Empress in Danger

by Zoey Gong

  “Death comes to us all,” the man muses. “But not soon enough for some of us.”

  “The gods perhaps still have a plan for you,” I say.

  Dong Fa lets out a chuckle, but there is no humor in it. “So, you are looking for your family.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Do you know what happened to them?”

  “Your father said you’d married well,” Dong Fa says. “That your husband had not demanded a dowry but had given your father a large bride price.”

  I nod slowly.

  “I have to wonder how a girl from this neighborhood managed to find a husband such as that. Especially a girl like you with big feet.”

  I gulp and wait for him to continue. He must want something. Money, I suppose.

  “My wife bound the feet of each of our daughters,” Dong Fa goes on. “Oh, how they screamed in pain. You must have heard it, your house being so close to ours.”

  I nod again. I don’t remember his daughters crying in pain specifically, but there were many nights when I couldn’t sleep because of the screams coming from somewhere in the neighborhood as another girl was subject to that rite of passage that would help secure her future and, hopefully, that of her family.

  “I thought that the death of our youngest daughter from infection would be the worst pain I would ever experience as a father. But I couldn’t be more wrong. Seeing the fear on the faces of the other girls as I sold them to that madam was far worse. It’s those faces that haunt me day and night. Those faces are why I long for eternal sleep.”

  I don’t want to hear anymore. I reach into my sleeve and pull out a couple of coins. I lay them out on the floor between us.

  “Please. Please, tell me where I can find my family.”

  Dong Fa takes the coins and slips them somewhere out of sight so quickly, it was practically a magic trick.

  “There is a mountain north of here, Baiyun,” he says. “They live in a village near there called Sitao. I hear he has a farm there, and a big house.”

  “Really?” I ask, my heart racing. Hopefully that means my father has done well for himself since we parted ways.

  The man shrugs. “I only know what he told me.”

  “When did you last speak to him?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. One day is like the next. He gave me this hole in the wall to live so I wouldn’t freeze to death. I guess I shouldn’t have accepted. Why should I want to prolong my life?”

  “Maybe one day your daughters will return too,” I say.

  He’s quiet for a while at that thought. “Maybe.”

  It seems we have nothing left to say to each other after that. I look back out the door, but the sun still has not started to rise.

  “Can I stay here until morning?” I ask. “I’ll travel to my father’s village at first light.”

  “Do whatever you want,” he says as he stands up, stretching his back. “I’m sure I can find somewhere to spend these coins.”

  “Good luck, uncle,” I say as he opens the door and steps out into the cold night.

  “And you,” he says. “I hope you find them.” He lets the door slam behind him and the dog starts barking again. “Ah, shut your mouth, you mangey mutt…” I hear him mutter as he wanders off down the road.

  I know I won’t get any sleep, but neither will I find a carriage heading out of town at this time of night. I lean against a wall and pull the ratty blanket over my big, flat feet. My feet shake with excitement. I’m so close to finding my family. I know I’ll see them soon.

  29

  I ask around the next morning and find out there is a carriage that will leave from the square in front of the Forbidden City heading for Baiyuan Mountain. While I wait, I can’t help but wander the streets a little, losing myself in memories. My mouth waters at the smell of steamed pork buns, buns I could rarely afford. The money Honghui gave me hangs heavy in my sleeve, and my stomach growls loudly. I buy one of the buns, and I eat it so quickly I forget to breathe between bites. I’m panting when I’m done, and I buy another one.

  When I’m done, I wander a bit more and come upon a crowd watching the same opera troupe that was performing here years ago. And they are performing the same opera, Drunken Beauty. The young man playing the part of the concubine seems not to have aged a day, though that could be because of all the makeup he is wearing. This time when the dwarf and his monkey come around asking for donations, I put a coin in his cup.

  I turn my head to see if the carriage has arrived, but instead, I see the old shoe seller, the one I had sold my shoes to in order to have enough money to buy food for my family. My heart clutches as the memory. Had I really been so poor it was better to go barefoot? I can hardly imagine it now. That was the last time I went to bed hungry.

  I walk over toward the shoe seller’s stall, not really looking at it, pretending that something else has my attention. I’m not sure why I’m approaching the stall. There is nothing but painful, sad memories here. But then I see them. The shoes I had sold. My shoes. The shoes that Mama had embroidered for me with delicate red flowers. Even from a distance, I can see the quality. Truly, Mama was a skilled artisan. Of all the fancy, beautiful, expensive shoes I have owned since, none were as detailed as the ones my mother embroidered for me.

  “A pretty lady like you needs a pretty pair of shoes,” the seller says. He reaches for a pair that is obviously new, never worn. I reach up and toy with my hair awkwardly. Do I really look like I can afford a new pair? I’m wearing the simple black clothes of a maid, my hair plaited down my back. I don’t look like a lady. At least, I don’t think I do. But as I watch the man practically falling over himself to sell to me, I realize that it must not be my clothes that give me away as a lady, but something else. Some unnamable quality that I now possess.

  “Actually, I was wondering about that pair,” I say, pointing toward my own shoes nestled among a dozen others.

