Burning Bush

All this percolates in her shivery unconscious as Li-Chun chats on the phone with her sister Pen-Ma, receiver cradled between head and shoulder. Her hands work deftly, scooping pork-and-chives mix into a palm-sized circle-shaped wrapper.

"You think?" Pen-Ma says.

"What?" she'd hissed.

"What's the matter with you? Can't you see who it is? I should go over there and slap her face. If I had me some dirty dishwater, I'd empty it over her." Li-Chun ground her teeth.

Only three months ago the funeral had been. Yet, Li-Chun feels as if she's lived her whole life alone, that her time with Zhi-Ming had never been. How can someone be gone so quickly, only leaving behind residues of emotions and memories like sticky resin? She folds the wrapper in half, then with thumb and forefinger pinches the ends together quickly, a kneading motion that bears dumplings the size of miniscule clasped purses. Two rows of them now lie beached, white and curled, against each other on a tray.

"Ach, it would've been a perfect revenge. It would have rankled Zhi-Ming like sitting on an anthill." Such sweet revenge she'd been planning, she could taste it like stewed chicken kidneys. Timely, because she'd just found out, through an inadvertent call from a real estate lawyer's office, that he'd bought a mansion up in the Hollywood hills for his mistress, while simultaneously telling her to rein in expenses, such as Ta-Ting's piano lessons and her weekly pedicures. Perfect too, the revenge would have been, because Pastor Chen would sermonize Zhi-Ming about his infidelity while he would be perfectly aware this God's servant is diddling his own wife.

"I gave him last month's Glamor. Fifty ways to stimulate the G-spot. He read it in the john. Revenge has side benefits."

"Don't you dare." Li-Chun counts the New Year dumplings on the tray in her head. She picks up another wrapper, dabs it with beaten egg. She scoops and stuffs, scoops and stuffs. A shuffling noise makes her lift her head. Ta-Ting, her nine year old son, is standing at the doorway, a book in his hand and a box of matches in the other. How much has he heard? Li-Chun panics. But there is an impassive expression on Ta Ting's face. He holds the box of matches out. "I'm going to light the bush on fire and talk to it," he declares.

"Can I eat a dumpling?" Ta-Ting approaches the kitchen counter, pincers a raw dumpling, stares at it. Li-Chun neatly plucks it from his hand and places it back on the tray. She flaps at him. "Go now. Shoo!"

"Just your Aunty Pen-Ma. Now go."

"Pen-Ma, I'm going to have to call you back later." Li-Chun hangs up. She tries to catch his flying sleeve. "Can't you see I'm busy here? Go put up your dragon paper cuts for New Year. You don't want to miss any red packets, do you?"

"TA-TING! Stop!"

"Is Pastor Chen staying for tea again today?"

"I hate it when he does that," Ta-Ting declares. One hand finger-walks up the side of a bowl. "He stays so long. Besides, he's too skinny and he smells."

"Papa says he's a hippo . . . a real crud."

"What're you talking about? Your papa seldom went to church."

"Ta-Ting! Stop making things up. Now go and play outside."

Li-Chun can hear her son outside now, careening around, screaming at the top of his lungs. Listening, she makes out the words of a church hymn, "Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light!" With Zhi-Ming's betrayal still lodged in her heart, she contemplates how neatly he'd sidestepped her revenge by falling ill. Not with any evanescent subliminal disease, but with a crippling, monstrous, galloping brain tumor that the doctors didn't even dare to biopsy, because the odds of death by biopsy were about even with the tumor killing him.

An hour later, Li-Chun sniffs the air and smells something burning. She looks at her oven and the stove. Then, yelling in panic, she rushes outside to see flames licking upwards from the stunted hedge, brittle, desiccated from a few months prior.

Her son emerges from behind. In his hand he holds a Bible, open to the Old Testament. Solemnly, he holds up a hand as if to bless her. His face is fiery red from the fumes. His voice roars over the crackling bush, "Mama, I have something important to tell you. GOD SAYS I AM THE CHOSEN ONE."

Pen-Ma swears by therapy for anyone having a mental meltdown, like PeptoBismol for acid reflux. Li-Chun and Ta-Ting are waiting to see Dr. Martin in a cream-colored antiseptic lobby, a psychologist recommended by her late husband's neurologist. He and Dr. Martin are tennis buddies, which Li-Chun figures to be a solid reference, despite all her misgivings about psychoanalytic mumbo-jumbo.

