The Moon Pearl

by Ruthanne Lum McCunn

  The animals, he said, had been beautifully dressed, capable of speech as well. Then people cried out to the Gods that they were too small, too weak to plow without assistance. Seh Gung, the Community Grandfather, and Day Jong Wong, the Earth King, could see that what the people said was true, and they asked the buffaloes to go down to earth and help.

  No buffalo wanted to do it.

  “Why should we work?”

  “We’ll spoil our clothes.”

  In response, people promised to reward the buffaloes generously. Still none would go.

  “Talk is worthless.”

  “Why should we believe you?”

  So people sent up many wonderful offerings of delicious food and fragrant incense. They pleaded sweetly. And Seh Gung and Day Jong Wong—convinced that plowing would truly be easy for such large animals and certain of the people’s goodwill—assured the buffaloes that they would live as well on earth as in the sky, perhaps better. All they had to do was take off their clothes while they worked.

  “If what I’m saying isn’t true, may I never have a roof over my head,” Seh Gung vowed.

  “May I lose my sight,” Day Jong Wong added.

  The buffaloes, thus persuaded, took off their clothes and went down to earth to give people the help they needed. But plowing was much more difficult for the buffaloes than people had said. Indeed, the work was so hard that the buffaloes suffered terribly. Nor did people reward the animals as they’d promised. Some even mistreated the creatures.

  Watching the animals struggle, Seh Gung and Day Jong Wong realized that not only had the two of them been duped but they had, in turn, fooled the buffaloes, who’d placed their trust in them. Deeply ashamed, the two Gods sought to show their remorse and prove their integrity: Seh Gung gave up the roof over his head, Day Jong Wong his sight.

  There was no going back to their old lives for the buffaloes, however, and they continued to eat bitterness. The more bitterness they ate, the more of their speech the buffaloes lost. Soon they could only cry.

  While learning weeping songs, Yun Yun had wailed, “I know I cannot escape this trap,” many times. So she understood that a woman, once married, could not leave her husband’s family any more than the buffaloes could return to the sky. And, like the buffaloes, she wept.

  Struggling Woman

  THE CHOWS were either too poor or too miserly to hire help, and their fields and ponds were widely scattered. But Yun Yun didn’t mind the burden of additional steps. The greater the distance between the fields and ponds, the more she was able to avoid working near her husband and in-laws. The long walks also gave her a chance to see all of Strongworm.

  Although Yun Yun’s mother had told her the village was dedicated almost entirely to silk production, the sight of field after field devoted to mulberry—with only a small scattering of rice paddies, vegetable patches, and fruit trees—still startled. Surveying the narrowness of the river and the maze of canals criss-crossing the fields, Yun Yun guessed much of Strongworm’s land must have been reclaimed. But there was no one she could ask for confirmation: her motherin-law had strictly forbidden her to talk to anyone outside of the immediate family, and with them there was no conversation in which she was included.

  Then, on Yun Yun’s way home from the fields one day, the sky suddenly blackened with heavy clouds that burst open, letting loose torrents of heavy rain.

  “Over here,” a woman’s voice called.

  Mindful of her motherin-law’s orders, Yun Yun hurried on without looking up.

  “You’ll get soaked,” the voice warned.

  Cold rain, driven by a strong wind, was already rendering Yun Yun’s widebrimmed hat useless, stinging her face, piercing her tunic and pants, dribbling between collar and neck, down her back.

  “Come on,” the voice urged.

  Yun Yun, glancing in the direction of the voice, saw a woman so stout she almost filled the doorway of a mud hut several yards from the flagstone road. As their eyes met, the woman’s dumpling-like face broke out in a huge smile and she beckoned warmly. Impulsively Yun Yun ran towards her, dashing through wet grass, shooting through the door into thick smoke, the sound of men’s voices.

  Frightened, Yun Yun would have retreated. But the large woman had her firmly by the arm and was drawing her further in, telling her, “We’re almost neighbors. My daughter Shadow is a member of the girls’ house that’s next door to you.”

  Yun Yun, captivated by the woman’s friendliness, could not summon the will to resist when she took her hoe, propped it against the wall. Still concerned over the possible presence of men, however, Yun Yun peered through the smoke—saw a cluster of five or six old men squatting in the far corner, sucking on their pipes, spewing billows of bitter smoke.