  “That one?” the seller asks, confused. “Why, the shoes you are wearing are better than those.”

  I look down at my simple, black maid shoes and realize he’s right. Even the maids in the Forbidden City dress better than I did when I lived here. I just shrug.

  “They are prettier,” I say. “How much?”

  “Hmm…” The seller picks up the shoes and rubs his chin. He must think I’m an easy target. He doesn’t know that I know what he paid for the shoes, or that they have been sitting on his stall shelf for years. On one hand, it makes me kind of sad that the shoes have never sold. On the other hand, I am glad they are still here for me to buy.

  The seller quotes me a price for the shoes three times what he paid me for them. I laugh.

  “You said yourself that the shoes I’m wearing are better than those, yet you try to charge me so much?” I start to walk away.

  “Okay, okay, little sister,” the man says. He then quotes me a lower price. Still more than he paid me for them, but I understand that he is running a business, so I hand over the coins. I practically snatch the shoes out of his hands as he offers them to me. A moment ago, buying them had seemed more of a game. But now that I actually have them in my hands, the feel of them, the smell, the memories of watching my mother stitch them together in the light from the open door,

  all of it nearly drives me to tears.

  “Say, you look familiar,” the seller says as I start to walk away, cradling my precious purchase.

  “I get that a lot,” I say as the carriage pulls up and stops, sending plumes of dust into the air.

  I pay the driver his fee and climb up to take a seat. Once I’m seated, I change out my shoes, putting on the pretty black slippers with embroidered red flowers. Oddly, they are more comfortable than the other ones I’d been wearing, despite the supposed lower quality. I guess it’s because I’ve worn these shoes before. They fit me like no other pair ever has.

  Several more people climb into the carriage until we are all crammed together. I lean against the opposite door, thankful for the window and fresh air. I fidget
with the maid’s shoes in my hands and then realize how gross it is to be handling them after walking all over the place in them. But I don’t have a bag to put them in. As the carriage starts to pull away, I shrug and toss the shoes out the window in the direction of the shoe seller. Hopefully he can make a couple of coins off them.

  When I paid my fare, the driver had said Baiyuan mountain was half a day’s ride north of Peking. It’s mid-afternoon by the time the carriage stops and the driver tells me to get out. I see only a small collection of houses and a market with half a dozen sellers. Looking around in every direction, I see only wide-open space. I’m truly in the middle of nowhere. I ask around and find an old farmer willing to let me ride in the back of his donkey cart to Sitao Village. Not only that, he says he will drive right past my father’s farm.

  “You know Hong Wen?” I ask in shock.

  “Everyone knows Old Hong,” the man says with a laugh as he urges his donkey on with a weak tap from his whip. “The only thing he has more than money is daughters!” His laugh turns to a cough in the dry air.

  Well, the remark about having lots of daughters certainly sounds like my father. But having lots of money? Well, I know how much Mingxia paid for me. And she was supposed to give my family even more money after I was selected as a consort, but I don’t know if she ever did. Still, the money Mingxia had given my father was a good sum, but not enough for my family to be counted as rich. If they lived simply, frugally, they could make the money last. But it sounds as if they didn’t do that. If other people consider them rich, they must be living quite lavishly. I hope my father did not squander the money away and now sits only on a fortune of debt.

  We amble along the road and I see a large rice paddy that is brown and fallow for the winter. Beyond it, I see a large manor house made of gray stones. On either side of the manor house are small, brown brick farmhouses.

  “There,” the farmer says, pulling his overworked donkey to a stop and pointing to the manor house. “Sitao Village.”

  I slid off the back of the cart, my heart beating rapidly. “And where does Old Hong live? One of the farmhouses?”

  “What? No. There!” He points to the manor house again.

  “You…you mean the big house?” I ask. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Go on, see for yourself,” the farmer says. Then he taps at his donkey again, leaving me behind without another word.

  Leaving me alone on the road, I have no choice but to go into the village and ask around for my family. The man must have been mistaken, or joking. My father couldn’t possibly afford a house such as that. It’s so huge, it must have dozens of rooms, many servants.

  The village is quite lively. I see a couple of kids guiding a herd of ducks to a pond. An old man is leading a couple of cows to a field to graze. A butcher is cutting up a fat hog. Some women are using a hand pump to fill buckets of water for washing and cooking.

  From around the side of the large house, from down the road, I see a group of well-dressed young ladies. They all have on brightly colored robes, hair styled with pins and flowers, and beautifully embroidered shoes. Three of the girls obviously have bound feet, based on the careful way they sway as they walk. The fourth girl, though, is taller than the others and walks confidently on pot-bottom shoes. They all laugh and chatter as if they don’t have a care in the world. If I weren’t in the middle of the countryside, I would think they were imperial ladies.

  I stop when I catch sight of the girl in the middle of the group. Her face is as familiar to me as my own. My throat squeezes so tightly, I can’t speak. One of the other girls notices me and taps the lead girl on the shoulder. When our eyes meet, the girl stops and freezes, all the color draining from her face as if she’s seen a ghost.

  “Mingming,” I finally choke out.

  “Daiyu?” she asks, shaking her head in confusion.

