A TROPICAL WINTER’S TALE
Charlson Ong 

 (1) It was winter when he came to her.  The last winter of her
 life.  The cold 
 air stung her face.  Her throat was dry and her breasts swollen. 
 She felt her 
 innards turn to stone and she was suddenly heavy with fear and
 longing.  The 
 man wore layers of animal fur – some strange animal the girl had
 never seen.  
 They called him Bei Xiong – northern – because he was said to have
 originated 
 from some northern province where it snowed in winter.  The girl Li
 Hua had 
 never seen snow.
 
 (2) She thought he must have another name, a real name, but it
 didn’t matter.  
 His head was made of stone, his eyes red, and when he turned to her
 in the half-
 light the girl thought for a moment that it was indeed some unknown
 animal 
 standing before her. Her heart would’ve leapt were it not frozen.
 
 (3) The girl had been waiting for the stranger at the outhouse. 
 The night 
 before, Bei Xiong had come with two sacks of rice, a goat and a jug
 of rice 
 wine which he gave the people Li Hua  had always believed were here
 parents.  
 They told her however that she was bought off some sick peasant as
 an act of 
 Buddhist charity. But when she was grown, the girl was too frail to
 work the 
 fields, too clumsy to care for the young ones, had no talent for
 cooking or 
 embroidery and could never be married off to a well-off family.
 
 (4) But Bei Xiong had seen the girl buying rice wine in town one
 day and 
 decided to have her.  He had two wives but neither had borne him
 any 
 offspring.  Now he wanted a younger woman.  A fresh field to plow. 
 And if she 
 was yet a girl he would be patient and wait for her to blossom.  He
 needed a 
 strong woman that he could take away with him to another land,
 across the seas 
 where he would seek his new fortune after debt and pestilence had
 wiped out his 
 crop and remaining kin.  He would have a new life in that faraway
 land of brown 
 men who worshipped white gods.  Where many of his villagemates had
 gone, where 
 the earth was forever kind and the sun warm.  He had had enough of
 bareness and 
 winter.
 
 (5) Bei Xiong had asked for the girl and the old couple had
 consented though he 
 was far from rich.  The girl had no dowry and was worth far less
 than the food 
 she consumed.  The old woman gave Li Hua some of her brown clothes,
 a bowl 
 steaming broth, some sweet potatoes and told her to wait for her
 man at the 
 outhouse.  The old man berated Li Hua for being lazy and admonished
 her to 
 thank the gods for not having dealt her a worse fate.  
 
 (6) When the stranger spoke rocks grated his throat but Li Hua knew
 he meant 
 for her to follow him.  He rode a black mule and threw her a piece
 of fur to 
 cover her face against the cold drizzle.  Rain seeped through the
 girl’s cotton 
 clothes and her shoulders began to burn.  For a moment Li Hua felt
 an unearthly 
 comfort and the fear flew from her body as ghosts of dead sparrows.
  She had 
 always had an affinity with winter,  The sadness without her,
 sister to the 
 sadness within.  But the fire raced down her spine and threatened
 to enter 
 her.  She screamed. 
 
 (7) The woman awoke in a pool of sweat.  In her dream the snow fell
 in clumps 
 as giant dumplings, burying her.  She knew she was inside a dream
 but couldn’t 
 escape. She had to shake her head several times to fully awaken. 
 The 
 airconditioner was dead.  Another brownout in the middle of the dry
 season.  
 The woman thought at once of the ground meat and foodstuffs in the 
 refrigerator.  Yesterday, some drunken customer complained that her
 meatballs 
tasted like clay.  “These accursed brownouts will be the death of
 us,” she 
 muttered beneath her breath.  Forty years of feeding habitues of
 their hole-in-
 the-wall Chinatown eatery and her meatballs had always tasted
 nothing else but 
 meatballs.
 
