Chen Ling and Ming sat at the head table with Auntie Yee and Moi. To Pei’s surprise, Lin had returned and was also sitting in their midst, speaking easily with some of the older girls. Immediately, Pei felt relief—and anger at seeing Lin there enjoying herself, while she had been left to worry. But she swallowed hard and decided to let nothing more mar the evening.
Chen Ling and Ming no longer resembled all the other girls with long thick braids. They appeared older without bangs and with their hair coiled meticulously atop their heads. Each was dressed in a long black silk skirt and white shirt and smiled happily as Auntie Yee stood and began the celebration with a small speech for them.
“Honored guests, I thank you for coming to celebrate this special day with Chen Ling and Ming. We at the girls’ house will miss them, only gratified by the knowledge that they are continuing their lives in the sisterhood. Now I would like to drink a toast to Chen Ling and Ming!”
Auntie Yee raised her cup of tea, followed by every guest in the room.
The evening moved slowly on, one course after another, until the ninth course, of steamed fish bathed in oil and green onions, was served. Mei-li sat beside Pei as if nothing had ever happened, and ate heartily as each dish was placed on the table. More than once Pei tried to capture Lin’s attention, but it was as if Lin deliberately avoided meeting her gaze.
When at last the banquet was over, the girls rose from their tables in a wave of black and white. Pei moved quickly forward, hoping to reach Lin before she slipped away again. But as Auntie Yee, Chen Ling, and Ming rose to receive the girls filing through with their congratulations, Lin remained seated.
“Where were you today?” asked Pei, taking the chair next to her.
“I went to see my mother,” Lin answered.
“In Canton?”
“No, she was here in Yung Kee with my brother.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to upset you.”
“What did she come here for?” Pei asked.
“She wanted me to go back to Canton with her.”
Pei sat quiet and tentative. “What did you say?” she finally asked.
“I told her that I didn’t want to return to Canton, and that I’ve chosen not to marry.”
Pei sat upright in her chair. “What did she say?”
“She wasn’t very happy about it, but I have to clear the way for my brother, one way or the other.”
Pei looked out toward the deserted tables and the picked-over remains of the banquet they had just feasted on.
“Does this mean you’ll go through the hairdressing ceremony?”
“Yes,” Lin quickly answered. “Don’t you see, it’s the only way I’ll still be able to see you. If I were to return home to Canton and my family, we might never see each other again.”
“And what about me?” Pei asked softly.
Lin said nothing.
They both knew that going through the hairdressing ceremony meant Lin would move from the girls’ house. After that, it might be days before they saw one another, except at the silk factory.
Without looking at her, Lin took hold of Pei’s hand and gave it a slight squeeze.
Chapter Seven
1926–1927
Auntie Yee
After their hairdressing ceremony, Chen Ling and Ming moved to a sisters’ house near Auntie Yee. They lived among other young women who chose to do the silk work. In the beginning, Auntie Yee tried hard not to notice the emptiness, but the silence was deafening, so she washed and scrubbed everything in the girls’ house after Chen Ling and Ming left.
“Why are you washing those windows again?” Moi taunted.
“Because they’re dirty.”
“No dirtier than yesterday!” Moi laughed, giving nothing of her own feelings away. She turned back toward the kitchen and let the door fall heavily behind her.
Auntie Yee knew the girls also missed Chen Ling. Her voice no longer rang through the house, reading and speaking to them each evening about the sisterhood and the struggles within China. At night the girls tried to keep themselves busy around the house. Lin and Pei read, while others tried to paint or sew. The emptiness seem magnified after Chen Ling and Ming returned for their first visit; voices filling the rooms.
“What is it like at the sisters’ house?” the girls repeatedly asked.
“There are women from all over the southern province. They have come to Yung Kee to do the silk work for one reason or another. Some have gone through the hairdressing ceremony, while others are there only temporarily to work while their husbands find work overseas,” Chen Ling answered enthusiastically. “We have a small room to ourselves, but it’s not as nice as here,” she added, looking in Auntie Yee’s direction.
