When Chung stopped, they were completely silent. Not even the faintest breath could be heard in the stillness. Chung stood waiting for any response. He looked anxiously toward Chen Ling to join him up front, wiping his brow over and over again. No one moved. They stared at him placidly, knowing that within their silence was all the hatred the years had stored up. Chung waited a few moments longer before their silence became too obvious. His eyes grew angry, but he said nothing more, simply throwing down his handkerchief and quickly walking back to his car. Only when the dust had cleared and his car was well out of sight did they raise their arms and rejoice at their one last victory.
Not long after, Lin received word from her brother Ho Chee telling them to come to Canton as soon as they possibly could. He had friends who would help them find a way to Hong Kong.
Lin had chosen to stay behind at the silk factory a few weeks more, only because Chung had promised to pay her and Chen Ling for another month’s work of cleaning up and closing the account books. At first, Pei was apprehensive and wanted to leave for Hong Kong as soon as possible, but Lin was more prudent.
“We’ll need the extra money until we can find work in Hong Kong,” Lin said. “Besides, Chung’s managers don’t know enough about the overall operation.”
“But Chen Ling can take care of everything,” Pei said.
“I can’t leave it all for Chen Ling.”
“But the Japanese are getting close to Canton!”
“I know they are, but there’s still time. I just want to make sure things are settled here first.”
Pei reluctantly agreed. She knew it was far more difficult for Lin to leave than it was for her. For the past eighteen years Yung Kee had been Lin’s home, and leaving its dusty streets and crowded marketplace seemed to leave her shaken. But slowly Lin began to rid herself of everything accumulated over the years, keeping only what was necessary for their journey.
For Pei it was entirely different. She anxiously waited to see Hong Kong. She’d read a great deal about the large, brilliant city, where foreigners from all over the world did business. But slowly, a quiet fear began to mix with her anxiousness. She tried hard not to show it. The Japanese moved like locusts, devouring cities in rapid succession. She knew that the longer they waited to leave, the more difficult it would become. Each day, more and more people were leaving the area in hopes of going to Hong Kong or overseas. Ho Chee would leave first to take his mother and his wife to Hong Kong, while Ho Yung waited for them in Canton.
The first day Lin and Chen Ling returned from work after the factory closing, they looked tired and pale.
“How was your day?” Pei asked.
“The factory seemed filled with ghosts,” Lin replied in an even tone. “It was strange to have the machines so quiet and still. Chen Ling and I chose to work on the books in my office, and every once in a while we could swear we heard the humming sound of the machines spinning, only to realize it was just our imaginations playing tricks. I can’t explain it, but it felt as if someone or something was waiting in the shadows.”
Pei laughed and said, “Now whose imagination is going wild?” Then, in a more serious tone, she asked, “Why don’t we just leave here?”
Lin nodded slowly and said, “In a short time, we’ll be far away from Yung Kee and those Japanese devils.”
Yet the fear inside Pei continued to grow with each passing day, though it had no face and carried no name.
Gradually, many of their older sisters left the house, finding ways to sit out the war in religious or spinsters’ houses. Each night before one of them left, they celebrated with what meager food they could find at the market. If they were lucky enough to buy a chicken or a piece of pork, then there would be salted chicken with oyster sauce, or pork strips fried with vegetables; if not, then rice and vegetables would do.
The day Kung Ma left for a spinsters’ house was a sad one. Pei and Lin stood outside as Kung Ma packed her scant belongings into a sedan chair. In her hand, she grasped a red-and-black book and a small white box.
“What do you have there?” asked Pei. She had never seen either of the possessions Kung Ma carried in all her years at the sisters’ house.
Kung Ma blushed. “It’s part of my history,” she said, clutching the objects tighter to her breast.
“We’re going to miss you,” Lin said.
Pei smiled sadly, and couldn’t say anything. Kung Ma’s departure meant the end of the sisters’ house. For so many years, she had silently led the house, and now they grieved to see her go.
Kung Ma nodded her head, and hugged each one of her remaining sisters. “We’ll see each other again, I’m sure of it,” she said, climbing into the sedan chair. “When this is all over and life’s once again gentle.” Kung Ma turned around and took one long, last look at the sisters’ house. “Take care of the old place for as long as you can.”
As they watched the sedan chair move quickly down the road, Kung Ma turned around once and waved her hand, still carrying the small white box.
Eight days later, Pei and Lin closed the sisters’ house and moved back to the girls’ house for the remainder of the month. With the food and oil shortage, it made little sense to stay in the large, almost empty sisters’ house. Chen Ling and Ming welcomed them back with great joy. Even Moi fussed over them, preparing a special meal in honor of their return, using ingredients no one dared ask how she procured.
A Northern Wind
It was on a rainy evening, with the winds blowing relentlessly, that Ji Shen found her way to the girls’ house. In the blinding rain it looked like a place that might offer her some food and a dry place to rest, if just for a short time. She was cold beyond belief, and the sores on her feet had swelled to double their original size and filled with a yellowish pus. By the time she came upon the girls’ house, Ji Shen could no longer feel anything below her ankles, and the hunger she felt burned a hole in her stomach.
