Peony in Love (7 page)

Finally, we were done. Mama looked at my work and patted my cheek. “You did an excellent job. This may be your special gift. You will make a fine wife and mother.”

Never had my mother offered such approval for anything I’d done.

Mama wrapped the foot she’d worked on first. She did what Second Aunt couldn’t do; she made the bindings very tight. Orchid was beyond tears by now, so the only sounds were my mother’s voice and the soft swish of the cloth as she passed it up and over and under the foot, again and again, until all three meters had been used on the one tiny foot.

“More girls are having their feet bound than ever before in the history of our country,” Mama explained. “The Manchu barbarians believe our women’s practice to be backward! They see our husbands and we worry for them, but the Manchus can’t see us in our women’s chambers. We wrap our daughters’ feet as an act of rebellion against those foreigners. Look around; even our maids, servants, and slaves have bound feet. Even the old, the poor, and the frail have bound feet. We have our women’s ways. This is what makes us valuable. It’s what makes us marriageable. And they cannot make us stop!”

Mama sewed the bindings shut, set the foot on a cushion, and began working on the foot I’d reshaped. When she finished, she set this foot on the cushion as well. She batted her sister-in-law’s comforting fingers away from Orchid’s still-wet cheeks and added a few final thoughts.

“Through our footbinding we have won in two ways. We weak women have beaten the Manchus. Their policy failed so badly that now the Manchu women try to emulate
us.
If you went outside, you would see them with their big ugly shoes with tiny platforms built in the shape of bound-foot slippers tacked under the soles to give them the
illusion
of bound feet. Ha! They cannot compete with us or stop us from cherishing our culture. More importantly, our bound feet continue to be an enticement to our husbands. Remember, a good husband is one who brings you pleasure too.”

With the sensations I’d had in my body since meeting my stranger, I felt I knew what she was talking about. Strangely, though, I’d never seen my mother and father touch. Did this come from my father or my mother? My father had always been affectionate with me. He hugged me and kissed me whenever we saw each other in the corridors or I visited him in his library. The physical distance between my parents had to come from some lack in my mother. Had she gone to her marriage with the same apprehension I would now take to mine? Was this why my father had concubines?

Mama stood up and pulled her wet skirt away from her legs. “I’m going to change. Peony, please go ahead to the Spring Pavilion. Second Aunt, leave your daughter here and go with Peony. We have guests. I’m sure they’re waiting for us. Ask them to start breakfast without me.” To Shao, she added, “I’ll send
congee
for the child. Make sure she eats it, and then give her some herbs to ease the pain. She may rest today. I’m counting on you to let me know what transpires four days from now. We can’t allow this to happen again. It’s unfair to the child and it frightens the younger girls.”

After she left, I stood up. For a moment, the room went dark. My head finally cleared, but my stomach was far from calm.

“Take your time, Auntie,” I managed to say. “I’ll meet you in the corridor when you’re ready.”

I hurried back to my room, shut the door, lifted the lid off the half-full chamber pot, and threw up. Fortunately, Willow was not there to see me, because I don’t know how I would have explained myself. Then I got up, rinsed my mouth, walked back down the corridor, and arrived just as Second Aunt emerged from the girls’ hall.

I’d finally done something that made my mother truly proud, but it had also made me sick. For all my desire to be strong like Liniang, I was softhearted like my aunt. I wouldn’t be able to show my mother love to my daughter. I’d be a disaster when it came to binding her feet. I hoped that Mama would never know. My mother-in-law might not let the news of my failure pass beyond the Wu family gates, just as Mama wouldn’t let anyone know of Second Aunt’s continued weakness. This fell under the admonition of never doing anything that would allow the family to lose face, and the Wus—if they were good and kind—would do their part by keeping the secret within the four walls of their home.

I expected hushed tones when Second Aunt and I entered the Spring Pavilion, for surely every woman in the villa had heard Orchid’s screams, but Third Aunt had taken the opportunity to play at being head woman. Dishes had been set out and the women were busily eating and gossiping as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened on the morning of Double Seven in the Chen Family Villa.

I forgot to harden myself against my cousins’ predictable biting comments that came over breakfast, but oddly their words fell away from me like the old skin that Willow had washed from my feet. I couldn’t eat, however, not even the special dumplings that Mama had Cook prepare for my birthday. How could I put food in my mouth and swallow it when my stomach was still so unsettled—from the binding, from my secret happiness, and from my worries about being caught tonight?

After breakfast, I went back to my room. Later, when I heard the soft padding of lily feet as the others left their rooms and headed for the Lotus-Blooming Hall, I wrapped one of my paintings in a piece of silk for today’s contest, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the corridor.

