Disclaimer: The author of this fanfiction does not, in any way, profit from the story. All creative rights to the characters belong to their original creator(s).
The Olive Tree
by Pout
My grandfather told me a story once, a true one; about our family, he said. He sat me down next to him; I was only a kid then, and while I played with the rays of light that streamed like trapeze lines from the window to the table, he told me this story.
“Wufei, be careful with that,” he said tapping on my chest. “It’s gonna break one day and you’ll think you can’t live any more. You’ll think you’ll die soon and you’ll be miserable for a while before you realize you won’t die and that it’s only the curse.”
“What curse?” I asked.
“The Chang line is destined to suffer at least one great heartache, every single one of us.”
“I won’t,” I remember saying defiantly.
“Oh?” Grandfather asked with an amused laugh. “Why is that?”
“Because I won’t ever fall in love with a stupid girl. They’re weak.”
“Hm. Don’t let your grandmother hear you say that,” he said glancing towards the door. “Maybe you won’t fall in love with someone, but there are other kinds of love, Wufei. Watch yourself.”
“Did you suffer a heartache, Ye-Ye?” I asked him.
Grandfather’s face grew solemn and he looked out the window at some unknown, distant time. I watched his Adam’s apple drop slowly and hitch back up as he swallowed the bitter memories and looked into my eyes. “Yes, A-Fei,” he said, his voice thick with regret. “I did.”
I didn’t push for details; I knew he would tell me eventually, and he did. After a moment, he regained his voice and began to speak. He told me how he had been young once, as if I might have doubted it. He told me how he had fallen in love for the first time with a very pretty woman who might have been my grandmother if fate had not cursed him with the luck of a Chang.
Her name was A-Fang; he had loved her very much, too much. Because when she died in a boating accident the month before they were to marry, he nearly starved himself to death while he grieved her passing. His words told me the facts, but his voice and his eyes showed me his pain. Memories can haunt you forever, he told me, so don’t ever do anything you’ll regret. The past is not a slate and your actions never merely chalk markings. He told me about how he should never have taken her out that day, not out to the lake when he knew she couldn’t swim and could never have saved herself in the murky waters. It was an old, illogical guilt. He confessed to me those sins, which he hadn’t spoken of in nearly fifty years. I was touched, touched and afraid.
He proceeded to tell me about his father, my Great-grandfather; how he had tried to runaway with a servant girl that his parents did not approve of and how they had gotten caught and reprimanded, how the girl had been sold and Great-grandfather had been forced to fulfill his arranged marriage contract. He told me how his grandfather’s first love had broken his heart by running away with another man. He told me so many unhappy stories that I started to wonder if so much sadness was even possible. He said it was. He warned me that it was my destiny as a Chang, to be ready for it, and to hope my share of the curse was less painful than some of the shares that had already been swallowed.
I never forgot his warnings, but I never gave it much thought until my mother died. My father was in love with my mother, desperately in love. Her death sent him over the edge for a while. Grandfather came with Grandmother to watch over us, which is quite ironic actually. While my father moaned and cried all day and night for a month, Grandfather would sit downstairs shaking his head, muttering about being a Chang, about the curse, about love, and sometimes, when Grandmother wasn’t around, about A-Fang. For a month, melancholy draped itself around my house, my home and my family.
Grandfather was right, though. After a month, father realized he wouldn’t die and he got over it, slowly. He got a new job and dedicated himself to it and to me. One night, while we ate dinner, he said something that surprised me. He said, “And someday it’ll happen to you, too, A-Fei. But don’t be afraid. It makes us stronger, and when it passes, you’ll have won and it’ll still hurt, but you’ll be alive.” The little speech was spoken in a moment of silence, with no context for me to glean a meaning from it. But despite the fact that his thought was utterly random and essentially pulled straight out of nowhere, I understood his meaning, and for the first time I found myself believing in it, this curse of love that seemed to plague the Chang lineage.
Struck by the randomness, I had a hard time thinking up a proper reply. I finally managed to say, “It would have been easier, I guess, if I had been a daughter instead, then.” I was expecting a chuckle at the least. When he failed to vocalize a response, I looked up from my bowl and looked across the table at him. His face was very solemn, very gloomy. He slowly took a sip of tea and set the cup down with a definitive clink.
