Monsoon Season
BY AUDREY TANG
Hsiu-hua’s strange behavior started along with Taiwan’s monsoon season. In these months, the sky intermittently thunders and pours for days on end. Even when it isn’t raining, the air is still thick and wet, hot and sticky. Walking outside, it feels as if you’re drowning.
Chiayi, Hsiu-hua’s daughter, noticed the behavior during the first thunderstorm of the season. As the rain was coming down, and the sky was flashing white and black, Chiayi saw her mother standing out in the rain, waving her arms at the muddy road that led down towards the river. Between the pattering of the rain against the ground and the wide banana leaves, a pattering so loud her mother’s voice as if muddled through layers of glass, Chiayi could faintly hear her mother say: He must’ve lost his way…
Worried, Chiayi took Hsiu-hua to the big hospital in the city the next day. The doctors ran a few tests and took a few scans. Alzheimers was the likely diagnosis, though nothing looked particularly wrong in the scans. The doctors were more worried about Hsiu-hua’s leg, which hadn’t stopped swelling from an injury a few months ago. There wasn’t much they could do about it, so they sent the two home with a medley of pills and vitamins.
The mother and daughter lived by the mangroves in an old house Chiayi’s ah-gong built. When it poured, the water drained into the mangroves, filling it up. The soil expanded into mud, the mud expanded into sludge. And so did Hsiu-hua’s bad leg. The wet in the air filled up in her leg, and her ankle and calf would swell to double their size. Whenever the swelling grew, she would wail and wail while Chiayi massaged her leg. She’d stay the whole day in bed, barely able to walk, and Chiayi would have to help her to and from the bathroom. Chiayi had never seen anyone pee that much. Even if Hsiu-hua didn’t have any water that day, the water would just keep running and running out of her, on and on, filling the basin of the toilet.
In the morning, the sun would warm the cold night air and create a soft fog. Chiayi preferred writing in the morning, before the water in the air got heavier and started to fall so loud to the point where she couldn’t hear her own thoughts. Everything was quiet in the morning. The fog would filter the harsh August sunlight, and the walls of her study would glow a cool blue.
Earlier that week, an old classmate of hers had reached out to her about writing a story for the magazine he worked at. He told her, over the landline, that they’re hoping to publish their next issue on the theme “Tears of the Times.” He told her that Taipei was changing faster than ever, and the magazine wanted stories of those who have been left behind by the Times. He emphasized, over and over again, that he was talking about the Times with a capital T. As Chiayi understood it, this fancy magazine from the city considered her as one of those left behind, either because of her traditional writing style or her reputation as a folk writer— whatever the reason, the point was that she wasn’t one of those fashionable Taipei writers, even though she was educated there with them. Nonetheless, work was work. Chiayi agreed to the job.
In the kitchen, Hsiu-hua prepared lunch. Her leg was a bit better in the drier mornings, and she could manage walking around the house, shuffling bit by bit across the linoleum floor, her slippers squeaking with each step. She took her time, scrubbing a white radish under running water with steel wool. The sink faucet sputtered and ran clear. Hsiu-hua liked the water pressure just like this, falling the way silk fell into the basin. From Chiayi’s study, she could hear each of her mother’s movements with clarity. Something about one’s hearing being constantly muffled but the rain that made it sharper in moments of quiet. If she focused, she could even hear the sink water travel down the drain and through the pipes in the walls. Like this, Chiayi listened to her mother speak to the running water:
Oh that fish looks plump. I haven’t seen scales that white before. Is it true, how you caught it? The white was shining between the shadow of the foliage, it glistened, and you caught it. Your pants, take them off, I’ll go wash them. Go dry off. Yes, I’ll wash them after lunch. Do you want the fish cooked? No, saved for ah-gong. I’ll cook it tender, his gums are getting worse. Yes, he’s home. He hasn’t left the bed yet. I’ll wash him. I can massage him too. Lying down all the time, the skin on his back must’ve rotted. Don’t worry, I’ll cook lunch first, you go dry off.
In a trance, Hsiu-hua’s voice lowered to a quiet mumble. Go dry off, she repeated. Her husband, Chiayi’s father, used to fish in the mangroves after the rain, when the fish would rise with the river. He’d prey upon them with his arms wide with a net, standing in a similar stance to the herons and egrets that preyed with him. Hsiu-hua would cook fish for every meal— steamed, sliced raw, cooked in soup, stewed, dried… But now Chiayi’s father wasn’t here anymore, and the city posted a fine for fishing in the mangroves, as a part of an environmental protection law. Since Hsiu-hua’s leg went bad, it became Chiayi’s responsibility to buy fish from the market. But she didn’t know much about picking a good fish from a bad one, so Hsiu-hua no longer cooked with fish.
