The Concubine's Daughter (8 page)

At night, before sleeping, she spoke in whispers to the rising moon, seeking Pai-Ling in the softness of its pure light.

“Is it true that I am
qian-jin,
as Ah-Su has said—compared like you to a thousand pieces of gold?”

She could almost see Pai-Ling’s smile and hear her answer clear and steady as the murmur of a gently flowing stream:
Gold can be found everywhere if you look for it … sprinkled by sunlight on clear water … in the evening sky and the coming of each new dawn. It falls like scattered coins on the forest floor and gilds the leaf of every tree; glitters on every blade of grass after the rain and turns each dewdrop into a precious jewel. You will find gold in kindness; it can be found in the seeking of happiness and in helping others. Try to find your fortune among these things, collect what you can of this real gold, and one day you will be
qian-jin.

“But I am told that I am worthless and do not even deserve my rice.”

The shining face of Pai-Ling seemed to brighten the dark room.

Do not reward such foolish words with your precious tears; they are not worthy of your sadness. Carry your dignity with care: The world and its people are not always kind to those who are gentle, and even the gods may pass you by. Gather your thousand pieces of gold wherever you may find them and protect them with all your strength. You will find these words on the very last page of my journal. I wrote them for you before you were born.

Each evening, by the light of the lamp and the fluttering of moths, Li-Xia turned the pages of her mother’s precious papers, learning to separate one character from another, carefully copying them with the colored pencils Ah-Su just happened to drop under her bed in the rice shed, then hiding her work beneath the thin straw mat of her wooden bed. The paper journals had no covers and were easily rolled up and hidden in the piece of hollowed wood that was her headrest. Some of the yellow pages were torn, but every one was filled with row upon row of Chinese characters. Here and there, attended by tiny images of gods and goddesses, a drawing of the moon appeared in all its many palaces.

The small book, with its cover of faded silk, was her greatest treasure. On its first page, Ah-Su had assured her, was the perfect image of her mother’s name, written when she was a child and surrounded by pale flowers painted by her hand. The last page was so beautiful it took her breath away, showing the lady of the moon dancing upon a carpet of stars. Li-Xia longed to know what was written there. Finally, when Ah-Su found a way to visit her in secret, bringing sticky rice wrapped in a spinach leaf, dumplings, and fried noodles, Li-Xia asked her to read the words clusterered at the feet of the Moon Lady. Ah-Su read slowly and clearly:

Li-Xia had been told little of Great-Uncle Ming, the silk merchant, and the changes in her life that were soon to come about. She was surprised and excited when her father himself appeared in the doorway of the rice shed. It was her eighth birthday, he said, and she would not work today. He brought her a ripe peach and a new
sam-foo
—a pair of trousers and a top the color of an apricot, with birds in flight embroidered on the cuffs and collar. Her porridge on this special day was sweetened, and there was fresh goat’s milk to drink, and a sweet bun filled with red bean paste. Li-Xia had never seen such beautiful clothes or tasted such delicious food. The butterfly of hope sat upon her shoulder.

She must eat and then wash herself, her father told her. Number Three would dress her hair and see that she was fit to ride upon the river and be seen by important people. When she was ready, he would come back and take her on a ride in the sampan, to see the willow trees and the frogs among the lotuses. The bucket was fetched specially for her to use; the hot water tipped from the steaming bucket into a washtub was the first real bath she had ever known. Washing herself with soap, fragrant as a petal, and dressing herself in the fresh-smelling clothes, she thought how greatly her fortunes were changing for the better.

When Yik-Munn returned, he looked with interest upon the child he had created, relieved by her mildness of manner. Could it be that the priests were right, the fox fairy had left her completely? She seemed vibrant in health and of quite an engaging disposition. He wondered if he should ask a higher price than the bargain he had struck. Even without the lotus slippers, did she not show promise of the beauty of her mother?

“Let me see your hummingbird hands,” he commanded with a twitch
of his wide thin mouth and a glimpse of his famous teeth, and she quickly obeyed, placing them in his outstretched palms. He fondled them carefully, inspecting each finger with its perfect painted tip. He bent, lifting them to his broad, flat nostrils, and sniffed each in turn, as he would a fresh-cut flower or the delicate traces of a rare and valuable spice, then held them against the roughness of his sparsely whiskered cheek.

It was the first time Li-Xia had felt his touch, and it both confused and emboldened her. Seeing him look so kindly upon her, she dared to speak in a strong and fearless voice.

“Will my honorable great-uncle up the river teach me to read?” she asked.

He frowned, instantly dropping her hands; then, turning away with an angry snort, he spotted the tip of a paper book under her bed. He stooped to pick it up and for a moment was so silent, she wondered if he had understood her question. When he spoke, each word was cold with accusation. “What are you doing with this? Where did you get it?” She hesitated, shrinking from his sudden burst of fury as he kicked aside her bed to uncover more tightly wound scrolls and loose paper pages of her copied words. He pulled them out, ripping and twisting until they were torn to shreds.

“You defy me and spit upon my kindness. These papers are old and full of rubbish; good only as a home for cockroaches.” He flung them at her. “Today you will visit Great-Uncle Ming … you will have no need of such nonsense.”