  That the men were grandfathers was a relief. Nevertheless, Yun Yun shifted her eyes, hands, and feet, uncertain whether she should retrieve her hoe and plunge back into the downpour.

  “No need to worry,” the woman soothed. “Your motherin-law can’t fault you for stopping here. This hut is a shelter for just such occasions.”

  One of the grandfathers hawked a huge gob of spit, and Yun Yun shrank back against the woman’s soft, comforting bulk.

  “The hut wasn’t always a shelter,” he said, grinding his spittle into the dirt floor with his heel. “It wasn’t a single room either, but a half dozen or so rooms in a row, one of many such houses that the Low gentry built when they were reclaiming land from the river.”

  “Gentry, hah!” another grandfather sneered. “Leeches more like. They were trying to rent out the land while it was forming, not yet ripe enough to grow much of anything. All the same, they wanted tenants to turn over half their harvests in rent.”

  The rest of the grandfathers jumped in.

  “Who could live on what was left?”

  “Hnnnh, we showed those leeches they couldn’t suck our blood.”

  “Wah, that was a great day, when no Strongworm man would agree to those terms.”

  “Great how? Didn’t those leeches just go ahead and build mud huts on common land then fill them with Tankas willing to farm for them?”

  “What are Tankas?” Yun Yun, caught up in their talk, asked.

  “Outcasts who live in boats for houses and drift about on rivers and seas.”

  “Men and women so poor their clothes rot on them and their children run about naked.”

  “People too desperate to refuse starvation terms.”

  “People the Low gentry drove out when the land ripened sufficiently for proper cultivation and we wanted to work it.”

  “Isn’t that always the way?”

  “Right. Big fish eat little fish.”

  “Little fish eat shrimp.”

  “And shrimps eat mud.”

  When Yun Yun came home dry, her motherin-law pinched her ear, demanding, “Didn’t you hear me tell you to return directly?”

  Yun Yun tried to defend herself by explaining she’d taken shelter in the hut. But Old Lady Chow only became more furious because under her grilling, Yun Yun revealed she hadn’t been alone, that men had been in the hut too.

  Grabbing the hoe, Old Lady Chow knocked Yun Yun to the floor and accused her of shamelessness.

  “They were grandfathers,” Yun Yun pleaded.

  Old Lady Chow threw down the hoe, seized Yun Yun by her collar, yanked her onto her knees.

  “I know how brazenly you leered at my son during your bride-teasing,” Old Lady Chow hissed.

  “I …”

  Old Lady Chow’s hand struck Yun Yun’s mouth full force, silencing her. “I should never have believed the matchmaker’s claims about your good home teaching. But I will teach you. And you will learn.”

  Each hand gripping one of Yun Yun’s ears, Old Lady Chow twisted viciously. “Your first lesson is to use these.”

  Releasing the ears, Old Lady Chow once again smacked Yun Yun across the mouth. “Not this.”

  The next morning Yun Yun’s ears felt swollen and sore, but
she shielded them from prying eyes with her hair; the painful welt from the hoe was already invisible to others. Old Lady Chow’s last slap, however, had split Yun Yun’s lips, puffing them out beyond the farthest reach of her tongue. During the night, Young Chow had also deliberately smashed her nose and blackened her eyes. “Now see if you can get any man to look at you.”

  Deeply ashamed, Yun Yun begged permission to stay indoors until she healed.

  “Release you from work? Reward you for doing wrong?” Old Man Chow roared. “Never! Let people see you for what you are. A worthless daughter-in-law in need of teaching.”

  Trying desperately to hide her disgrace, Yun Yun tipped her hat far forward and walked with her head bowed. Even so, she heard passersby catch their breath, click their tongues, and mutter their disapproval.

  When she went to wash the family’s clothes at the river, Yun Yun avoided the women already there. Nor did any come near her. All the same, they must have noticed she’d been punished, for their talk centered on remedies for breaking up bruises and bringing down swellings.

