Ties That Bind, Ties That Break

by Lensey Namioka

  The name Warner sounded familiar, and then I remembered what Miss Gilbertson had told me about her friends. ‘‘I’ve already met Mrs. Warner, right here, in fact.’’

  Miss Gilbertson smiled. ‘‘So you have! I’ll send word to Imogene right away and see if we can arrange a meeting.’’

  Apparently the Warners’ need was so great that they asked to see me the very next day. Miss Gilbertson took me to a modern, two-story house in a part of town with wide streets. It seemed bizarre for a house to have rooms built directly above other rooms. If you stamped your feet on the second floor, dust might fall into the rice bowls of people eating dinner below you!

  As soon as Miss Gilbertson and I were shown in by the houseboy, a very tall, thin foreign man came in. He had sparse brown hair, but to make up for it, he had the bushiest mustache I had ever seen. ‘‘This is so good of you, Frances!’’ he said, shaking hands with Miss Gilbertson. He turned to me. ‘‘So you are Eileen. Miss Gilbertson has told us a lot about you.’’

  I held out my hand. ‘‘How do you do, Mr. Warner?’’

  Mr. Warner beamed. ‘‘Why, your English is perfect!’’

  ‘‘I’ve been lucky to have Miss Gilbertson as my teacher,’’ I said. For a moment the three of us stood smiling at one another. The silence was broken by thumps that started above our heads and moved slowly down the curved staircase.

  Mrs. Warner appeared first, holding the hands of a girl with a shiny red face and masses of bouncing blond curls. A younger boy followed them. His face was scowling, and his thumping steps told the world that he was ready to rebel against anything and everything.

  I instantly recognized a kindred spirit.

  ‘‘Hello, Eileen,’’ said Mrs. Warner. ‘‘I’m very glad to see you again. This is our daughter, Grace, who is six.’’ She turned and tried to propel the boy to the front, but he quickly moved around so that he stayed behind her. ‘‘This is our son, Billy. He’s five, but sometimes he acts like a two-year-old.’’

  ‘‘Do you think you would be able to be our amah?’’ asked Mr. Warner. I could see desperation in his light blue eyes.

  ‘‘Timothy,’’ whispered Mrs. Warner to her husband, ‘‘Eileen looks a bit young.’’

  ‘‘How old are you, my dear?’’ Mr. Warner asked me.

  ‘‘I’m fourteen,’’ I said instantly. Miss Gilbertson raised her eyebrows, since she knew I was not quite thirteen. But according to Chinese reckoning, a person is one year old at the moment of birth, and another year is added to everyone’s age on New Year’s Day. Since I had been born in November, I was counted as two when I was less than three months old. Therefore, I was telling the absolute truth when I said I was fourteen.

  ‘‘I’m very bad at guessing the ages of the Chinese,’’ confessed Mrs. Warner. ‘‘They always look a lot younger than they really are.’’

  ‘‘Fourteen is old enough,’’ said Mr. Warner with relief. He turned to me. ‘‘We would be delighted if you would accept the position of amah for Grace and Billy.’’

  ‘‘Of course, you will be living with us in the house,’’ said Mrs. Warner. ‘‘You can have a large room upstairs all to yourself.’’

  I felt a pang in my chest at the thought of leaving my home, with its courtyards, fragrant sweet-olive bushes, carp pond, and the maids who did my bidding. But I would be leaving that home in any case. My alternatives were to become a concubine of the Fengs, enter a nunnery, or live in a thatched farm-house with mud walls.

  I swallowed hard. ‘‘Yes, I would be happy to work here.’’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When I went to tell Big Uncle about my decision, I was so nervous that my legs wobbled like meat jelly. I remembered vividly our interview soon after Father’s death, when Big Uncle had threatened to have me strangled and thrown down a well. Nor did I forget my defiant answer, which had not been calculated to soothe his anger. Somehow I managed to walk without tottering to his courtyard and into his study. I found him seated behind his table, waiting for me.

  ‘‘I’ve decided to go and work as an amah for an American missionary family,’’ I announced baldly. ‘‘I will be living with them from now on.’’

