Papa spent all his savings. NaiNai continued to get worse. I was with Pearl in the hills when a neighbor came and told me that NaiNai was about to depart. By the time I reached NaiNai’s bed, she was almost unconscious. “Carie…” she kept calling.
I flew from the house and went to Carie. Without saying a word, Carie picked up her medicine box and came.
“My mother is possessed by evil spirits,” the panic-stricken Papa warned. “If you touch her, bad luck will follow you home.”
“What a shame that my husband converted you!” Carie was disgusted. “You certainly don’t sound like a Christian.” Opening her medicine box, she ordered Papa, “Stay away.”
Taking out her needle and tube, Carie administered a shot for NaiNai. “The dose will do the job,” she said. “Let me know if it doesn’t. I’ll fetch the doctor at the embassy.”
By midnight, NaiNai was asking for water. At sunrise, she said that she was hungry.
While Papa got down on his knees to express his gratitude to Carie, Absalom said that it was God’s will that NaiNai lived.
“It has nothing to do with my wife,” Absalom insisted. “It’s the church members’ collective praying that God answered.”
If Papa was a fake Christian, he changed at that moment. So did NaiNai, who officially said good-bye to the little Buddha statue in her room. She replaced it with a clay figure of Christ-a gift from Absalom.
Still, some things would never change. In NaiNai’s Christian heaven, angels took the form of peach flowers, butterflies, and hummingbirds. God himself lived in a Chinese landscape where lakes reflected clouds and bamboo and pine covered the mountains. What amused Pearl and me the most was that NaiNai’s Christian God traveled on the backs of deer and rode a crane if traveling great distances.
By the time I turned eleven, Pearl knew almost everyone in Chin-kiang. Our favorite person was the popcorn man, who made it to our town the first week of every month. The man spoke a northern dialect and his skin was the color of coal. Dirt thickened his hair and he wore the same canvas clothes with patches on top of patches year after year. Although he never smiled, he couldn’t have been a nicer fellow. His fan-shaped nose was forever smeared with coal dust. Pushing his little cart, he wandered from village to village.
On the popcorn man’s cart was a cannon-shaped cooker made of iron. The firebox was made of tin cans. Connected to the bottom of the firebox was a wooden bellows with an aluminum pipe. A crate of firewood was on the side. On top of the wood sat a cotton sack. We got excited when the man started to heat up the cannon. We watched the flames shoot high. We kept our distance after adults warned that the cannon might explode.
Pearl and I stood by the popcorn man and watched for hours on end. He rotated the cannon with his left hand and worked the bellows with his right. The man needed no clock to tell him when it was time to pop the corn. When he felt that the temperature was just right, he picked up the cotton bag and covered the cannon with it. Using an iron pipe, he pried the cannon open. The sound of an explosion followed. This was what the children had been waiting for.
“Pop!” the man would shout right before the explosion.
While small children covered their ears and some closed their eyes, Pearl and I enjoyed the sound of the explosion. Following the sound came a delicious smell. The cotton sack was instantly full. To us, it was pure magic-a can of corn or rice could be made many times its original size.
Pearl and I jumped for joy the day Carie finally agreed to give us a can of dry corn. It was already dark and the popcorn man was gone. We caught him and begged him to pop the corn for us. The man shook his head and said that the stove was already shut down. We begged and begged. We offered to help him.
We were thrilled when he finally agreed. I worked the cannon while Pearl pulled and pushed the bellows. The flames blazed. Pearl kept looking at the popcorn man-she didn’t want the cannon to explode. About ten minutes later, the moment arrived. The man took over.
We heard the grand sound of the explosion. It felt as if we might go deaf.
That night, the popcorn tasted better than ever.
It became our passion to follow the popcorn man. We were like two fools, said Carie. Her rice jar was our target. Before long, Carie found out that we had been gradually emptying her grain storage. When the popcorn man came, Carie showed up. She called him a crook. Her opera-like voice was heard by the entire town. Carie grabbed the popcorn man by the arm and demanded that he leave.
Pearl and I were embarrassed. We each held Carie back as the man collected his things.
Carie yelled, waving her fist, “Don’t you ever come back and steal from my children!”
The man hurried away, dragging his cart.
For days Pearl and I were sad. We could not forget the popcorn man. We felt guilty about ruining his business.
CHAPTER 6
Absalom had been working hard to convert the town’s newcomer, Carpenter Chan. He was sixteen years old and originally from Canton. He limped a bit. He told Absalom that he had been beaten by his former employer. He had no job and was homeless and in debt. Absalom took him under his wing, hiring Chan to build his church in exchange for shelter and food. Absalom knew exactly the kind of church he wanted. He had a plan and he had purchased the land. It was a leveled lot on the main street near the market.
What Absalom didn’t expect was Carpenter Chan’s stubbornness and peculiar sense of style. Although the man was smart, he was incapable of following Absalom’s design because he found it ugly. Chan had grown up building Chinese temples and was proud of his craft. His ancestors were among those who built the Forbidden City for the emperor. Carpenter Chan’s speciality was Tokung, the traditional interlocking wooden structure. He was frustrated that he was not given an opportunity to use his skills. Carpenter Chan took every opportunity to convince Absalom to alter the design. He told Absalom, “The best Chinese architecture always has the Tokung style. It is a symbol of power, wealth, and nobility.”
“I’d like to have none of that.” Absalom was determined. “The church is a place where souls gather under God. No soul is above or under any other. Instead of power, wealth, and nobility, I’d like you to demonstrate simplicity, humbleness, and warmth.” Absalom wanted his new church to follow a Western design, to be inviting instead of intimidating.
“Why won’t you let me offer Jesus the best of my abilities?” Carpenter Chan was confused. “I should build him a temple instead of a house.”
Nail by nail, Absalom and the carpenter fought. Carpenter Chan was polite and obedient, but the moment Absalom turned his back, he put back what he was ordered to take down.
Absalom threatened to fire Carpenter Chan. He demanded that all the windows be changed. “Make the frames narrower with pointed arches,” Absalom ordered Chan and his crew. “Or I’ll have you walking, all of you!”
Carpenter Chan was miserable when he eventually complied. To him, the rough stone façade was an insult to his reputation.
Absalom called the work a masterpiece, and he praised Carpenter Chan for his fine skills.
When Carpenter Chan started to work on the interior, he invited his friends, the local artists and sculptors, for ideas.
“I understand that you are masters of rendering Chinese gods,”
Absalom warned them instead of greeting them. “But I don’t want my Entrance Jesus to look like the Kuang-yin Buddha. You are forbidden to make Jesus’s expression vicious like the Chinese gate god. Do not show his teeth. As for my Worshipping Jesus by the altar, I don’t want him to look like the Chinese kitchen god. Heaven forbid-do not make Jesus fat.”