Baba presided over the men’s table, Mama the women’s, and both heaped their guests’ rice bowls with choice pieces from each dish. Elder Brother and Elder Sister-in-law were no less gracious, plying the six with special attention, honeyed words. In response, the guests sweetened their own speech.
“Shadow has true family loyalty.”
“She’s a filial daughter indeed.”
“Capable, too.”
Mashing her rice with tasty lotus soup and feeding it to her niece, Shadow was relieved when the tributes to her spilled over to Mei Ju.
“Both daughters are filial.”
“Modest and respectable.”
“Also hardworking.”
“Thanks to good family teaching.”
Shadow teased open the baby’s mouth, popped in another morsel. If Mei Ju’s family on the other side of the wall was listening, wasn’t it possible her mother or father might be persuaded to reconcile with her in spite of fierce Grandmother Wong?
“Mei Ju, you always were a dependable worker,” Mama said. “You must come and help us reel our cocoons.”
Bobbing her head in assent, Mei Ju whispered in Shadow’s ear, “How can your parents afford to hire me?”
Shadow, tipping her chin, directed Mei Ju’s eyes towards the men’s table, where Baba was pouring wine for Master Low.
“Won’t you drink to my good luck in securing such an excellent worker?”
“Certainly.” Master Low drank deeply. “But you must let Mei Ju return to me when she’s finished with your cocoons. You know, I’m the one who recognized she’d be a skilled reeler while she was still an apprentice.”
“In that case, she should come to you immediately,” Baba said, pouring more wine for Master Low.
Bending over and tickling the baby, Mei Ju breathed, “Your grandparents are working their guests as skillfully as duck herders driving their flocks home.”
The baby chortled. Shadow giggled softly.
“Don’t forget me,” one of the minor landholders said. “I’m always on the lookout for skillful reelers.”
“What about Shadow?” his wife suggested.
“You’re too generous,” Shadow demurred.
“Shadow is as modest as she is talented,” Mei Ju boasted on her behalf. “The fact is, though, her embroidery commissions pay too well for her to return to reeling.”
There was a chorus of praise from both tables for Shadow, and she basked in her parents’ obvious pleasure, their pride.
Master Low, his face flushed with drink, said, “If you ask me, raising girls no longer has to be a loss. Not if you’re lucky enough to have a daughter who’s capable and has a nonmarrying fate.”
Baba, beaming, slapped Elder Brother on the back. “Here’s proof of our daughter’s worth.”
That her father didn’t value her for herself, Shadow had understood for some time. But hearing him declare it, and proudly, she had to hug the baby tight against her chest to keep her heart from shattering.
Going back to reeling after more than a season’s absence, Mei Ju suffered almost as much from the fire’s heat as when she’d been an apprentice. Oozing sweat from every pore, she wrinkled her nose at the stench of boiling cocoons, fumbled when manipulating strands of silk through the thick haze of steam, scalded her fingers while adding fresh cocoons and removing the dregs. Even so, reeling excited her as much as ever. And as the day progressed, she became more deft. Her awareness of the discomforts receded. Peace returned.
“Now if I could just figure out a way to get to Master Low’s without walking through the village,” Mei Ju joked during evening rice. “The gossips’ tongues are going full force over what he said at the banquet. That bit about, ‘Raising girls no longer has to be a loss. Not if you’re lucky enough to have a daughter who’s capable and has a nonmarrying fate.’ Let’s hope no one who was actually at the banquet reveals Master Low was drunk when he said it.”
Laughing, Shadow scooped more spicy bean curd on top of Mei Ju’s rice, her own. “Isn’t walking past the worst gossip easier than sitting down to eat with the other reelers—girls and women who’ve talked endlessly about you yet not one word to you for over a year-and-a-half?”
“I did feel trapped,” Mei Ju admitted. “Especially after I realized several of the older reelers are Strongworm’s worst gossips.”
Indeed, although a morning meal was part of a reeler’s earnings, Mei Ju would gladly have come back to the hut to eat had she not recognized that would provide more fodder for the women’s sharp tongues.
