Peony in Love (28 page)

“And I’ve caused harm,” I confessed. After everything she’d told me, didn’t I owe her the truth about what I’d done to Tan Ze? “My sister-wife died because of me.”

“I heard it differently,” Mama said. “Ze’s mother blamed her daughter for not performing her wifely duties. She was the kind who made her husband fetch water, isn’t that true?”

When I nodded, she went on.

“You can’t blame yourself for Ze’s hunger strike. This strategy is as old as womankind. Nothing is more powerful or cruel than for a woman to make her husband watch her die.” She took my face in her hands and looked into my eyes. “You’re my beloved daughter, no matter what you think you’ve done.”

But Mama didn’t know everything.

“Besides, what choice did you have? Your mama and baba failed you. I feel especially responsible. I wanted you to excel at embroidery, painting, and playing the zither. I wanted you to keep your mouth shut, put on a smiling face, and learn to obey. But look what happened. You flew right out of the villa. You found freedom here”—she pointed to my heart—“in your seat of consciousness.”

I saw the truth of her words. My mother made sure I was highly educated so I’d become a good wife, but in the process she’d inspired me to depart from the usual model of a young woman on the cusp of marriage.

“You have a big and good heart,” Mama continued. “You don’t have to be ashamed for anything. Think instead of your desires, your knowledge, and what’s in here—your heart. Mencius was clear on this point: Lacking pity, one is not human; lacking shame, one is not human; lacking a sense of deference, one is not human; lacking a sense of right and wrong, one is not human.”

“But I’m not human. I’m a hungry ghost.”

There. I’d told her, but she didn’t ask how it happened. Maybe it was too much for her to know right now, because she asked, “But you’ve experienced all that, haven’t you? You’ve felt pity, shame, remorse, and sadness for everything that happened to Tan Ze, right?”

Of course I had. I’d driven myself into exile as punishment for what I’d done.

“How can one test for humanity?” Mama asked. “By whether or not you cast a shadow or leave prints in the sand? Tang Xianzu gave you the answers in the opera you love so well, when he wrote that no one can exist without joy, anger, grief, fear, love, hate, and desire. So, you have it from the
Book of Rites,
from
The Peony Pavilion,
and from me, that the Seven Emotions are what make us human. You still have these within yourself.”

“But how can I change the wrongs I’ve done?”

“I don’t believe you’ve done wrong. But if you do, you have to take all your ghostly attributes and put them to good use. You need to find another girl whose life you can repair.”

That girl came to my mind in a flash, but I needed Mama’s help.

“Would you walk with me?” I asked. “It’s very far….”

Her smile radiated, sending beams across the dark surface of the lake. “That would be a good thing. I’m meant to be roaming.”

She stood and looked around the Moon-Viewing Pavilion one last time. I helped her over the balustrade and down to the shore. She reached into the folds of her clothes and pulled out the fish-shaped locks. One after the other she threw them into the lake, each one hitting the water with a soundless splash that sent barely discernible ripples into infinity.

We began to walk. I guided Mama, her spirit skirts trailing on the ground behind her, through the city. By morning we reached the countryside, where fields stretched out around us like an intricately woven piece of brocade. The mulberry trees were dense with foliage. Big-footed women in straw hats and faded blue clothes climbed up in the branches to cut the leaves. Below them, other women—brown from the sun and strong from their labors—tilled the soil around the roots or carried away baskets of the leaves.

Mama was no longer afraid. Her face glowed with peace and happiness. In days long past, she’d come this way many times with my father and she relished the familiar landmarks. We traded confidences, compassion, and love—all those things that only a mother and daughter can share.

For so long I’d wished to be part of a sisterhood. I hadn’t found it in the women’s chambers with my cousins when I was alive, because they hadn’t liked me. I hadn’t found it on the Viewing Terrace with the other lovesick maidens, because their lovesickness was different from mine. I hadn’t found it with the members of the Banana Garden Five, because they didn’t know I existed. But I had it with my mother and grandmother. Despite our weaknesses and failings, a single thread bound us together: my grandmother, as confused as she was; my mother, as broken as she was; and me, a pathetic hungry ghost. As Mama and I walked on through the night, I understood at last that I was not alone.