 (8) She heard the measured pounding and the scent of dough being
 kneaded 
 assailed her.  It was six-thirty, the girls were preparing fresh
 dumplings for 
 the day.  Since the new girl was hired – Anna, yes that was her
 name she 
 remembered, these huanna names continued to baffle her after 40
 years of 
 calling them out – work seemed to progress faster.  There were six
 of them now 
 – three working in the kitchen, and another three waiting on
 tables.  The woman 
 remembered how she had fed far more customers working in tandem
 with their old 
 cook Ah Beng – who had since left them – but that was many years
 ago.
 
 (9) The woman hurried down the stairs leading to the kitchens as
 she did every 
 morning.  “Good morning, Mrs. Lao,” the girls greeted her as
 always.  “Good 
 morning Mrs. Lao” they repeated.  It took the woman a while to
 recognize the 
 name.  It often sounded strange to her – especially when spoken by
 a huanna 
 tongue – even after many decades of being so addressed.  When she
 first heard 
 Ah Beng greet her as he met them at the wharf – “Lao tai tai” – he
 seemed to be 
 cursing.  It took the woman a while to realize that that was Bei
 Xiong’s true 
 name – Lao.  Old Lao, most people called him.  The woman had never
 called him.  
 She never needed to.
 
 (10) For all his boorishness, Ah Beng was at least respectful of
 her.  Though 
 the difference between their ages left little doubt among the
 lannang – people 
 from the other country – that she was not old Lao’s first wife, Ah
 Beng 
 continued to address her accordingly.  Later, when the fact of this
 distant 
 affinity with Lao was established, this thirtyish cook would refer
 to the woman 
 as “sister-in-law.”  The rest of Chinatown simply called her Li
 Hua, if at 
 all.  Only the huanna greeted her as “Mrs. Lao.”
 
 (11) The night he had her they had spoken little.  The man had
 hoped to be 
 patient with the girl.  He would wait for her to feel at ease, to
 come to him.  
 But the coldness oppressed him, mocked his timidity, turned his
 patience to 
 desperation even as she enjoyed his silence.  She was centuries
 distant from 
 him, wrapped in those sweet cotton slacks reeking of drenched
 manure, trapped 
 inside her thoughts.
 
 (12) Her lips wanted to smile even as her eyes remained empty as a
 cadaver’s 
 and the man was suddenly frightened.
 
 (13) “Come here,” he called her, trying not to be rude.  “Make me
 warm.”  But 
 the girl seemed deaf.  He panicked.  Had he indeed bargained for an
 idiot?  Why 
 else would the old couple have given her up for so little?  She had
 sat almost 
 unmoving in her costume since coming to his home two days ago,
 chewing 
 occasionally on her sweet potatoes.  Certainly his many layered
 brick house 
 with its large hearth which housed generations of kinsfolk before
 the plague 
 was preferable to the old couple’s mud shack?  How could the girl
 be pinning 
 for such people who’d treated her not much better than an animal?
 
 (14) She had not uttered a sound while trudging the 10 lis to his
 village and 
 had since wallowed in her muteness – refusing food, unmoved by his
 gestures, 
 dead to all else but some vision in her mind’s eye.  The man felt
 his chest 
 lighten, he’d heard of yao kways ghosts of those who died before 40
 – who 
 possessed winter travelers.  And Bei Xiong thought for a moment
 that he’d 
 indeed taken in the very evil spirit that had cursed his family. 
 The force of 
 his back hand blow sent the girl sprawling and when she looked up
 she saw him 
 in the light for the first time.
 
 (15) Li Hua’s innards seem to be melting as she felt a sudden
 nausea.  She was 
 weightless now and  the man lifted her and brought her to his four
 post bed – 
 the largest bed she’d ever seen.  He began undressing her
 brusquely.  She 
 wasn’t sure what he wanted from her but a strange peace came over
 the girl.  
 She was at once a child being rudely tucked in bed by an impatient
 father – the 
 father she never had.  She could hear him vaguely -  “Don’t you
 know how it’s 
 done?  “Don’t you ever watch the dogs, the pigs?  A rural runt like
 you?”  She 
 thought of the pigs and the dogs.  She remembered the boar she
 helped their 
 neighbor Co Lay butcher a fortnight ago.  Co Lay allowed her to try
 his big, 
 sharp knives, her hands and arms seemed possessed by the spirit
 from those 
 wondrous metals.  Li Hua could see in her mind’s screen the
 brilliant blade 
 sliding softly through layers of flab and the deep red blood oozing
 forth, then 
 rushing out in the torrent.
 
