Petals from the Sky

craquelin. I did not know exactly what was inside, but the cover picture looked very appetizing, with a colorful display of biscuits with shrimp, ham, cheese, sausage, lettuce, tomato, olive, pepper, onion. My eyes caressed the different items of food while my mouth watered. The price-one franc fifty-seemed unusually cheap for a hearty meal like this. I grabbed two packages, hurried to the beverage section to get some instant cocoa, then went to pay at checkout.

Back in my dormitory room, I cooked myself a cup of hot chocolate to go with the craquelin. I sucked back the saliva flooding my mouth. Then, with great anticipation and affection, I opened the package.

Alas! As if struck by an anti-magic wand, all the shrimp, ham, cheese, sausage, tomato, and onion were gone! What lay in front of my eyes were a few stacks of wrinkled, paperlike biscuits, completely bare, like the miserable and weathered face of an octogenarian. Anger welled up into my throat.

I was cheated by the supermarket! Or, I almost cried out in despair, somebody had opened the package and ate all the delicious toppings!

But what should I do? I didn’t think I could go back to the supermarket and complain to the checkout person. Anyway, who would care? Making a fuss over one-and-a-half francs, I would be the one who would become the laughing stock, not the checkout person nor the owner. Stuttering in my insufficient French, I would sound pathetic and ridiculous.

After a long mental struggle, I finally sat down submissively and started to nibble my first Sunday brunch in Paris, a la Zen.

Not to my surprise, the so-called craquelin tasted terrible. I felt like an old woman chewing on tree bark during a famine. How I missed my mother’s delicious cooking: soy-sauce chicken, steaming fish with black bean sauce, sweet and sour pork, crispy salt-and-pepper shrimp…

Then, as I was about to throw away the rest of the biscuits, I suddenly spotted a line of small letters at the bottom of the package, hidden among the pictures of shrimp, ham, cheese, sausage, tomato, and onion: “Proposer de servir”-serving suggestion. A joke at my expense!

Still hungry, I began to unpack.

As I was pulling out items one by one, a cockroach crawled out from the suitcase. How incredible that this little ugly thing had traveled with me six thousand miles-all the way across the Pacific Ocean from Hong Kong to Paris! Poor creature! I studied the dazed-looking brown bug for long moments. Was he starved after all these long hours in the airless dark trunk? Was he now lonely and miserable like me? Would he be able to make friends in the future? Then suddenly I realized he was at this moment my only companion in the whole world. A gust of loneliness swelled up in me.

I broke off a piece of the leftover craquelin and threw the crumbs onto the floor. To my surprise, he didn’t eat. Even a Hong Kong cockroach was too well fed and spoiled to have any appetite for the tasteless biscuits! Finally I used one craquelin to scoop him up, then went to the communal kitchen and put him on the counter. What would his fate be? Maybe he could find some better food here, or, his death. It’d all depend on his karma, his fate…

I decided to go out and get a real meal, even though it would deplete my tiny budget. I took the Metro to the Sorbonne and finally settled in a cafe in the little plaza in front of the university.

Barely did I have time to look around when the waiter plopped down a menu and demanded, “Que voulez-vous manger?”

While I couldn’t answer a simple question about what I wanted to eat, he urged, “Croque monsieur, croque madame, sandwich avec jambon et fromage?”

“Croque madame, s’il vous plait.” I had no idea what that was, but, feeling rushed, ordered it because the word “madame” made it sound like something special for women. The only flaw was it cost one franc more than the croque monsieur.

“Bien, quelque chose a boire?”

I hastily glanced at the menu. “Es…pres…so.” It was the cheapest kind of beverage, but the hardest to pronounce.

When the waiter put down the coffee cup, I was surprised at its diminutive size-not much bigger than the toy cup I used for pretend drinking as a child. Don’t the French get thirsty? I took a sip and involuntarily spat out the liquid, shocked by the bitterness. Mon Dieu! Isn’t life bitter enough for the French? Fortunately the madame-French toast topped with fried egg over a thick piece of ham and melted cheese-was filling and delicious.

Ah, I imagined how wonderful to be rich; even one franc could make such a big difference in life…

Some car horns snapped me back from my reverie. The cafe looked exactly the same as five years before, but my karma now seemed different-though just as uncertain. I had my Ph.D., but was still unsure of my future-would I take refuge as a nun or get a job in the secular world, remain single or get married? But I’d already turned down Michael’s proposal! I let out a sigh.