When I got to the Lotus-Blooming Hall, I sought my mother’s side. Her warm feelings from earlier seemed to have evaporated, but I didn’t worry. She would be exceptionally busy today between the guests, the contests, and the celebration, I thought, as she walked away from me.

We started with an art contest. If I was sloppy at embroidery and awkward at the zither, I was even worse when it came to painting. The contest’s first category was peonies. Once it seemed all the paintings had been displayed, expectant eyes turned to me.

“Peony, where is
your
peony?” one of our guests asked.

“It’s her name,” Third Aunt confided to the others, “but she never practices her petal work.”

This contest was followed by one for chrysanthemums, another for plum blossoms, and finally for orchids. I surreptitiously laid my painting on the table. My orchids were too heavy and another girl won the competition. Next came paintings with butterflies, and finally butterflies and flowers together. I didn’t enter either of those categories.

Always the same flowers and butterflies, I thought to myself. But what else could we paint? Our paintings were about what we could see in the garden: butterflies and flowers. Standing there, looking at the beautifully powdered faces of my aunts, cousins, and our female guests, I saw wistful longing. But if I was looking at them, they were observing me too. My mooning did not escape the notice of the other women, who were all trained to spot weakness and vulnerability.

“Your Peony seems to have been overcome by spring sickness in summer,” Fourth Aunt remarked.

“Yes, we have all noticed the heightened color on her cheeks,” Third Aunt added. “What could be on her mind?”

“Tomorrow I will pick herbs and brew a tea to ease her spring sickness,” Fourth Aunt offered helpfully.

“Spring sickness in summer?” my mother echoed. “Peony is too practical.”

“We like to see your daughter this way,” Second Aunt said. “Perhaps she will confide her secrets to the other girls. They all wish to have romantic thoughts too. Every girl should look this pretty on her sixteenth birthday. Five more months to her marriage. I think we can all agree she is ready to be plucked.”

I tried as hard as possible to make my face as unfathomable as a pond on a humid summer night. I failed, and some of the older women tittered at my girlish embarrassment.

“Then it’s a good thing she’s marrying soon,” my mother agreed, in a deceptively light tone. “But you’re right, Second Aunt, maybe she should speak to your daughter. I’m sure that Broom’s husband would be grateful for any improvement on their wedding night.” She clapped her hands softly. “Now come, let us go to the garden for our final contests.”

As the other women filed out, I felt my mother’s eyes on me—weighing and considering what had been said. She didn’t speak and I refused to meet her eyes. We were like two stone statues in that room. I was grateful she’d protected me, but to say that would be to admit…what? That I was lovesick? That I’d met someone in the Riding-the-Wind Pavilion the last two nights? That I planned to meet him tonight in the Moon-Viewing Pavilion, a place on our property I was not allowed to go? Suddenly I realized I’d changed in a fundamental way. Monthly bleeding doesn’t turn a girl into a woman, nor does betrothal or new skills. Love had turned me into a woman.

I called upon my grandmother’s poise and dignity, and without saying a word I lifted my head and walked out the door and into the garden.

I sat on a porcelain jardinière. The garden looked very pretty, and much of the inspiration for this last round of contests would come—as usual—from what we could see. My cousins and aunts offered bits of poetry from famous women poets that invoked the plum blossom, chrysanthemum, orchid, and peony. So many lovely words for such beautiful and evocative flowers, but I scrolled through my memory until I came to a dark poem that had been written on a wall in Yangzhou by an unknown woman during the Cataclysm. I waited until the others had recited their poems and then I began to speak in what I imagined to be the sorrowful voice of that desperate writer:

“The trees are bare.

In the distance, the honks of mourning geese.

If only my tears of blood could dye red the blossoms of the plum tree.

But I will never make it to spring.

My heart is empty and my life has no value anymore.

Each moment a thousand tears.”

This poem—considered one of the saddest of the Cataclysm—reached deep into everyone’s hearts. Second Aunt, still upset over her daughter’s footbinding, once again shed tears, but she wasn’t the only one. Great feelings of
qing
filled the garden. We shared in the despair of that lost and presumably dead woman.

Then I felt my mother’s eyes piercing me. All color had drained from her face, making her rouge stand out like bruises on her cheeks. Her voice was barely audible as she said, “On this beautiful day my daughter brings misery into our midst.”

I didn’t know why Mama was upset.

“My daughter isn’t feeling well,” Mama confided to the mothers around her, “and I’m afraid she’s forgotten what’s proper.” She looked back at me. “You should spend the rest of the day and evening in bed.”

