The Concubine's Daughter (19 page)

Ah-Jeh lifted the teapot from its wicker warmer, pouring tea in silence. When she had handed Li a cup, she spoke without emotion of any kind.

“It is not a pretty story, but every woman has the right to know her mother’s name and of her karma. They say she threw herself from a window to fall upon the tines of a harrow. She thought that you had been buried alive … and died for love of you, whom she never saw or held.”

Li was not conscious of any change in her face, but felt tears fill her eyes and spill hotly down her cheeks.

“As you know, her name was Pai-Ling and her family, once prosperous, was ruined by the triad tongs. Your father paid cheaply for her as a concubine. She had lotus feet but her spirit, they say, flew high as an eagle. She would be proud of you, I think.”

Elder Sister stood and crossed to a drawer, taking out a folded
sam-foo
of dark red. She tossed it in Li’s lap.

“Put these on and I will fetch you something to eat.”

She went to the kitchen corner to fill a bowl with hot and tasty soup, setting it with another bowl piled high with rice and a pair of chopsticks, while Li drew on the trousers and buttoned the tunic.

“Eat this food while I speak of
sau-hai
, so that you can choose your own path. You are very young, yet already what innocence you had has been bought and sold like turnips. This is the lot of a woman who lives long enough to receive her soul but is lost to her ancestors. You cannot change this, and neither can I.

“For more than a thousand years, the sisterhood has taken care of its own as women without men. To be a Ten Willows weaver is to have a secure place for life—to be treated well and to have the love and respect of many friends. To live and eat as comfortably as a woman should, to want for nothing, and to acquire a modest income of your own, that your passage to the afterlife may be a dignified one—our ancestors are your ancestors. For this you sacrifice what—the selfishness of a stupid man?”

Ah-Jeh pulled a face and pretended to spit upon the floor. “The thunder and rain eclipses all else for any man—kindness, loyalty, truth, and let
us not speak of
love
. If it is love you are after, you will do better to chase the moon in a water jar. All the pleasure of the ivory staff belongs to him—not to you; if you are lucky, you may catch a few drops. He will ram it into every hole in your body whether you wish it or not—and you will have no voice in this. Your voice will only be heard in the agony of bearing his children and the unhappiness left when he is done with you.”

Li watched Elder Sister pause to sip her tea. That she spoke her truth was not in question. Li looked upon her in a clearer light, feeling humbled by the passion of her words.

“Are you one to hope for the love and care of children in your old age … for their gratitude?” Ah-Jeh continued, slowly shaking her head with a mockery of sadness. “If you bear sons and do not die raising them—perhaps you will get a crumb from their table. If you bear daughters and they are allowed to live—your heart will weep for them as Pai-Ling’s wept for you.

“You cannot change your fortunes—that your father has betrayed you, turning your brave young dreams to ashes. He has sold you, and your future lies in the secret drawer of Ming-Chou’s great dragon desk with a hundred others. Nothing will retrieve it but a miracle. So ask these questions of yourself and be truthful: Are the seasons of the mulberry groves all that you will ask of life? To be old before your time, your beauty lost to savage suns and biting winters? Do you prefer to live with fools on a mosquito-ridden riverbank until you are cast out or buried in the Pagoda of Pity at the side of Little Pebble—or do you prefer to be cooled beneath the fans and warmed by the stoves of the mill, to live among flowers and sleep beneath a roof of tile?”

Li listened intently while eating the delicious food put before her. She set the chopsticks aside as Ah-Jeh filled her cup.

“I am unworthy of such valuable advice, and my gratitude is greater than my humble words can express. I beg you to hear my foolish thoughts, as foolish, I think, as the secret of my heart. You have paid me the honor of speaking to me as a woman and not a child. I must try to speak like one, and must beg for your patience… . When the man who calls himself my father dressed me as a doll, he showed me the butterfly of hope, then he
burned the books I could not read. He brought me to Ten Willows, saying I was to live with a rich uncle. He lied because he was afraid I might run from him again before the money paid for me was safely in his purse.

“He left me here and did not even say good-bye; he took with him my chance of happiness. He will never have my forgiveness, no matter what becomes of me. I do not hate him, as I do not know him—he is nothing to me, as I am nothing to him. Beneath the willows, I soon saw that the world of the
mui-mui
and the world of the sisterhood are greatly different, and like the others, I too dreamed of becoming a weaver.

“But I have watched the weavers come and go, hand in hand across the bridge—from the comfort of their little houses to the safety of the mill. They are beautiful to see beneath their sunshades, like flowers that do not wither and die. Each looks like the other and they are fortunate to be content and happy with the life that they have chosen. But I was kept imprisoned by four small walls for too long. My father tried to take away my feet, to make his purse a little fatter. I was less than a
lup-sup
dog and treated as one.

“I fought to save my feet, which took me into the fields under an endless sky. I suffered much to keep them free and cannot think that they will only cross the bridge and walk the flowered paths of this compound for the rest of my life. In the mulberry groves I can walk or run as I please. If one day I choose to run farther and faster than I should, then let me pay the price of my decision.”

Li left her seat to kneel before Elder Sister, kowtowing until her forehead touched the floor. “Ah-Jeh, do not offer me the mirror and the comb … I could not accept them. My respect for the sisterhood is too great and I have already found my limitations. Since I could stand, I have chased the butterfly of hope and happiness. Let me seek the miracle you speak of on my own feet … I shall never complain of the consequences.”

Ah-Jeh listened to Li without showing her thoughts. When she spoke, it was with the voice of Elder Sister, superintendent of Ten Willows.

“Then there is nothing I can do to help you. If you will not accept the mirror and the comb, you must face the punishment your attack on Ming-Chou demands.”