 (16) She suddenly remembered how they laid the bled pig down on its
 back as the 
 man pinned her down.  Bei Xiong tied the girl’s arms and legs to
 the bed 
 posts.  She thought for a while he’d cut her open like they had the
 pig carve 
 out her entrails, her still throbbing heart and stew them in his
 aromatic herbs 
 said to be the finest in all of Fujian.  And then he was naked, his
 body  so 
 frail she wondered how it could have supported that head of stone. 
 He 
 straddled her and cradled his member against her thigh.  And then a
 hundred 
 knives slashed through the girl’s insides.  But she thought only of
 the 
 disemboweled pig.  How she masterfully cut through the rib cage to
 extract the 
 lungs whole and unmarked – perfect for cooking in ginger oil – how
 the entrails 
 seem to give in to her every move offering no resistance.  She had
 never been 
 so much the master of her actions.  And the girl knew then, in her
 heart, that 
 it was her calling.
 
 (17) Li Hua told Bei Xiong about her talent for butchering.  He
 glared at her 
 in disgust and shook his stone head, convinced that he’d bargained
 for a 
 nitwit.  She spoke to him again and the man flared up.  Where on
 earth, he 
 wanted to know, were there women butchers?  Anyway there were never
 enough pigs 
 or cattle to butcher.  There was never enough food for people much
 less 
 animals.  After he’d disposed of his remaining property they would
 travel to 
 Xiamen and board the ship to a place called Manila where Bei
 Xiong’s distant 
 cousin who’d gone there earlier and apprenticed himself to a cook
 would help 
 Bei Xiong open an eatery.  The brown natives of lu song  were said
 to possess 
 an insatiable appetite for food.  Bei Xiong himself had worked in
 eateries in 
 Fuzhou and Guandong where he learned from some of the best masters.
 
 (18) The wind was soft and the sun gentle as they alighted from the
 boat.  For 
 two days and nights had been trapped amidst a sea of humanity
 aboard the 
 overcrowded ship.  Li Hua feared at times that she was among ghouls
 being 
 brought to the land of the newly dead.  But the air that greeted
 her was the 
 scent of rice and palm.  The man Ah Beng who met them was lean and
 square-
 shouldered.  His teeth were the color of tobacco but his smile gave
 her strange 
 comfort.  When he called her “Lao tai tai,” Li Hua thought for a
 moment that 
 the man were addressing a fellow traveler invisible to her, but he
 smiled and 
 she understood.
 
 (19) The kalesa took them through cobbled streets of gray stone
 houses and low 
 wooden structures.  She saw earth colored men and white women with
 hay-colored 
 hair.  Even the lannang  here were different like Ah Beng – they
 laughed louder 
 and their skins were darker.  Perhaps the earth was truly kinder
 here, she 
 mused.  Perhaps she would bear Bei Xiong’s many sons and he would
 treat her 
 well.  Her heart rose with the wind and she pained for winter.
 
