A Beggar's Broken Bowl to the Rescue

Holding the hospital's payment notice, I stood at the foot of the inpatient ward and stared at the number, 680,000, my temples pounding.

That number was a mountain, and it came down straight on the crown of my head.

My husband, Timothy Chavez, had kidney failure. A transplant was his only way to live.

But 680,000 dollars. Where was I supposed to find that?

I gripped the paper so hard my nails nearly tore through it.

Just as the money was choking the breath out of me, a strange number called. On the other end was a hoarse man's voice, and out of nowhere he said,

Regina Fox, it's been thirty years. That bowl. It's time to sell it.

I froze. A ringing went through my head, like a thunderclap splitting the air.

Mom, what did the doctor say?

I'd barely stepped out of the payment office when my son, Stephen Chavez, and his wife, Lorna Lambert, hurried up to me.

The smell of disinfectant in the hospital corridor mixed with the anxiety of patients and their families, churning my insides.

I didn't speak. I just held out the payment slip.

Stephen's face went white in an instant, his lips trembling.

Six... 680,000? That much?

Lorna snatched the slip away, her eyes going round, and her voice pitched up sharp.

This is robbery! One surgery costs 680,000? Don't you both know what shape this family's in? We could cut the flesh off our own bones and sell it and still not scrape that together!

Her voice wasn't loud, wasn't quiet, just right so everyone in the hallway could hear.

A few glances came at us all at once, some pitying, some just there for the show, and they stuck in my back like needles.

My face went hot. I grabbed her arm and dropped my voice.

Lorna, keep it down! This is a hospital!

Mom, what good does keeping it down do? Is money going to fall out of the sky on its own?

Lorna shook off my hand, her eyes rimming red.

Stephen and I bring home a little over ten thousand a month between us. The mortgage alone is six thousand, the kid's preschool is three thousand, and the thousand that's left, the two of us have to think twice before we even buy a cup of milk tea. Where would we get that kind of money?

Stephen stood off to the side, head down, wringing his hands, saying the same thing over and over.

What do we do... what are we supposed to do

Watching my son stand there with no idea what to do, the anger in me flared right up.

But I knew now wasn't the time for it. I drew a deep breath and forced the tightness back down.

Don't panic, I said, looking at the two of them, though I was telling myself too.

The sky isn't falling. The money, I'll figure it out.

You'll figure it out? How? There was mistrust in Lorna's tone, and a meanness that came from being cornered. Your and Dad's little pensions put together don't even cover our mortgage. And your savings, didn't most of that go the last time Dad was in the hospital? What, are you going to go take out a loan shark loan?

Watch your mouth!

I shot her a look.

What else is there, then?

Lorna wouldn't let it go. She glanced at Stephen, hanging his head, then clenched her teeth like she was working herself up to something big.

Mom, I have an idea why don't we, why don't we sell the old house we're living in now.

A ringing went through my head, like I'd been hit with a hammer.

Sell the house?

My hand curled into a fist before I knew it.

That house was assigned to us by Old Tim's workplace when we married, six hundred square feet, old and small, but it was the home Old Tim and I had built brick by brick, bit by bit.

The pencil marks tracking Stephen's height as he grew up were there. The laughter of the three of us wrapping dumplings at New Year was there. The first meal Old Tim ever cooked for me was there

It wasn't just a house. It was our root.

No.

I refused, flat and final, my voice low, every word forced out from between my teeth.

Why not?

Lorna got worked up.

That house has to be worth well over a million by now, right? Sell it, and Dad's surgery is covered, and there's still money left over for us to work with, or for a down payment on a bigger place, so we won't have to be crammed into that little two-bedroom. Three birds with one stone!

Looking at Lorna's face, flushed red with excitement, a cold went straight to my bones.

Every sentence out of her was us, every sentence weighing what was best for her and Stephen's little household.

My husband's life, to her, had become a transaction, something to trade off, something she could even turn a profit on.

I turned my eyes to my son, Stephen.

I wanted him to say one fair word.

But he only dodged my gaze and mumbled,

Mom Lorna, she she's just worried too

My heart sank, bit by bit.

The son I'd raised with everything I had, and when it mattered most, he couldn't get out one firm word for his father, for this family.

The house is my line.

I said it one word at a time, my voice cold as ice.

As long as I'm alive, no one so much as thinks about that house. The money, I'll raise it. The two of you, just take good care of your father.

With that, I didn't look at them again. I turned and walked off.

Behind me, Lorna's complaints and Stephen's coaxing chased after me like flies, but I didn't stop, not for one step.

I was afraid that if I stayed one second longer, I wouldn't be able to stop myself from slapping them both across the face.

I dragged my legs home, heavy as if they'd been poured full of lead.

I pushed open the door and a thick smell of herbal medicine, mixed with stale, heavy air, hit me in the face.