  Burning with humiliation, Yun Yun was nevertheless grateful for the women’s sympathy. She was also thankful that the Chows lived next to a girls’ house. Watching its members come and go freely, listening to their happy chatter, Yun Yun was warmed by their camaraderie, the memories of Lucky that they conjured.

  Shadow looked so much like the woman in the hut that Yun Yun easily picked her out, and sometimes she’d try to pretend that she too was a member, that she had only to finish washing the family’s bowls and dishes and chopsticks from their evening rice before she could run next door and join in their fun. Inevitably, however, the Chows’ never-ending demands would shatter these imaginings almost as soon as they began.

  Yun Yun understood a new bride was supposed to be the first to work, the last to eat and sleep. But if she wasn’t cooking, she was chopping up slop for the pigs, gathering eggs from the chickens, fetching water from the well, or carrying nightsoil to the fields. There were also worms to feed, mulberry to pick, and cocoons to reel.

  Seeking relief, Yun Yun lamented in her head:

  “My shoulders look like rough granite,

  My feet are full of holes.

  Ai yah, pity this struggling woman.

  If I told of all I suffer,

  It would be like fire melting iron.

  Ai yah, pity this struggling woman.”

  Shadow, like her friends, pitied Yun Yun. To Shadow’s dismay, though, there were people in Strongworm who claimed Yun Yun brought her troubles on herself.

  Whenever someone expressed sympathy for Yun Yun, Mei Ju’s grandmother would decree, “A motherin-law is always right.” And more than a few women agreed. “If Yun Yun were diligent and careful, her motherin-law and husband would have no cause to hit her.”

  Others said Yun Yun needed humbling.

  “She’s too proud to talk to us.”

  “She overlooks us alright.”

  “She barely mumbles a greeting.”

  There were also men who justified Young Chow’s treatment of Yun Yun, contending, “Old Lady Chow is living proof of the maxim, ‘Spare any woman a beating for three days, and she’ll stand on the roof and tear the house apart.’ Young Chow just doesn’t want to end up with a harridan like his mother for a wife.”

  Even Elder Brother wondered out loud whether Yun Yun’s parents might not have been cheated by matchmakers, whether they might have been the ones in a hurry for the wedding, not the Chows.

  Appalled, Shadow blazed, “You must be delirious with fever to be spouting such nonsense.”

  “Not nonsense. Not accusations either. But the fellows at Young Chow’s bride teasing did say Yun Yun was bold.”

  “Like she was with those rheumy-eyed grandfathers in the hut,” Mama snapped.

  Shamefaced, Elder Brother backed down hastily.

  “If only Yun Yun had gone home for the ritual third-day visit, she could have come back with her father,” Elder Sister-in-law said.

  Baba shook his head. “You think Yun Yun’s father could shame the Chows into doing right? Take my word for it, he couldn’t. No one can. The Chows are far too thick-skinned.”

  “Are you saying no one can help her?” Shadow spluttered.

  “All I did was try and save Yun Yun from getting wet,” Mama reminded. “The next day her eyes were bruised black and her nose was swollen big as a cabbage.”

  Elder Sister-in-law gazed down at her belly swollen with happiness. “Maybe that’s why Yun Yun didn’t go home, why no one has ever heard her cry when she’s beaten. Because she knows no one can help her.”

  Alone with Elder Brother, Shadow confided her fear that when the time came for her to marry, she might be as unfortunate as Yun Yun.

  Elder Brother rapped Shadow’s head with his knuckles. “No, this isn’t wood. So you’re not a muk tau, wooden head. Yet you seem to have forgotten how carefully our parents went about selecting a wife for me, the happy result. Can you really believe they’ll be any less careful when choosing your husband?”

  Propriety prevented husbands and wives from open displays of affection, but Shadow frequently caught Elder Brother leaning close to Elder Sister-in-law and whispering in her ear, making her laugh softly behind her hand. During meals, he’d drop his chopsticks and brush his hand against her leg when he stooped to pick them up. Out in the courtyard, he’d chase invisible moths, mosquitoes, and flies, and in his attempts to catch them, he’d graze his fingers against her back, her arm, her cheek. Each time, Elder Sister-in-law’s plump cheeks would dimple with pleasure, her movements and speech would become more animated. Moreover, Elder Sister-in-law was always ready with hot water for Elder Brother and Baba the moment they returned from the fields, massaging Mama’s neck and shoulders for her after a long day in the wormhouse, helping Shadow with her chores.