“No, son,” he said in a frighteningly proper manner, “All the female Changs have died from it.”
A year later, he met a woman: one Amanda Dale. They flirted and dated and went through all the appropriate rituals for a while before dad asked her to marry him and she agreed. She and her daughter moved in with us after the wedding and cemented our new family.
Father had made it through his “ordeal” as we liked to call it, but he had unwittingly started mine.
* * *
Amanda was a very nice lady and a good stepmother to me. She had been born in England and moved with her family to Hong Kong when she was four. She lived there for most of her life. She was fluent in both Cantonese and Mandarin, and in fact had a slight Chinese accent when she spoke English. When she was out of college, she married a Chinese businessman and moved to Beijing with him. There, she had a daughter and they all lived happily together for a while. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out and she divorced her husband and moved to the States, taking her daughter with her. They had been in the US for only half a year before she met my father.
Amanda’s daughter did not approve of her mother’s second marriage and so spent the entire month of the wedding and the honeymoon with her father in Shanghai and Japan. The first day I met her was the day she moved into my house.
Everyone knew she would be arriving that day, but father and Amanda decided to spend the entire day out together; they were still in the honeymoon euphoria phase. That left me with the task of helping my new sister move in. They claimed it was a good way for me to get to know her; I think they were just dodging manual labor.
I remember that first day perfectly. I remember it was a Saturday. I remember I was watching TV when the doorbell rang. I remember I opened the door and that I sighed that adolescent sigh of irritation. Most of all, I remember having my breath stolen away.
Sally Po was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. She stood in the doorway, one hand on her hip, one hand on her bag strap, sunglasses down at the end of her nose, her brown eyes peeking out at me, full of mischief and humor, blonde hair in neat twists that hung down to her elbows. She had a long and elegantly lean body that made her seem at once fragile and secure. And she was smiling that smile that seemed to mock and say, ‘I know something you don’t know.’
I remember I stood there silent and shocked for a moment before she said, “Lai, rang Jie-Jie qing yi qing. Come here and let Big Sis give ya a little kiss.” The irony, oh the irony.
At the time, I had no better response than to say, quite stupidly, “Shi Jie-Jie hai shi Da-Sao? Big Sister or Old Aunty?” I got a whap on the head for that, but it set the stage for the fun we would have in the next two years.
* * *
“Fei, they’re fighting.” I followed the call to the living room and sat down to watch.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“He found out she killed his dad.”
I chuckled. “Guess they’re not getting married.” She snorted and threw popcorn at me as we both cheered on and critiqued the fight.
We were having another marathon. When Sally moved in, she introduced me to the horrible world of the Chinese miniseries. I refused to watch anything that didn’t involve martial arts, of course, so she’d call me in for the “good parts.”
Just as the guy threw his blade away to let the woman who killed his father escape because he loved her, the front door opened and in came my father.
“Another one?” he asked with a touch of disdain. I ignored the connotation (he wanted us studying all hours of the day), but Sally couldn’t and wouldn’t let it pass, ever.
She vocalized her irritation, saying, “Yes, ok? We’re watching TV. God, it’s not like we don’t study enough already.”
I heard father give an aggravated sigh, “Wufei, go do your homework.” I was already standing before he finished the command. At the other end of the couch, Sally growled, turned off the television and stalked up the stairs before me. I turned to look at father, but he was clenching his jaw and shaking his head to himself so I followed my stepsister to her room instead.
“He didn’t tell you to come up,” I insisted.
She gave me an angry look and I shrugged. “He orders you around because he can’t order me around.” I shrugged again. “How can you just take it? Doesn’t he piss you off?”
I scowled at her and pushed off of the doorframe against which I was leaning. “He’s my father,” I said, nearly spitting the words at her.
We glared at each other for a brief moment before she smiled and nodded. “I know.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, an action I had become accustomed to seeing; it was her way of setting matters aside, a physical action to accompany the cerebral. She lay down on her bed and propped an arm behind her head. “You don’t have homework. Come here and lay down.”
I trotted over to her and sat up against the foot of her bed. She stared up at me with her brown eyes, then she patted the bed and nodded, a motion for me to join her. I unfolded myself, lying flat on the bed next to her. We lay there for a long time before she took my hand in hers, and we lay there for a long time after, not saying a word, not moving, just thinking.