Mama had control over me, but was she really going to keep me from the opera because I recited an unhappy poem? Tears gathered in my eyes. I blinked them back.

“I’m not sick,” I said, rather pathetically.

“That is not what Willow tells me.”

I flushed with anger and disappointment. When she’d emptied the chamber pot, Willow must have seen that I’d thrown up and told my mother. Now my mother knew I’d failed—once again—as a soon-to-be wife and mother. But this knowledge didn’t chasten me. It made me very determined. I wouldn’t let her keep me from my meeting in the Moon-Viewing Pavilion. I brought a forefinger to my cheekbone, inclined my head, and drew my features into the prettiest, blankest, most harmless picture of a Hangzhou maiden.

“Oh, Mama, I think it is as my aunties have said. On the day we honor the Weaving Maid I have let my mind drift to the celestial bridge that will be formed tonight for the two lovers to meet. I may have had a momentary case of spring feelings, but I don’t have spring fever, aches of any sort, or any womanly complaints. My lapse is only an indicator of my maiden status, nothing more.”

I appeared so innocent, and the other women looked at me with such benevolence, that my mother would have had a hard time sending me away.

After a long moment, she asked, “Who can recite a poem with
hibiscus
in it?”

Everything—as it was every day in our women’s quarters—seemed a test of some sort. And every test reminded me of my inferiority. I didn’t excel at anything—not footbinding, or embroidery, painting, zither playing, or reciting poetry either. How could I go to my marriage now when I loved someone else so deeply? How could I be the wife my husband deserved, needed, and wanted? My mother had followed all the rules, yet she’d failed to give my father sons. If Mama had been unsuccessful as a wife, how could I ever succeed? Maybe my husband would turn away from me, embarrass me in front of my mother-in-law, and find delights in the singing girls around the lake or by taking in concubines.

I recalled something Mama liked to repeat: “Concubines are a fact of life. What matters is that
you
choose them before your husband does, and then how
you
treat them. Don’t hit them yourself. Let him do it.”

That was not what I wanted for my life.

Today was my sixteenth birthday. Tonight, in the heavens, the Weaving Maid and the Cowherd would be reunited. In our garden, Liniang would be resurrected by Mengmei’s love. And in the Moon-Viewing Pavilion, I would meet my stranger. I may not have been the most perfect young woman in all of Hangzhou, but under his gaze I felt I was.

Soiled Shoes

CONFUCIUS WROTE
:
RESPECT THE GHOSTS AND SPIRITS
but keep them at a distance.
On Double Seven, people forgot about ghosts and ancestors. Everyone just wanted to enjoy the celebration—from our special games to the opera performance. I changed into a silk gauze tunic embroidered with a pair of birds flying above summer flowers to evoke the happiness I felt when my stranger and I were together. Under this I wore a skirt of silk brocade with a band of snow-crabapple blossoms embroidered around the hem, which attracted the eye to my fuchsia-colored silk bound-foot shoes. Gold earrings dangled from my ears, and my wrists were heavy with gold and jade bangles that had been given to me over the years by my family. I was not in the least over-dressed. Everywhere I looked I saw lovely women and girls who tinkled and jangled as they swayed across the room to greet one another in their rhythmic lily gaits.

On the altar table, set up for the occasion in the Lotus-Blooming Hall, sticks of incense burned in bronze tripods, filling the room with a deliciously pungent odor. Piles of fruit—oranges, melons, bananas, carambolas, and dragon eyes—sat in cloisonné dishes. On one end of the table stood a white porcelain bowl filled with water and pomelo leaves to symbolize the ritual bath given to brides. In the middle of the table lay a circular tray—nearly one meter across—with a round center surrounded by six sections. The middle depicted the Weaving Maid and the Cowherd, with his buffalo wading nearby in the stream to remind us of the place the goddess had hidden her nakedness. The surrounding sections showed the Weaving Maid’s other sisters. One by one, Mama invited the unmarried girls to place an offering for each sister in the corresponding section.

After the ceremony, we sat down to an extravagant banquet. Each dish had a special meaning, so we ate “dragon hoof that sends child”—pig leg with ten kinds of patrimonial seasonings braised over a slow fire—which was reputed to bring sons. The servants brought in a beggar’s chicken for each table. With a strong
thwack,
the baked clay crust for each chicken was broken and an aroma of ginger, wine, and mushrooms escaped into the room. Course after course arrived, each flavored to satisfy one of the tastes: good, bad, fragrant, stinky, sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. For dessert, our servants presented us with malt cakes made with sticky rice, red beans, walnuts, and riverbank grass, to help us digest, reduce fat, and prolong life. It was a sumptuous meal, but I was too nervous to eat.