Old Tim, Timothy Chavez, lay on the sofa bed in the living room.

To make it easier to care for him, and to keep the medicine smell out of the bedding, we'd been getting by like this for almost two months.

He'd wasted away past recognition. He used to be a big man, six feet tall, and now he curled up on the sofa like a leaf the wind had dried out.

His face was a waxy yellow, his lips pale, and the eyes that had once been so bright had gone cloudy and dull.

Hearing me open the door, his eyelids twitched, and he turned his head toward me with effort.

"You're back?"

His voice was as hoarse as a cracked gong.

"Mm."

I set my bag down, walked over, and out of habit reached out to feel his forehead.

"How do you feel today? Are your legs still swollen?"

He didn't answer my question. His cloudy eyes stared straight at me.

"What did the doctor say?"

My heart clenched.

I forced out a smile.

"Nothing new. Same as always. He just wants you to cooperate with the treatment."

"And the money?"

He pressed, and something I knew well flashed in his eyes, that stubbornness and shrewdness that was pure Timothy Chavez.

"How much is it?"

My throat closed up, and I couldn't get a word out.

He looked at the expression on my face and understood everything.

He gave a bitter smile, one that was uglier than crying.

"A lot, isn't it?"

He slowly pushed himself up, leaned back against the sofa, and drew a few ragged breaths.

The living room was terrifyingly quiet, only the ancient wall clock going tick, tock, tick, tock, each sound like a summons for the dying.

"Regina... Regina Fox..."

He suddenly said my name, his tone strangely calm.

"Let's stop the treatment."

"What are you talking about!"

Anger flared in me, and my voice rose all at once.

"I'm not talking nonsense."

He looked at me, and in his eyes was a clarity and resolve I'd never seen before.

"I know my own body. It's a bottomless pit. There's no filling it. Just now... I heard everything."

My heart lurched.

"Stephen and Lorna were on the phone downstairs just now. I heard them."

He spoke slowly.

"Selling the house... aren't they?"

I opened my mouth, but not a single word came out.

"I, Timothy Chavez, have been a useless coward my whole life, never gave you a good life. And now, at the very end, I can't burn through the last place you have to live too."

His eyes went red, and his voice began to tremble along with them.

"This house is our home. It's our root. When I'm dead, you'll still have something to hold on to, a place that keeps the wind and rain off. If you sell our home for a useless man like me, I won't be able to close my eyes even when I'm down below."

The more he talked the more worked up he got, gripping my hand, his withered fingers cold as ice, yet holding on with all the strength in the world.

"Listen to me, Regina. No more treatment. Let me go in peace. Stop putting yourself through this, all right? I'm begging you!"

"No!"

I threw off his hand, and the tears I couldn't hold back any longer came crashing down in great heavy drops.

"Timothy Chavez, you listen to me! As long as you live, this family lives! If you die, what good is that run-down house to me? Am I supposed to sit in it for the rest of my life? Don't you worry about the money. Even if I have to go out and beg, I will get every dollar of that surgery together for you! You say one word about dying, and I... I'll go right along with you!"

I cried myself hoarse, roaring out all the grievance, fear, and rage of these past days.

Old Tim cried too, a grown man in his fifties, weeping in front of me like a child, his face a mess of tears and snot.

And so the two of us wept, saying nothing, with only a coffee table between us.

Despair was an airtight net, and it had dropped down over the two of us and pulled tight.

Just then, the old landline in the living room went off with a shrill, jangling ring.

In an age when everyone used a cell phone, that phone had all but become a decoration, catching nothing but the odd sales call.

I wiped my face, walked over, and picked it up, my voice still thick and stuffy from crying.

"Hello?"

The other end was silent for a few seconds, and then a hoarse, unfamiliar man's voice, like it had been rubbed raw with sandpaper, came through.

"Is this... Mrs. Fox?"

"Speaking. Who is this?"

I was a little impatient.

"Who I am doesn't matter."

The voice paused, as if choosing its words.

"I heard... your Tim's fallen sick, ma'am, and he needs a lot of money?"

My heart shot up into my throat, and I asked warily.

"Who are you? How do you know that?"

"Don't worry about how I know."

The voice didn't sound like it meant any harm. If anything, it carried a strange weariness, and... concern?

"Do you still remember, ma'am, the winter of '95, that heavy snow, when you were at the bus station and gave two hot steamed buns to a little beggar boy who was near freezing to death?"

Ninety-five, the heavy snow, the bus station, a little beggar boy...

A memory sealed away for almost thirty years split open like a gash cut by lightning and came flooding into my head all at once.

Before I could answer, the voice on the other end went on, with a certainty that left no room for doubt.

"Afterward he pushed a bowl into your hands. That bowl, you've still kept it, haven't you?"

