The Moon Pearl

by Ruthanne Lum McCunn

  “Thief!” Mei Ju laughed, rapping Shadow’s arm lightly with the rice scoop.

  Shadow popped the sausage into her mouth. “Where?”

  Laughing even harder, Mei Ju filled two bowls with rice and sausage while Shadow swooped up the bench, carried it around to the back of the hut. Mei Ju covered the pot and followed her to their usual spot just left of the window—chosen so they had the hut’s mud wall for a backrest and could climb in through the window for anything they’d forgotten.

  In the purple light of dusk, Mei Ju could barely make out the shapes of the bamboo and trees on the edge of their clearing, the hills beyond. From the village came snatches of laughter, weeping songs. Closer, crickets chirped, cicadas shrilled. Shadow, taking her bowl from Mei Ju, swiftly snapped up another piece of sausage.

  “You’re like a silkworm with hands,” Mei Ju teased.

  More tired than hungry, she sagged against the wall, wishing yet again that she could earn her rice by reeling silk instead of bending all day over her embroidery frame, and as the wall’s hard heat penetrated her tunic, easing the knots in her shoulders, Mei Ju recalled her long ago wish for Shadow to join the girls’ house, to become her friend.

  Shadow, grinning, clicked her chopsticks against Mei Ju’s bowl. “Better get started, or I’ll be eating yours too.”

  Returning Shadow’s grin, Mei Ju bit into a sausage, felt the fat spurt thick, warm, and delicious onto her tongue.

  Compelled to obey her motherin-law, Yun Yun had never spoken to any member of the girls’ house. But piecing together her observations of the girls as they came and left with what she heard when eavesdropping, Yun Yun not only knew all the members’ names, faces, and voices, she was confident of their sympathy. A senior, Lightning, had even slipped her a piece of beef jerky once in passing, accomplishing this feat so smoothly that Yun Yun hadn’t truly believed she held something in her hand until, hidden in the stink of the Chows’ outhouse, she’d uncurled her fingers and seen the treasure, stuffed it into her mouth, tasted its honeyed richness, and licked every trace of sweet saltiness from her skin.

  When the girls failed to respond to her plea for help, then, Yun Yun worried that no one had heard her. She also worried that if she became too weak, she’d be beyond help when it came. So after waiting six long nights, she decided to repeat her lament, this time chanting louder.

  That afternoon, though, the worms woke from their great sleep. Nearly full grown, they were long as Yun Yun’s thumb, thick as her little finger, and struggling to cast off their skins for the last time. They always ate the most after they finished shedding, and Yun Yun knew she’d be feeding them late into the night.

  “Tomorrow,” she vowed. “I’ll make my appeal to the girls again tomorrow evening.”

  She was bringing in a third basket of leaves when she saw the worms, having wriggled free, were rearing up, opening their jaws wide, and swaying back and forth, demanding to be fed. Swiftly Yun Yun began searching the trays for worms trapped in their old skins. These worms, whether they were still squirming or had given up the struggle to break free, were sure to die before morning, and Yun Yun plucked them out, spread mulberry over the rest.

  She was, of course, supposed to save the dead and dying worms for the fish in the Chows’ ponds, and since there’d be questions if the bucket held an unusually small number, Yun Yun was careful not to eat too many. Months ago, when she’d started sneaking some for herself, she’d been unable to eat these worms unless she knocked them dead with the cleaver and pretended they were cooked chrysalides. Now she thrust the dying worms into her mouth the moment she picked them up from the trays, and her only concern was to avoid getting caught.

  She worked methodically, tray by tray, shelf by shelf, and as more and more jaws clamped down on the leaves and ground them into pulp, the noise from their munching swelled. Midway through the shelves of worms, Yun Yun thought she heard the members of the girls’ house chanting, and her skin tingling with hope, she headed for the window, positioned herself directly under it.

  “Motherin-law,

  At cock’s crow, Daughter-in-law leaps out of bed,

  At the second crow, her face is washed, her hair combed.

  At the third crow, she serves you tea.

  Yet you do not value her.”

