“Will I be all right tomorrow?” Jinhua’s lip is quivering now.
“You will be all right,” Suyin answers, and she is on her knees holding Jinhua tightly in her arms, and she is trying to comfort herself as well as Jinhua, who is bone thin and whimpering now. She wants to believe this, but Jinhua will not be all right tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, and it is because she has meili, this charm that all of the customers will want, and because what has happened tonight will happen again. Suyin repeats the words anyway—“You will be all right”—and she rocks Jinhua in her lap and feels Jinhua’s blood seeping onto the front of her tunic. “I will stay with you,” she says, “all night, and I will mend the dress tomorrow.”
Sitting there on the floor in the hall outside Aiwen’s room, Suyin is pondering now why it is that she herself is so afraid—and there are so many reasons. She thinks of the two houseboys who have not yet been found, and how Aiwen’s way of escaping was not their way but it was everlasting. She thinks about what she has watched through the peeping hole tonight; it has happened before, this terrible thing called bed business, and it will happen again and again to Jinhua, and no, Suyin has never before seen such a terrible thing as this—and she is the lucky one after all, because she is ugly and she will never have to do these things. She will never have to call a man by the name of her father, whom she remembers only a little.
“You will feel better when you are clean,” she says now, and she lifts Jinhua to her feet and hates what she has witnessed, and Jinhua says, “I am not the same as I was before you lit the candles. I am like Hongyu and Qingyue and Sibao now, and I am not curious and wise and virtuous the way my mother was. I am not like Timu, or even like you, Suyin. I am not the way my father wanted me to be.”
Suyin slips the red bride dress over Jinhua’s shoulders, and yes, there is a long tear at the neck, and yes, it can be mended, but not easily. Suyin brushes Jinhua’s hair away from her face, and Jinhua looks up at her, and it is hard to tell the difference between blood and bruises and makeup that has smeared. It is hard to see what will heal and what won’t.
“Come,” Suyin says, and she dreads the clumsiness of her gait next to Jinhua’s dainty footsteps. “We must go before Banker Chang wakes up.” She will wash off the powder, the blood, the sweat. She will wipe away the remains of Banker Chang’s essence. She will make Jinhua clean, and Jinhua will be all right in a while, but only until the next time and the time after that and the many times that follow. And then the day will come when she won’t remember how it used to be, and she will have that look on her face that all the girls get. The look that says, I am living with my fate, and I am strong enough to do what I must do, and yet, I am not all right. And she will sometimes get that softer look, the one that hides the foolish wish that all the girls have that a man will come one day to love them and take them away from this life.
Aiwen had this look and this wish, and for a while Suyin had it too, but she had it only in secret. She doesn’t think about that now because life can never be this way for her, and there is nothing that can be done about that.
“. . . and the little girl was lovely, with skin like white jade and hair like dark satin, and a face that was the shape of a perfect peach. And when she walked on her tiny feet, it was like a drop of water moving.” Suyin pauses to think of the best words to describe the way that Jinhua walks. “Like a drop of water coaxed this way and that by a delicate breeze.”
Jinhua is fast asleep on Suyin’s wooden pallet bed, and Suyin is telling the story of the day that the demon Gong Gong flew into a rage and smashed his head against Buzhou Mountain, which was holding up the sky. And on that day, the sky cracked and fell to earth in a thousand shattered pieces.
“The falling of the sky made everyone sad, but saddest of all was the little girl whose name was—” Suyin stops, and one of Jinhua’s eyelids flutters.
“Her name was—” Suyin doesn’t finish.
It doesn’t matter that Jinhua isn’t listening now. She has heard the story before. It is the story of Nüwa, who told the little girl whose name was not Jinhua—who didn’t even have a name—that all would be well. Who, while the girl was sleeping, picked up all the pieces of the sky, the small, the large, and the in-between pieces, and sewed them back together with strands of sparkling golden stars. This is what Nüwa did, and she was curious and wise and virtuous, and Jinhua loves to hear about the night she mended the sky and made everything all right. Jinhua says that Nüwa is like her mother.
