.

  “Sunni! Come down,” ordered a young boy from behind. “Your grandma’s calling you home,” he urged, tugging at the worn corner of her favourite white blouse.

  Startled, Sunni toppled off the brick pile, dropping onto the ground, somewhat dazed and irritated. “Lei! You scared me,” she shouted, glaring at the boy standing over her outstretched body.

  “Sorry. But your – yourrr – grr – grrr – graandma’s looking for you,” Lei sputtered, pulling Sunni to her feet.

  It was precisely at that moment that Sunni detected the aching strings of a violin wafting from the nearby window. It was the first time she ever heard a violin. The sound was different from that of her father’s harmonica. The music was sharp and sad, which touched her heart. Remembering her grandmother, she hurried toward home, which was in another smaller dormitory just across the road. The melody of the violin chased her down the street as she ran. Its beauty stamped itself indelibly in her mind as much as the violinist who teased those sounds from the bow held tenderly in his hand.

  Crazy Wen, who majored in Music Composition at Guilin University, was a teaching assistant in the Arts Department. Sunni had heard that he went crazy after his girlfriend broke up with him. Sunni had many questions running around in her mind and did not know the answers to them. She was too young to understand the complexity of human relationships; her world still revolved around the lives of her mom and dad. What did it mean to have a girlfriend? Was it like having a mom? How did she throw Crazy Wen away? Did she really slap him when she left?

  When she was sent to stay with her grandparents, she always felt very sad to leave her mother. So she felt the same sorrow for Crazy Wen. Sunni’s mother had told her she would come to get her as soon as her newborn brother was a little older. She wondered if Crazy Wen’s mom would come to take him home some day.

  Crazy Wen had ear hair and a floating goatee, which made him look like a civil servant in Chinese historical war movies. Whenever Sunni went to the cafeteria at the university with her grandmother for steam buns or played with other children on the campus playground, she would see him wandering aimlessly down the road, never talking to anybody. When Crazy Wen confined himself in his apartment with the door and windows closed for several days, she felt as if he had disappeared from the world. He always wore a loose white shirt and faded black slacks, and his goatee bounced lightly back and forth when he strolled through the campus. Curious children always followed him, imitating his funny stroll. Sunni sometimes joined them, her heart pounding when she caught up to him and found herself walking just behind him. Always on alert, she was ready to run should he turn and threaten to chase her. He never did, though. Maybe he didn’t care whether the children followed him or not.

  Since the time Sunni first heard the violin music drifting from Wen’s apartment she had stopped following him, although she still felt curious about him, and still thought about his “mom,” and why she’d left him, too.

  One day, while her grandmother sorted soybean sprouts, Sunni snuggled in close to her and asked, “Why did Crazy Wen’s girlfriend give him a slap?”

  “Oh, dear! Who told you Crazy Wen got slapped?” Amused by Sunni’s question, her grandmother explained, “His girlfriend doubted his musical ability and left him to marry a man who had been selected for further studies in music in the Soviet Union.”

  “What did Crazy Wen do?”

  “He became crazy, and that is how he got his nickname,” she chuckled.

  “What’s that song he always plays?”


  “That’s a composition,” her grandmother said. “It’s the story of Liang and Zhu.”

  “Who are Liang and Zhu?”

  “You ask too many questions,” her grandmother chided, as she thought about how to answer. “A long time ago, a girl named Zhu disguised herself as a boy so she could go to school.”

  “Why did she wear boy’s clothes?”

  “Well, because at that time, girls were not allowed to go to school.”

  “Why weren’t girls allowed to go to school?”

  “Don’t interrupt me. It is just the way it was,” her grandmother scolded, dropping a handful of the selected soybean sprouts absentmindedly into the bowl at her feet. “One day Zhu met a man named Liang on the way to school. They fell madly in love with each other, and were a really good match.”

  Sunni watched her grandmother carefully select more sprouts as she listened to the story.