  Although the verse could apply to any daughter-in-law, ordinary weeping songs were always directed at a bride’s family members, not her motherin-law, and Yun Yun, excited, clutched the rough-hewn shelf in front of her.

  “Father-in-law,

  You have so many fields,

  You have so many ponds,

  Daughter-in-law labors in them all,

  Yet you do not value her.”

  This verse was a little closer to the mark, but still rather general. Willing the lament to become more specific, Yun Yun tightened her grip, heedless of the splinters piercing her palms.

  “Husband,

  Your wife came to you lovely as a peach blossom,

  Yet you did not value her.

  With her hair clutched in your hands,

  You attacked her,

  Now the blossom looks like a dead person.

  Who will take pity on her?”

  Yun Yun’s blood quickened: certainly those lines hit home.

  “Neighbors,

  Open your eyes and you will see

  Daughter-in-law does more than any other.

  Yet Husband eats the best in the pot.

  Motherin-law and Father-in-law eat the rest.

  Neighbors,

  Open your ears and you will hear

  Voices scold, sticks strike.

  Neighbors,

  This person who is dying could be your daughter,

  Won’t you save her?”

  The girls were singing about her. Since she and her husband and in-laws weren’t actually named, however, would the people relaxing outside recognize that, understand the girls were calling on them to act?

  “This person who could be your daughter

  Suffers days that are worse than prison

  Nights that are worse than being caged.

  Let us wield our tongues as swords

  And restore this person to light.”

  Old Lady Chow’s shrill command, “Daughter-in-law! Tea!,” pierced the chant, and Yun Yun, stepping out of the wormhouse, could hear the girls loud and clear out in the street. She could also see no one was paying them any mind.

  True, Yun Yun had recognized from the start her plan was a gamble. Nor was she ready yet to give up hope. Deeply discouraged, however, she could hardly find the strength to fill the hefty green glazed teapot with boiling water, carry it out of the kitchen, the house.

  Steadying the pot so she could pour tea into her father-in-law’s bowl without spilling, Yun Yun sucked in her breath as the pot’s heat seared one hand and the straw handle ground against the splinters in the other, driving them deeper. Despite her best efforts, she could not keep a firm hold.

  The teapot swayed, splashed hot tea onto Old Lady Chow, who whipped out her hand and slapped Yun Yun soundly. Staggering, Yun Yun hugged the teapot to her chest for fear of dropping it—toppled backwards. As she landed, the back of her head cracked against the sharp edge of a raised flagstone. The lid flew, and hot tea gushed out, scalding her hands, her neck, soaking through her thin cotton tunic and undergarment, burning. Screaming, she dropped the teapot, which rolled a moment or two, hit she knew not what, shattered.

  Stunned from the fall, exhausted and frightened, Yun Yun tried to rise. But a thickening black cloud weighed her down.

  “Chicken hands, duck feet!” Old Lady Chow shrieked.

  “You really are worthless,” her father-in-law bellowed.

  Still Yun Yun couldn’t summon sufficient strength to move. Not even when her in-laws kicked her thighs, her shoulders, her head, demanding she get up and clear her mess.

  “Wai, have a care,” a woman cautioned.

  “She won’t be any use to you dead.”r />
  Through the deepening darkness, Yun Yun was aware of footsteps, grunts, as people gathered round her, squatted; and there were shocked expressions, gasps, cries of “Ai yah!” as if the familiar faces hovering above were seeing her for the first time.

  “She looks half dead already.”

  “Starved more like.”

  “You miserly fools, can’t you see you’re killing her?”

  Then the darkness became complete, and Yun Yun saw and heard no more.

  FIVE

  1838–1840

  Tipping the Scales

  SHADOW’S FATHER, like most men in Strongworm, leased the land he cultivated, and for days before an auction of tenancy contracts in which he planned to make a bid, he’d snap and snarl over small irritations that he usually overlooked or dismissed with a laugh. This change had frightened Shadow when she was little, and she’d run to Elder Brother for shelter.