“We do all our own cleaning and make most of our own meals,” Ming added shyly. “Each person must be responsible for herself; we don’t have Auntie Yee or Moi to look after us.”
Then Chen Ling laughed deeply. “That’s why we’ve returned to visit at evening meal!”
The girls laughed and whispered to one another in excitement.
Of all the girls, it was Pei whose voice rang out with question after question. Pei seem to cling to each answer as if her life depended on it.
“Do you have many new friends?” she asked. “Are you happy there?”
“Yes, we’re very happy at the sisters’ house,” Chen Ling and Ming managed to answer before another question came hungrily their way.
Chen Ling had returned often since her hairdressing ceremony. And each time, Auntie Yee noticed a change in her daughter. There was an ease about her that hadn’t been there before. Auntie Yee felt both proud and envious of her, because Chen Ling had found her way so easily in life. Soon Auntie Yee’s other girls would be forced to make a decision concerning the direction of their lives. She knew that for some it wouldn’t be an easy one. Chen Ling and Ming were blessed by Kuan Yin in having had their own choice. Auntie Yee had never been that fortunate and, she feared, neither would many others.
When Pei and Lin came to tell Auntie Yee of Lin’s decision to go through the hairdressing ceremony, Auntie Yee was not the least bit surprised. Unlike Chen Ling, who was born to the silk work, Lin had grown into it, with ease. But Auntie Yee’s first thought had to do with Pei. She turned toward her and immediately knew it was Lin’s absence Pei was grieving for. Her face was expressionless, her pale, thin lips pressed together so tightly they almost disappeared.
Auntie Yee called for Moi to bring them some tea. As she sat across from Pei and Lin, it was almost as if she could feel Pei’s grief move through her. But how could they know? To them she was Auntie Yee, too old and fat to understand what went on in their young bodies and quick minds. How could they know that the same grief had once played in her own life? It stung her memory even now, though it seemed a lifetime ago.
Auntie Yee had told only Moi her story, back in the early days when she wasn’t sure the girls’ house would succeed. Auntie Yee had been sick with worry about how to support her husband and his family. And it somehow made her feel better to remember a loss which made everything else seem smaller and dimmer. Moi had listened uncomfortably, then excused herself, going out to draw water from the well.
Yee was nine when she was given to the silk work. She was taken from the warmth of her childhood bed and thrown into the stark reality of another world. It wasn’t as if one life was much better than the other, but in her old life she did have her eldest brother, Chan. He was her half brother, born to her father and his number one wife. Yee was his third daughter by his second concubine, and quite useless to anyone. Only Chan took notice of her; in return she adored everything about him.
Chan was nine years older than Yee, with a thick, muscular body. He moved with a graceful ease, though you wouldn’t think it simply by looking at his bulk. Often Yee would watch for him coming up from the fields, his cropped hair shining with sweat, as he squinted against the sun in her direction.
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bsp; “Who are you looking for?” he would yell up from the incline.
“You!” she would yell back, running down to meet him. Yee would jump up into his arms, her cheek resting against his sweaty neck and shoulders. There was something mesmerizing about this daily ritual. She never forgot the strong smell of his maleness, along with the swift, gentle way in which Chan would lift her into his arms.
At night, they would sit on the front porch and tell stories, or listen to the night sounds, the constant music of the crickets filling up the darkness. It was their own private world they existed in, with the dim lights of reality behind them, and the unknown shadows of their future before them. In all her life, Yee would never again feel the same happiness as in those clear unhampered dreams of a child.
Days and nights would pass in this way, and Yee realized her childhood was made up of these small moments with Chan. The others must have seen that, too, only to disapprove, especially their father, who thought his oldest son was being too distracted by Yee and their foolish dreams. After their father spoke to him, Chan began taking a different path up from the fields and would no longer pick Yee up when she greeted him. Instead, he would rub his arm as if it were sore and say, “You’re too big for that now.”