When she has finished telling the story, when she has calmed herself enough to stand up and to walk, Suyin leaves Jinhua and goes back to the room that is no longer Aiwen’s room. The stink of Banker Chang is there, but he has gone and one of Aiwen’s shoes is missing. Later, when she hears of this, Lao Mama will say, “Aiya, that is good. That is very, very good. That he has taken something of hers, something so intimate, means that she has pleased him. It means he will come back with his purse that is fat with silver—and take more and more and more of her.”
Suyin takes the shoe that is left and goes back to her room. She strokes Jinhua’s cheek, and Jinhua opens her eyes for a moment, and she says in her sleepy child’s voice, “You are like Nüwa, Suyin. You are the one who will mend everything,” and Suyin thinks, but doesn’t say, You are wrong, Jinhua. It is only a story that people tell. Some things can never be mended.
13
HOW IT IS
Lao Mama
It has been at least an hour since she said to him, “Tell me how it is with you these days.” He has stayed, sitting straight-backed on a stool next to her long after he has finished with Jinhua. Long after the others have bowed and gone home to their own courtyards, to their wives and children and concubines. The banquet room is ferociously hot, and it is late, and Banker Chang’s cheeks are as red as plums from the heat and the exertion of bed business and the wine he has been drinking all evening. The banquet table at which they are sitting is littered with dirty dishes, empty wine cups, chewed bits of melon seed and chicken bone.
Lao Mama fans herself. Xiaoyun, the little dog, is sleeping in her sleeve. Cook comes in and goes out, clearing away, carrying platters to the kitchen, and Banker Chang is oblivious to the noise that Cook is making. His eyes glitter; his fingers find a silver toothpick on the table—someone has forgotten it. He fidgets with the toothpick, and he is talking, talking, telling Lao Mama things about his life. How his bonsai trees are growing well. How his wife has grown old and fat, and how Merchant Yi has cheated him in business, and the concubines are always fighting among themselves. Arguing about money, and bolts of silk, and their sons—and which of them is his favorite. “They cannot get along,” he says. “It is intolerable for me.”
He has stopped drinking wine, and slowly he is becoming sober. His eyes look sad, the way a dog’s eyes look when its jaw is on the floor. He is not complaining. He is simply telling her how it is with him.
Lao Mama sits quite still, listening. Although she is bansi, half dead from exhaustion, although it is so very late, she doesn’t suggest that he go home. He is an old customer, and he has paid for her sympathy over the years. He might—once—have taken her as his concubine. She thinks about this now. The life that might have been. A very different fate.
Their hands are close, his and hers both resting on the table. He has left the silver toothpick and is fussing now with a stray chopstick, rolling it back and forth between his thumb and one finger. He has an old person’s hands, and so does she. Lao Mama notices this and is nodding, encouraging him to tell her more. Men come here to the hall for bed business, but also for this kind of comfort. “Aiyo,” she says, “how you must suffer with these jealous women in your household. You are a man of such patience.” She says this almost without thinking, and for her it is not irony.
“Concubines are nothing but trouble,” he replies. “In this life I will never take another,” he says. “I swear it.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head, and the pain he is
feeling seems quite real. Lao Mama’s cheeks ache from the hours of smiling and talking and joking with customers.
Now Banker Chang has moved on to talk about other things, about the big-nose foreign devils that one sees from time to time. “They are building a huge temple for their barbarian god on the east side of the city,” he tells her. “They should not be allowed to come here, to take our land and build things, to force us to comply with their every demand, to compete with us in business. They do not belong in China.” She nods in agreement, but she is no longer really listening to him speak of these things that do not touch her. Instead, she is thinking about how it is with her and remembering what it was like then, when she was young and hadn’t been touched by a man. He was young then, too, and she was a great beauty when he chose her from the lineup of girls in the parlor. She had perfect three-inch feet. Almond eyes. Willow eyebrows. Now her feet have spread. They swell when it is hot, when she is tired, when she has had too much wine. It is a hard life that causes this.