  “Baba is worried, not angry,” Elder Brother had explained. “You see, if Baba bids too low, he won’t get the land, and without land, we’ll have no harvest, nothing to eat. If he bids too high, he’ll get the land, but lose so much of the harvest to the landlord that we still won’t be able to fill our rice bowls.”

  Whether Baba won or lost a lease he was bidding on, he’d come home dark with gloom. “The landlords are the only ones who come out ahead in this game. All I can do is try and lose as little as possible.”

  To improve his odds, Baba juggled his five-year leases so they came up for renewal at different times. He rented from landlords in their own clan so he could use their kinship as a plea for payment delays when they suffered a poor harvest or sustained losses in a big wind or flood.

  Similarly, from their earliest transactions with the water peddlers, Shadow and her friends had tried to better their odds by working through several instead of one. But there’d been no kinship ties, no ties of any kind that she or Rooster or Mei Ju had been able to call on. Moreover, the hostility they faced in Strongworm as spinsters and their reliance on the peddlers was abundantly clear.

  Commissioned work paid the most, and since Shadow was the only one whose embroidery was of a high enough quality for commissions, she stretched the number of pieces she could complete by having Mei Ju and Rooster take over the time-consuming tasks of outlining the complicated designs by dusting ground oyster shells through stencils, stitching seams and hems and trim. Shadow also left all negotiating to Rooster, whose tongue was sharper than her own or Mei Ju’s.

  The peddlers always heaved and clucked over Rooster’s demands.

  “I wish I could give you more, but I can’t wring another copper out of the store owners, so I have to turn you down.”

  “I’m close to taking a loss myself.”

  “I’d give you double if it was mine to give. No, triple.”

  The peddlers spoke with conviction, and Shadow could see the admiration in their eyes when they examined her work. But the landlords had sounded no less sincere when telling her father, “I’d like to give you an extension on your rent. I’d forgive it if I didn’t have obligations of my own to meet. Really, I would.”

  Indeed, the peddlers possessed the same sleek look, the same air of confidence and command as Strongworm’s landlords, and Shadow suspected they were as greedy. Then she fell on proof of her suspicions.

  They were entering their second year as spinsters. Rooster and Mei Ju were on the small deck in the stern of Scabby Woo’s boat, unwrapping their bundle of embroidery for his inspection. But Shadow, having caught sight of Elder Brother loading their father’s boat for market, was lingering on shore, hoping he’d notice her and return her smile.

  When at last he did see her, his lips tightened into a line thin and sharp as the edge of a knife. Cut to the quick, Shadow whirled around, leaped onto the boat. Then, realizing she’d jumped onto the foredeck instead of the aft, she started to swing one leg back onto the river bank, somehow lost her balance and dove under the awning arched between the two decks, landing on Scabby Woo’s stock of fabric, sliding off as the boat rocked and the neat piles collapsed under her, knocking over a basket, spilling papers in every direction.

  More distressed over Elder Brother’s grimace and the mess she’d made than the jolt she’d taken, Shadow scrambled to her knees in the tiny cabin and shouted reassurances that she hoped would keep Scabby Woo from looking in.

  “Good thing you’re not clumsy with your needle like you are with your feet,” Scabby Woo shouted back.

  Shadow, relieved he seemed amused rather than annoyed or concerned, poked her head through the oilcloth flaps separating cabin and deck so her friends could see she was alright.

  “I really am clumsy.” Shadow smiled winningly at Scabby Woo. “And with your permission, I’ll just stay here and catch my breath while you finish looking over our work.”

  Ducking back in before he could refuse her, Shadow began gathering the scattered papers. She never thought to read them, only to get everything back in place as quickly as she could. Even so, her eyes registered on a character here, another there, and she soon realized that the papers were receipts, some of them for her commissions. Furthermore, the store owners were paying Scabby Woo five, six times more for the embroidery than he claimed.

  Furious, she was about to burst out and confront him, when Mei Ju stuck her head in.

  “Are you truly alright?”

  Shaking her fistful of receipts at Mei Ju, Shadow hissed, “Scabby Woo is taking more than his fair share. Look!”

  Mei Ju scooted in, took the papers from Shadow, laid them down without reading them. “We can’t force Scabby Woo or any of the other peddlers to deal fairly with us any more than we can our families.”