* * *
I don’t know when exactly I realized that I loved her, my stepsister, Sally, but I slowly grew accustomed to the idea and found a way to live with it. Once Sally got settled down in school, she began to date, as I knew she would, and every time she went out, I watched from my window as she left and I waited at my window until she returned. I can’t really say how devoted to her I was.
Six months after I opened my door to find her standing there on my front porch, I watched her secretly from my upstairs bedroom window as she left for her date with her boyfriend, one of the nicest, most honorable guys in the school. I wasn’t jealous, I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t precisely happy for her, or him; I was just in love with her. She left at eight and returned at eight thirty, her eyes dripping from smeared makeup and runny tears. She was weeping so hard that Amanda went through a moment of frantic terror when she found her, fearing something violent had happened to her only daughter. But Sally shook her head and said simply that she had broken it off with Thomas and she was just a little upset; that was all. She ran upstairs and shut the door.
Amanda talked with her for a while before she got kicked out; father didn’t even think to try, which was best anyhow. After an hour of waiting, I finally heard her sobs subsiding in the other room. I gave her another half-hour, then went to knock on her door. There was a long pause before I heard her murmur out, “Come in.”
Opening the door slowly, I looked at her. She was sitting on her bed, in her nightclothes, clutching the stuffed pig I gave her for her birthday and slowly letting tears fall from her eyes. I didn’t run to her and I didn’t hug her. I just sat down in the chair she had by her window and began to tell her about this Chinese show I had watched the night before. It was one of the shows she usually kept tabs on, but schoolwork had caught up to her and so she hadn’t been able to watch for the past few weeks.
I told her how her favorite character had been dumped, then gotten together with this other guy, not the guy she liked, then dumped him and had promised never to love another man again. I told her how the guy that had dumped her had “accidentally” impregnated his best friend’s sister and so was forced to marry her, and how the father of the baby was actually this other guy who everyone thought was dead.
When I finished, she had stopped crying but her countenance showed she was still just as depressed and hurt. I didn’t say anything.
At last, she said, in an uncharacteristically soft voice that confirmed to me that she was still hurting, “You never watch the soap operas.” I shrugged. Then she began to cry again.
I looked away from her, not wanting to see her so unhappy, then I got up and crawled into bed with her, cradling her in my arms, bringing her close to me. I was introducing her to my heart, to let it know whom it was aching for, for whom it was breaking. When she tried to speak, I shushed her and we kept silent for the rest of the night. The lights from the city and from the sky streamed in through her open window, and as I watched moonbeams strike the jagged surface of her carpet, she trembled in my arms and clung to me in the darkness.
* * *
After Thomas, there was Jeremy, but he fared no better and I spent another dark night in Sally’s bed. There were no others to follow.
From then on, we were inseparable. We did everything together. Every free moment, we hung around together, ate together, and on occasion, slept together in the same bed, talking all night or just lying there in quiet contemplation. I don’t know exactly how it came to be like that, or why. It wasn’t exactly a gradual process; more likely we woke up one day, came together, and just never got around to separating again. I know why I stuck to her: I loved her. I would have done anything to be near her. But I hadn’t yet figured out why she tolerated my company.
One night (I think it must have been a Friday night) the school was going to have a dance. I refused to go, of course, but I remember asking Sally why she wasn’t going to attend. She gave me a look and shook her head. “Everything’s here, Fei,” she said to me. She put her warm hand in mine and stared at our clasped hands for a long while before smiling and dragging me to the couch to watch TV.
Our parents were out that night, as they were most nights. I don’t know why exactly I did it, maybe it was because the movie we were watching was way too sappy for me to handle, maybe it was because the lights were dimmed, maybe because the moon was a full wheel, maybe it was because she looked more kind and gentle sitting there on that couch next to me than I had ever seen her before. In any case, I did do it. As she was reaching across me to grab the remote, I touched the side of her face, pulled her to me and kissed her with all the passion and emotion that I had repressed for half a year.
I might have been surprised at my own initiative if I hadn’t been pleasantly shocked by her eager cooperation and lack of complaint. It may have been the sweetest kiss I have ever experienced in my entire life; in fact, I’m sure it was.