 (20) In the beginning life was simple.  She helped Ah Beng shop for
 fresh 
 foodstuffs at daybreak, they’d wash and prepare the meat, fish and
 vegetables 
 while Ah Beng taught her the ways and words of the huanna.  Later
 Bei Xiong 
 would fry the radish cake and boil the peanut soup for the
 stevedores, 
 merchants, travelling salesmen and workers who came for breakfast. 
 The food 
 was simple – dumplings, fried noodles, beef stew, maki, machang,
 siopao, 
 siomai… The people were simple.  Li Hua made fast friends with
 other women from 
 the old country.  They brought her news of her home village.  In
 the evenings, 
 after they listened to the lilting melodies of the huanna over the
 radio which 
 lulled her like monotone chanting of the Chinese Buddhist sutras or
 went to see 
 a Fujian opera with friends.  At night Bei Xiong came to her. 
 Sometimes when 
 business was good and he’d just had enough of the drink, the man
 was gentle and 
 time passed quickly. She was always past when gentle. Other times,
 when Bei 
 Xiong had just turned over the day’s earnings to the huanna 
 policemen who 
 dropped in occasionally for his favorite beef noodles and had had
 too much to 
 drink, he’d be rough and impatient.  He’d wield his member like a
 weapon 
 against despised enemy.  On such nights, Li Hua  thought of the pig
 she 
 disemboweled, she remembered the grace and power her hands and
 fingers once 
 commanded.  Sometimes, she would try recalling other sites and
 sounds as his 
 body mashed desperately against her.  She’d try helping him but
 this only made 
 him angrier and more ferocious.  Li Hua imagined winter; the sleet
 hanging from 
 dead trees like mutant fruits.  Her insides would freeze and the
 pain would fly 
 from her body like ghosts of dead sparrows.  But in the end she
 always returned 
 to the disemboweled pigs, to the power and grace in her hands and
 her spine 
 stiffen sending needles throughout the body as he released his
 anger in her.
 
 (21) But when two years had passed and she was still without child
 Bei Xiong 
 accused her of secretly aborting her pregnancies.  Li Hua protected
 her 
 innocence but her anger was beastly.  He left her for dead and
 disappeared for 
 weeks.  Ah Beng nursed her wounds and ran the business
 single-handed.  At 
 night, he read poetry  and tried to teach himself the ways of the
 huanna.  He 
 would practice calligraphy and sing her songs from the old village.
  “The 
 masters, he said, would paint trees only in winter.  For only in
 winter, 
 stripped of foliage does a tree's true character surface.  Yes, she
 answered, 
 she understood.  And when Ah Beng held her hand, guiding the brush
 along its 
 smooth, plaintive arc Li Hua felt the power to return to her
 fingers.  Not 
 since the day of the butchering had her fingers been possessed by
 this 
 unearthly force.  The black ink spread cleanly across the crepe
 paper.  Two 
 strokes and their hands, together, had written the character for
 “person.”  
 Then she saw his hands move up her arms; feeling her shoulders, her
 nape, her 
 back and Li Hua knew then that everything that had gone before were
 but meant 
 to prepare her for this moment.
 
 (22) One night as Ah Beng was teaching Li Hua calligraphy, Bei
 Xiong returned.  
 His face was unshaven and wounded, and when he saw them he knew he
 was the 
 stranger their lives.  Bei Xiong looked at he couple almost
 imploringly like 
 cattle about to be slaughtered and went to his room.  Li Hua fixed
 him supper.  
 Early the next morning Ah Beng was gone.
 
 (23) Ah Beng’s departure left a void in their lives that would
 never be 
 filled.  Li Hua had to do the morning shopping by herself while she
 and Bei 
 Xiong seemed to spend every moment cooking and waiting on tables. 
 Some 
 evenings Li Hua would try practicing a few characters Ah Beng had
 taught her.  
 But without Ah Beng’s strong guiding hands vibrant eyes that seemed
 to see the 
 beauty in a bowl of fried tofu as much as in Li Hua’s crooked
 calligraphy, the 
 spirit withdrew from Li Hua’s fingers.  And when Bei Xiong came to
 her at night 
 she can only think of the disemboweled pig.    
 
 (24) During weekends, Bei Xiong would be away on what he claimed
 was 
 “business.”  The hours of his absence grew longer until he’d spend
 his nights 
 and days away from home.  On such time Li Hua hired extra hands to
 help her 
 with the work as word of Bei Xiong’s almond-flavored dumpling
 spread among the 
 huanna as well as the lannang. Yet something close to joy seemed to
 descend 
 upon Bei Xiong.  He was hostage to a distant anxiety and often
 seemed hard 
 pressed to resist smiling just like the time he thought Li Hua
  pregnant.  His 
new found lightness was a blessing to Li Hua and she was both glad
   nd fearful  but above all she savored his absences.