A Daughter’s Fate

WE REACHED GUDANG EARLY THE NEXT MORNING AND
made our way to the house of the headman. I’d done so much roaming by now that these long distances no longer hurt me, but Mama had to sit down and massage her feet. A child squealed and ran barefoot out of the house. It was Qian Yi. Her hair had been tied up in little tufts, giving her an appearance of sparkle and liveliness that went against her thin frame and pale face.

“Is she the one?” Mama asked skeptically.

“Let’s go inside. I want you to see her mother.”

Madame Qian sat in a corner embroidering. Mama examined the stitches, looked at me in wonder, and said, “She’s from our class. Look at her hands. Even in this place they’re soft and white. And her stitches are delicate. How did she end up here?”

“The Cataclysm.”

Mama’s puzzlement turned to worry as she conjured up images of what might have happened. She reached into the folds of her skirts to find the locks she’d always relied on. Finding nothing, she clasped her hands together.

“Consider the girl, Mama,” I said. “Should she suffer too?”

“Maybe she’s paying for a bad deed in a past life,” Mama suggested. “Maybe this is her fate.”

I frowned. “What if it is her fate for us to interfere on her behalf?”

Mama looked doubtful. “But what can we do?”

I answered her question with one of my own. “Do you remember when you told me that footbinding was an act of resistance against the Manchus?”

“It was. It still is.”

“But not here. This family needs its big-footed daughters to work. But this girl won’t be able to do that.”

Mama agreed with my assessment. “I’m surprised she’s lived this long. But how can you help her?”

“I’d like to bind her feet.”

Madame Qian called for her daughter. Yi obeyed and came to stand next to her mother.

“Footbinding alone won’t change her fate,” Mama said.

“If I’m to atone,” I hurried on, “then I can’t choose something easy.”

“Yes, but—”

“Her mother moved down in the Cataclysm. Why can’t Yi move up?”

“Up to what?”

“I don’t know. But even if her destiny is only to be a thin horse, wouldn’t that be better than this? If that’s to be her course, perfectly bound feet will put her into a higher home.”

Mama looked around the sparsely decorated room, then back at Madame Qian and her daughter. When she said, “This isn’t the season for footbinding. It’s too hot,” I knew I’d won.

Putting the idea into Madame Qian’s head was easy, but getting her husband to agree was another matter altogether. He listed his reasons against it: Yi wouldn’t be able to help him raise silkworms (which was true), and no man in the countryside wanted to marry a useless woman with bound feet (which was a pointed insult directed at his wife).

Madame Qian listened patiently, waiting for an opportunity to speak. When it came, she said, “You seem to forget, Husband, that selling a daughter could bring a small fortune.”

The next day, even as my mother reminded me again that we were in the wrong season, Madame Qian gathered together alum, astringent, binding cloths, scissors, nail clippers, needle, and thread. Mama knelt next to me as I placed my cold hands over Madame Qian’s and helped her wash her daughter’s feet and then put them in a softening bath of herbs. Then we cut Yi’s toenails, daubed the flesh with the astringent, folded the toes under, wrapped the binding cloth up, over, and under the foot, and finally sewed the cloth shut so Yi wouldn’t be able to free herself. Mama spoke softly into my ear, encouraging me, praising me. She gave me her mother love and I passed it through my hands into Yi’s feet.

The child didn’t begin to cry until later that night as her feet began to burn from the lost circulation and constant pressure of the bindings. Over the next few weeks, as we tightened the bindings every four days and made Yi walk back and forth to put added pressure on the bones that needed to break, I went forward with grim determination. Nights were the worst, when Yi sobbed, sucking in hiccuped breaths through her agony.