  “But Zhu’s family thought Liang’s family was too poor. They wanted to marry Zhu into a rich and powerful family. And a marriage had already been arranged for her – ”

  “So what happened?” Sunni asked breathlessly, holding her grandmother’s arm as tight as she could.

  “Liang became very sick. He never recovered and died.”

  “Died?” Sunni gasped. She shook her grandmother’s arm and asked, “How come Grandma? Why didn’t he go to hospital?”

  “Don’t shake my arm, little one,” her grandmother said. “My bean sprouts are all falling onto the floor. There were no hospitals at that time,” she sighed, as she bent to pick up the fallen sprouts. “Heartbroken, Zhu insisted on visiting Liang’s grave on the way to the wedding her parents had arranged for her.”

  “Did she get to see his grave?”

  “Yes, she did. And as she approached, Liang’s grave suddenly opened, and Zhu jumped in. Just as suddenly, the grave closed over them both.”

  “Did she really jump into the grave?” Sunni asked, trying to imagine what an open grave looked like.

  “Yes, so the story goes. Liang and Zhu became two beautiful butterflies in their next lives.” Her grandmother’s voice got a little louder. “The two butterflies met every day over the grave. Their love was predestined.”

  After learning the story of Liang and Zhu, Sunni could picture the two butterflies dancing over the grave whenever she heard Crazy Wen play his violin – and that piercing melody would become the grey cloud of her childhood.

  ***

  The radio drew Sunni back to the present. A couple of hours had passed but Paul had not yet returned. The pleasure of listening to music dissolved.

  Ten minutes later, Sunni went to bed. She tossed and turned, dreaming that a car with high beams unexpectedly dashed toward her while she was slowly crossing a street. She jumped onto a sidewalk, but could not elude the car. Although she ran behind a fence, the car continued to follow her closely, like a cat chasing its own tail. To escape, Sunni pushed open the door of a shopping mall that appeared conveniently in front of her. In the blink of an eye, however, all the lights went out, and she suddenly found herself at the edge of a steep cliff. She did not have time to stop, and her feet slipped off the cliff. Her body floated in the air. “Help!” she tried to shout, but no sound came out. Finally, she was able to grab hold of a branch from a small, jutting tree and climb back onto the bluff.

  Paul came home in the wee hours of the morning. The moment he slipped in next to her, Sunni stretched her arm out to grip his as if it were the branch that helped her climb to safety in her dream. Startled, he asked, “What’s the matter with you?” But Sunni did not respond. Irritated, Paul drew back his arm and pulled the blanket up to his shoulders.

  Sunni turned over, caught in the web of her dream where she hovered in the air like a large, sleek bird. She spotted a dark, green river flowing slowly through the fields and forests beneath her. Several fish hawks were diving into the water while a few bamboo fishing-punts moved smoothly in the river, and picturesque hills formed in limestone karst soaring alongside. Fog like a veil gently wrapped itself around these variously shaped hills, their reflections in the water occasionally shaking with ripples. Sunni flew past The Hill of Waiting for Husband, a hill that looked like a woman standing in mourning over the river; a woman who had turned into stone after years of waiting for her husband to return home from the war. Just then, a song echoed around the hills:

  Flowers grow on a mountain top,

  The fragrance drifts below.

  The water flows past beneath the bridge,

  The breeze blows coolness over it.

  Sunni recognized the Li River winding through the city of Guilin where her grandparents had lived. Guilin was a place of gorgeous green mountains, where the fragrance of cassia trees wafts, and tropical birds roam. She had left the city long ago and had not been back since her grandparents passed away.

  Her dream took her back to many years earlier when she had walked with her playmates, swimsuits in hand, along the Li River toward Elephant Trunk Hill.

  “Crazy Wen has been found!” announced one of the boys that fateful day.

  “What?” Sunni stopped walking. “Where is he?” she asked with excitement and dread. She knew Crazy Wen had been missing for days.

  “He’s in the water near Elephant Trunk Hill,” said the boy.

  “Dead or alive?” Sunni asked, not able to disguise the frantic worry in her voice.