After he said that, nothing was the same between them. Chan seemed to purposely stay away from her, though once in a while Yee caught him watching her with a familiar tenderness in his eyes. Then one night, when she could no longer stand it, Yee stole out of the house to the small storage shed where Chan slept.
“Who is it?” Chan’s voice shot out from the dark.
She let the creaking wooden door close all the way before she answered, “It’s me.”
“Yee?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything wrong?” He fumbled in the dark to light the oil lamp. “Are you all right?”
“Why do you hate me?” Yee had asked.
Then her tears came. Yee had not meant to cry, but just being so close to Chan made her miss him more.
“I don’t,” she heard Chan whisper. Almost simultaneously, he reached out and took Yee in his arms, and she fell against him, crying in a low moan. Chan’s quick kisses on her head and against her forehead began to soothe her, until her crying stopped. She lay in his arms for what seemed a very long time, neither of them saying a word. Then Yee fell asleep, only to be awakened some time later by Chan, still holding her in the same position.
“You must go back in now,” he whispered.
“I want to stay with you,” she said, clinging tighter.
Chan shook his head and slowly pushed her away, his eyes avoiding hers. Auntie Yee’s only experience of love as a child was because of Chan, and it seemed too cruel to have it taken away. At first she fought him, pushing her young body against his, but she was no match for his strength. She wanted to cry again but held back the tears until they burned inside of her.
Auntie Yee didn’t know then that she would never see Chan again. The next morning he was gone, and the following day she was sent away to work in a silk factory. The grief she felt was hard and numbing. Sometimes, Auntie Yee still thought of Chan, and like a ghost he returned to her, young and strong. The memory still warmed her. Occasionally, Auntie Yee convinced herself it was a luxury to remember Chan in that way, when life was young and much more generous.
Auntie Yee awoke from her thoughts and urged Pei to drink some tea. Pei tried to smile, clutching the teacup in her hand. Auntie Yee watched the two young women sitting across from her. They were each beautiful in their own way. Lin had always been a classic beauty with Hawless features, and Pei had grown so tall, her Hakka features softening into a quietly striking face. Unlike Auntie Yee’s, their grief would only be measured in the short distance they would have to live from one another. Auntie Yee smoothed back a fallen strand of hair from her forehead and cleared her throat.
“Let me tell you a story,” she began.
Pei
Pei decided she would never marry. She would go through the hairdressing ceremony and move to the sisters’ house with Lin. From what she knew of marriage, it only brought unhappiness. Her own parents rarely spoke, and even a marriage as strong as Lin’s parents’ had come to an unhappy end. But every time Pei tried to tell Lin this, she only smiled sadly and said, “You’re too young to know what you’re saying.”
“I know I want to go with you,” Pei pleaded.
They would then argue until Lin ended it by telling her to wait a few more years to make her decision. Pei vowed never to give up.
Little by little, Pei began to feel Lin’s absence from the girls’ house. Lin went about moving her things so quietly, it was days before Pei realized that small items belonging to Lin had disappeared from their usual places. Pei first noticed the polished silver mirror missing. Since her first day at the girls’ house, Pei had felt an attachment to the mirror. She had looked into it and caught the first glimpse of her new life. When Pei ran upstairs to see if Lin’s set of combs was still beside her bed, she felt both relieved and annoyed to see that they were. It was as if Lin were deliberately keeping secrets from her.
Pei sometimes wished everything would go faster, only to be terrified when it did. Each time Pei found something of Lin’s missing, she felt as if she were losing a little bit more of her friend. Pei began to collect her own objects in their places: a small enamel bowl filled with colorful pins; a silk cushion the color of the sky; and a white porcelain bird which could never fly away. No one knew how much better this made her feel.