“Luckily, Lightning and Thunder also work for Master Low, and when his cook struck the gong for us to stop reeling and eat, the two girls came up on either side of me and shielded me from the gossips while we walked to the table. During the meal as well.”
“Lightning and Thunder didn’t sit together?”
Mei Ju understood Shadow’s astonishment. Despite Empress’s storms of temper and heavy fines, the pair had never surrendered to her spiteful attempts to split them by demanding they sit apart.
“Lightning and Thunder each took one of my elbows and steered me onto a stool between them,” Mei Ju explained. “They also kept my bowl filled and included me in the conversation without making me talk.”
Shadow set down her bowl. “How did they accomplish that?”
“I know it sounds impossible, but they did.”
Picking up the grains of rice that had dropped on the table, Shadow said, “To be honest, there were moments when I didn’t think my family would ever reconcile with me.”
“I can tell you mine never will. And for all Master Low called us capable women, I’m sure Grandmother still thinks of me as dead useless—if she thinks of me at all.”
“You heard how Baba calculates my worth.” Shadow swallowed hard. “Probably Elder Brother, too.” She reached over, covered Mei Ju’s hands with her own. “But you’ve supported me even when we’ve disagreed, and with no thought of personal gain. In truth, as happy as I am that my family and I have made up, I feel more strongly bound to you. So why shouldn’t we be family for each other?”
Too deeply moved to speak, Mei Ju nodded.
Shadow squeezed her hands. “Sisters, then?”
“Sisters.”
The talk that bothered Mei Ju the most was what people said about book learning.
That Shadow’s ability to write Master Choy had been crucial in saving her brother, all the gossips acknowledged. But a few of the most vicious would furrow their brows with false concern and question Shadow’s chastity since “a virtuous woman has no learning.”
No one guessed Shadow had learned to read and write from her brother. He didn’t even seem under suspicion. Instead people speculated whether Shadow had shared her learning with Mei Ju or whether Mei Ju had taught her. Then Mei Ju’s virtue would come under attack by the same vicious tongues that questioned Shadow’s chastity.
When one of the reelers at Master Low’s, a crony of Old Lady Chow’s, attempted to bait Mei Ju by bringing up learning during morning rice, Lightning said, “Have you forgotten the abbess of Ten Thousand Mercies wrote Rooster’s parents?”
“You’re not suggesting the abbess is lacking in virtue, are you?” Thunder asked.
The other reelers smirked, snickered, laughed outright. Old Lady Chow’s crony squirmed like an ant on a hot stove. Just then Master Low’s cook brought out a basin of ripe lychee, the first of the season, and the woman, visibly relieved at the distraction, gushed over the fruit—its large size and beautiful color, the generous amount. Others joined in. And as hands all around the table grabbed up the lychee, Mei Ju wondered which was more cruel: a gossip’s wicked tongue or watching others eat her favorite fruit.
Sorely tempted to risk a nasty, prickly rash by delving in and peeling some for herself, she clasped her hands together on her lap. Then, unable to hold back, she reached out.
As her fingers closed over the lychees’ scaly skin, Mei Ju realized that if her hands roughened even a
little, she would have to stop reeling. Torn, Mei Ju could neither release the lychees nor pick them up.
Lightning jogged her elbow. “Here, I’ve peeled one for you.”
As Mei Ju abandoned the fruit at the center of the table, Thunder also dropped a peeled lychee in front of her.
“How did you know?” Mei Ju gasped.
Lightning flashed a smile. “We remember from the girls’ house.”
True, her sister or Shadow or Rooster had always skinned the fruit for her. But for Lightning and Thunder to have noticed such a small thing, and then for them to have remembered and acted on it, Mei Ju found remarkable, and that night, she told Shadow, “I think Lightning and Thunder might be our mystery benefactors.”
Shadow tapped her chin doubtfully. “They could have given us the hen, I suppose. But the bolt of black gummed silk and all those sausages, too? Where would they get that kind of money?”
Mei Ju, having thought of little else since morning rice, was ready with the answer. “Lightning and Thunder have been reeling for Master Low since they completed their apprenticeships three years ago, and they always hire out to him for the whole season, since both their families have daughters-in-law to do their reeling. Of course, the gifts were still extraordinarily generous. Carefully considered as well. But those are the very qualities that make me believe Lightning and Thunder are our benefactors.”