He seized her jaw, forcing her to look directly into his eyes. “Never mention such a thing to anyone at Ten Willows—do you hear me?”

His thumb,
Li-Xia thought,
is big as a soup ladle, but his eyes are those of a tired old dog.

Before she could find the words that would stop him, he scooped up the remaining papers and left, banging the door behind him. She watched through the window as he tossed the precious pages onto the dung hill beside the buffalo stall and set it alight. The pages lifted like leaves in the wind to drift and disappear.

Number One nodded wisely when she heard how slyly the fox fairy had deceived them all and tried to teach itself to read. Yik-Munn was quickly bathed and changed, then served with Swatow tea to soothe his nerves. How brave he had been to face this thing alone, and how wise he was to see to it that this unholy being would leave the farm this day, never to return.

Yik-Munn was dressed in his finest clothes for the journey to the Ten Willows silk farm—a plum-colored gown of shantung velvet and his official high-crowned hat trimmed with gold. The prefect must not think that his daughter came from a poor and unimportant family, or the price might go down even further. His wives had fussed about him until he looked the picture of prosperity, a casket of rare spices beneath his arm as a gift for Ming-Chou.

Li-Xia walked behind him to the jetty and to the front of the sampan, well beyond his reach. Why had he taken her papers and burned them? She could find no forgiveness for such a terrible thing.

Watching lotus flowers drifting by, she cherished her few remaining secrets. Hidden under her new clothes and flat against her heart was the book she had kept hidden in its secret place, the story of the Moon Lady, to be remembered forever through her mother’s hand. As precious as this was the orange-peel finger jade, sewn carefully into the hem of her
sam-foo
, weighing no more than a baby frog.

These great secrets helped her forget the sight of the pages turning black under a cloud of yellow smoke. As long as these last things were safe, she felt protected too, wondering who rich Uncle Ming could be, and if he would be pleased to see her. She had never felt as pretty as she did today; the apricot
sam-foo
fit her well, and the wives had dressed her hair and dabbed her cheeks with rouge till they were rosy as an apple. Her mouth had been carefully painted red as a rose petal and her eyelashes and eyebrows were black as ink. The wives were nices to her than ever before, but the thought of going far away from the spice farm filled her with a grim determination: She would never return to the rice shed and its jars of pickled snakes and the pink little bodies of baby mice.

When all was done and she was ready for her journey, Number Three
returned with a yellow water iris to wind into her hair, and a most beautiful gift. It was a sunshade, which when opened bloomed in the same bright yellow as the iris on a stalk of green bamboo. Ah-Su had found a moment when the others were engaged in readying Yik-Munn. She kissed Li-Xia and said with her secret smile, “I have gathered the rest of your mother’s things from the rice shed; I will keep them safe for you until we see each other again. Remember, my Beautiful One, your feet are your freedom. While you have them, nothing is impossible.”

I
n the smoky blue
mulberry groves, there were as many trees as there were scales on a snake, or so it was said among the
mui-mui
, the young girls who killed the moths and collected the tiny pearls of silk. The rolling hills of the Ten Willows silk farm were covered with the trees as far as could be seen from the banks of the river.

Unlike at smaller spinning mills, which depended on cocoons supplied by others, Ming-Chou, a man of great prosperity and power, had the advantage of owning his own groves. Established by his great-grandfather, they had made him the richest silk merchant in the Pearl River Delta, living in a world of lordly privilege beyond that of even the city taipans of Canton or Hong Kong.

Here, behind the high, dragon-back walls of his tranquil gardens, he employed one hundred women. Fifty of these were
sau-hai
, “women without men,” an ancient sisterhood born to the cult of survival. As hungry children, victims of flood and famine, mauled and molested by field hands for a handful of rice, they had been plucked from the darkest depths of despair. The oldest of them had forsaken the notion of wedlock and motherhood, banding together and welcoming any virgin girl to join their ranks and accept the traditional comb and mirror as she took the sacred oath of
sau-hai
.

The sisterhood cherished and protected its own as surely as nuns in a convent. It had always been the way for a poor woman of China, if her family was unable to feed her but had failed to kill her at birth, to be sold
to anyone who would have her. Such lost women had sought the sisterhood and shared its strength for centuries. It offered food and shelter, but above all it promised a measure of dignity, and security from the injustices of men.

The
sau-hai
were much sought after as dometic servants, and any household worthy of its name was prepared to pay a little more for an amah who wore the black
tzow
and showed the white handkerchief of purity, her hair wound into a tight bun and caught by the wooden comb. Thus had been formed a network of secret communications that could stretch from house to house, village to village, and town to town, even from province to province. Members of the sisterhood became a constant source of information on the fortunes of rival clans and competitive households.

Ming-Chou was deeply proud that he had chosen the sisters of
sauhai
to become his weavers. He paid them well, saw that their conditions were pleasant, and treated them with respect. Most could not read nor write, so questioned nothing. Yet they were intelligently led and there were some among them who were of considerable breeding, whose families had been beset by disaster, or who despised or feared the male sex and preferred the company of women. Some, like Elder Sister Ah-Jeh, the Ten Willows superintendant, had great skill with the abacus, a keen eye for business, and a deep knowledge of healing the sick. The money paid to them at the end of each month was less than half of that given to men and boys, but it was wisely used or carefully saved.