 (25) Bei Xiong brought a huanna woman home one morning.  Her name
 was Clarita.  
 She had black, silky hair that reached her buttocks, her skin was
 light but the 
 black in her eyes reminded Li of burnt charcoal.  She was smaller
 than Li Hua 
 and not much older.  Bei Xiong announced that Clarita would
 henceforth live 
 with them.  She would sleep in their room.  The woman was with
 child he said.

 (26) Something inside her told Li Hua she should be angry, that she
 should rage 
 against Bei Xiong’s animal ways.  Yet the thought of an extra hand
 to lighten 
 her load, of another presence to liven up the deadening days of
 their 
 togetherness gave her strong comfort.  And if the huanna girl were
 truly 
 pregnant, if she were indeed to bear Bei Xiong’s child! That night
 Li Hua moved 
 her own things out of their room and into the kitchen.  She was now
 completely 
 free of the man. 
 
 (27) But before long Li Hua heard the ugly rumors across their
 neighborhood.  
 The lannang were distraught.  Bei Xiong had always seemed an
 illiterate but 
 honorable man.  Even the lannang back home who took other wives
 housed them 
 separately if within the same courtyard.  How could Bei Xiong have
 two woman, 
 and one of them a huanna at that, under the same roof? 
 “Shameless,” they 
 whispered.  The man was truly descended from some northern
 barbarian.  And many 
 of the lannang stopped patronizing Bei Xiong’s eatery.  In the
 beginning they 
 looked at Li Hua with pity but soon enough in disgust.
 
 (28) Clarita in fact grew big and Bei Xiong was never happier
 despite his 
 diminishing profits.  Li Hua too felt a sense of fulfillment.  She
 was happy 
 for the huanna girl and despite the ugly talk Li Hua had never been
 more at 
 peace.  She helped Clarita bathe; brushing the long, lustrous hair,
 marveling 
 at her bloated belly.  She was witness to life seeking expression
 and the sense 
 of grace and power returned to Li Hua’s hands if only for moments.
 
 (29) Clarita and Li Hua taught each other their respective
 languages.  They 
 sang each other songs and shared stories.  Clarita learned to cook
 and Li Hua 
 to embroider.  Li Hua began to feel that she at last had a family. 
 And as the 
 months passed the shared conviction between the two women grew
 stronger that 
 this in fact their child to be born and the man in their lives but
 an accident 
 of fate.
 
 (30) But Clarita stopped with growing, the time of her child’s
 birthing came 
 and nothing happened. Bei Xiong panicked. He took her to the
 herbalist who felt 
 the woman’s pulse and said that she could not detect the child’s
 heartbeat. 
 Must be a weak infant, she consoled, and gave Clarita some
 medicine. Weeks 
 passed and they took Clarita to the huanna doctor who pried into
 the woman and 
 told everyone that Clarita had never been pregnant. A rare case,
 she admitted, 
 but some women who desperately want to could in fact exhibit signs
 of pregnancy 
 without being so. Bei Xiong flared up. He called the doctor a liar
 and had to 
 be hauled away by the police. That night the man’s anger leapt from
 him as the 
 wounded tiger. How could such things happen to him? Bargaining his
 rice wine 
 for an idiot girl and picking up this huanna witch, this mad woman
 who could 
 bloat her belly with nothing but air and lies. What evil had
 committed in his 
 past life to deserve such fate?
 
 (31) Li Hua could feel her own skin break as Bei Xiong beat
 Clarita. Her heart 
 leapt as blood tricked from Clarita’s lips. For a moment she wanted
 to rush to 
 the girl’s defense but one feared for her own life, Bei Xiong
 Nearly once 
 killed her. Bei Xiong dragged the girl out into the streets and
 threw her 
 clothes at her. He told Li Hua to move back into their room and
 when he came 
 for her she could only remember the blood, the knives and the pig.
 
