This turned out to be joyous news for Huang Taitai, for she liked nothing better than to reclaim all her gold and jewelry to help me become fertile. And it was good news for me too. Because after the gold was removed from my body, I felt lighter, more free. They say this is what happens if you lack metal. You begin to think as an independent person. That day I started to think about how I would escape this marriage without breaking my promise to my family.
It was really quite simple. I made the Huangs think it was their idea to get rid of me, that they would be the ones to say the marriage contract was not valid.
I thought about my plan for many days. I observed everyone around me, the thoughts they showed in their faces, and then I was ready. I chose an auspicious day, the third day of the third month. That's the day of the Festival of Pure Brightness. On this day, your thoughts must be clear as you prepare to think about your ancestors. That's the day when everyone goes to the family graves. They bring hoes to clear the weeds and brooms to sweep the stones and they offer dumplings and oranges as spiritual food. Oh, it's not a somber day, more like a picnic, but it has special meaning to someone looking for grandsons.
On the morning of that day, I woke up Tyan-yu and the entire house with my wailing. It took Huang Taitai a long time to come into my room. "What's wrong with her now," she cried from her room. "Go make her be quiet." But finally, after my wailing didn't stop, she rushed into my room, scolding me at the top of her voice.
I was clutching my mouth with one hand and my eyes with another. My body was writhing as if I were seized by a terrible pain. I was quite convincing, because Huang Taitai drew back and grew small like a scared animal.
"What's wrong, little daughter? Tell me quickly," she cried.
"Oh, it's too terrible to think, too terrible to say," I said between gasps and more wailing.
After enough wailing, I said what was so unthinkable. "I had a dream," I reported. "Our ancestors came to me and said they wanted to see our wedding. So Tyan-yu and I held the same ceremony for our ancestors. We saw the matchmaker light the candle and give it to the servant to watch. Our ancestors were so pleased, so pleased…."
Huang Taitai looked impatient as I began to cry softly again. "But then the servant left the room with our candle and a big wind came and blew the candle out. And our ancestors became very angry. They shouted that the marriage was doomed! They said that Tyan-yu's end of the candle had blown out! Our ancestors said Tyan-yu would die if he stayed in this marriage!"
Tyan-yu's face turned white. But Huang Taitai only frowned. "What a stupid girl to have such bad dreams!" And then she scolded everybody to go back to bed.
"Mother," I called to her in a hoarse whisper. "Please don't leave me! I am afraid! Our ancestors said if the matter is not settled, they would begin the cycle of destruction."
"What is this nonsense!" cried Huang Taitai, turning back toward me. Tyan-yu followed her, wearing his mother's same frowning face. And I knew they were almost caught, two ducks leaning into the pot.
"They knew you would not believe me," I said in a remorseful tone, "because they know I do not want to leave the comforts of my marriage. So our ancestors said they would plant the signs, to show our marriage is now rotting."
"What nonsense from your stupid head," said Huang Taitai, sighing. But she could not resist. "What signs?"
"In my dream, I saw a man with a long beard and a mole on his cheek."
"Tyan-yu's grandfather?" asked Huang Taitai. I nodded, remembering the painting I had observed on the wall.
"He said there are three signs. First, he has drawn a black spot on Tyan-yu's back, and this spot will grow and eat away Tyan-yu's flesh just as it ate away our ancestor's face before he died."
Huang Taitai quickly turned to Tyan-yu and pulled his shirt up. "Ai-ya!" she cried, because there it was, the same black mole, the size of a fingertip, just as I had always seen it these past five months of sleeping as sister and brother.
"And then our ancestor touched my mouth," and I patted my cheek as if it already hurt. "He said my teeth would start to fall out one by one, until I could no longer protest leaving this marriage."
Huang Taitai pried open my mouth and gasped upon seeing the open spot in the back of my mouth where a rotted tooth fell out four years ago.
