by Amy Tan
When I opened my eyes, I saw Pomelo’s blurry face moving in ripples. For a moment, I thought I had drowned and was viewing her from beneath water. I might be dead, but at least I wasn’t blind. She looked stern one moment, then forgiving. Why did I need to be forgiven? I tried to ask her but could not hear my words.
The opium faded and I awoke in nauseating pain. My eyes darted about, looking for Perpetual. I could not run from him. My legs and arms were stiff, and when I tried to move, sharp hot pain shot through every part of me. Pomelo was putting herb poultices on the bruises, but the weight of them made me ache even more.
I don’t know how many days had passed before Perpetual came with red-rimmed eyes, a remorseful face, and a gift. Despite my pain, I pushed away from him. If he killed me now, so be it.
“How could I have done this?” he cried. “I’ve made you afraid of me.” He claimed he was drunk, and that love, despair, and wine had caused this to happen. He also feared that his father’s ghost had possessed him. “All along, I did not feel I was myself. I was terrified by what was happening and yet I could not stop myself.”
I recalled his whimpers. “Stop. Stop. You must stop.”
He examined the welt on my jaw, the bruises on my shoulders, arms, and legs, kissing each, causing waves of nausea to wash over me. He described the bruises as the colors of fruits—plums, kumquats, and mangoes. “How could I have done this to your precious skin, my love?”
He laid a silk pouch on the bed next to me. I would not touch it. He opened it and pulled out a hairpin, a gold-filigreed phoenix of inset turquoise with a fantail of pearls. It had belonged to his great-grandmother, he said. “See how much you mean to me.” He left it on the bed.
Every day he came and sat by the side of the bed for a few minutes. My fear had dulled to disgust. He brought fruit and candies. I did not eat them. He did not demand anything else. Two weeks after the beating, he asked if he could make love to me. He said he would be gentle. He wanted to do nothing ever again to hurt me. What could I do? Where could I go? What would he later do to me if I refused?
“I am you wife,” I said. “It’s your privilege.” My body shuddered when he touched me. I had the urge to get up and run. When I could finally keep my body still, his hands felt like stone weights over my dead flesh. He was not happy with my lack of passion but understood that it would take time before we both loved each other again fully and completely. When he left, I vomited. Soon after, I heard him shouting with excitement in Pomelo’s room. He bellowed to her and she shouted back that she belonged to him, every part of her. If she wanted him so much, she could have him every night. I would help her. I would insist.
About once a week, Perpetual would become livid and beat me. It was not like the first time when I thought he would kill me. He would roar and I would yell back, knowing what this would unleash. According to Magic Gourd, the neighbors would sit close to their windows, cracking peanuts while enjoying our opera. He was careful to not hit my face. He would slap the back of my head instead, circle me, and kick my rump and legs. He would shove me against the wall and force me to look at him, then yank my hair and shove me to the floor. When I was too nauseated to continue, I curled into a ball. Magic Gourd had been right about Perpetual’s need to be cruel and later contrite. I loathed him and would not show him my fear.
When he was in my bed, I used memory to make him vanish. He could not see or hear my thoughts, and I brought back memory after memory until he left my bed. I went to the places I loved. The big salon where I chased Carlotta. She was batting a knotted ball of my mother’s handkerchief. I went to a street where I took carriage rides. I waved to men. I walked along a lane with shops that sold books, lockets, and watches. I bought candy. I went to Edward. We were in the car and I was driving. I was screaming because I thought I was going to run over a duck and her ducklings. I returned to an afternoon when it was too hot to do anything but lie on the divans opposite each other in the library. He was reading … The Golden Bowl. Listen, he said. What was I reading? A passage out of his new journal. His journal. I read the passage aloud. I was driving. I returned to our bedroom and saw Edward standing with Little Flora in his arms. It was nearly dawn, and the room was warm with sepia light, and grew lighter and filled with color. I could see them both so clearly, the look on Edward’s face as he murmured to Little Flora that she was miraculous. I felt the moment when he looked at me and said, “She’s the perfection of love, pure and unharmed.”