 (32) The huanna girl exuded an air of unreality. Her eyes were
 opaque and 
 unreadable. The old man often had strain to feel her presence. But
 when he 
 looked hard enough her skin shone with pained luster. He could tell
 from the 
 way she carried herself that the girl was not born of a good woman.
 ”She has 
 bad bones,” Bei Xiong said to Li Hua at once. But he could see how
 the older 
 woman had taken to the girl. “Anna…” he could hear Li Hua calling
 out in the 
 kitchen, “your steamed chicken is getting better.” Indeed the first
 time he saw 
 the huanna girl Bei Xiong felt a hungry worm boring down his spine.
 Her round 
 blood-shot eyes reminded him another girl whose cadaver look had
 struck fear in 
 his heart inside that outhouse ages ago. And he knew that some
 indescribable 
 evil had once more entered his household.
 
 (33) Since the time he threw Clarita out of his house Bei Xiong had
 had little 
 interest left for women. He came to Li Hua less and less and
 finally decided to 
 partition their room. He had given up on anyone bearing him
 children and was 
 revolted at the suggestion of adopting some huanna orphan. It had
 dawned on Bei 
 Xiong that he was fated to live a solitary existence, that he and
 Li Hua lived 
 almost entirely separate lives bound incidentally by strangers who
 came for 
 their dilapidated building was torn down by some Taiwanese
 developer bent on 
 reshaping Chinatown.
 
 (34) But the girl had brought with her a vitality that seemed to
 rub off even 
 on their customers. People liked her and Li Hua doted on her. The
 old woman 
 commented upon her every action—admiring her meatballs, criticizing
 her chicken—
 acting as though any of it truly mattered.
 
 (35) Li Hua was again retreating into her own world from which he
 had once 
 saved her. The world she would share with Ah Beng, with Clarita and
 now with 
 this huanna wench Anna. The world beyond him, from which he was
 forever 
 outcast. The woman was displaying once more the cold conceit that
 mocked him 
 when she’d found common cause with Ah Beng and years later with
 Clarita. He 
 could tell she was conspiring once again against him. The injustice
 of Li Hua’s 
 apparent faithlessness struck him like a physical blow. It all
 became clear to 
 him that night when she asked the girl to move in. Anna had been
 orphaned since 
 she was eight and her relatives had finally turned her out. Bei
 Xiong saw the 
 triumph on Li Hua’s face as she consoled Anna and offered to take
 her in. The 
 old woman’s eyes were made of steel as she stared down an incipient
 protest 
 from a surprised Bei Xiong. They assailed him, mocked his aloneness
 and 
 sterility. And when she spoke in that loathsome, gentle manner to
 the 
 distraught girl, he heard the voice of a mother.
 
 (36) No, she had no right to be a mother, Bei Xiong raged mutely.
 She who was 
 barren like Clarita and all the women in his life who had failed to
 bear him 
 progency, to bear him the son who would be his joy and comfort in
 his old age—
 the mirror of his own youth; a youth long lost and irredeemable.
 The land of 
 the huanna had not been a land of rebirth and sustenance for him.
 Here he found 
 the same barreness and death that he had stalked him in the old
 country. He was 
 the last of his line, and his line was doomed. A proud and noble
 line of 
 warriors, once honored by the Tang emperors, which would perish in
 this 
 barbarian earth feeding grimy laborers and unlettered merchants.
 
 (37) In the beginning the fear had bound him and Li Hua. The alien
 drove them 
 into each other’s arms. But soon their profits grew and became a
 wall of silver 
 insulating them from the wiles and werewithal of the huanna.
 Policemen, revenue 
 collectors immigration people all dropped in regularly for their
 profit. Life 
 was difficult but more bearable than in the old  country and for
 sometime Bei 
 Xiong imagined he would grow into an old, wealthy patriarch of a
 large clan in 
 this country. But the woman had given him no offspring. Had
 deceived him and 
 poisoned those closest to him. She had seduced Ah Beng and made him
 – Bei 
 Xiong, who had saved her – a cuckold. Yes, he could tell by their
 looks that 
 night when he returned that the twain had betrayed him.
 