"And finally, I saw him plant a seed in a servant girl's womb. He said this girl only pretends to come from a bad family. But she is really from imperial blood, and…"
I lay my head down on the pillow as if too tired to go on. Huang Taitai pushed my shoulder, "What does he say?"
"He said the servant girl is Tyan-yu's true spiritual wife. And the seed he has planted will grow into Tyan-yu's child."
By mid-morning they had dragged the matchmaker's servant over to our house and extracted her terrible confession.
And after much searching they found the servant girl I liked so much, the one I had watched from my window every day. I had seen her eyes grow bigger and her teasing voice become smaller whenever the handsome delivery man arrived. And later, I had watched her stomach grow rounder and her face become longer with fear and worry.
So you can imagine how happy she was when they forced her to tell the truth about her imperial ancestry. I heard later she was so struck with this miracle of marrying Tyan-yu she became a very religious person who ordered servants to sweep the ancestors' graves not just once a year, but once a day.
There's no more to the story. They didn't blame me so much. Huang Taitai got her grandson. I got my clothes, a rail ticket to Peking, and enough money to go to America. The Huangs asked only that I never tell anybody of any importance about the story of my doomed marriage.
It's a true story, how I kept my promise, how I sacrificed my life. See the gold metal I can now wear. I gave birth to your brothers and then your father gave me these two bracelets. Then I had you. And every few years, when I have a little extra money, I buy another bracelet. I know what I'm worth. They're always twenty-four carats, all genuine.
But I'll never forget. On the day of the Festival of Pure Brightness, I take off all my bracelets. I remember the day when I finally knew a genuine thought and could follow where it went. That was the day I was a young girl with my face under a red marriage scarf. I promised not to forget myself.
How nice it is to be that girl again, to take off my scarf, to see what is underneath and feel the lightness come back into my body!
The Red Candle | Up
* * *
The Moon Lady
Ying-Ying St. Clair
* * *
For all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out. And because I remained quiet for so long now my daughter does not hear me. She sits by her fancy swimming pool and hears only her Sony Walkman, her cordless phone, her big, important husband asking her why they have charcoal and no lighter fluid.
All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. And because I moved so secretly now my daughter does not see me. She sees a list of things to buy, her checkbook out of balance, her ashtray sitting crooked on a straight table.
And I want to tell her this: We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.
I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.
Yet today I can remember a time when I ran and shouted, when I could not stand still. It is my earliest recollection: telling the Moon Lady my secret wish. And because I forgot what I wished for, that memory remained hidden from me all these many years.
But now I remember the wish, and I can recall the details of that entire day, as clearly as I see my daughter and the foolishness of her life.
In 1918, the year that I was four, the Moon Festival arrived during an autumn in Wushi that was unusually hot, terribly hot. When I awoke that morning, the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, the straw mat covering
my bed was already sticky. Everything in the room smelled of wet grass simmering in the heat.
Earlier in the summer, the servants had covered all the windows with bamboo curtains to drive out the sun. Every bed was covered with a woven mat, our only bedding during the months of constant wet heat. And the hot bricks of the courtyard were crisscrossed with bamboo paths. Autumn had come, but without its cool mornings and evenings. And so the stale heat still remained in the shadows behind the curtains, heating up the acrid smells of my chamber pot, seeping into my pillow, chafing the back of my neck and puffing up my cheeks, so that I awoke that morning with a restless complaint.
There was another smell, outside, something burning, a pungent fragrance that was half sweet and half bitter. "What's that stinky smell?" I asked my amah, who always managed to appear next to my bed the instant I was awake. She slept on a cot in a little room next to mine.
"It is the same as I explained yesterday," she said, lifting me out of my bed and setting me on her knee. And my sleepy mind tried to remember what she had told me upon waking the morning before.
"We are burning the Five Evils," I said drowsily, then squirmed out of her warm lap. I climbed on top of a little stool and looked out the window into the courtyard below. I saw a green coil curled in the shape of a snake, with a tail that billowed yellow smoke. The other day, Amah had shown me that the snake had come out of a colorful box decorated with five evil creatures: a swimming snake, a jumping scorpion, a flying centipede, a dropping-down spider, and a springing lizard. The bite of any one of these creatures could kill a child, explained Amah. So I was relieved to think we had caught the Five Evils and were burning their corpses. I didn't know the green coil was merely incense used to chase away mosquitoes and small flies.