I froze.

"Thirty years, ma'am."

The voice said, low and heavy.

"That bowl. It's time to sell it."

Click.

The line went dead.

I stood there holding the cold receiver, rooted to the spot, my mind gone blank.

Outside the window the sky had turned completely dark, with only scattered lights flickering in the distance.

I turned to look at Old Tim on the sofa. He was watching me, his face full of confusion.

That bowl...

That chipped, worn-out black ceramic bowl I'd shoved into the corner of the storeroom and all but forgotten existed.

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.

Early the next morning, I slipped out of the house with the rusted tin box tucked against me.

I didn't dare tell Old Tim. I was afraid he'd call me a fool chasing pipe dreams, stirring up trouble for nothing.

So I just said I was going to see some old coworkers, to figure something out.

First I went to the old street nearest home, the one with several pawnshops and antique stores that had been open for decades.

If this bowl really was worth anything, I figured, they'd know it when they saw it.

I picked the one with the grandest storefront, a place called the Treasure Trove.

The moment I walked in, the owner was lying back in a rocking chair with his reading glasses on, listening to the radio. He didn't so much as lift an eyelid.

"Sir, could you take a look at this? What's it worth?"

I set the box on the rosewood counter and carefully opened it.

He gave it a lazy glance, and something flickered through his eyes, contempt too quick to catch.

He didn't even get up from the rocker. He just craned his neck and grunted.

"Where'd you pick that up?"

"I didn't pick it up. It's... it's been handed down in the family."

I lied.

"Handed down?"

He let out a scornful little laugh and finally rose, slow and easy, came to the counter, pinched the rim of the bowl between two fingers like it disgusted him, lifted it, and held it up to the light.

"It's just a coarse black folk-kiln bowl. The firing's not even, look at the glaze, dark in one spot, pale in another. And it's chipped. You couldn't give it to me. It'd just take up space."

My heart sank halfway, but I still asked, clinging to one last thread of hope.

"Then... then how much would you give?"

He dropped the bowl back into the box with a hard clack, hard enough to make my chest clench.

He stuck out one hand and waved it in front of my face.

"Five hundred?"

I ventured.

He turned the hand over and waved it again, impatient now.

"Fifty! Not a cent more! Seeing as you dragged yourself out here first thing in the morning, I'll take it off you like scrap. Go buy yourself some groceries."

Fifty dollars?

Blood shot straight to my head, and humiliation and disappointment swallowed me whole in an instant.

I felt like the biggest joke in the world.

The mysterious phone call, the buried good deed coming back around, all of it fake. It was a scam. A cruel

joke!

"I'm not selling!"

I snapped the box shut, hugged it to my chest, and turned to leave.

"Hey, don't go!"

The owner called after me.

"Thirty works too! Keep it around for the memory, why not!"

I rushed out of the Treasure Trove without looking back, and the sunlight outside stabbed at my eyes.

I went into two or three more antique shops after that, and it was more or less the same everywhere.

Some owners were at least polite, telling me not to waste my effort, that it was just a worthless common piece from the Republican era. Others were like the first one, every word dripping with mockery, as if I'd walked in holding a brick and kept insisting it was gold.

I walked down the street with no direction, the tin box in my arms.

Cars streaming past, the roar of the crowd, and yet it felt like I was the only person left in the whole world.

Like a clown, hugging a broken bowl, dreaming a daydream about getting rich.

Hope, gone.

That feeling of being flung from the clouds straight into the mud was more crushing than having had no hope at all.

I came to a small park in the middle of the street and found a bench to sit on.

I opened the box, looked at that grimy black bowl, and the tears fell before I could stop them.

I hated whoever had made that call. Why give me a false hope like this, only to make me smash it with my own hands?

I hated myself too, for being so naive, so stupid, for letting one absurd phone call run me in circles.

My phone rang at the worst possible moment. It was my son, Stephen.

I sniffled and picked up.

"Mom, where are you? Lorna and I talked it over. We don't think we can drag this out any longer. I've got a realtor lined up. They're coming to see the house this afternoon. You..."

"Don't you dare!"

I shouted into the phone, my voice raw.

"I told you, the house is not for sale! Anyone who brings people to that door, I'll break their legs!"

"Mom! Can you be reasonable? Is now the time to be stubborn? What matters more, Dad's life or the house?"

Stephen's voice was heating up too.

"Both matter!"

I shouted back.

"I'm going to save your dad, and I'm keeping the house too! You stay out of it!"

I slammed the phone down, shaking all over with rage.

Pressuring me, every single one of them pressuring me!

I looked at the bowl in my arms, and a wild anger caught fire deep inside me.

Throw it out! This wretched thing that had brought me nothing but humiliation and disappointment!

I raised the box, ready to hurl it into the trash can beside me.

