Forgiveness

Timeline: This occurs sometime during "A Place of Memory"

While packing for Canton, and ultimately Hong Kong, Tao approaches me. It is the second time we have been alone since my mother rescued us. I have done my best to make sure someone, usually my mother who despises Tao as much as I do if not more, is with me to avoid another confrontation like the previous one. We will be gone soon, and Tao will continue his life here, carrying on in making second-rate art with a first-rate reputation, just like he always wanted to. Everyone gets a happy ending. No good can come from letting him persist with the idea of a family reconciliation. We'll soon be gone, and he'll move on. We'll all move on.

Tao walks in front of me so that he is directly in my line of sight, nearly impossible to ignore. I cringe inwardly as I admit to myself that he looks attractive. Nourishment, rest, a lack of hard manual labor, and one of Z.G.'s finer outfits nearly take my breath away. He has never looked more amazing. He is not the same sack of bones I remember carrying from Sung-ling's house, nor is he the grubby farm laborer I first fell in love with. I look away and tell myself to stop being so in love with the superficial, so very much like my birth mother, Auntie May. I love her, but I do not want to be like her in that regard. I resume packing, not acknowledging his existence until he addresses me.

"Joy," he says in a low voice that makes my chest tighten. I continue to focus on packing. Socks, blouses, underwear… probably better to pack more underwear. I learned the hard way that you can never have enough…

"I overheard Pearl and Z.G. speaking. When we leave tomorrow, you're planning on leaving with your mother and Sam to meet your Auntie May in Hong Kong, and…" he chokes. He shakes his head as if to will away weakness. If only he'd done that when his depraved mother suggested murdering his own daughter!

"You aren't planning on coming back, are you?" he asks.

Crap. Cat's out of the bag. Way to go, Mom.

"Yes, Tao," I say as apathetically as possible. "This is correct."

He looks pale, almost ill. Good.

"When were you planning on telling me?" he asks.

"Maybe once we got to America. Maybe never."

He shakes his head again.

"How could you do that to me? I know I've made mistakes, but Sam is my daughter too! Don't you think I have a right to see my daughter? Or a chance to say good-bye, at the very least?"

"She's sleeping in the other room with Ta-ming. I can go get her if you want to do it now."

"Listen to me! Please. I love you. You are my ai jen! I apologized for what I almost did, but if it's more groveling you want, I'll say I'm sorry till you finally get it in your head that I am."

"I'm actually getting sick of hearing it."

"Good," he says in a tone of voice that is calmer than the rest of the conversation that preceded it.

"Good," I respond in a similar tone.

"Good," he says again. We both crack a smile. I hate how familiar it feels, like when we first fell in love, back when we couldn't stop making each other giddy with happiness. I stop smiling when I tell him a harsh truth.

"I've already decided I'm going home with my mother. You can't stop me."

"I could report you," he says in a low voice. It is an empty threat. It is a desperate plea for me to stay.

"You wouldn't. I would be sent to a place far worse than the one we came from, so we'd end up separated anyways. And I would die. I'd hope you wouldn't want my blood on your hands," I say. "Just let me go, Tao. Let us go."

"I can't," he confesses. I roll my eyes.

"You have to. We're not staying." Like the Dog he is, he has gripped both Sam and I with his teeth and is refusing to let go in this epic tug-of-war, even though we are all suffering because of it.

"Let me come with you then. You have all these fake passports and exit papers. Surely one more set can't be too difficult to get?"

I freeze. The thought of Tao coming with us never crossed my mind. I had thought our separation was inevitable once I made up my mind to return home. Tao would be here, I would be there, and that would be that. Now that he has offered a possible alternative, I can't shake the idea away, no matter how absurd. After all, this is the man so backwards that he tried to wash dishes in the toilet. He doesn't belong in America. He is too backwards, too much like…

…like my father Sam.

I miss him. That is probably the real reason I married Tao in the first place. He reminds me of the man I thought to be my father for 19 years, the man I loved and who loved me so much and so selflessly that he killed himself for my mother and I. Tao is like my father in looks and background, only he is more confident than my meek but strong father had been, or at least Tao usually is. Now he trembles as he talks about leaving China for a country he has never visited to be with me and our child, the only family he has left. His voice quivers every now and then, and he looks at me with wide imploring eyes to try to probe my face for the faintest clue of what is going on inside my mind. He has made himself vulnerable to me in this moment. He has never reminded me of my father more than he does now, and it hurts to look at him for this reason. Only unlike my father, Tao struggles with the concept of selfless love. He loves himself more than anyone else. All he ever spoke of in the village was getting out and getting into Shanghai. This is another reason why his suggestion to come with me has taken me by complete surprise. It's selfless. It's unlike Tao.

