by Mingmei Yip
Then, four days before the winners were announced, the situation had become truly appalling. Now Red Jade had ninety-eight votes, Pearl had eighty-three, and I sixty-eight. Seeing that Red Jade's tally was soaring while Pearl's was sinking, I made the drastic decision to withdraw from the contest.
I hoped by so doing all my votes would go to Pearl. I convinced all my customers-old and new alike-to vote for her.
It worked. Now two days before the announcement, Pearl's votes suddenly escalated to well over a hundred, outnumbering Red Jade's. I sighed with relief. Smiles broke out on Pearl's face again as she regained confidence that she would be announced as the winner. Her pictures and poems praising her beauty and talent would appear in many newspapers-Flower Moon News, Flower Heaven Daily, Flower World News, Idle Emotion News, Pleasure Talk News-in Shanghai. She would soon be crowned, officially, the most prestigious prostitute.
The night before the announcement, Pearl asked me to go see her right after I'd served my last customer.
When I entered her room, I saw the eight immortals table covered with plates of food, a bottle of wine, and a vase spilling with an assortment of exotic flowers. Pearl had dressed in a pink silk gown decorated with gold leaves. Flowers perched above her ears while underneath gold earrings dangled like fireflies. Her brows were shaved into two elegant brush strokes and her lips painted the shape of a small, crimson heart. Her gold filigreed butterfly hovered elegantly on her three-thousand-threads-of-trouble, ready to take flight.
Before I could finish appreciating her, she was already speaking. "Xiang Xiang, this morning I asked Ah Ping to prepare all these for us." She winked, a smile blooming on her radiant face. "You know what? You and I will have a little private celebration in advance. Tomorrow I'll invite Mama, De, Spring Moon, other sisters, and all the maids and niangyi to dine out. I've already booked three tables at the Pacalo Restaurant in the French Concession." She paused to throw me a flirtatious glance. "Have you ever tasted French cuisine?"
I shook my head.
"Good, then you will tomorrow. Pacalo is Shanghai's most elegant and expensive Western restaurant. I promise you we'll all have a good time there."
Of course Pearl was sure to win, but somehow her overconfidence made me ill at ease. I kept asking myself why but couldn't come up with an answer.
Her tender voice rose again. "Xiang Xiang, don't stand there like a statue. Come, now let's first pray to the White-Browed-God and Guan Yin."
I followed her to kneel in front of the two ceramic statues on the small altar. After she'd offered the God and Goddess incense, tea, and some of the food from the table, she began her prayer. "The venerable White-Browed-God and the compassionate Guan Yin, please accept these offerings from me, Pearl, and my little sister Xiang Xiang. We thank you for protecting us from evil and bringing us good luck. Please continue to help us bewitch our customers and fatten our purses."
Then she spoke to Ruby's picture placed between the two statues and whispered another prayer too softly for me to hear. After that, she asked me to sit between her and an empty seat at the table on which were placed chopsticks, a cup, a bowl, and a glass from which bloomed a napkin folded in the shape of a flower.
"Sister Pearl, is there another guest coming?"
"The guest is already here."
I looked around the room. "Who? There's no one here except you and me."
She threw me a chiding glance. "This seat is for Ruby. In my prayer, I've already invited her to join us."
Invited a dead person to join us? I felt both a shudder and an urge to laugh. But since I didn't want to break Pearl's heart by breaking her faith, I kept my mouth shut.
Now she started to put food onto Ruby's plate and pour tea into Ruby's cup. After that, she picked up the bottle of wine and showed it to me. "Xiang Xiang, this is the best kind of champagne. Once it's in the wine shops, all the bottles will be snapped up by the rich. So today I sent my maid to buy it on the black market."
The bottle opened with a loud "Pop!" Pearl smiled prettily but my heart almost jumped to my throat. The shot which had killed my father must have sounded like this, only ten times louder. The foam gushing out from the bottle's narrow neck conjured in my mind the froth dripping from Baba's mouth the moment the bullet hit his head. I bit my lip. I really shouldn't have thought of something gruesome like this during Pearl's celebration.