  I nod and stumble toward her, my arms outstretched. The other girls scatter as if they are afraid I carry some terrible disease, or that I might just get them dirty. But Mingming eagerly embraces me.

  “Is it really you?” she asks.

  “Yes!” I manage to say. “Yes, it’s me.”

  “Mama and Baba will be so thrilled to see you.”

  I have to pull back to look at her face and make sure she isn’t toying with me. “They are here? Really?”

  “Of course,” Mingming says. She points to the big manor house. “They are right inside.”

  “They really live here?”

  Mingming looks at me, as if I am the one telling a joke, then she laughs. She tugs on my arm and leads me into the house. We step over the threshold and I have to look around in wonder at how beautiful the courtyard is.

  “Ma! Ba!” Mingming calls out as she drops my hand and runs off. There is a large pond in the middle of the courtyard, and all around it are trimmed hedges and pretty flowers in pots. There is a second story to the house with a balcony that wraps all around the inside. At the far side of the courtyard, there is an elevated stage for opera or music performances. I’m so completely lost in the grandeur of it all, it’s as if I’m awakened from a dream when I hear my name called.

  “Daiyu!”

  I turn around and see two elderly people I almost don’t recognize, or don’t want to recognize. How could my parents have aged so much in such a short period of time? But as they come toward me, their arms outstretched, none of that matters. We run to each other, and I fall into their arms.

  “Daiyu! Daiyu!” they say over and over again.

  “Are you really here?” my mother asks.

  “Mama. Baba. I’m home.”

  30

  That evening, I see all my sisters, even the youngest, who had been just an infant the last time I saw her. She had been so tiny, I thought she was going to either starve or freeze to death. Now, she’s a healthy and rambunctious toddler.

  “Her name is Daiyu,” my mother tells me later as we sit outside under the stars, wrapped in brackets next to a warm fire. It’s just the two of us, the girls having gone to bed and Baba working with his steward to go over some accounts.

  “Daiyu?” I say as I sip a cup of hot tea.

  “When you left, it was as if you had died,” she explains. “We never thought we would see you again. So, since the baby didn’t have a name, we thought it was a good way to honor your memory. Your sacrifice.”

  “I understand,” I say. “I never thought I would see any of you again. There were many times I thought I was going to die. I thought for sure I was going to be caught. That I was going to be tried for treason and executed.”

  “But you weren’t,” Mama says. “You survived. And now you are here.”

  “Yes,” I say. “I don’t know this place, but I truly feel like I am home since I am with you.”

  “Are you here to stay?” she asks cautiously.

  I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

  She hesitates before asking, “Do you want to tell me how you came to be here?”

  Finally and freely I tell her my story—every part of it. Even the parts I’m not proud of. Every word is like another rock falling from my shoulders. When I finish, Mama is quiet.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you.”

  “Disappointed?” Mama gasps. “How could you ever think that?” “You were so quiet. I thought… I don’t know. I thought maybe you were angry with me.”

  “Daiyu,” she says, taking my hand and squeezing it. “You’ve been through so much, but you only ever did what you had to do to survive. I couldn’t be prouder of you.”

  “Thank you,” I say. I clear my throat to keep from crying again and motion toward the house. “It looks like you and Baba have done more than just survive. How did you end up here anyway?” “Oh, it’s a long story,” she says.

  “I tried to find you,” I say. “Remember? I snuck out of the Forbidden City to see you, but you were gone.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry we weren’t there,” she says. �
��But by then, we knew you’d been selected and weren’t coming back. Little Daiyu was starving and so cold. Your father finally decided there was no reason for us to stay there, so we left. We went to an inn and stayed together in a room with a real bed and a fireplace. The girls ate so much they got sick. But we were determined to not waste the money. Not waste the opportunity. Your father went to the docks, but not for work. He talked to the big bosses there, asking about investment opportunities.

  “Well, he didn’t have enough money to invest in shipping, so they suggested farming instead. We had to leave the city for that, though. We hated not having any way to tell you where we’d gone, but we thought you would never leave the Forbidden City again.

  “It hurts me how close we were to one another,” I say. “The Temple of Grief is just on the other side of Baiyuan Mountain, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not close,” Mama says. “But it’s not as far away as Peking is. So, yes. If you had left, you could have found us, I’m sure.”

  “How could you afford this place?” I ask.

  “Oh, it was very cheap. It had been abandoned by some magistrate. The house was crumbling. The fields were overgrown. There were no farmers. But we did a lot of the work ourselves. We repaired the house and worked the fields. Thankfully, the first harvest was very bountiful. We were able to reinvest more money and expand. Then we rented some of the land to tenant farmers. Your father was able to buy more land to then turn around and rent again. I had no idea he had such a head for business.”

  “I’m proud of him,” I say. “Of all of you. I was so scared…” I’m almost embarrassed to say what I was afraid of in light of just how well Baba has done.

  “I understand,” she says. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t know. All you could do was worry.”

  “What’s next?” I ask. “Will Baba take a concubine and try for a son?” Mama laughs. “No. He says he’s too old for that. And I’m… Well, I’m too worn out. Five daughters is more than enough.”