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Jordan stood in the kitchen doorway and listened to her mother lying to the police. Ling’s voice was shaking, but that was easily explained by the story she was telling. It was harrowing enough, the one she and her mother and grandmother had agreed upon.
‘Yes, that’s what I said. My daughter thought it best to run. Yes. With my two younger children, that’s right.’ A pause. ‘She called me when she had phone service.’ A longer pause, Ling shaking her head and Jordan bit her lip. This was the bit she didn’t like and pressing a hand against her churning stomach, she grimaced at the phone held in her mother’s hand.
‘Her father, yes. We are divorced.’ Ling’s eyes flickered over to where Jordan stood, then she looked away, stared fixedly at the wall. ‘He was acting violently.’ Her knuckles whitened around the cord. ‘Yes, he was often violent, that is why we divorced. But my daughter says she was worried for the safety of herself and the twins. What she has described to me sounded like some sort of psychotic break.’ The last bit was barely a whisper. ‘No, we are not psychiatrists! Sir, we are trying to tell you that a man is out in that forest with a woman, and we believe that woman to be in danger.’ She listened for several minutes, breathing coming in little sighs, facing the wall, Jordan watching her back hunch further and further over, and then with a mumbled goodbye, she hung up.
Her face was blanched when she turned to Jordan, gazed at her for a moment, then pushed past into Chenguang’s kitchen, where Jordan could hear the teacup clatter against the table in her mother’s unsteady hands and then the murmur of her grandmother’s voice.
Maybe it would be better if the police didn’t go trekking into the forest after her father. Jordan didn’t know if her father was still alive, but she thought maybe he was. It was just a feeling she had, and she wasn’t sure if she ought to trust it, but it was there. He was out there in the clearing right this minute, hunched over the river, Teddy’s blood on him. He would no longer be under the influence of the Chemei, of course, but the damage had been done. She thought he might well choose to topple forward into the water and breathe that into his lungs instead of air.
On a sigh, she followed her mother into the kitchen, and sat down at the table. It was still early and the twins were sleeping. Jordan had been to bed, but sleep had eluded her, as apparently it had her mother and grandmother. They’d met here at the table before the sun had even risen, as if by some unspoken agreement and by the time the first rays of the sun were sweeping wide over the horizon, they’d decided on the story they’d tell the police.
‘It didn’t go well,’ her grandmother said, and Jordan nodded her head. ‘Your mother doesn’t know if they will even go looking for them.’
‘I doubt they have any choice,’ Jordan said. ‘They will go look. What they find – that’s what I don’t know.’ She lowered her head and listened to the breeze in the woods at the back of the house.
Her mother was fussing with the dishtowel. Twisting it in her hands while her gaze skittered away from the view out the back window of the woods. ‘You don’t know,’ she said. ‘You don’t know that they’ll go look.’ Her lips pressed together.
Tiredness welled up inside Jordan and her eyes were heavy. The breeze in the trees was like a lullaby. She took the cup her grandmother pushed towards her and sipped at the sweet tea.
‘Of course they will go look. We reported a woman in danger. They’ll be organising something already. Someone will call back any minute to get more details.’
‘I gave them all the details,’ Ling said. ‘You think I didn’t know how to play my part?’ The dishtowel was tight around her hand like a red-and-white checked boxing glove, and she jabbed it toward the window. ‘I told them everything I was supposed to!’
Jordan stifled the sigh that rose in her throat and looked across the table at her grandmother who sat staring at her daughter with her eyes damp in the dim light.
Ling thumped the counter with her bound hand, and they all jumped. ‘I hate those trees!’ For a moment she looked surprised at her own outburst, then turned her head so that her sight could skim over the heads of her mother and daughter. ‘They used me – for all those years!’ The words were spat out, and Jordan felt the rustle of leaf and root inside her chest.
‘You didn’t even know they were there,’ Jordan said, keeping her voice calm.
Her mother stared at her for a long moment, dark eyes brooding. ‘But you do,’ she said, and this time the words came slowly, drawn out like a revelation. ‘You feel them, don’t you?’
Jordan stared at her mother, feeling the rat-tat-tat of her heart knocking on wood. She swallowed saliva and sap.
‘What’s wrong, Ling?’ her grandmother asked. ‘Do you not realise you saved our lives last night?’
At the sound of her mother’s voice, Ling dragged her gaze away from her daughter and her arms wrapped around herself and she hunched inward.
‘You all had no right,’ she whispered.
A sidelong glance at her grandmother showed Jordan the same dismay she felt. Chenguang met her eyes, and there was an apology there before she went back to watching her daughter again.
‘Mum,’ Jordan said, trying one last time and shaking her head to quiet the birdsong. ‘We would have been killed if you hadn’t come along at the last minute.’
Ling’s lips were a thin white line. ‘I did not ask to carry all that stuff around inside me for all those years.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘It was a violation!’ Her gaze turned on her daughter and Jordan could see her thoughts without any effort. ‘And now you carry them!’ She blinked and held her eyes closed for a long moment, her body shuddering. ‘You do it willingly.’ Eyes snapped open, and Ling stood up, staring at her hand for a moment as though puzzled at the cloth wrapped around it. She unwound it, tugging at it, impatient, then flung it down onto the table.
‘I am going to wake the twins, and then I am taking them home.’
Jordan shifted in her chair and glanced out the window at the shaded woods. She’d hoped to go give her thanks before leaving.
Her mother’s eyes followed her. ‘The trees or me,’ she said, and her voice was curiously flat.
‘What?’ Jordan blinked and the trees inside her shivered and froze.
‘You heard me.’
Chenguang reached for her daughter’s hand. ‘Ling. Think what you’re saying. You don’t understand.’
Her daughter shook her head. ‘I know exactly what I'm saying. Things like this have no place in the world.’ She looked at her own daughter. ‘And I do not want it in my home.’
‘But things like this are the world!’ Jordan said.
Her mother shook her head. Folded her arms. Unfolded them, clenched her hands at her side. ‘Not in my house.’ Her face shifted into anguish. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Jordan, I can’t.’
Chenguang’s strong hand gripped Jordan’s arm. ‘She will stay here with me. But Ling, can’t you understand...’
‘No!’ Jordan saw her mother suck in a deep breath and shake her head. ‘No, I can’t. I don’t want to.’ She stumbled toward the doorway and disappeared.
‘She will come around,’ Chenguang said, but even Jordan could hear there was no conviction in her voice.
Now it was Jordan’s turn to shake her head, and she sat there, feeling roots twining down into her fingers. She shifted in her chair, got up, looked at her grandmother.
‘I’ll say goodbye to the twins, and then...’ Her face turned toward the window and she felt rather than saw her grandmother nod.
‘We will go give our thanks,’ Chenguang said.
Jordan nodded, and heard the clear, bell-like call of a bird. ‘Grandma,’ she said. ‘There are so many sick forests in the world.’
‘Many wild places in danger, yes.’
‘I have to keep my end of the deal now.’
‘It will take a lifetime.’
‘I know.’ Jordan smiled and, inside her, trees began their song. ‘But trees live a very long time.’ She hummed for a moment. ‘And we will start today.’