It was bad luck.
Now Pearl poured the three of us full glasses. After that, she clinked her glass to Ruby's and said to the empty space, her voice extremely tender, breaking my heart, "Ruby, here's to my winning tomorrow's contest." Then she turned to toast me. "Xiang Xiang, to our prestige!"
"To our prestige," I echoed.
We sipped our wine in silence, then Pearl pointed to the dishes. "Tonight we'll eat light-steamed fish, drunken shrimp, crab meat dumplings, dandan noodles, fried quail, marinated duck's feet, stewed rabbit's legs, spicy deer's tails, abalone with oyster sauce, ham congee, lotus root soup-for we'll have to reserve room for the very rich French food tomorrow."
Although the food cooked by Aunty Ah Ping was delicious as always, when I swallowed, my throat felt as if it were broken out with blisters. An invisible hand seemed to touch my face, caress my shoulder, feel the texture of my satin dress. I imagined invisible eyes from Ruby's empty place searching me with curiosity, even jealousy. I peeked at Pearl. She took a delicate bite of a crab dumpling, then chewed with her crimson-painted lips. A smile, like a butterfly, hovered on her snow-white face.
Though I'd lost my appetite, my hand, to please her, kept flicking my chopsticks into the various dishes, putting food onto her plate, then taking some for myself.
Pearl, elated, kept eating and drinking. She said dreamily, "After I've won the contest, I hope someone will propose so I can live the comfortable life of a rich tai tai."
I was surprised to hear this. "But Sister Pearl, I thought you didn't want to be any man's wife."
"Silly girl," she cocked an eye at me, "I don't mean a housewife, but a rich tai tai." Pearl sighed. "Someday we'll be old and ugly. Mama, or whoever takes over from her, won't waste money in keeping us because no man will pay to fuck ugly old bitches. With no other way to make a living other than that of the bedchamber, what can we do but take refuge in a temple? But. . . " Pearl shook her head, "if we don't have any money to make a large offering, we may even be turned down there.
"So the best way out is to meet someone who's so bewitched by you that he's willing to get you out of the fire pit and take you home as his tai tai. But this is as difficult as filtering gold from sand. Second best is to become a mama yourself. In that case not only do you make a lot of money through someone else doing the fucking, you can also get revenge by torturing the girls the same way you were tortured." She paused for a brief moment, then, "The hardest thing is to run away."
When I heard the two words "run away," I could almost feel my blood foaming inside my arteries. I'd never told Pearl that I was resolved, someday, to do just that. I put down my chopsticks. "Everyone watches us here, so how can someone succeed in running away?"
Pearl cast me a curious glance, then picked up a shrimp and popped it into her mouth. "I knew one sister here in Peach Blossom who did just that. She planned carefully for a long time. First she hid her money in secret places. Then she won Mama and De's trust by being obedient and never talking back. This went on for years until Mama and De felt so relaxed that they didn't even send a guard to watch her during her outings. Then one night she got her guest dead drunk and disappeared."
"Was she caught?"
"No, we never heard of her again. It's been ten years. She might have become a beggar, been killed by bandits, or married her secret lover; it would all depend on her Karma." Pearl paused to sip her wine. "Years ago another young sister by the name of Water Moon succeeded in running away from the Sleeping Flower Pavilion, then went to a temple to take refuge. But as soon as the abbess spotted her as the gate was swinging open, she quickly banged i
t closed."
"Why?"
"Because the girl's beauty snatched away the old nun's breath. She insisted that the girl would bring catastrophe to her temple."
I was shocked to hear this. Pearl's words were almost the same as my mother's years ago during our departure:
The Mother Abbess said that you're too beautiful to be a nun. She fears your beauty will bring bad luck to her temple.