But my hand hung there in midair and wouldn't come down.

And into my mind came that snowy day again, that boy's stubborn, clear eyes.

When he handed me this bowl, he'd done it so solemnly, so reverently.

This bowl had to mean something to him. Something important.

I slowly lowered my hand and let out a long breath.

No. I couldn't just give up like this.

Those shop owners, maybe they simply didn't know what they were looking at. Maybe they were lowballing me on purpose.

A proper place. I had to take it somewhere proper.

Wasn't there a cultural relics authentication center in the city?

Nothing left to lose, one last try!

If they told me too that it was worthless junk, then I'd accept it.

I'd smash the bowl, and then... then I'd do what Lorna said and sell the house.

I wiped my tears and packed the bowl away again.

I flagged down a cab and gave the address of the city's cultural relics authentication center straight off.

The city's cultural relics authentication center sat in a plain old building, but the moment you stepped inside, the atmosphere had nothing to do with the antique street outside.

No noisy haggling here. Just hush.

The staff all wore white coats, moving briskly, their faces set and serious.

The air carried the old, dry smell of paper and wood, and it made you soften your steps without meaning to, until even breathing felt like something you had to do carefully.

I took a number and sat down on a cold plastic chair to wait.

A few people sat around me. Some were in tailored suits, clearly people with money; others, like me, were dressed plainly, but every one of them held something wrapped in cloth or a box close to their chest, faces full of unease and hope.

My heart was pounding, my palms slick with sweat.

I held the tin box against my chest, and it felt as heavy as iron.

"Number A37, Ms. Regina Fox, please come to Appraisal Room 3."

The number came over the speaker.

I drew a deep breath, stood, and walked through the door with the "Ceramics Appraisal Department" sign hanging on it.

Inside sat an elderly expert with graying hair and gold-rimmed glasses, refined-looking. The tag on his chest read: Hubert Lambert.

"Hello, sir."

I greeted him nervously.

He gave a gentle nod and gestured to the chair across from him.

"Have a seat. Take it out and let me have a look."

I set the tin box on the table, which was covered with a thick layer of felt cloth. My hands trembled from nerves, and it took me several tries to work the rusted clasp open.

When the black bowl came into view, Mr. Lambert's eyes didn't fill with the contempt those shop owners had shown.

He simply looked at it calmly, then pulled on a pair of white gloves.

He didn't pick it up right away. First he took a soft-bristled little brush and, gently, bit by bit, swept away the dust and the traces of rust clinging to the bowl.

His movements were slow, light, as if he were handling a rare treasure.

And with every motion, my heart climbed higher into my throat.

Then he took out a high-powered magnifier, bent close to the rim, and examined it inch by inch.

He studied the base first, then the body, and last the few tiny chips along the mouth.

The minutes crawled by. The room was so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat.

Mr. Lambert's brow slowly drew together.

He set the magnifier down, picked the bowl back up, and tapped its body lightly with a knuckle, tilting his head to listen to the sound. It was dull, not crisp.

He put the bowl down, took off his glasses, wiped them with the felt cloth, and put them back on.

He didn't look at me. He stared hard at that bowl, his eyes full of shock, confusion, and a light I couldn't read, something close to fervor.

He murmured to himself.

"Impossible... this clay body, this glaze... could it really be..."

Suddenly he lifted his head, his gaze burning as he looked at me, his voice shaking a little from excitement.

"Ma'am, this bowl of yours... where did you get it?"

His intensity startled me, and I stammered.

"It was... a friend gave it to me, many years ago."

"A friend?" he pressed.

"What kind of friend?"

"Just a... a friend I lost touch with a long time ago."

I didn't dare tell the truth.

Mr. Lambert seemed to see my discomfort, and he didn't push any further.

He only lowered his head, picked up the magnifier again, and stared over and over at one utterly unremarkable spot on the bottom of the bowl.

His breathing grew faster and faster.

Then all at once he jerked his head up, yanked off his glasses, his eyes flung wide from sheer shock.

He looked at me, then at the bowl, then back at me, his expression more complicated than anything I'd ever seen.

"Ma'am..."

His voice came out hoarse and dry.

"Are you... planning to sell this?"

I nodded hard, and asked nervously,

"Mr. Lambert, is it... is it worth something?"

He didn't answer me directly.

He only drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly, as if trying to steady the storm churning inside him.

He adjusted his glasses and looked at me with a gaze that was gravely serious, even touched with a trace of pity, and said, one word at a time:

"Ma'am, you have to promise me you won't get too excited!"

In that instant my heart seemed to stop.

Then, in a voice only the two of us could hear, he said one sentence.

I looked at his face, serious to the very limit, and felt all the blood in my body rush to my head. My ears filled with a ringing hum, the room spun, my legs went weak, and I nearly crumpled to the floor.