  Shadow, straining to keep her voice low like Mei Ju, seethed, “Why not?”

  “You know the answer as well as I do. We can’t confront the peddlers without admitting we have book learning. And proving we’re being cheated won’t help us anyway since we’ve no way to fetch our own work or to sell it except through the peddlers. Then, too, they’ve made it clear they know we’ve been refused employment as reelers in all the neighboring villages as well as Strongworm. So we have no choice but to accept their terms, however unjust.”

  What Rooster had pried out of the water peddlers had covered their expenses. For as long as they’d been spinsters, though, Shadow couldn’t remember having had so much as a copper to spare, and she worried that without Rooster’s sharp tongue, she and Mei Ju would be paid even less for their work. They’d certainly have to take on fewer commissions. How would they manage?

  The question pounded in Shadow’s head until, blinded by the pain, she couldn’t embroider. She couldn’t rest either. Pacing back and forth, she searched for an answer—suddenly saw that Rooster’s departure could have tipped the bargaining scales in their favor.

  As Shadow explained to Mei Ju, “Before, the peddlers would never have believed us if we’d said that unless they paid us more, we’d move to town and deal directly with the merchants ourselves. Now that Rooster’s there, though, the peddlers might.”

  Mei Ju’s eyes, her entire face brightened with desire. “Even if you do manage to get more out of the peddlers, you won’t make as much as you would by dealing directly with the merchants, and if we moved to town, I could get work reeling at the filatures, and we’d be able to visit Rooster at Ten Thousand Mercies.”

  Shadow’s chest burned as though her heart were frying in oil. “I combed up my hair so I could stay in Strongworm… .”

  “I know that,” Mei Ju interrupted. “But …”

  “I’ll never leave. Never.” The words spilled out of Shadow hot as live coals.

  “Then I won’t either,” Mei Ju said quietly.

  From the figures in Scabby Woo’s receipts, Shadow calculated how much she could reduce the water peddlers’ share of her commissions and still leave the business too profitable for them to abandon. During negotiations with the peddlers, Mei Ju responded to initial offers by telling S
hadow, “We can’t live on that. Let’s move to town where we can deal directly with the merchants.” And when the peddlers protested, as they inevitably did, that town was no place for women without the protection of a family or nunnery, Shadow, imitating Rooster’s fixed stare and sharp tongue, demanded more money. Protesting that they were taking money out of their own pockets to help the spinsters stay in Strongworm, every one of the peddlers eventually gave in, and Shadow and Mei Ju were finally able to set aside coins instead of spending all.

  When calling on her family at New Year, Shadow carried a tiered basket filled with gifts. Still thinking of the house as home, she threw open the door and stepped into their common room without knocking. Seeing no one, she was about to call out New Year greetings when she noticed her niece crawling from under the table.

  Dressed in New Year red, the baby’s tiny fingers and pinched cheeks were red, too, doubtless from the red envelopes in her fists. Shadow’s heart seized. Was it the thick padding in the child’s little jacket and pants that made her neck and wrists and ankles look so thin, the red stains on her skin that made her seem so pale?

  Catching sight of Shadow, the babe dropped the red envelopes, wrapped her hands around the closest table leg, and pulled herself onto her feet. Then, crowing over her success, she tottered unsteadily towards Shadow with both arms raised.

  Swiftly setting down her basket, Shadow stooped to pick the child up. But before Shadow could embrace her, Elder Brother appeared from nowhere, snatched his daughter, and stalked out of the room without uttering a single word.

  Shadow, staring down at her empty hands, felt like the dragon that failed to grasp the moon pearl no matter how cleverly it danced, how high it leaped. And, like the dragon, she couldn’t stop trying.

  Yun Yun’s father-in-law accused her of deliberately falling in front of their neighbors.

  “Don’t you dare throw mud in our face like that again,” her motherin-law warned.

  But they didn’t beat Yun Yun for it. Nor did Young Chow. Moreover, Old Lady Chow increased the food she allotted for each meal so there was again enough for four.