Sitting with her Louis Vuitton purse carefully balanced on her lap, she glances at her child. Ta-Ting is methodically pinching first the left then the right side of his face. She flaps at him. "Stop fidgeting."

The receptionist is buzzed. She picks up the phone, listens without saying a word, replaces the receiver and looks across at them. "Dr. Martin will see you now." An android couldn't be more stoic.

"Dr. Khoo very kindly called me before you visit."

"He explained you situation. I'm very sorry to hear about you husband."

"You disturbed by something." Dr. Martin then holds out a hand. "Please, I'm not asking you to trust me. I'm here to help, if I can. We only need talk about whatever you feel comfortable discussing."

Li-Chun now takes a leap of faith. "Dr. Martin, I need to explain something to you." She quickly reprises this scene from memory to him, while Ta-Ting listens as if they are talking about some other unfamiliar boy. His eyes light up with magisterial wonder, a kind of impishness.

Embarrassed, Li-Chun mumbles, "He's a very very bright boy. Nearly top of his class, every year."

Li-Chun looks at her son. He puffs out his cheeks, having inhaled a lot of air, and he stares back at the doctor unblinking. His jaws work under the strain, and his cheeks indent here and there as the pocket of air dances around. Dr. Martin waits.

Finally, Ta-Ting exhales. "Yes, I like to draw," he says.

"Anything you like," Dr. Martin urges. "Whatever comes to you mind. A rainbow or an animal?"

"Maybe Spiderman or his nemesis, Dr. Octopus?"

As he draws, Dr. Martin slips into casual chit-chat. He asks where they live, and what she enjoys about her Pasadena neighborhood. Li-Chun realizes that what she has mistaken for grammatical errors is actually an inability or recalcitrance of Dr. Martin's tongue and soft-palette to form the sound "oar." Thus, when he speaks, "more" sounds like "mew" and "for" like "few." It liberalizes her attitude towards him. That, and his manner towards Ta-Ting, patient and unexpectant.

Dr. Martin looks up. "This is very, very good."

Ta-Ting crosses his arms. "I AM WHO I AM," he drones.

Dr. Martin looks felled by her aggression. He takes a deep breath, gets up from his seat and starts pacing up and down.

"Oh, so you can charge us double?" Li-Chun storms to the windows, drags Ta-Ting's hand. She strides to the door. "What kind of a roughhouse Chinese-equivalent to Martin are you anyway?"

For the last four weeks, her own progress has been slow. The shrink tells her possibly she is enraged at herself. Possibly, her anger is directed towards the person who died for no other reason than that he died. He tells her anger has many faces; the other side of anger is sadness and loss. Possibly, her anger matches her sadness in equal measure and intensity.

When she tells Pastor Chen this, he gives her a sermon about worshipping false idols. And he does this while they are still breathless and disheveled on the carpet. Angrily, she snatches up her bra and covers her chest. "You're missing the point," she says.

"You mean, like Zhi-Ming and his harlot, and me and you?"

"You need to be less aggressive, Li-Chun. Seek God's forgiveness."

So, she tells this to her shrink, by way of preamble. "I don't need to seek anybody's forgiveness. Certain people, even as they lie churning in their grave, need to seek God's forgiveness."

"Just wonderful! Ta-Ting is commencing his mass exodus. Soon, I'll expect to see the slaughter of first-borns."

"Let's talk about that today. Tell me about these antics of Ta-Ting's. How do they make you feel?"

"What else?"

Dr. Martin taps his fingertips together. "I've told you what I think it means. Why don't you tell me what you think it means?"

"So you think there's a connection between his behavior and the lessons?"

"But you think not?"

"What do you think he's trying to tell you?"

Dr. Martin switches topic. "Tell me about you church. What's it like? How long have you been going?"

Just as she gets up to leave though, Dr. Martin says, "Perhaps the next time Ta-Ting reenacts a biblical episode, you should indulge him, play along."

"If you believe he's seeking communication with you in the only way he knows how, playing along, engaging by his rules, is a way to signal you're listening."

"I was just thinking. That's unusual for a pastor of a large congregation, is it not? To take such an interest in one little boy?"