Chin down—eyes up—head tilted. Use your hips and your fan and your eyes. One shoe peeking out from under your skirts will convince a man that you are the one he will choose for the night. Then, she was glad to be chosen, because not to be chosen is a bad thing in a place like this. This is what she tells her girls. She is stern with them. And truthful. It is what she told Jinhua, a warning of sorts. Banker Chang was Lao Mama’s first customer, too, and when he picked her as the one he wanted she knew so little of what a man does and what he wants. Now Lao Mama makes sure the girls know everything. The newborn kitten should fear the tiger. It is better to know what lies ahead.
For bed business, Banker Chang moved on long ago to other, younger merchandise. Lao Mama wonders, does he remember her working name? It was Ziyan—because in those days her eyes glowed with the color of black amethysts. It has been a long time since anyone called her by that name. Now she is Lao Mama—just Lao Mama.
Banker Chang was very drunk this evening, clutching at walls when he went up the stairs to Jinhua’s room. With Lao Mama, all those years ago, he was rough. Rougher than some who came later and not as rough as others. Remembering that, she asks him, “How was she? How was the little one? Did you hurt her quite as much as you hurt me that first time?” Men like to think about these things, and she is curious. Banker Chang closes his eyes and smiles, showing teeth.
“You are jealous,” he says.
“No,” she replies, “I am not.” She is not on the streets, living off garbage as many others are when they grow old. She has not eaten opium. She has not hung herself from the rafters. She has looked after her affairs. She is surviving, and that is all, and she is absolutely not jealous of the little one.
“I am happiest when I am here,” he tells her.
“We are lao pengyou,” she replies. Old friends. But really, she thinks, it is only business between him and her. It has never been anything else. He pays with silver, and she puts the coins in the palm of the landlord’s hand when he comes for the rent. Everyone is paying for something. Everyone must be paid for something else. It is the nature of the living world, she thinks.
For just a moment, Lao Mama wonders how Jinhua is doing now that Banker Chang has finished. That first time with him, she is remembering now, was very, very bad for her. She remembers pain and blood and fear. Later, it became easy to do these things. To do them and forget. She knows what they say when her back is turned, now that she is the one who is buying girls and putting them to work. They say she has the heart of a wolf and the lungs of a dog. But, she tells herself, not everything is black or yellow. One cannot earn a living with hands that are white.
Jinhua will learn. They all do, every one of her girls. Jinhua will be a great success. Her future is secure, for now, and this is better than all the other possibilities.
Now, sitting here—looking at Banker Chang—Lao Mama thinks that it is time for him to go. She tells him this, and he looks startled, and Old Man comes into the room.
Old Man is piling dirty dishes high. His hands are shaking more than usual. It is a precarious business when he carries the dishes out to the kitchen, where Cook will clean them and put them away for another day. A chopstick clatters to the floor. “Be careful,” Lao Mama says, too tired to shriek.
Old Man is hobbling badly tonight, with his weight shifted back to his heels. He is like a mule cart with a broken wheel. He shouldn’t eat so much sugar. Sugar is bad for bunions. Lao Mama tells him this, speaking to the back side of him framed by the doorway, plates weighing him down. She sees his black skullcap move up and move down as Old Man nods to say, You are right. I should not eat so much sugar. His queue is thin and gray, as straight as an arrow down his back.
When he has gone, she thinks about the profit. It has been a good night. Two banquet tables; sixty-four dishes; fourteen jugs of wine, and she has lost count of how many pots of tea and pipes of opium. Old Man will know. Best of all, Lao Mama’s latest investment has begun to pay; Jinhua is now a money tree.
Old Man is back for more dishes. Stacking bowls until they teeter. Using his hands, he sweeps the table clear of seeds and bones. He is concentrating. His eyebrows pull at his old and spotted forehead.
“Pour me a cup of wine, Old Man,” she tells him. He puts down the stack of bowls. They rattle. His arms dangle at his sides. She opens her fan, and the emerald on her finger sparkles a profound and brilliant green. She loves the ring, a gift from a man who was her customer once and long ago. He was richer even than Banker Chang. He was from the North. A man who enjoyed Suzhou women. “The most beautiful women in all of China,” he said, and this is one true thing.