Chiayi, from her study, could not stand the water running. She came into the kitchen and shut the faucet. The water from the sink made Hsiu-hua’s skin tender, and the hand she’d been using to scrub with the steel wool had grown bright red. She looked over at Chiayi, with glassy eyes and a gummy smile, and asked: Do you want the fish cooked?
We don’t have any fish, said Chiayi. I bought clams.
She grabbed the clams soaking in a bowl and put it in the sink in front of her mother. Don’t keep the water running, Chiayi warned. Then she returned to the study to keep writing.
Chiayi completed the story and faxed it over to the magazine. It was about Penelope, from The Odyssey. In Chiayi’s retelling, Penelope’s husband Odysseus never came home, and she kept weaving at her loom during the day, and unraveling her work at night. This went on and on until the present age, when the suitors that pursued her have all died off, and the pristine Ithaca she resided in had been replaced with smoke stacks and sweatshops. She still wove on her loom and unraveled it when night came, and she was just as beautiful as the day Odysseus departed for the Trojan War. Which, of course, was long past. The patterns she wove got more and more complicated, and it took longer and longer to unravel. The day arrived when she could not unravel her work by morning. So she stood up, seeking a pair of scissors, and snipped the loom. In that moment, she aged instantly, wrinkles folding across her skin, her plump arms thinning to bare bones, and she died on the spot. The loom, however, watched. With the same gaze, it watched her age in a second as it had watched her, weaving, for the past millennia.
A week later, the magazine responded to her. In between generic compliments, the editor wrote that they worry a story about classical literature would be too high-brow for their readers— even though what Chiayi wrote wasn’t really about classical literature, and even though she knew the magazine’s readership consisted mostly of college students and professors. In the fax, the editor wrote: readers want something more familiar, more Taiwanese; change is happening here in Taiwan— write those stories.
They’re very convinced about this change, Chiayi grumbled as she folded the letter into her pocket and went outside.
Afternoon, the sky darkened and fine rain gathered into a heavy pour. Their house, like the rest of the houses built in that area, had a tin roof. When it thundered, the racket of the rain against the roof echoed in this cacophonous roar that reminded Chiayi of the subways in the city, running and screeching through tunnels. Outside, she found Hsiu-hua sitting on a bench under the awning, staring at the path towards the river. Right under the tin roof, the rain sounded
crisper and harsher, like jackhammers and construction work. Chiayi squatted on a low bamboo stool by her mother and, together, they watched the rain.
He must’ve lost his way.
Hsiu-hua was talking again.
Have you seen him? He went after you. I was cooking, and I looked up, and I saw him running after you, towards the river. You must’ve seen him on your way back. He left before the rain, have you seen him? Please, the rain, who knows what the tide is like right now. Can’t you go back? I’ll go. No, I can go. I need to go. Please, let me go. The tide… No, I need to go. Please don’t stop me…
Hsiu-hua’s ankle had swollen to the size of her calf. Wincing, she attempted to stand, but Chiayi held her down. Ma, you’re confused, Chiayi tried to tell her. Chiayi had never gone down that path towards the river, especially not in this weather. When the rain was this heavy, no one knew how deep you might sink into the mud with each step.
Please… Let me go… Don’t stop me… Let me…
In Chiayi’s arms, Hsiu-hua’s body, tense and bony, felt surprisingly fragile. Chiayi knew vaguely from her relatives that she had an older brother who died before she was born. She never knew his name, but she knew that he was lost in the mangroves, looking for his father who was fishing, when the rain came down, and they searched and searched, only to find his body, the next day, when the rain stopped, caught mangled between mangrove roots. She heard different versions, where it was her father, who found him with the herons and their long beaks pecking at his eyes— or it was her mother, who found him washed up at the door of their house, almost unrecognizable from the mud that dried in fractals over his face. Each story she heard felt more unlikely than the next.
Let me go…
This wasn’t the first time Hsiu-hua had an episode like this. All Chiayi could do was hold on to her mother, rocking her the way Hsiu-hua used to rock her, gently, back and forth, as if quelling a baby’s cries.
Back inside, Chiayi stared at her word processor. Change had indeed been happening, she knew that. They’ve built a building with a hundred and one floors in the city. When Chiayi studied there, she could see the construction from her dormitory window. It creeped up into the skyline, one crane at a time, and set itself against the Yangming Mountains. The world’s tallest building, the news had said. Taller than the mountains behind it, made forever ago by volcanoes that have long gone dormant. But Chiayi had nothing to do with the new building; she didn’t work there, she didn’t live there, she couldn’t even see it from her house here. All she saw was the rain, thick and heavy.