This would be a two-year process, and Yi inspired me with her bravery, inner strength, and persistence. The moment the bindings went on her feet, Yi automatically moved up a class from her father and her siblings. She could no longer run away from her mother or follow her sisters barefoot through the dusty village. She was an inside girl now. Her mother understood this too. The house had little ventilation, but my ghostliness brought coolness wherever I was, and on the hottest day of summer, when even I couldn’t overcome the oppressive heat and humidity and Yi’s suffering was great but not as great as it would be in a few more weeks, Madame Qian brought out the
Book of Songs.
The bright white pain in Yi’s mind lessened as her mother recited love poems written by women tens of centuries ago. But after a while, the burning and throbbing in Yi’s feet overpowered her again.

Madame Qian got up from the bed, swayed to the window on her golden lilies, and stared out over the fields for several minutes. She bit her upper lip and gripped the windowsill. Did she have the same thoughts as I, that this was a terrible mistake? That she was causing her daughter too much pain?

Mama came to my side. “Doubt comes to all mothers,” she said. “But remember, this is the one thing a mother can do to give her daughter a better life.”

Madame Qian’s fingers loosened on the windowsill. She blinked back her tears, took a deep breath, and returned to the bed. She opened the book again.

“With your feet bound, you’re no longer like your sisters,” she said, “but there’s an even more important gift I can give you. Today, little one, you will begin to learn to read.”

As Madame Qian pointed out certain characters, explaining their origins and their meanings, Yi forgot her feet. Her body relaxed and the blinding whiteness of pain dulled. At six, Yi was old to start a proper education, but I was there to redeem myself, and reading and writing were things I knew very well. With my help, she would catch up.

A few days later, after seeing Yi’s curiosity and aptitude, Mama announced, “I think the child’s going to need a dowry. I’ll be able to help with that once I’m settled.”

With our energies so focused on Qian Yi, I’d stopped paying attention to the passage of time. Mama’s forty-nine days of roaming had come to an end.

“I wish we had more time,” I said. “I wish it had always been like this. I wish—”

“No more regrets, Peony. Promise me that.” Mama hugged me and then held me away from her so she could look me straight in the face. “Soon you’ll go home too.”

“To the Chen Family Villa?” I asked, confused. “To the Viewing Terrace?”

“To your husband’s home. That’s where you belong.”

“I can’t go back there.”

“Prove yourself here. Then go home.” As she began to fade away and into her ancestor tablet, she called out, “You’ll know when you’re ready.”

FOR THE NEXT
eleven years I stayed in Gudang and dedicated myself to Qian Yi and her family. I perfected controlling my basest hungry-ghost qualities by building shields around myself, which I could raise and lower at will. In summer, I moved indoors with the family and cooled the house for them. When fall came, I mastered blowing on the coals in the brazier to make them hotter without singeing my skin or scorching my clothes.

It is said that a clean snow means prosperity in the coming year. Indeed, during my first winter in Gudang, a clean snow blanketed the Qian house and all that lay around it. At the New Year, when Bao came to survey my father’s lands and exhort the workers to increase production, he had news: his wife was pregnant, and he was not increasing the rents and tributes due to the Chen family as usual.

The next winter more clean snow fell. This time when Bao came and announced that his wife had given birth to a son, I knew my mother had been hard at work in the afterworld. Bao did not deliver red eggs to everyone as a celebration for this miracle. He did something even better: He awarded each of the headmen of the villages that housed my father’s workers a
mou
of land. The following year, another pregnancy, followed the year after that by another son. Now that the Chen family’s future was secure, Bao could afford to be generous. With the birth of each new son, he gave another
mou
of land to the headmen. In this way, the Qian family’s prosperity grew. The older sisters were given small dowries and married out. At the same time, bride-prices came in, increasing Master Qian’s holdings.