The banquet was followed by one last contest. The lanterns were turned down and each of the unmarried girls had a chance to thread a needle by the light from the tip of a single stick of incense. A needle successfully threaded meant that the girl would give birth to a son upon marriage. There had been much drinking of Shaoxing wine, so considerable laughter accompanied each failed attempt.

I joined in the laughter as best I could, but I was already plotting how I was going to meet my stranger without getting caught. I would have to use the scheming ways of the inner realm and make up what I thought might serve me well from the outside realm. I could only guess and hope and think about each move, as I did when I played chess with my father.

Unlike the first night, I didn’t want to sit in the front row where I’d be closest to the opera but would also be in the one place where all the women could see me. I also couldn’t linger behind as I had last night. If I did that again, my mother would suspect something. She knew I loved the opera too much to be late again. I had to appear as though I were trying to please her, especially after what had happened this afternoon. As my mind searched for the possibilities, my eyes fell on Tan Ze. I began to play out my moves. Yes, I could use the child to cloak myself in innocence.

As Lotus successfully threaded the needle and everyone applauded, I moved across the room to Ze, who perched on the edge of a chair, hoping my mother would choose her to take a turn at the game. That was never going to happen. Ze wasn’t waiting for her wedding ceremonies to take place; she was a little girl who had yet to be matched.

I tapped her on the shoulder.

“Come with me,” I said. “I want to show you something.”

She slipped off the chair and I took her hand, making sure my mother saw what I was doing.

“You know I’ve already been betrothed,” I said, as we walked to my room.

The little girl nodded, her face serious.

“Would you like to see my bride-price gifts?”

Ze squealed. Inside, I did practically the same thing but for a very different reason.

I opened pigskin chests and showed her the bolts of airy gauzes, lustrous satins, and heavy brocades that had already been sent.

When the crash of cymbals and the bang of drums began calling us to the garden, Ze got to her feet. Outside my room, women gathered in the corridor.

“You have to see my wedding costume,” I rushed on. “You’ll love the headdress.”

The girl sat back down, eagerly wiggling her bottom into my bedding.

I brought out my embroidered red silk wedding skirt, which had dozens of tiny pleats. The women my father had hired to make it had adjusted their stitches so that the pattern of flowers, clouds, and interlocking good-luck symbols were perfectly aligned. On my wedding day the design would break apart only if I took too large a step. The tunic was equally exquisite. Instead of just four frogs to hold it shut—at my neck, across my breast, and under my arm—the seamstresses had made dozens of tiny braided frogs to confound my husband and prolong the wedding night. The headdress was simple and elegant: a garden of thin gold leaves that would quiver as I moved and shimmer in the light, with a red veil to cover my face so I wouldn’t see my husband until he removed it. I had always loved my wedding costume, but the emotions it now stirred in me were very dark. What was the purpose of being wrapped like a present if you had no feelings for the person you were being given to?

“It’s beautiful, but
my
father has promised I will have pearls and jade in my headdress,” Ze boasted.

I barely heard her, because I was listening so hard to what was happening outside my room. The drums and cymbals still called the audience, but the corridor was quiet. I put my wedding costume away. Then I took Ze’s hand and we left my room.

We wandered together to the garden. I saw my cousins grouped together behind the screen. Unbelievably, they’d saved a place for me. Lotus waved to me to join them. I smiled back and then bent to whisper in Ze’s ear.

“Look, the unmarried girls want you to sit with them.”

“They do?”

She didn’t even wait for me to give her more encouragement but threaded her way through the cushions to the other girls, sat down, and immediately began talking nonstop to my cousins. They had shown me a little kindness and this was how I repaid them.

I made a great show of looking around for an available cushion near the front or in the middle, but of course by now there were none. I feigned a look of disappointment and then delicately sank to a cushion on the edge at the back of the women’s section.

Tonight’s opening scene was one I would have liked to have seen but could only hear from my spot at the back of the audience. Liniang and Mengmei eloped—something completely unheard of in our culture. As soon as they were married, Liniang confessed that she was a virgin—this despite her ghostly nocturnal unions with Mengmei. As a ghost, the maiden status of her body in its grave had been preserved. The scene ended with Liniang and Mengmei departing for Hangzhou, where he would complete his studies for the imperial exams.