  “Sure, he’s dead.” The boy threw his swimming suit in the air and jumped to catch it. “Dare you to go look at the body?”

  “What the heck!” one of the girls shouted back. “Let’s go see him!”

  In the dream, Sunni stood at the foot of Elephant Trunk Hill. She could hear water being sucked into the elephant’s trunk. She wondered what Crazy Wen had looked like in the water, but could not remember his appearance no matter how hard she tried. She had followed the children that day, shaking over Wen’s death in a way she could never explain to anyone. The only thing she could remember was that Crazy Wen killed himself right at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, in the chaotic summer of 1966, when everything changed. The haunting strains of the violin solo, “Liang and Zhu,” broke off the moment Wen’s life snapped like a violin string.

  ***

  When morning’s sunbeams streamed into the bedroom, Sunni woke with a start and sat straight up in bed. She realized she did not need go to work – it was Saturday. Her husband was sleeping like a log. She watched his face and wondered what had changed him. The wrinkles that lined his forehead are supposed to display a man’s maturity, but is Paul mature? Now, in his early forties, he had reached a period in his life he could be proud of. He had settled into family life and had been teaching for years at the community college.

  They had met seven years earlier. Sunni had found a part-time job in a public library after her graduation from the Library Science and Information Program at Concordia University. She was responsible for a section of bookshelves called Other Languages where there were many books in Chinese, Slavic, Arabic, and Japanese. Chinese books occupied almost a whole bookshelf.

  Sometimes, Sunni would shelve the scattered books that had been pulled out and left by readers. One day, while she was shelf-reading, making sure all the books on the shelves were in order by checking their call numbers, a man rushed up to her and asked, “Excuse me. Can you tell me if you have this book?” He showed her a piece of paper in his hand and pointed to a title in Chinese: Liang and Zhu.

  “No. We don’t,” she replied, casting a cursory glance at the books on the shelf to disguise her surprise at his request. “But I might be able to locate a copy for you,” she added, turning her head slowly to meet his eyes.

  “Really? Where?” the man asked. “I just feel like reading it,” he said with a pleased smile, “so anytime would be fine.”

  “All Chinese books are circulated from the National Library among
public libraries all over Canada. I’ll ask for a copy and call you when it arrives.”

  “Great. I appreciate your help.” The man took a pen and wrote down his name and phone number on a slip of paper he pulled from his pocket. “I’m Paul. Are you new here?”

  Sunni nodded. “Do you use this library often?” she asked.

  “Yes, I’m a regular patron and I like to read in Chinese once in a while,” he replied, passing her the slip with his phone number before turning to leave.

  Sunni was able to find a copy of Liang and Zhu for Paul. And, not long afterward, she and Paul began dating. He was an intelligent and gentle man with a wonderfully dry sense of humour. Sunni was so attracted to him that she hated the fact she hadn’t met him earlier. That he had asked her to find him the story of Liang and Zhu seemed an omen that they were meant to be together.

  Sunni believed she was a happy version of Zhu. It was not long before she and Paul married and had a daughter.

  ***

  Recently, Sunni found Paul increasingly absentminded, even when they made love. She asked him what was bothering him but he would not, or could not answer. Sunni had heard about the “seven-year itch” – the vague uneasiness that arises after seven years of marriage. She wondered if her marriage was experiencing this “itch.”

  She stared at the alarm clock on the night table. It was just past 8:00 a.m. She had promised their daughter, Ida, they would go to a widescreen movie at the IMAX theatre that afternoon. She dressed quickly and left Paul sleeping in the bedroom.

  Ida was playing with her dolls on the couch in the living room. Her dress was slipping off her shoulder so she smiled happily when Sunni entered the room. “Mommy! Help me,” she said, pointing vigorously at her back.

  Sunni got on her knees and zipped up Ida’s dress, brushing her forehead with a good-morning kiss. “Have you washed your face and brushed your teeth, Ida?” Sunni asked, leading her little girl toward the bathroom.