That day, instead of dressing me in a light cotton jacket and loose trousers, Amah brought out a heavy yellow silk jacket and skirt outlined with black bands.
"No time to play today," said Amah, opening the lined jacket. "Your mother has made you new tiger clothes for the Moon Festival…." She lifted me into the pants. "Very important day, and now you are a big girl, so you can go to the ceremony."
"What is a ceremony?" I asked as Amah slipped the jacket over my cotton undergarments.
"It is a proper way to behave. You do this and that, so the gods do not punish you," said Amah as she fastened my frog clasps.
"What kind of punishment?" I asked boldly.
"Too many questions!" cried Amah. "You do not need to understand. Just behave, follow your mother's example. Light the incense, make an offering to the moon, bow your head. Do not shame me, Ying-ying."
I bowed my head with a pout. I noticed the black bands on my sleeves, the tiny embroidered peonies growing from curlicues of gold thread. I remembered watching my mother pushing a silver needle in and out, gently nudging flowers and leaves and vines to bloom on the cloth.
And then I heard voices in the courtyard. Standing on my stool, I strained to find them. Somebody was complaining about the heat: "…feel my arm, steamed soft clear to the bone." Many relatives from the north had arrived for the Moon Festival and were staying for the week.
Amah tried to pull a wide comb through my hair and I pretended to tumble off the stool as soon as she reached a knot.
"Stand still, Ying-ying!" she cried, her usual lament, while I giggled and wobbled on the stool. And then she yanked the full length of my hair like the reins of a horse and before I could fall off the stool again, she quickly twisted my hair into a single braid off to the side, weaving into it five strands of colorful silk. She wound my braid into a tight ball, then arranged and snipped the loose silk strands until they fell into a neat tassel.
She spun me around to inspect her handiwork. I was roasting in the lined silk jacket and pants obviously made with a cooler day in mind. My scalp was burning with the pain of Amah's attentions. What kind of day could be worth so much suffering?
"Pretty," pronounced Amah, even though I wore a scowl on my face.
"Who is coming today?" I asked.
"Dajya"—All the family—she said happily. "We are all going to Tai Lake. The family has rented a boat with a famous chef. And tonight at the ceremony you will see the Moon Lady."
"The Moon Lady! The Moon Lady!" I said, jumping up and down with great delight. And then, after I ceased to be amazed with the pleasant sounds of my voice saying new words, I tugged Amah's sleeve and asked: "Who is the Moon Lady?"
"Chang-o. She lives on the moon and today is the only day you can see her and have a secret wish fulfilled."
"What is a secret wish?"
"It is what you want but cannot ask," said Amah.
"Why can't I ask?"
"This is because…because if you ask it…it is no longer a wish but a selfish desire," said Amah. "Haven't I taught you—that it is wrong to think of your own needs? A girl can never ask, only listen."
"Then how will the Moon Lady know my wish?"
"Ai! You ask too much already! You can ask her because she is not an ordinary person."
Satisfied at last, I immediately said: "Then I will tell her I don't want to wear these clothes anymore."
"Ah! Did I not just explain?" said Amah. "Now that you have mentioned this to me, it is not a secret wish anymore."
During the morning meal nobody seemed in a hurry to go to the lake; this person and that always eating one more thing. And after breakfast everybody kept talking about things of little consequence. I grew more worried and unhappy by the minute.
"…Autumn moon warms. O! Geese shadows return." Baba was reciting a long poem he had deciphered from ancient stone inscriptions.
"The third word in the next line," explained Baba, "was worn off the slab, its meaning washed away by centuries of rain, almost lost to posterity forever."
"Ah, but fortunately," said my uncle, his eyes twinkling, "you are a dedicated scholar of ancient history and literature. You were able to solve it, I think."