Dr. Martin shakes his head. "Nothing at all. It's heartwarming to hear that there're still such dedicated priests out there. The one stray lamb in the flock causes a rejoicing up in heaven."

On the phone with Pen-Ma later, Li-Chun gasps out, "Do you realize what this means? Zhi-Ming must have known all along." Wind rolls out of her, the sounds bassooning like reedy breaths. "Here I've been burning up thinking I'm unavenged, when all along…" The enormity of her realization makes her wheeze in soundless laughter. "I totally missed it. Son of a gun. I thought he was twisting in his deathbed for time, for life, when in fact, he's just twisting. Twisting because he's been betrayed just as he has betrayed." Li-Chun heaves.

Li-Chun realizes there are damp tracks trickling off her chin. She swipes at them. "I'm cracking up. I'm literally fizzing."

Li-Chun collapses on the floor. "I don't know. I hope not. Oh, I really hope not. Damn Zhi-Ming!"

Over the next few days, a vague feeling of disappointment pursues her. Instead of release, Li-Chun feels deflated. She's unsure of many things. In the light of cold reason, she again becomes confused. Did Zhi-Ming know or not? However, despite the highs and lows of her emotional roller-coaster, one thing she does know. It congeals like dried lard, becoming rock-solid. And it spurs her to action. When next Pastor Chen walks in the door, she makes him a nice cup of Oolong. She sends Ta-Ting off to play at Alex's. Perched on the kitchen stool, she sedately laces her fingers. "You know, Da-Wu, I'm so proud of the progress Ta-Ting has made with the Bible. Just this morning, he's beating his bread with his short ruler."

"He's preparing for Passover. I've never been prouder of my little Moses." Li-Chun measures her next words. "In fact, I'm so proud I think he can carry on now without guidance. More than that, he should proceed on his own, for his own good."

The formality rocks her a little. She hesitates.

Li-Chun purses her lips. "I don't think Zhi-Ming would have liked his son to become a priest." She studies her fingernails. "After all, it's not like he was surrounded by flawless examples. And he knew it before he died."

His hand grasps hers. "I don't think it's a good idea. As your pastor, I earnestly advise against it."

Some of the desolation she's feeling must have seeped through. She looks up to find Pastor Chen puckering his lips like drawstrings, and there's no mistaking the wistfulness in their edges. "I'm not perfect, but I forgive you," he says.

It's the night of Passover. Ta-Ting has barricaded all the doors with strips of newspapers. He's painted the doorway with red x's, incanting a prayer as he does so. He has slaughtered a year-old lamb out in the living room, slashing his toy hatchet at his white pillow. Every action is fraught with significance.

She makes him dinner, watches as he eats his fried chicken with his Spiderman cloak tucked into his belt, sandals on his feet, a staff in his hand. She prepares herself. With rawness in her heart, she says, "Ta-Ting, you'll be glad to know Mama has decided no more lessons with Pastor Chen." She steals a glance.

"Aren't you happy? No more memorizing the Bible. You never liked him, did you?"

Li-Chun's throat convulses. "Did Dr. Martin tell you that?"

His seriousness quells her protests. Her alarm simmers long, becomes a gloaming unease. The weather conspires, almost gleefully. Over the course of the evening, the wind has increased to gales, rattling the bay windows, the louvered shutters, circling in the chimney. They try to watch T.V. in the den, but the keening gusts make Li-Chun shiver. Gales are rare in L.A. and Li-Chun flips channels with foreboding in trying to catch the weather report, much to Ta-Ting's annoyance, who wanted to watch Spiderman 2 on one of the cable movie channels.

The next morning, as Ta-Ting grabs strawberry Poptarts on-the-go as the school bus honks outside, Li-Chun's hands flutter over his shoulder, catching him in flight. There's a quickening as she looks her son in the eye and says, "Well done, Moses. Commemorate this day, this day you came out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery, because the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand."

She watches him sprint across the driveway and hop into the waiting bus. Her heart flips even as she waves to him, even as she sees him greet his friends, Passover temporarily forgotten, the crossing of the Red Sea still to come.

Li-Chun walks over to her husband's portrait. She stares at it for a long time, until his features become pinpoints of light and color. Then, with swift unerring aim, she punches in his eyes with a two-fingered prong. And it's cathartic.

E.P. Chiew