  Instead of exploding with fury, Big Uncle looked at me with no expression at all. For a moment I thought he had not heard what I had said. Then he smiled—or more accurately, he bared his teeth. ‘‘I had thought that nothing you did would surprise me anymore. It seems I am wrong.’’

  The calmness of his voice emboldened me, and I ventured to explain my decision. ‘‘I thought it less disgraceful to the family name than becoming a concubine of the Fengs.’’

  I had made a mistake. What I took for calmness was fury under tight control. His fingers gripped the inkstone on his desk. It was heavy and would make a deadly missile. Then he loosened his hold. It took such an effort that I saw the drops of sweat on his brow. ‘‘I loved your father,’’ he said in a strangled voice. ‘‘That’s why you may leave this room alive.’’

  Mother was the one I told next. As I had expected, she was appalled. ‘‘Living with the foreigners is different from just going to their school, Ailin!’’ she cried. ‘‘Can you stand eating all that foreign food? And you might end up wearing their funny clothes, all made of wool and terribly itchy!’’

  I tried to reassure her. ‘‘Don’t worry, Mother. I’ve tried some foreign food at the MacIntosh School, and it didn’t disagree with me. As for clothes, I’ll be wearing my own.’’

  Saying good-bye to Little Brother was harder. ‘‘Why are you going away to take care of somebody else’s children?’’ he asked. ‘‘Why can’t you stay here with me?’’

  I looked him in the eye, the way Second Sister used to look at me when she had something serious to say. ‘‘Little Brother, all girls have to leave home eventually. Only boys are allowed to stay. Some girls go to a nunnery, but most go away to join other families. It so happens that the family I’m joining consists of foreigners.’’

  Little Brother wiped his eyes. ‘‘Can you visit me? Second Sister comes home sometimes.’’

  I wasn’t sure how much freedom the Warners would give me to go out. But I did know one thing: When a married daughter returned home for a visit, she was treated like an empress. Nothing was too good for her. I suspected that if I returned home, Big Uncle might order that I be turned away at the door.

  ‘‘I’ll try to visit you if I possibly can,’’ I promised.

  The actual moving was less painful than saying my farewells. Since Mrs. Warner had told me that there would be bedding and furniture in my room, all I had to take with me were my clothes and a few personal possessions such as books, pens, writing brush, and ink stick and slab. Everything went into one rickshaw, while I rode in another. As my rickshaw pulled away I turned my head to avoid looking back at the gate of my family home.

  Mr. and Mrs. Warner were at work when I arrived with my luggage. The houseboy answered the door, and he looked surly when I asked for help in carrying my bags to my room. Instead of replying, he turned his back on me and barked some orders to a maid, who hurried over to help.

  I decided to ignore the houseboy’s rudeness. My major concern at the moment was managing the two children who were my charges.

  I knew that Billy would be the difficult one, and I had spent some time thinking over ways to cope with him. As it turned out, I made a good start when I began to unpack my belongings. I was placing my writing implements on the desk in my room when I heard a voice. ‘‘What are those things?’’

  I turned around and saw two heads poking around my door. Grace and Billy came into the room. ‘‘Mother said we should let you unpack first,’’ said Grace. ‘‘But we wanted to talk to you without the grown-ups.’’

  Billy pointed to the ink stick and little stone slab. ‘‘What are those things?’’ he asked again.

  ‘‘These are for making ink,’’ I replied.

  ‘‘We’ve already got ink,’’ said Grace. ‘‘Father has a big bottle of
it, only we aren’t allowed to touch it.’’

  ‘‘This ink is for Chinese brush writing,’’ I told them. ‘‘You need very thick ink for that.’’ I had an idea. ‘‘Grace, can you get me a glass of water? I’ll show you how to grind ink and write Chinese characters.’’

  Grace ran off and quickly returned with a cup of water. Pouring a few drops into a depression in the stone slab, I began to rub the ink stick in the little puddle. I let Grace and Billy take turns rubbing the ink stick, having made them solemnly promise to do it slowly and not spill a drop. When a thick pool of ink had formed, I uncapped a brush, dipped it in the ink, and slowly wrote the characters for mountain and river.

  ‘‘Whenever you’re especially good,’’ I promised them, ‘‘I’ll let you make some ink and write one of these characters.’’