The superintendent informed Ming-Chou that the girl who had turned upon him with such savagery had been captured and secured in the rings. The merchant recalled the fox fairy painfully, his annoyance fleeting. This was Ten Willows business and need go no further. He considered himself a fair master: Had he not supplied mosquito nets and built the Pagoda of Pity in a corner of his own land, a place of burial for those whose ancestors had disowned them? He had full confidence that his superintendent would see to it that the demon did nothing more to disturb the serenity of his illustrious domain.

Ah-Jeh did not need to be told that the faster this was put to rest, the better. There were those among the
mui-mui
who nursed grudges of their own, and would need little reason to rebel. Even her small corner of
sau-hai,
a system that kept order and harmony through the strictness of its rules, could be at risk. Li must be silenced as swiftly as possible, an example that would not be forgotten.

The scroll of proclamation was read out and hung upon the gingko tree. Ah-Jeh spread word throughout the huts of the
mui-mui
and the compound of the mill that the girl called Crabapple had been condemned by the laws of
sau-hai
to receive one hundred strokes of the cane across the soles of her feet, followed by one week of confinement in the animal pens—then to be taken to the river in a basket made for the transport of pigs, and there to be drowned at the break of day in the way of all devils and demons who would corrupt the laws of Ten Willows.

Li was taken to the rings of punishment, her ankles thrust into the clamps. When everyone was assembled, Ah-Jeh slashed the soles of the fox fairy’s feet until the long, thin cane was too heavy to lift.

As each cutting blow jerked her body, flames of agony licking her precious feet, Li found herself back in the rice shed, waiting for the rattle of the latch and the door to open. She thought only of her mother Pai-Ling descending on a moonbeam to the silver mists of the ginger field. A veil of white wrapped her safely in its gossamer folds, where the flames could not follow.

She was left in the leg irons for a day and a night. Certain that the fiend inside her had turned her raving mad, no one went near her. Even the
larn-jai
muttered their abuse from a distance, while their dogs circled, sniffing for an opportunity. Finally, with daylight gone and a pale moon rising, Giant Yun and Little Pebble led the family
mung-cha-cha
silently from the darkness. They formed a circle of protection around Li, sitting upright on the ground to keep away the
larn-jai
and their dogs.

Taken from the rings, Li’s lacerated feet were swollen to twice their size and she could not stand. Armed and uniformed bodyguards of Ming-Chou stood ready as she was dragged to the pigsties and the goat pens, a collar and bell around her neck and tethered by a chain.
S
he was left for a week, to eat what the animals ate and to drink what she could from the trough. The
mui-mui
were ordered to pelt her with refuse, but dared not face the wrath of Little Pebble and the
mung-cha-cha
, or the feet of Giant Yun. Every night, by the light of their mother the moon, her feet were washed with herbs, while Pebble fed her from her own bowl and gave her clean water to drink.

On the seventh day, the
larn-jai
approached Li as they would a helpless goat. They had armed themselves with willow wands to slash her into submission, but could not raise the squeals they hoped for. She resisted them with such frenzy they backed away, giggling as they poked her with sharpened sticks. Only when a vicious blow from behind had stunned her did Li-Xia fall in an explosion of blinding red that slid into instant darkness. It was struck by Ah-Gor, the elder brother of the
larn-jai
, the one who had straddled her in the ditch. She awoke to find that he had tied her hands tightly behind her back with grass rope as another trussed her feet. A filthy hand was shoved brutally between her legs with whoops of laughter as others tore away her clothing.

“We shall see what the beautiful Crabapple is hiding in her hair.” Ah-Gor opened a long-bladed knife, hacking at handfuls of her hair. Another gathered them into a bunch and set it alight, tossing the flaming torch onto her half-naked body. It gave off a smell Li knew she would never forget. Even so, it took time and sweat for the
larn-jai
to force her bodily into the long narrow cylinder of the pig basket. The opening of
the basket was quickly tied tight, as the gangling Ah-Gor squatted beside her, resting on his bony haunches, lighting the stump of a cigarette.

He flicked the burning match at her and blew strong tobacco smoke into her face with a gust of putrid breath, speaking easily as he would to a friend. “There is no escape from the basket.” Ah-Gor grinned, flicking away the stub and climbing to his feet, scooping a dipper of water from the trough, pouring it carefully onto her bound hands and feet. “When the grass rope is wet, it grows tighter and tighter. The more you struggle, the tighter it gets.”

Trussed in this coffin of woven reeds, she was carried down to the riverbank and deserted, bound hand and foot, the gag in her mouth. Only the fire of her festering feet told her she still lived. Left there through the freezing night, she retreated again into the moonlit mists of the ginger field—until the first cock crow echoed across the river, dogs barked, and sampans quietly sculled their way to market, the smell of cooking fires from the chop house strong on the morning air. Lamps were lit among the huts, to the clamor of the triangle. In the rising mists, the bodyguards herded the
mui-mui
to the riverbank in sight of the jetty. They would witness the punishment whether they wished to or not.

Through the weave of the basket, Li saw a procession approaching, headed by two priests and their acolytes in full regalia of red and black, accompanied by the thin keening of trumpets and loud thumping of fish-head drums. The sisters of
sau-hai
followed, their sunshades furled beneath their arms, each with a switch of willow in her hand; and behind them the
larn-jai
, with a great clashing of cymbals and beating of gongs. In moments, the pleasant faces of the weavers surrounded the basket, peering down, looking with bland interest at her muddied face through the open weave, jabbing her with their sticks to see if she still lived.

Looking past them, through eyes almost blind with pain and exhaustion, numbed of all hope, Li blinked her eyes, unsure at first if what she saw was real, or her tortured mind playing tricks: the white-tipped masts and streaming pennants of the foreign ship, twin dragons writhing through the willows like the wings of a phoenix.