In her feverish condition, Ji Shen crawled toward the back of the house with every last bit of her strength. To keep herself going, she dreamed that her family safely awaited her inside; she prayed that the rain would wash away the nightmare of the last month. She pulled herself toward the back door and tried to stand, but when she fell hard against it, Ji Shen had already fainted.
“Death to those devil cats!” Moi said, grabbing her broom and moving toward the back door. For weeks they had come to the back door, crying for food, and Moi no longer had patience for them. She held the broom high as she opened the door, promising to scare them away once and for all. But when Moi opened the door, it wasn’t a parade of hungry cats she found, but the apparently lifeless body of a young girl.
“Aii-ya!” said Moi, dragging the soaking girl into the kitchen. “What will the gods bring to me next?”
Then Moi allowed Chen Ling and others into her kitchen to carry the girl out. They took her upstairs and placed her gently on one of the many empty beds. When they saw her swollen feet and feverish condition, Chen Ling told Moi to boil the bitter tea that brought fevers down, while Lin and Pei carefully cleaned her swollen feet and wrapped them in cloth.
For the first time in months, the conversation that evening centered not on the war, but on the young girl lying feverish in the bed upstairs. From the looks of her bone-thin body and high cheekbones, she came from far away, somewhere up north. Each of them took turns watching the girl through the next few nights; when it was Pei’s turn, she eagerly took her place beside the sleeping girl, whose restless sleep seemed filled with nameless nightmares.
On her third morning at the girls’ house, Ji Shen opened her eyes and tried to move. Every muscle in her body seemed to hurt, so she lay still, letting her eyes grow accustomed to the long room she was in. On the bed next to hers slept another woman, but the numerous other beds were empty. Ji Shen tried to lift herself up higher, accidentally knocking over a teacup that sat on the makeshift table next to her bed.
“What is it?” Pei said, sitting up quickly.
“Ah, I see you have finally awakened,” said Pei. “We have been very worried about you.”
Then, seeing that the girl was thirsty, Pei poured her some tea from a thermos and leaned over to help her take a sip. When her thirst was satisfied the girl leaned back and seem to rest from the effort.
“Would you like more?” Pei asked.
The girl shook her head no.
“What is your name?”
“Ji Shen,” the girl whispered, with a heavy northern accent.
“My name is Pei.”
“Where am I?”
“You are in the village of Yung Kee, in the Kwangtung province. Where have you come from?”
“From Nanking, in the Chen-Chiang province.”
“How old are you, Ji Shen?”
“Almost fourteen.”
“And where are your parents?” asked Pei.
Ji Shen turned away and closed her eyes.
Three days later, Ji Shen had regained enough strength to sit up and receive the entire household, including Moi. They quickly adopted Ji Shen as their “Moi Moi,” their younger sister. Ji Shen viewed all the women in wonderment. Never before had she seen an entire group of women dressed exactly alike. Yet it didn’t take long before she grew to trust each one of them and know their differences. She especially liked Pei, the tall one who had first spoken kindly to her.
“What do you do here?” Ji Shen asked Pei.
“We were silk workers, and this is the house we all stayed in while we worked at the factory,” Pei answered, taking Ji Shen’s empty soup bowl from her.
“You no longer work at the factory?”
“I’m afraid there isn’t any work left for us to do. We’re the last of the workers.”
Ji Shen looked puzzled. “What about your families?”
“They gave up on us a long time ago.” Pei laughed. “I’m afraid we have to find our own way now.”
“I don’t understand,” Ji Shen said.
Pei stroked her forehead and said, “It’s nothing to concern yourself with now; there’ll be plenty of time for you to find out everything. Now, I want you to rest.”
Ji Shen lay back in the bed, feeling warm and safe. She watched Pei move across the room straightening up, then closed her eyes and fell into a deep sleep.
When the sores on her feet began to heal, Ji Shen walked slowly downstairs, supported by Ming and Lin. It was in the reading room, surrounded by her new family, that Ji Shen finally told them her story.
“My father was a shopkeeper in Nanking. He sold curios and dry goods. My mother sewed for others on the side. We didn’t make much money, but we lived in the rooms behind the shop and my mother, my sister, and I were very happy with our lives. Many of our friends and neighbors had warned us about the Japanese, but my father never believed they would get much farther than Manchuria, so rather than move away from his life’s work and the place in which his ancestors were buried, he made the decision to stay in Nanking. My older sister Juling and I were attending a local school, and my father didn’t want to pull us out. Juling was so smart—she easily finished her lessons each day and helped me with mine every night. It was on one of these very ordinary nights that they came upon us without any warning, like the devil himself had descended upon us in the form of the Japanese soldiers. Just because they wore tan uniforms and came in the image of men, it made no difference. Nothing was sacred. When the Japanese first came to Nanking, they ravaged everything, taking what they wanted and burning what they felt like, including people. We did everything we could to become invisible and stay out of their way. Then that night, they came to my father’s shop, pulling us out of bed and making all of us kneel outside in front of the shop before them. They called my father a traitor and beat him. When we tried to stop them, they beat us also. I screamed for help but nobody came. They continued to beat my father while others took my mother, my sister, and me back into the shop, where they lay us side by side and raped us over and over. To ease my fear, Juling turned to me and began singing a nursery rhyme we sang as children. When they were finished, they shot my mother through the head, while another took his bayonet … and …”
“You don’t have to say any more,” Lin said, stroking Ji Shen’s back.