  The children looked at me with wide eyes. From my own experience I knew they must have received plenty of bribes from adults. But never before had they been bribed by being taught to write in Chinese.

  My life as an amah was much harder than I had expected. My own amah had been expected only to get me dressed, carry me around, and prevent me from getting into mischief. With the Warners, I discovered that I was supposed to teach the children as well. Mornings were set aside for lessons, including reading and writing.

  ‘‘When Frances Gilbertson told us what an excellent student you were,’’ Mrs. Warner said to me, ‘‘we counted ourselves lucky to have you teaching Grace and Billy!’’

  Afraid to point out that I had never taught anyone in my life, I meekly accepted the lesson books. Brightly illustrated and with big print, they were very different from the textbooks I had used at the MacIntosh School. At least they were in easy English. To Grace I read the sentences aloud and had her repeat them after me.

  To Billy I had to teach the alphabet first, and he was an unruly pupil. He was very different from Little Brother, although they were the same age. Little Brother was easy to please and easy to amuse. With Billy I had to use all my ingenuity. Recognizing my own rebellious nature in the boy, I tried to imagine how I myself would react. Sometimes this tactic worked.

  The best way to quiet Billy down was to tell him stories. I loved stories involving plenty of action, and these were the ones that he liked best, too. So I told him stories from Outlaws of the Marsh, a book about a band of 108 outlaws who defied corrupt government officials.

  ‘‘I like the part about Wu Song killing the tiger!’’ yelled Billy, who preferred the bloodthirsty bits.

  My own favorite stories were from the classic Journey to the West, about the Monkey King who escorted the priest Xuan Zang on a pilgrimage to India. The stories were full of magic and demon spirits, and, of course, action. The only trouble was that instead of quieting Billy down, they sometimes got him even more excited.

  What I didn’t enjoy was being at the beck and call of the children and having to drop whatever I was doing if one of them wanted my attention. I was in no position to say, ‘‘Don’t bother me with such a trivial thing!’’ It made me feel guilty to realize how often my own amah must have wanted to say that.

  But taking care of the children was the easiest part. I had to adjust to an entirely new way of life. At the Warners’, I no longer had anyone to fetch things for me, to run errands. I discovered immediately that the servants would not do my bidding. The houseboy went out of his way to make this clear.

  From the day I arrived I could tell that the houseboy resented me. He was a thin man in his forties, and he gave orders to all the Chinese servants. It took me a while to understand the cause of his resentment. Mr. Warner spoke very little Chinese and Mrs. Warner none at all. The houseboy, who understood some English, ran the household and regarded himself as a vital link between the Warners and the servants. He saw my arrival as a threat to his power, and I often found him glaring angrily at me. Whenever I made some social blunder, which happened often during my early days as an amah, I would see him smile with satisfaction.

  The hardest part of all was trying to live the life of a foreigner. Three months after moving in with the Warners, I found that I was growing out of my clothes. I didn’t know what to do. At home my clothes had always been made to order, but none of the maids at the Warners’ was a seamstress.

  Mrs. Warner had a suggestion. ‘‘We have our clothes made by a tailor in town. Why don’t you have some Western clothes made, Eileen?’’

  ‘‘Yes, yes, Eileen!’’ shouted Grace. ‘‘I want to see you wearing American clothes!’’

  With the money the Warners paid me I ordered two outfits, similar to those worn by Mrs. Warner but of plainer material and with shorter skirts. I was used to wearing long trousers under a tunic, and it felt funny to be wearing thick stockings under a skirt. The stockings were uncomfortably binding, but they turned out to be warm as the weather became cooler.

  Food was another problem. The first meal I had with the Warner family was a Sunday dinner— which was in the middle of the day! All the Warners ate together, and I joined them at the long, rectangular dining table. Before the meal was served, Mr. Warner said grace for the food provided, ending his prayer with the word Amen.

  To be on the safe side, I said ‘‘Amen,’’ too. Both Mr. and Mrs. Warner beamed when they heard me.

  After the prayer I finally took a close look at the plate in front of me. It contained some vegetables and a great slab of meat. For a moment I thought I was supposed to slice it up for everyone else. Did my duties include kitchen work as well? But why do it at the dining table?

