I had seen many moving pictures before with my mother, all silent: Charlie Chaplin, the fatty man, policemen and fire engines, the cowboys running their racehorses in a circle. That afternoon the picture show was about an orphan girl who had to sell matches in the snow. She was shivering. A woman in front of me was crying, blowing her nose, but I was thinking that little girl was lucky, to be so cool on a hot day. That’s what I was thinking before I fell asleep in the dark theater.
When I awoke, the lights had come on and my mother was leaning toward the man sitting next to her, whispering to him in a solemn voice. I was alarmed. This seemed a dangerous thing she was doing, talking to a stranger. So I whined a little and pulled my mother toward me. The man leaned over and smiled at me. He was not too old. He looked refined. His skin was smooth and light-colored, not like the face of someone who worked outdoors all day long. Yet he was wearing a common villager jacket, plain blue, although very clean. My mother thanked him, and then we stood up and left.
On our ride home, I fell asleep again, all my excitement used up. I woke up only once—bumped out of sleep by the pedicab driver cursing a slow cart on the road. My face was leaning against my mother’s hair. I found myself looking at the color of her hair. How different it looked from mine, from that of other women in our family, from anyone else’s I had ever seen. Not a brown-black or black-brown. Not any kind of black with a name.
My mother’s hair was a color you could feel more than see—very, very black, as black and shiny as water at the very bottom of a deep well. And winding through her bun were two white hairs, like little ripples when tiny stones are thrown in the water. And still, these words are not enough to describe it.
I remember only a few more things, what happened that evening. I was already very tired from the day. We ate a simple meal in our room. Afterward, my mother showed me how to do an embroidery stitch, one she said she invented herself. I copied her very badly, but she did not criticize me, not once. She praised what I had done. And then, as she helped me undress for bed, she gave me another lesson, how to count my fingers and toes. “Otherwise, how will you know if you wake up each morning with the same number?” she said. “... six, seven, eight, nine, ten.”
You see how educated and clever my mother was? She always found a reason why I should learn. She told me once she had wanted to be a schoolteacher, just like the missionaries who had taught her.
And then she sat at her stool in front of her dresser, and I watched her take off her clothes, her jewelry. She pulled off her gold bracelet, her jade earrings. She saw me looking at her in the dresser mirror. She turned around and held up the earrings.
“Someday these will be yours,” she said in a somber voice. I nodded.
“And all this.” She patted her jewelry box. I nodded again.
“When you put them on, people will think your words are worth more.” I nodded once more.
“But you should never think this way, never,” she said. I shook my head right away.
She climbed into the bed we shared and smoothed my hair away. As I looked up at her face, she sang me a little song—about a naughty mouse who stole lamp oil. Do you remember? I used to sing you that song. That night, before I could hear the ending, I fell asleep.
I dreamt about all the things I had seen that day. A fish that cried and sang a song about a little mouse. The blond-haired girl trying on fancy French shoes. My mother’s hair, the way my fingers wove through it only to discover it was not hair at all, but embroidery and jewels. My mother, sitting at her dressing table, combing her hair, crying to her face in the mirror, “Double Second! Double Second!” Although maybe this last part was not a dream.
The next morning, when I awoke, she was not there. I thought she had slipped quietly out of bed and walked to the staircase, the same as we had done the day before. I opened the door and looked out. I saw only the servants, carrying away chamber pots. I went back in the room and sat down to wait for her return. And then—ting-ting-ting—the servant came in with two steaming bowls of syen do jang. You know the one, the salty-tasting soy-milk soup we can get at Fountain Court on the weekend. Last time, Cleo ate a big bowl by herself, no spills.
Anyway, that morning I had no taste for do jang. “My mother—where is she?” I demanded.
The servant did not answer me, only looked around the room, puzzled. She put both bowls down on our table.
“Now eat fast. Don’t let it get cold,” she scolded, and left the room in a hurry. I let my bowl become cold. I waited, and when I became impatient, I began to cry, just a little. A lump grew in my throat, and I waited for my mother to return so I could release it, cry and tell her how long I had waited. I decided that when she did return I would point to my cold bowl. I would demand some English biscuits, at least three to make me happy again. I waited some more. I tipped over my bowl and made a big mess. I stood on a chair and brought down the biscuit tin myself. And still she did not come.
The servant came back to take our bowls away. She looked at the mess I had made. She looked around the room. “Look what you’ve done!” she scolded, then left quickly. As soon as she closed the door, I opened it. I saw the servant talking to the head servant. They both rushed down the stairs, and I ran over to the staircase to watch them going down. And then I heard loud voices downstairs, more people walking, doors opening and closing. I could see Nai-nai, my grandmother, walking slowly up the stairs with the servant talking fast next to her. Nai-nai was not the kind of grandmother who patted my head and told me I was pretty. She was the big boss of all the ladies of the house, and I was the smallest girl, the one she noticed only when she wanted to criticize. I raced back into the room and sat on my bed, scared. Trouble was coming, I knew this.
I cried as soon as they walked in the door. “Where is your mother?” Nai-nai asked again and again. “When did she leave? Did she take anything with her? Did someone come get her?”