Why had he used that word unharmed? I had wanted to ask him later when Flora was asleep. There were so many things I meant to ask him, and now the only answers I would ever have were those I needed to believe. I knew what he was saying. I would protect her and all the harm that had been done to me would heal until I was pure again, no hate in my heart, only love.
MAGIC GOURD AND I went to Pomelo’s courtyard two or three times a week to play mahjong. We had become old flower sisters, who had given up our suspicions and promised not to undermine each other. One day she mentioned a dish she had eaten in Shanghai. I said in a whisper that Azure’s maid might hear and report to Perpetual that she was thinking of her old home.
“Azure’s maid?” she said. “That little spy doesn’t dare report anything about me. I have her by the neck. She and the young manservant are lovers, and I know for a fact he’s been giving her food stolen from the pantry. But she still gets her reward from Azure for spying on you. I suggest you let her earn her reward. When you know she’s spying, talk about your undying love for Perpetual and how much you admire Azure. Let the maid tell your lies.”
Pomelo put a record on the Victrola. “The maid can’t hear us talk with this music playing.” During our latest visit with Pomelo, she began the conversation over mahjong with a complaint. “I’ve been meaning to tell you that you cannot outdo me in my affection for Perpetual.”
I eyed her, wondering what she was up to.
“I can hear your business with Perpetual across the courtyard. You can hear mine. I sound more convincing than you. You’ve really become quite lackluster in your appreciation of his cock. I suggest you improve your actress skills. I was thinking we might compete with each other over who has fooled him the most with our fakery. We can be like the Shanghai flower sisters of our past, and vie for a man we don’t want. Scream with pleasure. Declare you are his forever. Tell him you love him and only him. Do it for the pride we once had in our profession.”
“I’d rather be beaten.”
“That’s what one of the other concubines said. She was strong like you.”
I held my breath. I had been waiting for her to tell me this. Until now, she had refused to say more. “Did she live in my room?”
“She was in my room. I was in yours until I was promoted. Her name was Verdant,” Pomelo said. “She once truly loved Perpetual, even after she came here and saw that he had lied. But when I arrived, she went crazy. She berated him for his dishonesty, mocked him for living in such a poor place. She no longer showed him any fondness or passion. And she would not cower. He beat her nearly brainless. He knocked out two teeth and damaged one eye so that she never could open that eyelid again. One night I heard her screaming even louder than usual. The next morning, she was gone. Naturally, I feared that Perpetual had killed her and already taken her body out of the house so that no one could see what he had done.”
“Ai-ya!” Magic Gourd said.
I gasped and my stomach knotted. Perpetual, a murderer. This same end might await me.
“It turned out she had run away,” Pomelo said.
I breathed again. Now I was eager to hear how she had done it.
“She took the path along the river. At the first bend, two women working in the field saw Perpetual and Verdant struggling. She broke free and quickly stepped into the river and wobbled forward over the smooth rocks below. The water was only knee deep by the banks and she must have thought she could easily cross to the other side. But the moss on the rocks was slippery, and the water was s
wift, and she fell a few times. Then it deepened, and toward the middle, the water was up to her thighs. Her clothes wrapped around her legs and she struggled to stay upright. Every time she fell, she moved a little bit farther downstream before she could stand again. But then the water deepened to her waist, and it carried her along like a leaf. She managed to steer herself to the bank and grabbed onto the roots of a tree. Perpetual found a sturdy branch and held it out to her, and she grabbed on. The women watching this were relieved. As Perpetual pulled her in, he shouted to her. She shouted back. The women didn’t know exactly what they said because the water was running fast and loud. But one said Perpetual looked angry and he let go of the branch. Verdant was carried away with the branch still in her hand. Her head bobbed up twice before her body went tumbling over a small drop and was churned under. The woman said that Perpetual looked as pleased as a man who had caught a large fish.”