  Shadow, then, gladly acknowledged the happy choice their parents had made in Elder Sister-in-law, her certainty that Baba and Mama would try to secure her similar happiness. “Since we’ve succeeded in keeping my knowledge of book learning from them, however, isn’t it possible for a matchmaker to fool them too?”

  Elder Brother tousled Shadow’s bangs the way he used to when she was little. “I’ll make sure our parents aren’t fooled, alright?”

  Shadow nodded. But the first weeping song Shadow had learned in her girls’ house was about matchmakers:

  “To get new shoes, Matchmaker,

  You’d lure birds from the trees

  With sweet words.

  To get more wine, Matchmaker,

  You’d draw monkeys out of the hills

  With your sweet tongue.”

  And Shadow, without a matchmaker’s honeyed tongue, had kept her lessons in the girls’ house loft a secret from her brother as well as their parents.

  The Big Wind

  WHEN SHADOW’S embroidery had become good enough for Baba to sell at the market town upriver, Mama had given her a little trunk. “You can store your earnings in this.”

  The elaborately carved trunk, small enough for Shadow to easily carry herself, seemed absurdly large for the nine coppers Baba had stacked on the table, and she laughed.

  Mama reached out, cupped Shadow’s chin, gently tipped it so they faced each other. “Listen well.”

  Sobered by her seriousness, Shadow gave Mama her full attention.

  “Sons turn their wages over to their fathers because they stay home and inherit all. But daughters keep their earnings since they must go to strangers when they marry and will have only what they take with them to call their own.”

  Mama picked up the little pile of coins, placed them in Shadow’s hands, which were then still childishly pudgy. “This money is yours. But after you marry, you’ll have to give every single coin you earn to your motherin-law. So you should save while you can. If I hadn’t brought savings with me when I married Baba, I would’ve had to ask your grandmother for every little thing.”

  Shadow blinked in
confusion. Each time they went to make offerings at the family graves, Mama would heave her considerable bulk down onto her knees one by one, bow deeply, and pray, “Ancestors, give my daughter a motherin-law as kind and generous as mine. Motherin-law, watch over your granddaughter. Help her learn the skills that will bring her favor as a daughter-in-law.” If Grandmother had been as kind and generous as Mama claimed, why had Mama’s savings been important?

  Shadow looked down at the coins, hard and cold, on her silk-smooth palms, folded her plump little fingers over them one by one. “Wouldn’t Grandmother have given you what you asked for?”

  “She did. But having my own money meant that if a peddler had a piece of fabric I liked, I could buy it on the spot, that I didn’t have to wait and ask permission, or wonder if Grandmother might think I was taking advantage of her good nature, or consider me wasteful. Be frugal now, and you can enjoy that freedom as well.”

  Shadow had opened the trunk, dropped in the coins, and at their merry jingling, she’d felt a sudden surge of satisfaction. Now she realized the coins in her trunk would not save her if she married into a family like the Chows. Neither would her ability to write to her parents. Nothing would. Furthermore, even if she married into a family with a husband and in-laws as kind as her brother and parents were to Elder Sister-in-law, she would not only lose Elder Brother and Mama and Baba, but her good friends Mei Ju and Rooster, their nights in the girls’ house loft, every single one of the freedoms and privileges she now enjoyed.

  In truth, Shadow felt like a person who’d been applying a wet finger to a papered window so as to create a transparency through which a little could be seen. Slowly the view had become less and less clouded, and now that she could see with absolute clarity, she knew she didn’t want to be a wife—not to a husband who was alive and kind, not to a husband who was dead.

  Shadow was aware that she wasn’t the first girl to recoil from marriage. Only last year four members of a girls’ house in a neighboring village had bound their feet and hands together with two long cords, then jumped into the river loudly proclaiming it was better to die than become wives. Over the years she’d also heard occasional whisperings of other girls in the district who’d embraced death alone—by eating opium or hanging—for the same reason. Shadow, however, didn’t want to die.