What could a little girl say, a girl who knew nothing? I shook my head, cried and cried, “She’s not gone! She is still here, right here.”
Suddenly another person burst into the room. I don’t remember who, because I had eyes only for what she was holding in her hand. It was my mother’s hair, chopped off, now hanging down like a horse’s tail! I screamed. Of course I screamed. It was the same feeling as seeing her head cut off. How bad!
And now my memories of that time are very cloudy. I only remember that everyone was nervous, whispering secrets. And my father was angry. He came into my mother’s room. He opened her drawers, the armoire, her jewelry box, all full. He sat down, quiet. He looked at me sternly as if something were my fault.
“Where did she go?” he asked. And I was trying to be obedient. I tried to guess for him. I said Zhejiang Road. I said maybe Chenghuang Miao. I mentioned the fish stand at Little East Gate. I said she was at the picture theater.
I did not leave the room for three days. I sat there, waiting for my mother. Nobody told me I had to stay there. But nobody came to get me either. The servant who brought me my food said nothing, and I did not ask her any questions.
On the fourth day I went downstairs by myself. As I already told you, my mother used to carry me everywhere. So my legs were never too strong. That day they were very, very weak. But perhaps this was also because I was afraid of what I might see.
Let me tell you, it was worse than what I had imagined. I saw funeral banners hanging on the door. I knew what this meant, without asking. Yet I did not want to believe it. So I walked up to the girl who washed our laundry and asked who had died. The girl said, “How can you ask such a question!” I walked up to Old Aunt, who had arrived that day, and she said, “Don’t talk about this anymore.”
Maybe one week later, maybe sooner than that, I was sent to live on Tsungming Island with my father’s younger brother and his two wives, Old Aunt and New Aunt. The island was two hours from Shanghai by motorboat, up the Huangpu River until you reach its mouth. That’s where my father’s family came from originally,
the island countryside. On a map, maybe it is only a little dot stuck in the water, close to nothing, cut off from everyone.
Anyway, by the time I arrived I was sick to my stomach, because of that motorboat ride, because of my grief. I was crying loud, so heartbroken I didn’t care that Old Aunt was threatening to slap my face in two. I shouted, “I want my mother! I want to be with my mother! Tell her where I am, she’ll come get me.”
And that’s when Old Aunt told me, “Shuh! This is where your mother is buried, on this island.”
If you ask me today what really happened to my mother, I could not tell you exactly, only what everyone told me. And that would not be the truth, only gossip.
I knew this, though: What my mother did was a big disgrace. That’s why they said she died, to bury her scandal. That’s why no one would ever talk about her to my father. That’s why they sent me away, so I would not remind him of her.
And yet, many times they gossiped about her. They all did—Old Aunt, New Aunt, Uncle, and their friends—over tea, during meals, after the noontime nap. For many years, my mother was the source of funny and bad stories, terrible secrets and romantic tales. It was like digging up her grave, then pushing her down farther, always throwing more dirt on top. Can you imagine how a little girl would feel, hearing this about her own mother?
I heard what they said. I felt so bad to hear them. And yet I could not stop myself from listening. I wanted to know how it could be that my mother left me, never telling me why.
So that’s how my mother became a riddle, each piece of gossip making another question in my head. If she was dead, why did they hold no funeral? If she was alive, why didn’t she come back to get me? If she ran away, where did she go?
Sometimes I would try to put together all the pieces of gossip I heard, I would try to make one whole story. But then each part would contradict the next, until no part made sense.
So then I looked at what I knew about my mother, both good things and bad. I tried to think of all the reasons why her life went one way or the other. And this is what I think happened, how my mother came to be the second wife to my father and, later, why she left.
My mother was not like the Chinese girls Americans always imagine, the kind who walk around with tiny bound feet, choosing their words as delicately as they choose their steps. My mother was a modern girl. Many girls in Shanghai were. They were not peasants, nothing of the kind. When my mother was eight years old, her feet were already unbound, and some people say that’s why she ran wild.
She had been born into a wealthy, educated family in Shanghai, the only child of a Ningpo father and a Soochow mother. Soochow is that city of ladies with beautiful soft voices; even a Shanghainese would tell you a Soochow accent is the best. And Ningpo people are such good businesspeople they continue to argue even after they have already made a bargain. So you see, my mother was born with a double character already fighting inside of her.
I think my mother must have been a classic beauty, the kind other girls would read about in a story and cry over, wishing they were reading about themselves. My mother once read me a story like that, about a beautiful but lonely girl. One day, she looked in a pond and thought she had finally found a friend, someone who did not envy her. She did not know that the shimmering face smiling back at her was her own reflection. At the end of the story, my mother exclaimed, “Nonsense! What girl would not know her own self looking back at her!”
In any case, my mother did not look in a pond, she looked in a mirror. Every night she did this. So if I am honest, I would have to say my mother was proud of her looks, maybe even vain, just a little.
Of course, she had reason to be proud. Her skin was the color of white jade. Or maybe it was the color of a summer peach. Or maybe I am only remembering my mother as another classical tale, all those phrases about ladies with voices as pretty-sounding as lutes, skin as white as jade, their gracefulness flowing like calm rivers. Why did stories always describe women that way, making us believe we had to be that way too?