"Was she really that beautiful?" Actually my real question was whether she was even more beautiful than I.
"I can only tell you that after the other sisters saw her, they all went back to their room to smash their mirrors."
"Oh ... then ... what happened to this girl?"
"Since she'd brought a lot of money and jewelry to donate, the abbess finally changed her mind and accepted her."
I let out a sigh of relief, then absentmindedly scraped rice into my mouth.
Pearl poked her chopsticks at the fish's eyes, picked them up, and put them onto my bowl. "If you want to be smart, eat more of this." Then she broke the fish head and started to chew, her delicate tongue sucking, licking, and spitting out bones.
Finally she accomplished the task of dismantling the head. "But there was still more to the story. After she had her head shaved and put on a loose robe, her life was still not at peace. Her former customers just wouldn't leave her alone. They went all the way to the temple to look at her as if she were an animal in a circus. Some tried to persuade her to go back to prostitution, others thought it would be much more exciting if she was willing to entertain them as a nun prostitute, yet others were just curious to find out how she'd look with neither hair nor curves. Poor girl, she actually became a celebrity, much more prestigious than when she had lived in the turquoise pavilion-"
"Then what happened?" I asked through a mouthful of rice.
"She was so determined to be a nun that one day she pressed a red hot iron onto her cheek-"
I dropped my chopsticks and covered my face. "Oh my heaven!"
"Needless to say, as an ugly woman, she was finally left alone to find peace." Pearl paused to sip more wine. "Few sisters have her courage.
I was too shocked to say anything.
"Xiang Xiang," Pearl reached to unplug my hand from my cheek, "would you please stop worrying about someone you don't even know?"
So as not to arouse her suspicion, I took an extra helping of dandan noodles and resumed eating. Then I asked, slightly changing the subject, "What about those who got married?"
Pearl sucked on a duck's foot, then bit off a piece of webbing and chewed for a while. "When you're used to the life here, married life may not be much better. In place of Mama, De, and the jealous sisters, you have your dictatorial husband, his ugly first wife, and a slew of spiteful concubines. After the loose ways here, it's almost impossible to put up with all the rules in a big Confucian household.
"Some ex-sisters try to behave like decent women-giving up seductive manners and gaudy clothes-forgetting that these are exactly what attracted their customers to redeem them in the first place. So their husbands soon go back to the turquoise pavilions to look for new faces. Without the husband's backing, they're just another out-of-favor concubine, spat on because of their infamous past."
Pearl sighed. "Once you're a whore, you always stay one. Nobody believes that you're faithful to your husband." She spat. "Those chou nanren, they want women to be both saints and sinners!" Some moments passed before she went on, "I also knew a sister who got married, three times, but all her husbands died, so she was forced to replay the pipa. It's so sad." Pearl sipped her wine while looking at me over the rim of her glass. "We can never beat fate, can we?"
But we can play along and make the most out of it.
I remembered my mother's saying but decided to keep it to myself.
Pearl forced a smile onto her face. "Xiang Xiang, why are we talking about all these unpleasant things when we should be celebrating my winning the contest?"
"Then why don't you tell me more about Jiang Mou?"
To my amazement, she blushed. "I like him very much, but too bad he's both poor and married. You know, a woman like me needs a lot of money to maintain," she said, spearing a bit of abalone, putting it into her mouth, and chewing absentmindedly. Her eyes, now blurred by the alcohol, looked like two dreams floating on the sea. On her wrist, the jade bracelet gleamed like a green lizard flitting under moonlight.
I appreciated her for a few seconds before I tentatively asked, "Why do you like him so much?"
Dreamily she went on, "Jiang Mou is very good at pleasing both me and my body. He knows exactly when and what a woman does and doesn't want."
I knew what I wanted-to find my mother and revenge for Baba. But as for my body, I had no idea what it wanted, only what it didn'tto serve any rich, stinky men who decided to visit Peach Blossom.
I blurted out, "My body doesn't want anyone."