Ji Shen looked up with tears in her eyes and continued. “Maybe it was because of the song that he wanted Juling to suffer, but the devil took his bayonet and went inside her, the same way he himself had just been inside her. I will never forget her screaming. I grabbed whatever I could find and hit the head of the soldier watching me and ran. I kept running until I saw the light of day. I don’t know why they didn’t come after me, maybe because I wasn’t worth their time. They already had what they wanted.”
Ji Shen stopped and took a deep breath. Across the room she could see Pei standing by the window.
“I hid, and caught up with others moving south. They took me in for a while, until it became too much of a burden to have another mouth to feed. I don’t know how I survived the rest of the journey on my own. I just kept moving, and each time I wanted to lay down and die, I saw Juling, who gave me the strength to continue. The rest is like a dream, something that I can only vaguely remember, until I woke up and saw Pei.”
On hearing her name, Pei looked over and walked back to Ji Shen, taking hold of her hand. The room was perfectly still, since the rain and wind had subsided. The sun glared weakly through the delicate curtains, and in the distance they could hear the birds singing in the trees.
Gradually, Ji Shen was able to sleep through the night. Her nightmares still came, but slowly they began to take on a new aspect, one that no longer frightened her with the faces of the devil soldiers. One night she dreamed of her parents, and the next brought her sister, Juling. Their faces came back to her, and in them she found comfort. The days moved on, one after the other, and Ji Shen grew stronger.
Chapter Eighteen
1938
Pei
After Ji Shen stumbled upon the girls’ house, Pei nursed her back to health, protecting her like the little sister she’d never known. Ji Shen had added a spark of life to the girls’ house, dampened by the mass murders of over a hundred thousand Chinese and the ongoing news of city after city falling into the hands of the Japanese. They controlled many of the major seaports and railways, crippling most of China. Through the dark clouds that hovered over them, it was a miracle that Ji Shen had somehow managed to find her way to the house.
Even Moi was taken by Ji Shen. She made strengthening soups, and herbal teas that brewed all day, then had to be drunk quickly while still hot to insure their potency. Moi also nourished Ji Shen with an abundance of food, which came from her secret source. Moi never ceased to amaze Pei and Lin each evening with her plentiful bowls of rice or noodles. Where she got the rice when others scrambled for the smallest grains would remain her mystery. When Chen Ling questioned her, Moi shook her head and said nothing.
From the moment Ji Shen was well again, she did her share of work and never complained. She seemed to live only in the present, hiding from the pain of her past. She had not spoken of her parents and sister again, and there were no more tears. Yet even if she remained silent, Ji Shen’s flight from the north repeated itself over and over again in Pei’s head. Sometimes, Pei looked at Ji Shen and searched her face for a trace of the fear she must have felt. After the horrible scene of seeing her family murdered, she had survived the horrendous journey from Nanking to Yung Kee with little food or water, and with a burning emptiness in her heart. It was an unbelievable feat, of which Ji Shen still had no memory. Pei wondered if Ji Shen carried these fears in the earliest hours of the morning, when she might wake and find herself in the strangeness of her new room, lost and alone. But what Pei saw every morning on Ji Shen’s face was an eagerness to be accepted. And every time Pei
mentioned her past, something distant glazed her eyes.
In body, Ji Shen was well again, though she still limped. She had adapted to the girls’ house with an urgency that kept her busy with any chore Moi granted her. And when the chores ran out, Ji Shen kept Pei company during the day while Lin was away at the factory with Chen Ling. Sometimes, they would walk to the marketplace with Moi and watch the women bargain for what little fruit and vegetables lined the empty stalls, or go down to the river and, half-hiding, watch Chiang’s soldiers gamble away the time.
The days moved swiftly in Ji Shen’s company. Pei continued to write her father, praying for a response before they left Yung Kee, only to be disappointed when there was none. By the end of the week, Lin and Chen Ling would finally be finished at the silk factory. Pei kept telling herself there were only a few more days until they would be safely on their way to Canton. But as much as she looked forward to their new life, Pei worried about the fates of her remaining sisters, especially her newest one, Ji Shen.
Pei had wanted to speak to Lin about Ji Shen, but each night slipped by with nothing said. Pei was afraid there would be no room for Ji Shen on the boat, and she was afraid to hear it from Lin. She knew there was no sense in her fear. Lin liked Ji Shen as much as she did, and it was clear Ji Shen couldn’t stay in Yung Kee with Moi, where it wasn’t safe, or hide in a vegetarian hall in the countryside with Chen Ling and Ming.
So one evening, after their meal, Pei simply asked, “Would you mind if Ji Shen came with us when we leave?”
Women of the Silk Page 23