I went numb seeing this in my mind.
“The other woman told a different version. She said that as they shouted at each other, Verdant got a crazy look in her eyes. She gave him one last shout and flung away the branch and let herself be carried away. The woman said Perpetual looked like a man who had caught a large fish only to have it escape and swim away.
“Verdant’s body was found a mile downstream the next day, slapped against a boulder. The current was so strong her body could not be peeled off until summer when the water level went down. Whichever way it happened, people said, Perpetual could not be blamed for her death. After all, she ran away. She walked into the water. But if you ask me, I think it was she who let go of the branch. That was the kind of woman she was. She was like you.”
My throat tightened. “You said there was another concubine. Did she die, too?”
“She is the one I have been waiting to tell you about. Charm arrived after me, and she left a year before you came. She used to be in your room.”
I hoped Pomelo would not tell me that Charm had had a gruesome death.
“Charm and I became as close as sisters. We shared confidences about our hatred of Perpetual. We plotted ways to leave. She had two good feet and I had two bad ones. She suspected that whenever Perpetual said he was going to check on the lumber mills, he actually went up Heaven Mountain. Early one morning, she waited in hiding where the hidden trail starts. Sure enough, there he was, walking up briskly. When he returned home, she plied him with a lot of wine and a few drops of opium and exhausted him with enthusiastic sex. When he fell into snoring sleep, she went through the pockets of the trousers he had worn on the journey. She pulled out a small leather envelope and found inside a piece of paper that had been folded five times. It appeared to be a poem about the landscape of Heaven Mountain. It described a tree with a branch bent like a man’s arm, a rock in the shape of a turtle—many different landmarks, including boulders on the trail that a person could climb over, but a horse could not. There were also words like left, right, straight, up, down, the third one, the second one. She realized she was holding the directions for going to the top of the mountain, to Buddha’s Hand.”
My heart soared. A means of escape. “Did you write down the answers as well?”
“Let me finish. When she left, she did not want Perpetual to know where she had gone. She tore a jacket and a pair of pants and showed them to me. ‘Let him think that I followed Verdant into a watery grave.’ She promised to send word when she reached a safe place. She left that night after she rendered Perpetual helpless again with her potion of drink and sex. She took with her the directions, the torn clothing, and a small satchel with food and water. Perpetual found the torn clothes in the river the next day. He was actually heartbroken. I cheered that Charm had escaped by going up Heaven Mountain. But after hearing nothing from her for two months, I thought she had died. I mourned her and hoped she did not die painfully.”
So there had been a ghost in my bed after all. Charm.
Pomelo opened a drawer and removed a small folded sheet of paper. “Two days ago, I received proof that she is alive. A traveling shoe mender came by and said he had brought me shoes from my sister. The shoes looked familiar, and I accepted them. They had belonged to Charm. She had torn apart her shoes and refashioned them into a pair that would fit my bound feet. The seams were perfect and I searched for an opening in the lining—the one we courtesans make for hiding money or notes from our lovers. I carefully snipped open the back seam of the left shoe.” She handed me the note:
Use the directions below to climb Heaven Mountain. At the top, you will see the valley and a dome of rock shaped like Buddha’s Hand. Look down from the ridge and you will see the town of Mountain View. Go to the House of Charm and I will welcome you.
I pictured a town that lay in the valley at the top of the mountain. Magic Gourd and I clutched each other with happiness “When should we leave?” I asked Pomelo.
“As soon as possible. I’ll stay behind to tell them I heard you talking about running away toward the river. When you get to Mountain View, send a note in a pair of shoes to tell me how difficult it was to get there.” She pointed to her bound feet. Although they were not particularly small, it was clear she would not be able to climb all that distance on her own. We spent a few minutes arguing, Magic Gourd and I insisting that we should go as three sisters.
Magic Gourd lifted her own feet up. “See? Mine were bound, too, and I’m willing to try.”