She watched the monsoon season happen, and she thought of the humanities building at her college that was built in her first year there. It was one of many new buildings built around that time, including a new gymnasium and computer laboratory. It had glistening white tiles that stood out from the dusty terracotta tiles of the old buildings. Then the monsoon came and passed, staining the white tiles black with rain, spurring the hostile ivies and climbers. When school started again, the new humanities building looked like a relic. Everything aged so quickly, nothing was ever new for long.
In the evening, Hsiu-hua’s swelling went down with the rain, which had now become a soft irregular drum. Days ran long in the summer, and the sky would stay a dark blue for hours after the sun had set. Crickets chirped and cicadas buzzed. A soft damp sheen had settled on the earth, and Hsiu-hua’s leg shined. As Chiayi pressed and folded the muscles on her mother’s leg, the skin ran loose and thin. She took extra care not to tear it. As if rowing a boat, she treaded through her mother’s leg.
Does it hurt? Chiayi asked as she adjusted her strength.
Hsiu-hua didn’t answer. With her back turned, Chiayi could not make out her mother’s expressions. Instead, she watched the back of her mother’s head, her sparse white hair, speckled with a few black ones here and there, and the bald spot at the top that had been growing larger and larger. With her back still turned, Hsiu-hua spoke:
I just want to take care of my daughter. It’s not supposed to be like this, you know?
Chiayi wanted to tell her mother that she was okay. She wanted to say that she chose this, but was interrupted:
Ma, I turned out just like you. I’ve trapped my daughter to this useless leg of mine. She’s not supposed to be like this, Ma. I’m not supposed to be like this.
Chiayi already noticed that her mother hasn’t spoken to her for a long time. Since the strange behavior started, her mother seemed to speak through her, to someone on the other side of her. She used to think that her mother was lonely, speaking to ghosts, but she was the one that felt alone. She stayed quiet and let Hsiu-hua go on:
You never got to see her, but you’d think she looks just like me. It’s like, at some point in this life, I died, and reincarnated in my own belly, and became her. Except she doesn’t have you, she has me. I should’ve died early like you did, and she would’ve been free. Times have changed since you and I, Ma. The best thing I could’ve done for her was to die. But I’m stubborn, Ma. I’m stubborn.
Chiayi and Hsiu-hua are just two boats on the sea, tugged between tides. They’re daughters of different eras, women of different Times, and this “Times” thing had run right by them, below the hull of their boats, and the two of them— too busy looking up at the night sky, the constellations and the stars— never noticed that the waves beneath them had changed directions. Now they’re moored on the shore. What’s a boat’s use if it’s not in the water? Chiayi knew that the moment Hsiu-hua missed the right wave was when her firstborn son died, when she chose, out of guilt, to stay in this house that had nothing left for her. Chiayi could not, with all her fancy college degrees, figure out when that moment was for her.
Ma— this time it was Chiayi speaking— can you sing to me?
She said this with no expectation for a response, maybe even with a bit of bitterness and jealousy, and kept massaging her mother’s leg. Her arms were getting sore, but she went on anyway. There wasn’t much else for her to do, except maybe write, but she was in no mood for that. So she held onto her mother’s leg, as if a piece of driftwood in this vast ocean, as if to stay afloat, with her chin bobbing up and down the water’s surface. Speak to me! She wanted to shout. What’s the use talking to people who can’t talk back when I’m right here in front of you?
***
After a while of silence, Hsiu-hua began to sing. Her voice was low, almost a whisper, but Chiayi could hear her. She sang in a dialect Chiayi hadn’t heard in a while, at least since this house became just the two of them. Chiayi didn’t know the words her mother was singing, but hummed along to the tune. She had heard this song before, as a child. It’s what the fishermen’s wives would sing as they sent their husbands out to sea. There’s the joy and excitement of a new day, and the quiet sorrow of will-I-ever-see-you-again. At the face of possible loss, all these women could do was sing their hearts out. At the chorus, Hsiu-hua’s voice would twist and turn, going from deep to clear. Her singing was the type to be heard in the jungles, where the cicadas kept the rhythm and the magpies played accompaniment. Tshin ài —ê, hn̄ g tsáu —ah hn̄ g tsáu, Hsiu- hua sang in dialect. Chia-yi understood this. My dear, go far, go far. Guá tsāi huān pian puê lí tshiàng ko. I will sing with you from the shore. Outside, crickets sang with the two of them, and the night set in full. The radio reported that tomorrow, the rainy season would be over. Deep in the mangroves, egrets and herons perched vigilant, waiting for the tide to rise and the fish to come in again.
