Sustaining

712 words

Xiong sat erect in the bus-stop shelter on the eve of her daughter’s wedding. The food for the guest table had already been purchased and prepared, but it was a meager offering.

Her daughter was going to be shamed.

Xiong’s name translated to Sustaining, but no matter how hard she worked, it was never quite at the sustaining level. However, their guests also were going to be hard-pressed to bring a gift, so there was going to be mortification for everyone.

Her thoughts were scattered when a truck pulled up next to a nearby electrical pole. She watched in fascination as they quickly raised a man in a bucket to an easy working height, high overhead.

The man who was in charge said, “Sorry ma’am, but it’s an emergency. Over a thousand homes without power. We need to get this fixed. I promise, we won’t get in the way of your bus.” She nodded her head in agreement.

But soon her thoughts returned to her dilemma. To chase out the humiliating images, along with the shouts of the workers, she concentrated on the sounds of nature around her. The bus stop sat on the edge of New York’s Central Park and she could hear the splashes of water fowl and the soft ‘weep’ ‘weep’ calls of the male Mandarins.

She closed her eyes and envisioned the dazzling contrast in their orange, purple, teal and white feathers. The pond always looked like a rich woman’s finest jewels had been stolen and all her brightly colored gems and bobbles strewn across the water by a careless highwayman.

Because the Mandarin Duck symbolizes love and fidelity in the Chinese culture, Xiong had painstakingly embroidered two of the birds in gold thread onto her daughter’s red Qun Kua jacket.

The cost of the jacket had depleted the food money, but the birds were traditional wedding adornments and the couple needed the blessing on their life.

Her harmony almost collapsed at the reminder of the wedding, but she skillfully changed herself into a leaf and floated among the birds again. Unnoticed.

A phrase from the Analects of Confucius came to mind and she quoted it in the silence of her mind.

“Did the gods exhaust all beauty in the mandarin ducks? Winter trees stand unadorned around the pond.”

Which reminded her of a haiku she memorized as a child. It swirled around her as she whispered the words Yosa Buson wrote and sent to a friend.

All beauty exhausted
In the mandarin ducks—
Winter trees

He wrote that in the Seventeen Hundreds. She tried to pretend she was a little girl over three centuries in the past, watching the ancestors of these NYC birds bob on the waters. What would the elder birds think of their offspring? Would they envy them or pity them?

Xiong’s spirit became one with the sound of the pond, hearing no other sounds in her reverence.

Until shattering glass exploded around her.

At first she thought she had been shot. She stood, shaking the glass out of her clothes and waiting for blood spots to appear.

“Lady ! You okay?” A harsh male voice spoke, as his hands brushed her clothing and he very inappropriately looked her up and down, front and back. No blood.

“I am so sorry ! The basket got away from us and it hit the side, right here.” He pointed at the back section of the broken bus-stop window where she had been seated. There was even glass on the cycle path. It was a wonder she hadn’t been injured.

But she was definitely stunned and in shock. She slowly left the beat up shelter with the rude man holding her steady.

When she pulled away from him, he grabbed at her.

“Hey Lady ! Where ya going?”

She pointed to a colorful lump just off the cycle path. It wasn’t moving.

“Aww, Ma’am. You’ve had a shock. Best you not go see that. Me and my boys’ll take care of the deceased duck. My man wouldn’t have pushed the wrong button if that damn duck hadn’t jumped out of the bushes and startled him. Never seen one leave the pond like that.”

It is ‘Sustaining’ said Xiong.

She barely had time to prepare it correctly for the guest table.