My father responded with the line: "Mist flowers radiant. O!…"
Mama was telling my aunt and the old ladies how to mix various herbs and insects to produce a balm: "This you rub here, between these two spots. Rub it vigorously until your skin heats and the achiness is burned out."
"Ai! But how can I rub a swollen foot?" lamented the old lady. "Both inside and outside have a sour painful feeling. Too tender to even touch!"
"It is the heat," complained another old auntie. "Cooking all your flesh dry and brittle."
"And burning your eyes!" exclaimed my great-aunt.
I sighed over and over again every time they started a new topic. Amah finally noticed me and gave me a mooncake in the shape of a rabbit. She said I could sit in the courtyard and eat it with my two little half-sisters, Number Two and Number Three.
It is easy to forget about a boat when you have a rabbit mooncake in your hand. The three of us walked quickly out of the room, and as soon as we passed through the moongate that led to the inner courtyard, we tumbled and shrieked, running to see who could get to the stone bench first. I was the biggest, so I sat in the shady part, where the stone slab was cool. My half-sisters sat in the sun. I broke off a rabbit ear for each of them. The ears were just dough, no sweet filling or egg yolk inside, but my half-sisters were too little to know any better.
"Sister likes me better," said Number Two to Number Three.
"Me better," said Number Three to Number Two.
"Don't make trouble," I said to them both. I ate the rabbit's body, rolling my tongue over my lips to lick off the sticky bean paste.
We picked crumbs off one another, and after we finished our treat it grew quiet and once again I became restless. Suddenly I saw a dragonfly with a large crimson body and transparent wings. I leapt off the bench and ran to chase it, and my half-sisters followed me, jumping and thrusting their hands upward as it flew away.
"Ying-ying!" I heard Amah call, and Number Two and Number Three ran off. Amah was standing in the courtyard and my mother and the other ladie
s were now coming through the moongate. Amah rushed over and bent down to smooth my yellow jacket. "Syin yifu! Yidafadwo!"—Your new clothes! Everything, all over the place!—she cried in a show of distress.
My mother smiled and walked over to me. She smoothed some of my wayward hairs back in place and tucked them into my coiled braid. "A boy can run and chase dragonflies, because that is his nature," she said. "But a girl should stand still. If you are still for a very long time, a dragonfly will no longer see you. Then it will come to you and hide in the comfort of your shadow." The old ladies clucked in agreement and then they all left me in the middle of the hot courtyard.
Standing perfectly still like that, I discovered my shadow. At first it was just a dark spot on the bamboo mats that covered the courtyard bricks. It had short legs and long arms, a dark coiled braid just like mine. When I shook my head, it shook its head. We flapped our arms. We raised one leg. I turned to walk away and it followed me. I turned back around quickly and it faced me. I lifted the bamboo mat to see if I could peel off my shadow, but it was under the mat, on the brick. I shrieked with delight at my shadow's own cleverness. I ran to the shade under the tree, watching my shadow chase me. It disappeared. I loved my shadow, this dark side of me that had my same restless nature.
And then I heard Amah calling me again. "Ying-ying! It is time. Are you ready to go to the lake?" I nodded my head and began to run toward her, my self running ahead. "Slowly, go slowly," admonished Amah.
Our entire family was already standing outside, chatting excitedly. Everybody was dressed in important-looking clothes. Baba was in a new brown-colored gown, which while plain was of an obviously fine-quality silk weave and workmanship. Mama had on a jacket and skirt with colors that were the reverse of mine: black silk with yellow bands. My half-sisters wore rose-colored tunics and so did their mothers, my father's concubines. My older brother had on a blue jacket embroidered with shapes resembling Buddha scepters for long life. Even the old ladies had put on their best clothes to celebrate: Mama's aunt, Baba's mother and her cousin, and Great-uncle's fat wife, who still plucked her forehead bald and always walked as if she were crossing a slippery stream, two tiny steps and then a scared look.