Maybe my mother was not pretty at all, and I only want to believe that she was. But then I think, Why else did my father marry her? He was an important man. He could have had all kinds of wives—which he did. Back then there was no other reason to marry a second, third, or fourth wife, except to use a woman’s prettiness to add to a man’s prestige. So I think my mother must have been pretty. It is not just bad classical stories that make me think this way. There was a reason why she had to be.
She was also smart and clever, quick-thinking too. I have already mentioned that she was educated. She went to a missionary school in Shanghai, the first Chinese school girls could go to. That’s because her father, my gung-gung, was very educated himself, a scholar-official, like a bureau chief in charge of reforms for foreign affairs, something important like that. In any case, many of the officials at that time were sending their daughters off to get an education. That was the modern thought—educate sons, educate daughters a little to prove you were not too feudal-thinking. But Gung-gung did not want to send her to France, or England, or America, the way some families did just to prove how rich they were. All those girls came home with short hair and dark faces from playing tennis outside in the sun. Why should he educate a daughter only to turn her into a girl he did not like? So in 1897, when the missionary school first opened in Shanghai, Gung-gung sent my mother there.
I heard my mother even learned English at that school, although I never heard her say any English words, except “biscuit.” New Aunt, who went to the same missionary school, said my mother was not a good student, not very good at all, maybe that’s why I was the same way. She said my mother had a fighting temper, maybe that’s why I was the same way. She was naughty, maybe that’s why I was the same way.
New Aunt said that once, during prayers at that school, an old nun let out a loud fart—by accident, of course—and my mother burst out laughing and said, “God heard that!”
“I don’t know why the nuns liked her so much,” New Aunt said to me. “They told her, ‘We’re praying hard for you, little one. If you become a Christian, you can go to heaven when you die.’ And your mother, so willful, she said, ‘When I die, I don’t want to live in a heavenly foreign concession.’ Do you know what those nuns did? Laughed—only that!”
New Aunt was so jealous. She used to say, “I was never bad like your mother. So why didn’t the nuns pray hard for me?”
Old Aunt, on the other hand, did not go to that school, no school whatsoever. She was raised in a feudal family, the traditional way: The girl’s eyes should never be used for reading, only for sewing. The girl’s ears should never be used for listening to ideas, only to orders. The girl’s lips should be small, rarely used, except to express appreciation or ask for approval. Of course, all this feudal thinking only made Old Aunt more opinionated on all kinds of matters.
“Her education was the cause,” Old Aunt would always say.
“They put Western thoughts into a Chinese mind, causing everything to ferment. It is the same way eating foreign food—upset stomach, upset mind. The foreign teachers want to overturn all order in the world. Confucius is bad, Jesus is good! Girls can be teachers, girls do not have to marry. For what purpose do they teach this? Upside-down thinking!—that’s what got her into trouble.” And then Old Aunt would warn me, “Weiwei-ah, do not follow your teachers too closely. Look what happened to your mother.”
If you were to ask me, what happened to my mother was not a bad education but bad fate. Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it—that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.
Uncle used to say that none of this would have happened if my mother had not been the only child. All the will and stubbornness that should have been given to a boy went into her. Worse, her parents let her stay at home and grow stronger and stronger. They were thinking they could wait and pick a husband for their only daughter when she was maybe twenty-two.
&
nbsp; Before that could happen, the revolutionaries came and threw the Manchus out. That was in 1911, when my mother was just twenty-one years old. No more Ching Dynasty, no more scholar-official job for Gung-gung.
A servant told Gung-gung this bad news while he was eating his noontime meal. He was chewing a piece of steamed tendon. Suddenly Gung-gung yelled like a wild animal, then bit his tongue right in half. Or perhaps he bit his tongue first, then yelled. In any case, he fell over backward, chair and dead body together. And in one fall, my mother’s family plummeted ten thousand feet. Because everyone said Gung-gung committed suicide, so sorry to see the Ching Dynasty end.
Now my mother’s mother, my ha-bu, was a widow, not so rich anymore. She was in no big hurry to marry off her daughter. Her daughter could take care of her into her old age. That’s what Confucius would have said. I don’t know why everyone always thought Confucius was so good, so wise. He made everyone look down on someone else, women were the lowest!
In any case, my mother was already twenty-one years old, and she had been educated against Confucius thinking. Maybe she wanted to marry, maybe she did not. Who knows? In any case, she would choose for herself. Uncle used to say, “That’s what got her into trouble, thinking for herself.”
New Aunt did not agree. The real trouble, New Aunt said, was romance, a foolish desire on my mother’s part to marry for love. She had met a student from Fudan University, a journalist. He was older, maybe twenty-nine, so he was very late in starting his education. My mother was already twenty-six years old at the time.
This student was a man named Lu, a Marxist, just the kind of person Gung-gung would have hated. New Aunt said she knew all about him, because after my mother left, New Aunt searched through her belongings and found a newspaper story about a student revolutionary named Lu. It must have been the same student she loved, New Aunt said. Why else would my mother have saved the article?