“They’ve certainly gone out of their way to be kind to you at Master Low’s,” Shadow agreed. “Why haven’t they spoken up though?”
“They’re probably afraid someone will overhear them.”
“Why would they mind when they’ve shown their support for you over and over?”
“You’re right. But if Lightning and Thunder didn’t bring us the gifts, who did?”
Changing Luck
AFTER YUN YUN’S betrothal, her mother had told her, “You’ll know you’re with child when your little red sister fails to come.” The two times Yun Yun had happiness in her, however, she’d realized it from a sense of well-being deep in her bones. The subsequent absence of her little red sister had merely confirmed what she’d already felt. And just before the fourth generation of worms for the season hatched, Yun Yun once again recognized she had life in her.
To avoid polluting the eggs about to hatch, she knew she should immediately quit working in the wormhouse. But it was more important to her to protect her unborn child by avoiding her husband. So Yun Yun put into action the plan she’d conceived during her long months of waiting, and under the pretext of fetching mulberry leaves, she set off for the spinsters’ hut.
In the months since Shadow had saved her brother by sending for Master Choy, Yun Yun had noticed many people greeting the spinsters when they passed in the street. But she knew of no one outside of Shadow’s own family that had extended an invitation for them to call. In any case, few people had time during the silk season for visiting. And since Shadow had not returned to reeling, Yun Yun was almost certain she’d find her at home.
Wary of prying eyes, Yun Yun left the main road and approached the spinsters’ hut from the rear. The grasses, moist from an earlier shower, dampened Yun Yun’s pants, and as the cloth soaked through and stuck to her legs, she recalled the morning she’d toppled into the gully, the musky scent of the crushed honeysuckle blossoms Mei Ju had used to restore her spirit.
Neither Mei Ju nor Shadow had spoken more than a dozen words to her since that day. But the generosity and kindness they’d shown her then warmed her still, and Yun Yun was sure that Mei Ju and Shadow held back from engaging her in conversation only because they understood it would cause her problems with her in-laws and husband.
“Yun Yun.”
Startled from her reverie, Yun Yun found herself already in the spinsters’ clearing.
Shadow poked her head through the window and beckoned cheerily. “Climb in. That’s what Mei Ju and I do when we’re too lazy to walk around to the door.”
Buoyed by Shadow’s warmth, Yun Yun halted, bent her knees, and soon as she felt the baskets on either end of her carrying pole touch the ground, she shrugged. With a barely perceptible swish, the pole slid off her shoulders, down her back, settling on top of the baskets, and Yun Yun, freed from her yoke, ran the last few steps to the window.
Careful of her unborn baby, though, she didn’t swing her legs over the sill. Instead, she perched on it. Then, steadying herself with one hand and cradling her flat belly with the other, she eased each foot up and in.
“You’re with child, aren’t you?” Shadow said, drawing Yun Yun over to the bench and dropping down beside her.
Shadow’s understanding loosened Yun Yun’s tongue, and she confided in a single, seamless rush that the child she was carrying was not her first, that if she was to hold this baby in her arms, she’d have to avoid her husband in bed by going back to her parents in Twin Hills.
“Will you write what I’ve told you to my father and ask him to come for me?”
Shadow’s response was instant. “Gladly.”
Awash with relief, Yun Yun poured out her thanks.
“If anyone notices you or Mei Ju or I giving the water peddlers a letter for your father, though, there’ll be talk,” Shadow interrupted, her eyebrows knitted together in a concerned frown.
Yun Yun’s hands flew to shield her unborn child. “Ai yah! I didn’t think! My husband and in-laws are bound to question me with their fists and sticks.”
“But no one will question my sending a letter to Rooster,” Shadow said slowly, as if she were thinking out loud. “And she could write your father.”
Bowing, Yun Yun whispered joyfully to her baby, “Listen to your clever auntie. She’s a capable woman, alright.”