"Think about this for a minute. Here in Shanghai, you have your art. You have connections. Your career is just beginning! In America, you are no one. Even Z.G. is no big deal in America. If he is a no one, you would surely be nothing."

He frowns. Being called no one and nothing is harsh, but it's better for him to face the truth now than months after coming to America and becoming disillusioned.

"I know, but I don't care," he says.

I sigh and throw up my hands.

"Be reasonable! You don't even speak English!"

"Neither did your father!" he shouts. His words sever me. Now I must cut him back, even if I shred myself in the process.

"I loved my father more than anything," I say, "But he lived and died in poverty, and that's the same fate you'll have if you come with us."

Poverty is such a relative term. In America, poverty meant plain food, plain clothes, plain everything, but at least there were clothesand food. Even in the worse times I don't remember going hungry, and certainly nothing like the gnawing hunger I grew accustomed to in the village. I recognize, not for the first time, how much I have taken for granted. I had no idea the life of privilege I lived before I came here, but it is hard to discern poor and rich when the terms mean very different things from the place I am now and the place I came from.

"Your father learned some English."

Had I really spoken so often of my father to Tao? I don't remember speaking of him so much to anyone.

"And I can learn from your mother," he said. "I don't care anyway. I don't care if I have to wash dishes in your family restaurant for the rest of my life. I'm coming with you and Sam and that's final!"

I laugh, picturing Tao washing dishes in the toilet like he did the first time he attempted the act. When Tao asks why I am laughing at this completely inappropriate moment, I tell him, and he laughs as well as a rosy blush creeps onto his cheeks.

"You will never let me forget that, will you?" he asks.

I shake my head.

"Never."

The laughter fades into a few chuckles before receding completely. We stand in silence as the jovial moment passes. How can he do this? Make me mad one moment, pitying the next, then laughing? It isn't fair that staying mad at him requires so much effort, not when it used to come so much easier to me. He must see my thoughts as he did when he began courting me. He places a hand on my cheek. When I don't flinch or pull away, he takes the opportunity to kiss me. It is gentle and soft. My pulse races so rapidly that I am certain everyone in the house will wake up, and everyone who is already awake will rush in here to figure out the cause of that frantic drumming noise. The sound must have at least reached my daughter's delicate ears because she begins to cry right away.

Tao breaks the kiss, looks at me longingly, and leaves to tend to Sam. I have been surprised at the way he treats her lately. He comforts her when she cries, much to my initial dismay. (Although he only comforts her once she's already upset because he does not possess an ounce of the maternal intuition I have that allows me to sooth Sam before she gets fussy). He feeds her, coos at her, and even changes her diaper without complaint and without being asked to, after he requested to be shown how to change a disposable diaper, a device that was, much like the toilet, a complete mystery to Tao. He was so fascinated with this simple task that my mother and I laughed. Of course, at the time I reasoned that he deserved it, that we were laughing at him in a scornful way, not that his innocence to modern ways was endearing. But now I feel guilty. Tao was trying to learn how to be a good father. I should not have mocked him for that. For all the horrible things he did to Sam and me, I should not have reserved my snickering for his efforts at decency.

Tao returns with Sam, who still sobs, but is somewhat subdued by our presence. She reaches for me, and I take her. She is my comfort, and she will shield me from Tao long enough to let rationality seep back into my brain so that I can send him away before I reach a point where I can no longer escape.

"Do you remember…no, you probably don't," he says, and shuts himself up quickly.

"Remember what?" I say, expecting him to drudge up some pleasant memory of us in our courtship days, trying to woo me with reminiscences of the past when our love was new and untouched by the turmoil of life.

He shakes his head. He's doing it again, that gesture where I can tell he is trying to fight away weakness. Emotion creeps into his voice even as he tries to push it back.

"Can I take her?" he asks, gesturing to Sam. I pass her back to him, and he looks at her with love and admiration, as if he can't believe he had anything to do with creating such a perfect entity. He speaks to me while looking at her, directly avoiding my eyes.

"Do you remember when we were escaping, and you looked at me and told your mother… no, no, no." He says. He smiles bitterly while looking at Sam, and the sour smile turns into him biting his bottom lip. I study his face like an archeologist examining hieroglyphics without the Rosetta stone, trying to read him, trying to read the way his face twists in pain at the memory and what it means to him.

