Chapter 3

Something drove me, half-stumbling, straight to the smallest room in the house, the storage room crammed with junk.

I yanked the creaking wooden door open, and a wave of stale dust hit me so hard I couldn't stop coughing.

I flicked on the light. Under the dim yellow bulb, old furniture, old newspapers, old clothes were piled up like a small mountain.

I started digging like a woman gone mad.

"Regina, what on earth are you doing? What are you looking for, kicking up all this dust?"

A thin, shrill voice came from the doorway.

I turned around. It was my sister-in-law, Timothy's sister, Annabel Chavez.

She stood in the doorway pinching her nose, her whole face twisted with disgust.

A mesh bag of fruit dangled from her hand. She'd come to visit the sick, by the look of it. She'd probably heard about the fight between me and Lorna at the hospital and rushed over to catch the show.

"Nothing."

I didn't want to deal with her. I kept my head down and kept digging.

"Oh, come on, at a time like this, and you've still got the heart to root around in this trash?"

She walked in and nudged an old cardboard box by her foot with her toe.

"Your husband's illness is what matters. And I heard it takes over six hundred thousand! Regina, you and my brother only have the one son, Stephen. If you can't count on him, who can you count on? That house... I think Lorna's got a point..."

"You shut your mouth!"

I shot up and spun around, glaring at her.

"Don't anybody bring up that house again! Or get out of here!"

Maybe it was the bloodshot rims of my eyes, or the wild look on my face, but Annabel shrank back and clamped her mouth shut, sulking. Still, those eyes of hers kept sliding back and forth over me and over that heap of junk, nothing kind in them.

At last my hand touched something hard, cold, and square.

It was a tin box, left over from mooncakes I'd bought years ago, rusted all over now.

I hauled it out, set it on the ground, and pried the lid open with shaking hands.

Inside, resting quietly, was a bowl.

A dull black coarse-clay bowl, with a few nicks the size of rice grains along the rim, the whole body covered in fine, irregular cracks, so that it looked like the face of an old person weathered by years of hardship.

She snorted.

Annabel couldn't hold it in and burst out laughing.

"And here I thought it was some treasure, the way you were acting all spooky. All this fuss, and it's just a beggar's bowl? Regina, you actually kept this thing? You can't eat off it, can't drink from it. Keeping it in the house only brings bad luck!"

My fingers brushed lightly over the cold cracks along its body, and that afternoon of falling snow rose up clear before me once again.

It was the winter of 1995. I'd just turned twenty-five, working at the textile mill.

It had snowed heavily that day. The ground lay under a thick layer, crunching underfoot with every step.

I'd just gotten paid, and with the money tucked away I headed to the bus station to catch a bus back to my parents' place.

Right there at the corner of the station wall, I saw that "beggar."

Though beggar wasn't quite right. He looked more like a boy who'd run away from home, only sixteen or seventeen, thin as a reed, in a ragged, threadbare cotton coat, huddled in the corner and shivering with cold.

His face and hands had gone purple from the cold, his lips cracked, and clutched to his chest was this one black bowl.

People were softer-hearted back then. Looking at him like that, I just couldn't bear it.

There happened to be a stall right beside me selling steamed buns, hot and steaming.

I went over and bought two, put them in a plastic bag, walked up to him, and held them out.

"Hey there, you must be hungry? Eat these while they're hot."

He lifted his head. Those eyes, black as two grapes, watched me with wariness.

He didn't take them.

"Go on, take them. I'm not a bad person."

I pushed the buns into his arms.

He stared at me, dazed, then looked down at the scalding buns against his chest, and all at once the rims of his eyes went red.

He wolfed them down like he hadn't eaten in three days and nights, so fast that he choked and his eyes rolled back.

It made my heart ache to watch, so I went and bought him a bottle of water too.

When he'd finished, I was about to leave, but he suddenly stood up and blocked my way.

He didn't say a word. He just took that grimy black bowl from his arms and, holding it in both hands in an almost reverent way, held it out to me.

"What are you doing?"

He startled me.

"I don't want your bowl."

He still said nothing, just held it up like that, his gaze as stubborn as an ox.

I tried to refuse, and he just kept holding it up, snowflakes settling on his thin shoulders until they were quickly covered in a layer of white.

The people around us started pointing and whispering.

"Kind-hearted girl, and now she's got a simpleton on her hands."

"Right, giving away the very thing he begs with. How's he supposed to live?"

Their stares made my face burn, and I was afraid of missing my bus, so I had no choice but to take it.

"All right, all right, I'll keep it. Now go find somewhere to get out of the snow, before you freeze."

The bowl felt cold and heavy in my hands.

When he saw me take it, only then did a stiff smile break across his face. Then he turned and limped away, vanishing into the sweeping snow.

Later I brought the bowl home. My mother-in-law took one look and frowned, saying it was something a beggar had used, that it was bad luck, and telling me to throw it out at once.

Timothy urged me too, said it wasn't worth quarreling with his mother over such a thing.

But whenever I looked at that bowl, I always thought of the boy's stubborn eyes.

I felt it wasn't an ordinary bowl. It was the most precious thing he had, the thing he'd traded away all his dignity to give.

I couldn't bring myself to throw it out, so I found a box, packed it away, and stuffed it into the storage room.

And there it had stayed, for close to thirty years.

"Regina? Regina!"

Annabel's voice pulled me back from the memory.

"What are you spacing out over a broken bowl for? Have you lost it? I'm asking, have the bills driven you crazy, thinking a piece of junk like this is going to turn into gold?"

I ignored her jeering, carefully put the bowl back into the tin box, and held it tight against my chest.

That strange phone call, that mysterious man...

He'd said this bowl, it was time to sell it.

Whether or not it was some absurd joke, in this dead-end of a situation, it was my only hope, however faint and far-off it might be.