Yi grew up. Her lily feet turned out beautifully: small, fragrant, and perfectly shaped. She remained sickly, even though I kept away other spirits who preyed on weakness. With her sisters gone from the house, I made sure she got more to eat, and her
qi
strengthened. Madame Qian and I turned the girl from a piece of unsculpted jade unfit for use into someone precious and refined. We taught her to dance on her lily feet so she looked like she was floating on clouds. She learned to play the zither in a clear style. Her strategy at chess became as ruthless as a pirate’s. She also learned to sing, embroider, and paint. We lacked books, however. Master Qian didn’t appreciate their purpose.

“Yi’s education is part of a long-term investment,” Madame Qian reminded her husband. “Think of her as a tray of silkworms that must be tended properly so they will spin their cocoons. You would not disregard that asset. If you tend a daughter, she will also become valuable.” But Master Qian was resolute, so we did the best we could with the
Book of Songs.
Yi could memorize and recite, but she didn’t quite understand the poems’ meanings.

All too soon Yi was a plum ready to be plucked. At seventeen, she was small, thin, and beautiful. Her features were delicate: jet-black hair, a wide-open forehead like white silk, lips the color of apricots, and cheeks as pale as alabaster. Dimples appeared with every smile. Her eyes shone bright with impudence. Her straight nose and questioning glances revealed her curiosity, independence, and intelligence. That she had survived illness, neglect, footbinding, and a generally weak constitution showed hidden tenacity and fortitude. She needed to be matched.

But her marriage possibilities were slim in the countryside. She could not do the hard labor required of her. She was still sickly, and she had a disconcerting habit of saying whatever came to her mind. She was educated but not to perfection, so even if a city family could be found that would consider a country girl, she would not be judged suitable or ready. And even in wealthy, some might say enlightened, families, no one wanted a second, third, fourth, let alone a
fifth
daughter, for it implied that only girls could come from the bloodline. For all these reasons, the local matchmaker pronounced Yi unmarriageable. I thought otherwise.

FOR THE FIRST
time in eleven years, I left Gudang for Hangzhou and went straight to Ren’s home. He had just reached forty-one years. In many ways he seemed the same. His hair was still black. He was still long, thin, and graceful. His hands still entranced me. While I’d been away, he’d stopped drinking and visiting the pleasure houses. He’d written his own commentary on
The Eternal Palace,
a play written by his friend Hong Sheng, which was published to great acclaim. Ren’s poetry had been collected in editions featuring the finest poets of our region. He’d earned a reputation as a distinguished and respected drama critic. He’d been, for a time, secretary to a
juren
scholar. In other words, he’d found peace without me, without Tan Ze, and without the company of women. But he was lonely. If I’d lived, I would have been thirty-nine, we would have been married for twenty-three years, and it would have been time for me to start looking for a concubine for him. Instead, I wanted to bring him a wife.

I went to Madame Wu. We were “sames,” and we both shared love for Ren. She had always been receptive to me, so I whispered in her ear. “A son’s only duty in life is to give the family a son. Your first son has failed in this task. Without a grandson, you won’t be cared for in the afterworld and neither will any of the Wu ancestors. Only your second son can help you now.”

Over the next few days, Madame Wu watched Ren carefully, gauging his moods, seeing his solitary ways, and mentioning that it had been a long time since the sound of children had filled their compound.

I fanned my mother-in-law when she rested in the heat of the day. “Do not worry about class. Ren was not a golden boy when he was betrothed to the Chen daughter or when you married in the Tan girl. Both of those arrangements ended in disaster.” I respected my mother-in-law by never sitting in her presence, but I had to rush her along. “This could be your last chance,” I told her. “You have to do something now, while society is fluid and before the emperor has his way.”

That evening, Madame Wu broached the subject of a new wife with her son. He did not object. After that, she called in the best matchmaker in the city.

Several girls were mentioned. I made sure they were all rejected.

“The girls in Hangzhou are too precocious and spoiled,” I whispered in Madame Wu’s ear. “You had someone like that once before in your household and it didn’t suit you.”