"No, I don't remember. I don't remember anything after I took pictures and sent them to Mother. I was in a daze from the hunger."

"I didn't think so. I don't remember much either except that."

I don't dare ask him what I meant at the time I said that or what he thinks I meant. He offers his opinion anyway.

"You were telling your mother to leave me there," he says. He strokes Sam's face. He gathers all his courage to talk about this by looking at her innocence to counterattack the horrors in his mind that erupt from thinking back to that dark time in our lives.

"Be serious. That could have meant anything. I was delirious," I protested. We both know I'm lying. I remember it now. The cold metal of the wheelbarrow on my back, my mother's comforting words, the familiar hunger ache inside of me. I looked at Tao and condemned him to death in that moment. Just three simple words.

No, no, no.

Would Z.G. have left him there if he had known? The way he continues to teach us both, the way they seem to have developed a distant mutual respect despite Tao's mistake makes me think he wouldn't have listened to me anyway.

"I know you sentenced me to die that day, and if your parents had known everything that had happened, I'm sure they would have left me there. Lucky for me that you were too weak to protest."

I look to the floor ashamed. I've been self-righteous about how much better I am, but in this moment, I don't feel better than Tao. I feel like the dirt I used to plow every day until the sun went down.

"I'm sorry," I say.

Tai shrugs. "I deserved it."

"Yes, but…"

"Let it go. I said I deserved it. We all make mistakes."

Realization hits me in an abrupt wave. We both made major mistakes, the kind that change or destroy lives. These are adult mistakes, and the very first one I experienced was when I joined the Chinese Students Democratic Christian Association, an involvement that cost me my father's life. It feels like I'm dying because my entire life is flashing before my eyes, but it's mainly just the life I began when I stepped foot here. My life started here because of one big mistake, I almost lost my daughter Sam because of one big mistake, and I almost lost Tao because…

No, no, no…

I could finally picture it now. Tao's mother telling him to look at his brother and condemn him to death over a stupid girl that probably wasn't his child anyway. Tao looking at his brothers and knowing death would soon be visiting them all soon, and his mother placing that burden on his shoulders. Tao had consented, but he'd gone back for Sam and had he acted a little more intelligently by bringing the infant to swap them back or been a little stronger to win the fight, he could have brought Sam home before I intervened. He made a mistake, but he tried to right it. And I was no better. I killed my father, or at least it still felt that way. I flew halfway around the world to be a part of a collective because being an individual was too hard. There was too much guilt and pain in being an individual. Better to join a group where everything is evenly distributed, including pain.

Father, forgive me, I plead, knowing that if he could speak to me, he'd tell me there was nothing to forgive, just as he'd always say in real life. I know he'd never blame me. He'd probably apologize for killing himself and making me so crazy that I decided to come to China after all the horror stories I grew up with about my family's homeland. I think I have known this for a long time now, but my grief has been so strong that I held onto the guilt. But now I feel different. I feel absolution flooding me. I wanted to extend this feeling to Tao, to let him know how it feels to let go of all your grief and pain and just feel nothing but relief course through you. When I look at him, holding Sam tenderly and looking at me with pleading eyes, I honestly feel no more hatred for him than I do for myself.

"I forgive you."

He closes his eyes. All the tension he has been holding on to leaves him.

"Good. It's about time," he says coolly, but he doesn't fool me. The soft smirk on his lips brings a smile to my own. His beautiful scar glimmers through my tears. I kiss it, as I've wanted to do for some time now. I hold him and Sam both in my arms. We stay that way for a long time.

"I hope you accept that I am coming with you now," Tao says in my ear. I nod. Mother will raise hell. That should be amusing. I know I may feel forgiveness for Tao, but I don't know about my mother. I wonder for a moment if Sam will ever forgive Tao for I Tzu, Erh Shih. Not that I would ever tell her, but from my own personal experience I know that some secrets are too big to be kept forever. One day she will find out. I wonder if she'll find it in her heart to forgive me for not telling her, and to continue loving Tao as I somehow do, even though he almost let her die. Then again, didn't I practically sentence Tao to death when I told my mother, "No, no, no" in my half delirious state, meaning, "No, no, no, leave the bastard here, leave him to rot with his whole cursed family." I did. I would have let him die, yet here he is, professing his love for me despite this.

If Tao could continue to love me after I nearly left him to die, I believe Sam can one day forgive Tao as he forgave me. She is half-Tao, after all, a fact I'm no longer ashamed of. After decades of Tao showing her the kind of love I experienced with my own father, forgiveness will come much easier for her than it did for me.