PART TWO

15. New York, New York

Back in Hong Kong, right after Mother had helped me bring in the luggage and closed the door, she lowered her voice as if to divulge a secret. “While you were away, some gweilo has called several times.”

My heart started to pound. “Oh, what’s his name?”

“Mic Ko something. He said he called from the United States.” Mother eyed me suspiciously. “Who is this foreign devil?”

“Nothing, Ma-”

“You mean this man is nothing, or he wants nothing from you?”

“Ma!”

“If a man’s mouth says he wants nothing, that always means he does want something, you understand?” She paused. “I don’t like foreign devils-they always want more, more, more!” Now she stared at me through her pinched eyes. “But then when you want to get married, they don’t want you anymore!”

“Ma, no one is talking anything about getting married!”

“Oh, if you react so strongly, that means you’re thinking about it, right?!”

“Ma!” I decided to lie to save myself from more motherly harassment. “I think it must be the Asia Society in New York, which might be interested in my application for a position.”

Mother looked happy. “Good. Now let me fix some tonic soup to invigorate you after the plane ride,” she said, then whistled “One Day When We Were Young” all the way to the kitchen.

Although I was dying to call Michael right back, I decided to wait a little.

Mother prepared a big dinner. “This is to celebrate your Ph.D.” she said, then started to pile fish, chicken, shrimp, and vegetables onto my plate.

Starved from the unsatisfying airplane meals, I was hungry for my mother’s delicious cooking and ate with great relish. As I was raking rice into my mouth with my chopsticks, I noticed that she was not eating.

“Ma, are you not hungry?”

“Ah”-she looked at me as if I were her first love, then rolled her eyes heavenward-“I don’t know how an ignorant woman like me can give birth to a doctor daughter like you!”

I reached to pat her hand. Just then the phone rang and Mother dashed to pick it up.

She cupped the receiver and made a face. “It’s that same gweilo!”

I went up to snatch the receiver from Mother and waved her away. “Michael?”

“Meng Ning?”

A silence. Then Michael’s voice again. “Meng Ning, where have you been? I was worried about you!”

He sounded so upset that I didn’t have the heart to blame him for not calling me earlier. “I was…in Paris.”

“Your mother told me that, but she wouldn’t give me your phone number.”

“I’m sorry, Michael. She doesn’t trust strangers.”

“It’s all right. So you’ve gotten your Ph.D.?”

“Yes.”

“Congratulations, Meng Ning. I’m so happy for you!”

“Thanks.”

Another pause. His voice now sounded low and edgy, as if he hadn’t slept for days. “I’m so sorry I didn’t call you earlier. The operator tried many times, but couldn’t connect from Tibet to Hong Kong. Then when I tried from the States, you’d already left for Paris.”

“Michael, I’m sorry about all that…but anyway, I’m talking to you now.” A pause, then I asked, “How’s Professor Fulton?”

“He had a stroke while collecting antique thangkas in Lhasa. When I arrived, the local doctors were treating him with Tibetan medicine, which I didn’t understand at all. I immediately booked a flight, brought him back, and put him in New York Hospital.”

Michael went on to tell me that fortunately it was only a mild stroke, so the Professor’s partial loss of memory and motor function would only be temporary. Already he could eat on his own and move around, though with a walker.

“You don’t have to worry, Meng Ning. He’s fine now,” Michael said, sounding more relaxed. Then he changed the subject. “Will you come to the States to see me?”

I didn’t know how to respond to this for several seconds. Then I felt his anticipation rolling toward me from the other side of the world.

“Meng Ning, you there?”

“Yes.”

“Will you come? Please…”

I didn’t know what to say. Wasn’t he angry with me? If I went to see him in the States, what would happen? Would he still be serious about me, even though I’d turned him down?

I covered my chest, fearing that my heart would flutter out of me. In the intimate silence stretching across the Pacific Ocean, I imagined myself listening to his breathing and touching his eyebrows, which resembled the Chinese character “one” saturated with qi…

“Meng Ning, please.” Michael’s urgent voice rose again. “Please say yes.”

A moment later I looked at the telephone receiver, now back on the table. I had agreed.

I went back to finish my celebration dinner. I decided not to tell Mother about Michael-not yet.

So, when she asked about my long-distance telephone conversation, I said, “Ma, it’s the Asia Society in New York. So I’m going to the United States for a job interview.”

“Wow, Meng Ning.” A big smile bloomed on her face. “Now good luck finally pours into our house one after another!” she enthused, beginning again to pile food on my plate until it’d become a miniature meat mountain.