 (38) He had been forgiving but her treachery was boundless. She
 would deceive 
 Clarita – the only woman who would have borne him children – and
 turn her 
 against him, Bei Xiong was certain now that it was Li Hua,
 employing some 
 despicable witchcraft from her village, who had sucked the spirit
 out of his 
 child from Clarita’s womb. And now she’d taken in the huanna girl
 to drive him 
 completely out of her life, to make him a stranger inside his own
 home.
 
 (39) Bei Xiong marched downstairs to the kitchen where he could
 hear Anna 
 puttering about preparing the day’s foods. She had been sleeping in
 the kitchen 
 for nearly a month since weeping to Li Hua about being thrown out
 of the 
 apartment she shared with foster cousins. Li Hua would still be
 away, it took 
 over an hour to haggle at the fresh food market. Bei Xiong knew he
 must act 
 before the old woman returned. It was shameful but true that Li
 Hua’s power had 
 grown even as his own has weakened through the years. The demon
 inside the 
 woman who had saved and nurtured through the years was now a
 monster, before 
 whom Bei Xiong often felt lost and confused. He could not look into
 the woman’s 
 eyes without seeing that demon staring him down. He could not
 remember the last 
 time he won an argument with the woman or had his way with her. She
 ran every 
 detail of their lives from the number of dumplings steamed for the
 day to the 
 amount of small change he could use to buy cigarettes.
 
 (40) But she was not to bring this huanna thing into his home. She
 was not to 
 be a mother to this evil wench at his expense. When Li Hua returned
 Anna would 
 be out of his home and his life forever, the old man vowed.
 
 (41) The girl was unsteadied by the old man’s voice. “You…,” he
 croaked. ”Leave 
 my house,” he wanted to say but the morning, had lent vigor to her
 pout and he 
 could see the outlines of her adolescent breast poke naughtily at
 him through 
 her kamiseta. His belly ached.
 
 (42) “Come here, ‘ the old man finally equipped.
 
 (43) “What is it, ankong?”
 
 (44) Her voice pricked his aged skin. “Don’t call me that,” he
 yelled. “I am 
 not your lolo. I’ll not have any huanna wench call me that.”
 
 (45) “I’m sorry,” she muttered. But it’s how amah said I should
 call you.”
 
 (46) The fire raced through his brain and he leapt at the girl as a
 scared 
 prey. “Don’t call her that. She is not your lola, she is nothing to
 you and you 
 are nothing to us. You have no business sleeping in my kitchen.” He
 gripped the 
 girl’s thin wrists.
 
 (47) Anna wanted to struggle, to hide from the rage seizing her,
 but she knew 
 in a moment that the storm had trapped her inside its eye and all
 was futile.
 
 (48) “She told me I could stay.”
 
 (49) The girl’s helplessness warmed his aching belly. Her eyes
 begged for mercy 
 even as the blood trickled from her bitten lips. And in that
 instant the old 
 man knew she was the one he had waited for.
 
 (50) “Do you want to stay?” he whispered. The surfeit of huanna
 worlds stilting 
 his tongue.
 
 (51) “Yes.”
 
 (52) “Be quiet then.”
 
 (53) They were a strange couple, the girl thought. The old woman
 must be 60 
 though her back was always straight even as she ate and she never
 ceased 
 moving. The man looked much older to the girl and often seemed
 weary and dull. 
 His presence was almost accidental and it was more than once when
 the girl 
 mistook him for a customer as he hunched over a corner table
 sipping tea. 
 “Don’t mind him” the old woman would tell the help whenever he
 grunted and 
 bellowed about how the food was deteriorating. His brain is
 rotting,” she would 
 quip.
 
 (54) Anna used to call the woman “Mrs. Lao” like the rest of the
girls and was 
 finicky about the dishes, a poorly washed plate could set off a
 long–winded 
 diatribe. Her Tagalog sounded funny at times but was mostly
 understandable. And 
 she could be patient too when teaching a new girl how to season a
 roast duck or 
 listening to another one’s latest plea for a loan. All the girls
 owed her at 
 least half a year’s wages.
 