Pearl smiled mischievously. "Someday you'll meet someone you truly love; then you'll have a real soul losing."
"What does it feel like?"
"Like strings of firecrackers popping one after another."
A silence. Pearl poured me more wine, then picked up a quail and put it into my bowl. "Let's eat and enjoy our life at this moment." She paused to speak to the empty seat. "Right, Ruby?"
I stared at the seat and felt a jolt. If Ruby's spirit was really here, then where was the yellow butterfly?
I blurted out, "Sister Pearl, where's the butterfly?"
She looked up at me, her pupils now two seasick bugs rolling on a boat. "Don't you worry about that." The gold filigreed butterfly gave out a few mysterious sparks on her hair. "There are many yellow butterflies in the haunted garden."
That night after I'd retired into my room, I flipped and tossed in the bed like a fish sizzling in a wok, painfully alert to the slightest sound. I hoped in the morning to see Pearl's name and pictures on all the front pages of the newspapers, together with poems praising her. Yet I couldn't cast away the ominous feeling in my heart. I prayed to the Guan Yin on my neck chain, then assured myself over and over that nothing would go wrong-Pearl's and my votes combined would surely beat all the other sisters.
I kept alternately tormenting and comforting myself until I fell into a troubled sleep.
18
. Tawoke to a sharp cry slashing the morning air. At first I thought it came from a bad dream, but a moment later I was snapped into reality. I jumped off the bed, flung open the door, and dashed toward Pearl's room.
Plum Blossom cried to my back, "Kill! Kill! "
As I entered, my heart plunged at what I saw.
Pearl, stark naked, had collapsed on the floor. Sheets of newspaper, soaked with blood, lay strewn around her like red good-luck posters turned unlucky. Ah Ping was helping her to sit up.
I dashed toward Pearl but she didn't seem to notice me-her eyes were closed.
Staring at her nudity, I remembered it was a custom for sisters to pray naked in front of the White-Browed God-so he'll be aroused and grant them all their wishes. Pearl must have been praying to win the contest. The blood, I was relieved to realize, was not Pearl's, but chicken blood. Sisters all believe that drinking the crimson liquid protects them from evil spirits.
I turned to Ah Ping. "Aunty Ah Ping, please get something to cover Pearl."
Ah Ping dashed away, then returned to throw a blanket over Pearl.
I lowered my voice and asked the mute woman, "What happened?"
Face streaked with tears, Ah Ping pointed to the newspaper. I picked it up and saw on the front page Red Jade's name as big as eggs and her picture as big as a chicken.
I could hear my sharp voice trembling. "Red jade won the contest?"
Ah Ping nodded.
I read the newspaper again and saw a poem praising her:
I threw down the newspaper. "Liar! Liar!"
Ah Ping picked it up and thrust it under my eyes. I searched the whole page but couldn't find Pearl's name. I couldn't
believe what I saw-and what I didn't see. Pearl hadn't won the title of vice president, nor even that of prime minister.
"What happened?" I shouted.
Just then Pearl spoke, her voice faint and ghostly, as if rising from a grave. "Wine, give me some wine."
Ah Ping hurried away. I knelt down and took Pearl's hand. "Sister Pearl . . ." I tried to say something comforting but couldn't utter a word.
Pearl muttered as if talking to herself. "Fate, this is all fate ..
This time I blurted out my mother's saying, "Sister Pearl, we can't beat fate, but we can play along and make the most out of it. Try to be happy."
Pearl jolted upright and screamed into my face. "Try to be happy? How? Are you mocking me?"
Ah Ping was back with a bottle; she waved a hand to calm Pearl.
Pearl stared at her and then me, tears streaming from her eyes, ruining her immaculate makeup. Finally she said, her voice cracked, "That's it; I'm done for."
"No, Sister Pearl ..."
Her eyes, though still glistening, seemed to have lost their power to bewitch. "Xiang Xiang, I promise this will never happen again. Never!"