While Pei worried about Lin’s leaving, she was also entertained by a host of strangers who suddenly found their way to the girls’ house. They seem to come from everywhere, descending upon the house like flies. Some said it was because of the struggles up north. More and more hungry people arrived in Yung Kee. Moi got rid of the unwanted, screaming at the beggars who somehow came in from the main street. “Get away from here, you stink more than a dead dog!” she would scream at them as they lingered by the back door, their foul stench filling up the kitchen. But almost always, Moi then stepped out and called them back, sending them away with a bit of hard rice and vegetables.
Auntie Yee laughed and said, “Moi will never forget where she came from!”
The vendors also came, one after another, old women with herbs that could cure any ailment, from the physical to the emotional. They carried everything in glass jars, and measured the dark twigs and dried leaves into white pieces of paper folded neatly into perfect squares. The old women were usually followed by ancient-looking men carrying heavy basketloads of fruits or vegetables. The baskets were balanced evenly upon bamboo poles that fit securely along the men’s backs and shoulders. Each morning they came singing “Or-anges! Ba-na-nas! Or-anges!” in a chorus of mismatched voices.
Chen Ling and Ming also came over often, and each time Lin turned to Pei with a smile that said, “You see, we won’t really be far apart.”
While Pei never saw her family, the girls’ house was constantly full of family and friends, but none came as often as Mei-li’s parents. Mei-li had become strangely docile and accommodating about her arranged marriage. While her behavior frightened Pei, Mei-li’s father happily invited the entire girls’ house to the wedding. Her parents had rewarded Mei-li with small gifts, which she left to accumulate unopened in the basket beside her bed.
Pei had begun to worry more and more about Mei-li. “Are you all right?” she asked, one night when they were alone.
“Of course, why shouldn’t I be?” Mei-li answered.
“Because you’ve been so quiet,” Pei said hesitantly. “And your parents keep coming with their plans for your marriage.”
There was a long pause. Pei was afraid Mei-li would become upset, but instead she answered calmly. “Everything will be fine in time.”
“What do you mean?” Pei asked.
Mei-li refused to tell Pei anything other than she was now happy about the marriage, and Pei didn’t dare push. Sometimes, when Pei
mentioned Hong’s name, Mei-li turned around and glared at her as if he were a stranger. In her heart Pei knew that Mei-li was still keeping secrets. At least twice a week Mei-li slipped away to go for a walk. Pei followed her once, only to be led through a maze of streets and back to the girls’ house, as if Mei-li knew she was there. At other times, when Mei-li returned from her walks, there was a glow in her eyes that didn’t die for days.
One evening Pei returned to the girls’ house late from picking up some tea for Auntie Yee. She was not surprised to hear from Moi that there were visitors in the reading room, but was shocked to learn that the visitors were Lin’s mother and brother. She stood stunned for a moment. Nothing gave them away, neither loud voices nor low murmurs. She felt a knot tighten in her stomach. As a child waiting by her father’s empty pond, Pei had learned to bury her anxiety at not seeing any fish. She would close her eyes and imagine the glittering fish moving across the surface of the water, like small flashes of light. She could actually feel their presence. Pei sat on the stairs and waited. She closed her eyes again and tried to see Lin’s face behind the closed door, but failed.
The doors finally opened, liberating Pei from the darkness, yet she felt scared. She heard Lin’s familiar voice first, though it was Lin’s mother who suddenly stepped out into the hall. She was so beautiful Pei wanted to climb back up the stairs out of sight. She was wearing a fancy tight dress, buttoned up the side, with a high collar, and when she turned at just the right angle, parts of the dress sewn with shiny beads caught the light and flickered. Her skin was as white and smooth as Pei’s porcelain bird, and her large dark eyes darted back and forth anxiously. It was easy to see from whom Lin had received her gift of beauty.
Then came the next surprise. Lin’s brother stepped out into the hall. Pei felt an immediate twinge of disappointment. He was not very tall, nor handsome in comparison with Lin and her mother. He was dressed in dark Western clothing and stood with the same erect bearing as did the white devils Pei had seen passing through Yung Kee. But he did have the same gentle smile as Lin.
Women of the Silk Page 10