“Better not celebrate yet,” Shadow warned. “Rooster’s abbess may not allow her to write your father. Hnnnh, the abbess might not even give Rooster my letter.”
Yun Yun jerked her head up. “The nunnery is called Ten Thousand Mercies. How could the abbess refuse?”
“Let’s hope she doesn’t. But Ten Thousand Mercies is in the opposite direction of Twin Hills. It’ll be days before your father can possibly know you need help. How will you manage?”
“I’ll be safe for a while. I’m expecting a new generation of worms to hatch later today, and my motherin-law will want me to pass the next eight, nine nights in the wormhouse.”
Shadow blanched. “You’ll pollute the worms.”
“I have to protect my baby,” Yun Yun said firmly.
Just as resolutely, she pushed aside the doubts Shadow had raised, smiled. “Will you be my child’s godmother?”
Shadow returned the smile. “With pleasure.”
In her letter to Rooster, Shadow expressed her fear that Yun Yun’s father might not come. “But I know that if anyone can convince him, it’s you.”
Shadow also wrote at length about Mei Ju’s return to reeling and Elder Brother’s daughter:
“I finally discovered my niece’s name when I chanced upon Elder Sister-in-law chasing her, shouting, ‘Woon Choi, Change Luck, get back here.’
“I could see Elder Sister-in-law—lumbering on account of her swollen belly—would never catch the babe. So I ran after her and swooped her into my arms just as she was about to stick a rusty nail into her mouth.
“When I returned her to Elder Sister-in-law, I noticed Woon Choi’s shoes were worn, and I made her a new pair with big black eyes that would see evil and thereby avoid it.”
Clutching the tiny pair of shoes, Shadow had waited for someone in her family to respond to her knock. Through the closed door, she’d heard a cleaver striking wood in short, rapid strokes, Woon Choi’s broken, exhausted sobbing. Should she risk entering uninvited, leave, or knock again, Shadow had fretted.
Glad of the generous eaves that staved off the sun’s fierce glare, she tapped the shoes indecisively against the wood.
“Come in,” Elder Sister-in-law called.
Shadow, hugely relieved, swung open the door—was struck
by a blast of ovenlike heat. Lurching back, she waved her gift at Elder Sister-in-law, who was hunched over the table with Woon Choi strapped to her back.
“I made Woon Choi a pair of shoes.”
At the sound of Shadow’s voice, Woon Choi squirmed, writhed, kicked, and wailed with renewed vigor. Wrenched by the child’s distress, Shadow longed to run to her, but was afraid of offending Elder Sister-in-law.
Without breaking the rhythm of her chopping, Elder Sister-in-law bounced the baby by jiggling her shoulders. “Come in and shut the door quick.”
Obeying, Shadow silently berated herself for forgetting her niece was susceptible to drafts, all the while assuring her sister-in-law that the day was airless, without the whisper of a breeze.
“I know,” Elder Sister-in-law cut her off. “We keep the door shut to muffle the baby’s crying. Otherwise the sound carries into the wormhouse and the worms lose their appetite.”
Hoping she didn’t sound critical, Shadow asked, “Why’s she crying?”
Elder Sister-in-law stopped chopping, soaked up the perspiration coursing down her face with her sleeves. “She wants out of the meh dai. But if I give in to her, she’ll get into mischief. You saw what happened the other day.”
With her cleaver, Elder Sister-in-law swept the sliced turnips from the chopping block into a large earthenware crock, added a handful of salt. Then, bending clumsily on account of her big belly, she scooped up more turnips from the basket by the table, dropped them onto the chopping block, brought the cleaver down hard and fast.
Woon Choi, shrieking her unhappiness, flailed her arms and legs.
“I’ll watch her for you,” Shadow blurted, throwing her hat and Woon Choi’s little shoes onto a chair.
“Wah, that would be wonderful.”
As Elder Sister-in-law unknotted the meh dai, Woon Choi’s cries diminished, and she tumbled into Shadow’s arms in a steaming, redhot heap.
Elder Sister-in-law blotted the baby dry with the meh dai. “Now that she’s got what she wants, she won’t cry, so you can go out into the courtyard where it’s cooler.”
The Moon Pearl Page 21