Pomelo pushed them away. “Yours were unbound when you were a small child. They’re as big as Violet’s, maybe even bigger.”
We continued to argue. We would find a way to help her. She insisted she would be a burden. We pointed out that she had given us the instructions and letter from Charm. In the end, she said, “You are both too good to me. I didn’t even repair any furniture for your room.”
I SAW LIFE differently after that night. I heard the farmers shout gruff greetings in the morning. And they seemed softer. I saw old men on the streets puffing on their pipes. A pack of dogs howled and barked and their ruckus dwindled as they ran away, and in my mind, I was running with them.
It was spring and the leaves were budding. At last, the rain was gone and the days were warming. Pomelo had already fashioned a pair of crutches from broken chair legs. She had glued layers of stiff leather on the bottom of her shoes and had a pouch of herbs for reducing swelling. She practiced by marching back and forth in her room every night that she was not with Perpetual and when the maids had gone to bed.
We brought other scraps of wood from the shed of broken furniture, which we used to make our effigies, which we hoped would fool people into thinking we had never left. The bottoms of small stools became our heads, half of a tea table top was used for a torso, and the table legs became our legs and arms. Magic Gourd insisted on fashioning faces for the effigies. She made a mixture of clay mud and sculpted mounds on the stool bottoms, then stuck different-size stones and pegs to create the eyes, nose, and lips. Our faces were quite frightening.
Magic Gourd and I had been hoarding food to last the three of us for three days. There was nothing I could not bear to part with. Everything would be a burden on either my heart or my back. I would bring only the clothes that would serve me best during warm days and cold nights. But then I remembered something I could not leave behind: Edward’s journal and his and Little Flora’s photos. I recalled the terrible day that Flora was snatched from me. I had looked at her photo and said to her, “Resist much, obey little.” I had been following those words of advice. I slipped the photos out of their frames, and tucked them between the pages of the journal.
Magic Gourd set a Western blouse and long skirt on my bed.
“Why are you bringing me those?” I said.
She smiled slyly. “So you can turn yourself into the half of you that’s Western. A Western woman traveling without a husband is not going to be questioned. People know foreigners are crazy and roam anywhere they please. It’s worth a try.”
“And if anyone asks why I’m traveling up a mountai
n, what do I say?”
“You will say in English, you are an artist. You travel to paint scenery. I will translate into Chinese.”
I frowned. “Where are my paints? What is there to prove I’m an artist?”
She pulled from her bag two rolls of canvas. “You don’t need to show me,” I said. I knew what they were: Lu Shing’s paintings, the portrait of my mother, the other of the valley. Every time I had thrown these paintings away, Magic Gourd had retrieved them.
“It’s at least worth a try,” she said. “I’ll carry them. She unrolled one, the painting of the valley. “How could I give this up?” she said softly. “This looks like the place where my mother lives.”
We waited until it was Azure’s turn for a nocturnal visit from Perpetual. The moon was half full. In the afternoon, when Azure’s maid was nearby, Pomelo made a show of inviting us to play mahjong, and we begged off at first and finally agreed after she insisted twice more. We had already brought our belongings piece by piece to her room over the last week. At seven, we went to Pomelo’s for our game of mahjong. At ten o’clock, when all was quiet and Azure’s maid was with her lover, we put on the simple clothes of farmers’ wives. We laid out on the floor by the far wall our three effigies, donned in pretty dresses. We quietly placed the table and chairs on their sides, as if they had been overturned. We sprinkled the mahjong tiles and teacups on the floor, as if our game had been suddenly interrupted. An oil lamp stood in this heap, and we carefully doused oil on the bed quilts, the silk curtains, the gauze-covered lamps, and the rug. Alas, once the fire started, no one would be able to enter to save us—those ugly effigies with rocks for eyes. Pomelo and I left by the back gate just behind Pomelo’s courtyard. Magic Gourd wound the Victrola, put on a sad aria, knocked over the brazier and oil lamp, then lit the curtains of the bed and darted to the gate where we were waiting.