The ring is the most precious thing that Lao Mama owns.
Old Man pours. She takes a sip of wine and feels it immediately. Hot on her tongue. Warm in her throat. Cool in her belly. He waits. She feels lightness in her head. Her hands have grown fat. They’ll have to cut her finger off to steal the ring. She shudders at the thought of this, lying mutilated in her coffin. And then she contemplates that she has rescued every one of them. All six of the girls, and Suyin, and Old Man too. And others before them. They would all be eating garlic skins were it not for her. They would be dressing themselves in chicken feathers, hanging upside down, and fighting for their lives. They should be grateful to her—shouldn’t they?
It is such a hot night.
“I will have another,” she says, sliding her cup across the table. Old Man pours. It occurs to her that he and she are the same age. Both of them are shunian sheng—born in the Year of the Rat.
“Who will look after us,” she asks him, “when we are older? Who will bury our bones and burn money for our ghosts?” She doesn’t expect him to have an answer. Rat people are cunning. Charming and intelligent. They can be cruel when circumstances require. Lao Mama wonders about Old Man. He is not charming or intelligent, but is he cunning? She isn’t sure.
“Gan bei,” she says, draining the cup in a single swallow. Lao Mama nods for another round. Old Man’s eyes are on the silver toothpick, lying on the table where Banker Chang has left it.
“I have a nephew in the countryside,” he says, finally. “I have a little money saved,” he adds.
She didn’t know about his nephew or the money he has saved or anything, really, about him. Perhaps, she thinks, he has been stealing from her. The wine jug is empty. Sitting here with him standing near, she feels alone. One does what one must to survive. She considers saying this out loud but says something else instead.
“I am going to adopt Suyin,” she tells Old Man. “As my daughter. She will do for me when I am old, when I pass to the Western Heaven.” Lao Mama didn’t know until this moment that this is what she will do. But wine is oil for the tongue—and the mind. Suyin is a good girl. She is a cripple and has no one else, and because of this she can be trusted. This will be a good arrangement. Lao Mama is nodding to herself. She will speak to Suyin—but she will do it tomorrow. Such things are best discussed in the morning, when the ligh
t and the mind are both strong.
On the way to her bedroom, when Cook and Old Man have gone to bed and the hall is dark and quiet, Lao Mama passes the door to the closet where Suyin sleeps. She pauses. Her feet are swelling from the heat, and the wine, and from sitting for so long. Suyin must come and freshly bind them. It is a task for a daughter. She pushes at the door. It opens. Inside, two girls are sleeping—the Ugly One and the Beautiful One—wrapped in each other’s arms.
She herself has never had a person like this, someone to hold her close in this way. She has the little dog, of course, but no one to ask her how it is with her. No one to listen to the answer. Lao Mama’s bed is a lonely one, and her pillow will be cold tonight. But she is fine. This is how she is doing. She is simply Lao Mama, and she will survive this life for a long time to come. She thinks of her girls as daughters, in a way. In quite another way, she thinks of them as herself, except that she is stronger than they are—and she has more money.
While she sleeps, Lao Mama dreams. Old Man is lying in her bed, and she is watching him through a narrow slit in the red bedcurtain. In the dream she finds this not at all strange. Old Man is older than he was when he poured wine for her this evening. His face is as crinkled as a cabbage leaf; his hair is bone white, his body wasted, as frail as paper. He is sleeping deeply. Lao Mama parts the curtain and climbs onto the bed, and she lies down next to him. She feels a deep longing to share her destiny. In the dream she falls asleep and aches with this need, and then suddenly she wakes, sweating. The bedding is hot and as damp as mud. She is not well. Sitting up, she retches, then vomits into her lap. “Look, Old Man,” she cries out, and Old Man’s eyes open wide and he is no longer himself. He sits upright, staring at her, and he is youthful and handsome, the most beautiful man she has ever seen. “Look,” she cries, “it is a baby.” She is filled with grief. “I have vomited a baby,” she tells him. “Help me, please, help me clean it up, and then you must hold me in your arms and take me away from this place.”
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