There was very little in the final third of the opera that I liked. It was mostly about the world beyond Liniang’s garden—with great battle scenes, where everyone was on the move—but it completely captivated the audience on my side of the screen. Around me the women sank deeper into the story. I waited until I couldn’t stand it any longer; then, with my heart pounding, I slowly rose, smoothed my skirts, and walked back as casually as possible toward the women’s chambers.

But I didn’t go to the Unmarried Girls’ Hall. I turned off the main path and then hurried along the south wall of our property, past small ponds and viewing pavilions, until I reached the trail by the lakeshore. I had never been on this path before and was unsure how to proceed. Then I saw the Moon-Viewing Pavilion and sensed my stranger there already. Only the quarter moon illuminated the night, and I searched the darkness until I found him. He perched on the balustrade that lined the farthest edge of the pavilion, looking not out at the water but at me. My chest constricted with that knowledge. The path had been inlaid with pebbles in designs that created bats for happiness, tortoise backs for longevity, and
cash
for prosperity. Each step thus brought joy, a long life, and more wealth. My ancestors had also constructed these pathways for health reasons. As they aged, the pebbles massaged their feet as they walked. This must have been in long-ago days when women weren’t allowed in the garden, because I found the surface hard to walk on with my bound feet. I focused on making each foot find purchase on a pebble, balancing just so before committing myself to moving forward, knowing that this accentuated the delicacy of my lily walk.

I hesitated before stepping into the Moon-Viewing Pavilion. My courage faded. This place had always been forbidden to me because three sides were surrounded by water. Technically, it was
outside
our garden walls. Then I remembered Liniang’s determination. I took a breath, walked into the middle of the pavilion, and stopped. He wore a long gown of midnight-blue silk. Next to him on the balustrade were a peony and a sprig of willow. He didn’t stand. He just stared at me. I tried to keep perfectly still.

“I see you have a three-ways viewing pavilion,” he said. “I have the same in my home, only ours is on our pond and not the lake.”

He must have seen my confusion, so he explained. “From here you can see the moon three ways: in the sky, reflected in the water, and refracted from the lake into the mirror.” He lifted his hand and languorously pointed to a mirror that hung above the only piece of furniture in the pavilion: a carved wooden bed.

“Oh!” slipped from my mouth. Until this instant I had never considered a bed in a pavilion as anything other than a place for the lazy to rest, but now I trembled at the thought of the bed, the mirror, and the languid nights I wished I could have in his moon-viewing pavilion.

He smiled. Had he found humor in my embarrassment or were his thoughts the same as mine? After a long and to me discomforting moment, he rose and came to my side. “Come. Let’s look out together.”

When we reached the balustrade, I gripped a pillar to steady myself.

“It’s a beautiful night,” he said, looking out across the glassy water. Then he turned to me. “But you are far more beautiful.”

I felt overwhelming happiness and then a horrible wave of shame and fear.

He stared questioningly into my face. “What’s wrong?”

Tears welled in my eyes, but I forced myself to contain them. “Perhaps you see only what you want to see.”

“I see a real girl whose tears I want to kiss away.”

Twin drops overflowed and ran down my cheeks.

“How can I be a good wife now?” I gestured around me hopelessly. “After this?”

“You’ve done nothing wrong.”

But of course I had! I was
here,
wasn’t I? But I didn’t want to talk about it. I stepped away, folded my hands in front of me, and said in a steady voice, “I always miss notes when I play the zither.”

“I don’t care for the zither.”

“But you won’t be my husband,” I responded. A pained look came over his face. I’d hurt him. “My stitches are too large and ungainly,” I blurted quickly.

“My mother does not sit in the women’s hall all day for needlework. If you were my wife, the two of you would do other things together.”

“My paintings are weak.”

“What do you paint?”

“Flowers—the usual.”

“You are not the usual. You shouldn’t paint the usual. If you could paint anything you wanted, what would you choose?”

No one had asked me that before. In fact, no one had ever asked me anything quite like it. If I had been thinking, if I had been at all proper, I would have answered that I would keep practicing my flowers. But I wasn’t thinking.

“I would paint this: the lake, the moon, the pavilion.”

“A landscape then.”

An actual landscape, not a landscape found hidden in cold slabs of marble like the ones in my father’s library. The idea intrigued me.

“My home across the lake is high on the hill,” he went on. “Every room has a view. If we were married, we’d be companions. We’d go on excursions—on the lake, on the river, to see the tidal bore.”

Everything he said made me happy and sad at the same time as I longed for a life I would never have.

“But you shouldn’t worry,” he continued. “I’m sure your husband isn’t perfect either. Look at me. Since the Song dynasty it has been the ambition of every young man to achieve distinction in official life, but I have not taken the imperial exams and I have no ambition to take them.”