Prologue from “Once Our Lives: A Memoir”

Tap. Tap. Tap. The knocking at the front door was so faint that it could have been the sea breeze gently rocking it back and forth in its thick wooden frame. But Ya Zhen knew someone was outside waiting for her. She went to the kitchen and fetched a big bowl in which she had carefully hidden some delicious fried fish, meat, and vegetables under a generous mountain of yesterday’s leftover rice. Holding the bowl with one hand and her swollen belly with the other, she slowly made her way to the front door.

Of course, he was there. The old beggar nodded silently, shuffled his rag-covered feet, and stared greedily at the rice bowl, searching for any traces of the treasures buried underneath. His nostrils flared, sucking in every faint scent escaping from the bowl. In those hard times, amid foreign wars and the Great Depression, beggars were usually given some stale rice and a sympathetic look. People could not afford to give away what they did not have enough of themselves, but Ya Zhen had married into a wealthy family, and food was plentiful.

She felt a special attachment to this beggar whose daily visits had started a week before. For some reason she could not explain, she waited for his gentle knock and eager eyes and fed him herself instead of ordering the servants to take care of the matter.

Who was he? Where was he from? Where did he live? Ya Zhen did not know and never asked. But she knew he could starve to death if she did not feed him, and she pitied him. She was feeling unusually sensitive these days. Her first baby was coming, and she was scared. Women often died during childbirth in remote sea villages such as hers where doctors did not exist. Somehow, in her Buddhist mind, keeping this old man alive made her feel more secure, as if she was ensuring the future for herself and her baby.

A few weeks before, the village fortune teller had been summoned to the house and brought both good and bad news about her baby. As big and round as a banquet table, she rolled into the sitting room with a gigantic smile and a hungry-looking mouth full of shiny gold teeth.

“Show me your daughter-in-law’s birth records,” she said importantly, with half-closed eyes, ready to do business.

Ya Zhen’s mother-in-law bowed as she presented her with a package wrapped in red satin.

The fortune teller’s pudgy fingers fumbled with the soft, slippery fabric before managing to open the packet. Her eager eyes fixed instantly on the stack of silver tucked discreetly inside. She grabbed the coins, sized up the amount, and dropped them into her pocket before picking up the documents and studying them with intense concentration.

“Good, good,” she kept on repeating as she nodded her round head. Her golden earrings danced with her words.

Then, she frowned, opened her eyes and mouth wide, wider, and even wider, as if she couldn’t believe what she saw. “No, not good, not good at all …”

She narrowed her eyes and mouth until they were shut tightly. She swayed slowly back and forth and, for a moment, looked as if she were in a trance. Her face showed the sufferings of a tortured soul.

Anxiety filled the room. The silence became unbearable as everyone waited nervously for her imminent, prophetic speech.

“First, the good news,” she finally said. “Your daughter-in-law is very fertile and will have many grandchildren for you.”

Everyone sighed with relief.

“But she is a Tiger, and it is not good to have her first baby in a Dog year. Her life is too strong, and the baby could have a hard time coming out, which can hurt the mother, or the baby, or both.” Her eyes darted around her audience as she slowed her words almost to a halt, pleased to see the tension building up in the room.

“Don’t worry. I can do something … a lot, in fact, to change that. Just add another 20pieces of silver.” Her voice was firm, and her palm was open.

“Good. Now you shouldn’t worry anymore. I’ll take care of it,” she said cheerfully as she deposited the silver into her pocket.

“The baby will be … will be … will be a boy, a boy! I can feel it. It’s a boy!” Her face was radiant. “Oh, he is lovely! He is sensitive, caring, and hardworking. He is a Dog, you know, a lucky Dog, a boy with a lot of luck. As a matter of fact, I’ve never seen a baby with so much luck. That’s why he will end up in your family. Watch out, though! His luck doesn’t have depth. A lucky soul is always looking for opportunities. A dog can be jumpy, curious, and led away easily, so his luck can change.”

The fortune teller didn’t take away Ya Zhen’s worries. She only added more, but the in-laws seemed to be pleased by her prophecy: a boy, a grandson, a first-born grandson!

Ya Zhen felt her baby’s strong kicks inside her and worried about her own fate as she took the empty bowl back from the beggar. He wiped his greasy face on his torn sleeves and gave out a loud, satisfied burp. She stared at him. He smiled at her. His smile reminded her of a little boy’s—bright, innocent, satisfied, and grateful. She felt surprised by her maternal instincts, brought out by this total stranger, a vulnerable beggar whose very life now depended on her. She started to say something to him but stopped. His smile had disappeared, leaving him with a strange, blank face. Her eyes met his, and she was startled by what she saw: For a moment, the beggar’s eyes seemed like a pair of deep, dark tunnels, taking her to an unknown world. He put his hand on her belly and muttered, “He is coming. He is coming,” before turning and walking away.

Ya Zhen stood watching him until he shrank to a dot in the distance. When tomorrow comes, I hope I will be here to feed him, she thought.

That night she gave birth, an easy birth, to a healthy baby boy whom the family named An Chu Sun. My father.

The day after she had the baby, Ya Zhen broke a cultural taboo: Instead of staying in bed for a whole month, as required by tradition, she got up, for she was eager to feed her beggar. As usual, she prepared him a special feast and waited. She went to the door several times at the slightest noise. But he was not there. He never came back. Not the next day. Not the day after. Not ever.

Sometimes, as she nursed her baby, she pondered her seven encounters with the beggar. One day, as she examined her own child, she was startled to see a familiar twinkle in her baby’s eyes. She suddenly realized that she knew all along that the beggar was a wandering spirit — a youhui — searching for a home. And now, that beggar’s spirit was in her son!

An Chu was a first son, and first grandson, born into a prosperous family, so his birth brought joy, glory, admiration, praise, gifts, and feasts. But, even at the celebration banquet, held under a silver moon with hundreds of colorful paper lanterns, tables filled with roast ducks and suckling pigs, sea cucumbers as dark as the earth, bowls of fresh peanuts, flying firecrackers and thick stacks of lucky paper money in red envelopes, red-faced uncles shouting loudly over drinking games, and fat-faced aunts gabbling and predicting glorious things for the newest heir to the Sun name, Ya Zhen worried about her son’s life path, for a beggar’s existence was destined to be a struggle against poverty, hardship, and all sorts of unpredictable dark forces …

Later in life, when the Japanese burned her family’s factory, civil war destroyed the Sun fortune, and she and her son were plunged into poverty, Ya Zhen silently saw all these events as signs confirming the treacherous path of the beggar’s life An Chu had yet to walk. She prayed that, one day, all the good luck the fortune teller had predicted for her boy would shield him and break the beggar’s spell.

Qin Sun Stubis’s book “Once Our Lives” is out now. Learn more about Qin and her work on her website.