 (55) When Anna told Mrs. Lao that she had been thrown out by her
 relatives it 
 didn’t take the woman more than a few minutes to decide to let her
 move in. 
 Anna could tell, though, that the old man was disturbed. She could
 not see why. 
 They were childless, after all, and she could help with the house
 chores. Still 
 she made up her mind to move out once she had saved enough to fend
 for her own.
 
 (56) The old man hardly ever spoke. What he uttered was mostly
 inexplicable and 
 he seldom waited for a response. Sometimes he’d be gone for days
 and then he’d 
 lock himself up inside his room for a week. Whenever she brought
 him food Anna 
 would see him slumped on his hardback narra rocker with an empty
 look on his 
 face. Once she thought he’d stopped breathing and nearly screamed
 and then she 
 was breathing and nearly screamed and then he groaned and his eyes
 were 
 beastly. She froze.
 
 (57) Anna knew the old man would soon turn her out. But she could
 not 
 understand his anger when he came at her. She could not see how his
 frail weary 
 body could hide such a rage. He was all over her in an instant,
 gripping her 
 wrists so tightly she thought they would break. And then she was
 breathing down 
 her neck uttering something into her ears. She could smell his
 nicotined breath 
 as he began to licking her forehead. She squirmed but he’d pinned
 her against 
 the wall before darkness overcame her.
 
 (58) Bei Xiong slept like a child. Li Hua had never seen him
 sleeping so 
 soundly and almost envious of the peace that seemed to have come
 over him. When 
 she returned home from the market with her load of vegetables, Li
 Hua found 
 Anna weeping inside the kitchen. Something steely ripped through
 her insides. 
 Nausea clogged her throat and her heart clubbed against her chest.
 
 (59) “What happened?” The woman managed to ask but the girl could
 only weep. 
 You must leave,” said the old woman swallowing hard.
 
 (60) “But I have no place to go,” moaned girl.
 
 (61) “You must leave,” the old woman repeated.
 
 (62) Li Hua gave Anna some money and helped her to the door.
 Goodbye Amah,”
 
 (63) “Come home again in a week’s time, “ Li Hua whispered placing
 her golden 
 necklace in the girl’s hand.
 
 (64) It had been many years since she last held a cleaver much less
 butchering 
 knife. Since her arthritic fingers began causing her pain Li Hua
 had let the 
 girls do the chopping and the heavy knife work, content to
 supervise the 
 cooking. Yet the twin knives felt surprisingly light. Bei Xiong’s
 wrinkled skin 
 offered no resistance as she slit the blades across his throat. The
 dark blood 
 trickled and then broke out in waves. A lightness suffused her. Li
 Hua 
 remembered the day of the disemboweled pig and the spirit of those
 wondrous 
 blades returned to her hands. They knew exactly what to do,
 bleeding the 
 carcass dry, splitting the upper torso, and expertly removing the
 entrails and 
 organs. She has never been more the master of her actions and fear
 flew her 
 like the ghosts of dead sparrows.
 
 (65) A few of the neighbors soon noticed Bei Xiong’s absence and
 started asking 
 about him. Li Hua told them he had gone home to visit his kin. In
 truth, 
 however, Bei Xiong had been disappearing from the lives of the
 people around 
 him for many years and later, few would remember his real face.
 Once, a huanna 
 cop came by to ask questions. He later learned, however, that
 Manuel Santos, 
 who allegedly owned the eatery had died many years ago in Pampanga.
 Li Hua 
 offered him some tea and almond cake and after failing to obtain
 useful 
 information he went his way.
 
 (66) Anna returned to the eatery and stayed with Li Hua for many
seasons until their side of Chinatown was razed by fire some years ago. To this day, some of  the lannang claim that for a few days after Bei Xiong’s disappearance Li Hua’s  dumplings exuded an exotic addictive flavor the likes of which they have not  tasted before nor since.