When we finally broke apart, our eyes met and in a glance we shared happiness, love, bliss. As was our way, we communicated in silence. A kiss from her told me that she had loved me all along. I caressed her face and she knew that I had loved her just as long. Sometime in the evening, we retreated back up the stairs and I left her room the next morning after having spent all night basking in her presence. I was stuck in a euphoria I had never before experienced.
If it was even possible, we began to spend even more time together. Our parents of course were quite oblivious and likely wouldn’t have cared one way or another anyhow. But we kept it a secret and snuck around and kissed in dark closets.
But Sally was a year older than I. She was a senior at the end of it, in her last year of high school; I was only a junior. A month before her graduation, she began to act strangely.
* * *
It’s easy to remember being in love. Those moments that make your heart pound are impossible to forget. But the moments that stand out the most, like stars and thumbtacks, are the beginnings and the ends.
I remember that she was wearing a red dress. The color complemented her nicely. It was just slightly darker than the color of her lipstick, and she had a ribbon in her hair that matched it perfectly. Of course, she was beautiful. She was walking down the stairs when I caught up with her and wrapped my arm around her waist, nuzzling her neck.
With our parents out of the house, she shouldn’t have worried, but she pulled quickly out of my embrace, gave me a look and flew down the stairs. I followed after her anxiously.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she snapped back.
“Aren’t we going out tonight?”
“Yeah, ok?”
“Sally, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing!” she cried. In her voice I detected distress. I put a hand on her shoulder and spun her around to face me. She looked uncomfortable and distraught.
“What’s wrong?” I asked again.
She shook my hand off as she shook her head. “You’re my brother for God’s sake!”
I narrowed my eyes in shocked disbelief. “What are you talking about?”
“Ni shi wo di-di, ah! You’re my little brother!”
“You’re kidding me,” I said angrily. I reached for her but she pulled away.
“Don’t, Wufei.” Her eyes were stormy.
“Sally. We’re not related by blood,” I said, giving in to the inevitability of a problem.
“Technicality,” she argued.
“Ni jin tian gan ma? What’s with you today?” I asked heatedly. She glared at me. “Bie zhe yang, ma. Don’t be like that.” She spun around and retreated up the stairs. “Where are you going?”
“I’m not going out tonight, Fei. You go if you want.”
“Come on, Sally, stop-”
“Wan an. Goodnight.” With that, she disappeared out of view and remained holed up in her room for the rest of the night despite my efforts to coerce her out to talk things through.
* * *
We went out together one last time the next day. We went to see a movie at the local theater. When I tried to put my arm around her, she flinched and told me irately to stop. Ordinarily, I would have been angry with her, but something about her demeanor told me that we were at a breaking point, and I would have apologized for the sun setting if by doing so I could have made her happy and kept us together a little while longer.
The drive back to the house was really where it all came crumbling down. I tried to talk to her, confront her about the way she was acting, but she gave no replies. I grew angry and started to demand an answer to my questions. She stayed silent. I started to panic and pleaded with her. She said nothing.
Instead of driving home, she took us to the private pier that we often trespassed on. We walked down the length of it, she a few steps before me as I trudged along behind her with dread in my stomach. The oddity of her actions finalized the fears within me and it was impossible not to know what would follow.
It was a quiet breakup. When she had said what she needed to say, I returned to being just her brother and we walked back up the pier, she a few feet ahead of me, and I tossed a rock I had been fiddling with back into the sea, feeling it sink steadily to the bottom.
My life without her was bare and hollow. I could barely function without her. I didn’t know what to do with myself.
* * *
After she graduated, she left for college. She rarely came home to visit though she did make an effort to call once and again. I only spoke to her twice and even then, the conversations were painfully short and awkward. Then Amanda and my father decided to call it quits. After the divorce, I received one letter from my ex-step-sister congratulating me on my graduation. She was still a good big sister looking out for her little brother. I never heard from Sally again.
It’s been fifteen years and I have a son now with a woman who I love but a woman who will never be the one I love. One day I’ll take my son to the ocean and tell him a story about a boy and his sister and how they said farewell by the sea. I’ll tell him that someday he’ll fall in love, too. And as I look off into the depths of the water and search for a sinking stone, he’ll see pain and sorrow in my eyes. And when he asks if I was that boy once upon a time, I’ll tell him about the curse, about our family history, and about his Aunt Sally whom he would never know. It’s only fair to let him know ahead of time. Isn’t it?
THE END
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