  ‘‘Don’t you like beef, Eileen?’’ asked Mrs. Warner when I didn’t pick up my eating utensils right away.

  ‘‘Yes, yes, I do,’’ I said, although I preferred pork to beef. Hurriedly I picked up my knife and fork, which I had learned to use at the MacIntosh School. I looked around and saw that there was a slab of meat on every plate, although the ones on the children’s plates were smaller. Mrs. Warner took her knife and proceeded to cut up the meat on Billy’s plate. I realized that each person was supposed to eat a whole thick piece! It took all my willpower to finish the serving on my plate. Fortunately only Sunday dinner featured large portions of meat. Most of the other meals consisted of Chinese food, which I was glad to discover the Warners enjoyed.

  Usually I ate with the children in an upstairs room. The first time Grace told me that I would be eating with her and Billy, I decided I would enjoy the informality. Then I overheard a conversation between the houseboy and one of the maids.

  I was sitting at a small table with Grace and Billy when I heard the houseboy talking to the maid in the hallway. ‘‘Why shouldn’t she eat with the children?’’ he said. ‘‘She’s just hired help. And another thing, I heard you calling her Miss Tao. There’s no need for that.’’

  ‘‘But she’s well bred,’’ protested the maid. ‘‘I don’t feel right, treating her like one of us.’’

  The houseboy and the maid had not bothered to lower their voices. They had become accustomed to speaking freely in Chinese, secure in the knowledge that the Warner family could not understand.

  ‘‘What’s the matter, Eileen?’’ asked Grace, who noticed my mortification. ‘‘Don’t you like to be here with us?’’

  ‘‘Of course I do,’’ I said quickly, but my face was hot, and I felt a mixture of emotions. No one had called me well bred for a long time, not since I had refused to have my feet bound. But it hurt to know that I was now considered by the servants to be one of them. Was this how my own amah had felt the first time she went to work?

  The servants were not the only ones who didn’t bother to lower their voices. Mr. and Mrs. Warner were used to being surrounded by people who didn’t understand English.

  ‘‘I saw Eileen teaching Grace and Billy to write with a brush,’’ Mrs. Warner said one evening after the children were in bed. They were in the living room downstairs, but their voices carried upstairs, and I could hear every word, since my door was open.

  ‘‘I don’t se
e anything wrong with that,’’ said Mr. Warner.

  ‘‘Timothy, I don’t want the children to learn a heathen language,’’ said Mrs. Warner. ‘‘She can spend the time teaching Billy to read and write English words.’’

  I got up quietly and closed my door. I didn’t want to hear any more. What was wrong with teaching the children to use a brush? They loved it, especially Billy, and he was behaving better in order to earn the privilege of using the brush.

  In my history class at the MacIntosh School, Miss Scott had used the word heathen to describe various ‘‘uncivilized’’ tribes who practiced strange religions. What did this have to do with Chinese writing?

  A few weeks later I heard the word heathen again. I knew that on the day called Sunday by the foreigners, all the Warners went out for a ‘‘service.’’ I didn’t know what they served, but they were always well dressed. After they came back, the whole family, including me, would eat Sunday dinner together.

  One Sunday Mr. Warner asked me to speak with him privately after the meal. I joined him in the room he called the library. It had shelves filled with smelly books bound in leather. The thought of books being bound with the skins of animals revolted me at first, but I had to admit that I was getting used to my new shoes, which were made of pigskin.

  I was nervous. Was Mr. Warner planning to send me away because I was two years younger than he had thought? Or because I was teaching Grace and Billy brush writing?

  Mr. Warner motioned me to a seat opposite him. He folded his hands and looked at me seriously. ‘‘Eileen, you have been very good with the children. They are better behaved, and they seem to be studying well, too.’’

  I knew that tone of voice. Mr. Warner was about to criticize me for something. On the previous day Billy had been jumping from his bed to the floor while I was telling him the story of the Monkey King flying through the air. Mr. and Mrs. Warner had been away at the time, but the houseboy could have reported the thumping.

  Mr. Warner continued. ‘‘We appreciate your telling Grace and Billy some Chinese folktales. Mrs. Warner and I feel, however, that the time would be better spent on Western history and literature, materials more relevant to our children’s own background.’’