Magpies
I saw how she often gave Fifth Wife money to go visit her poor village, encouraging this silly girl to "show your friends and family how rich youve become!" And of course, her visits always reminded Wu Tsing of Fifth Wifes low-class background and how foolish he had been to be lured by her earthy flesh.
"In the early morning, she left in a rickshaw, her hair undone and with tears streaming down her face. She told no one but me what had happened. But Second Wife complained to many people about the shameless widow who had enchanted Wu Tsing into bed. How could a worthless widow accuse a rich woman of lying?
And on that day, I showed Second Wife the fake pearl necklace she had given me and crushed it under my foot.
"From the start, Second Wife knew how to control Wu Tsings money. She knew by the way his face paled at the sound of the wind that he was fearful of ghosts. And everybody knows that suicide is the only way a woman can escape a marriage and gain revenge, to come back as a ghost and scatter tea leaves and good fortune. So when he refused her a bigger allowance, she did pretend-suicide. She ate a piece of raw opium, enough to make her sick, and then sent her maid to tell Wu Tsing she was dying. Three days later, Second Wife had an allowance even bigger than what she had asked.
Now my uncle picked up a porcelain vase. "Is this what you want to do?" said my uncle. "Throw your life away? If you follow this woman, you can never lift your head again." He threw that vase on the ground, where it smashed into many pieces. I jumped, and my mother took my hand.
Two days before the lunar new year, Yan Chang woke me when it was still black outside.
And when I opened that box, all my shame, my fears, they fell away. Inside was a new starch-white dress. It had ruffles at the collar and along the sleeves and six tiers of ruffles for a skirt. The box also contained white stockings, white leather shoes, and an enormous white hair bow, already shaped and ready to be fastened on with two loose ties.
I sat quietly, trying not to listen to my mother. I was thinking how much my mother complained, that perhaps all of her unhappiness sprang from her complaints. I was thinking how I should not listen to her.
I know how it is to live your life like a dream. To listen and watch, to wake up and try to understand what has already happened.
And when we finally arrived home, we were both exhausted.
"First Wife says she sees only what is Buddha perfection," said Yan Chang. "She says she is blind to most faults."
I looked at her without moving.
And my mother, her head still bowed, looked up at me and saw my face. I could not stop my tears from running down. And I think, seeing my face like this, my mother changed. She stood up tall, with her back straight, so that now she was almost taller than my uncle. She held her hand out to me and I ran to her. She said in a quiet, calm voice: "An-mei, I am not asking you. But I am going back to Tientsin now and you can follow me."
She talked of clever peddlers who served every kind of simple food: steamed dumplings, boiled peanuts, and my mothers favorite, a thin pancake with an egg dropped in the middle, brushed with black bean paste, then rolled up—still finger-hot off the griddle!—and handed to the hungry buyer.
Her hand was warm. "Come, An-mei. We must hurry," she said, as if observing a rainy sky.
I looked up at the house and saw my mother looking down from her window, watching everything. So in this clumsy way, my mother found out that Wu Tsing had taken his fourth concubine, who was actually just an afterthought, a foolish bit of decoration for his new motorcar.
When I met First Wife, I thought she was blind. She acted as if she did not see me. She did not see Wu Tsing. She did not see my mother. And yet she could see her two daughters, two spinsters beyond the marriageable age; they were at least twenty-five. And she always regained her sight in time to scold the two dogs for sniffing in her room, digging in the garden outside her window, or wetting on a table leg.
Thinking back, I find it hard to remember everything that was in that house; too many good things all seem the same after a while. I tired of anything that was not a novelty. "Oh, this," I said when Yan Chang brought me the same sweet meats as the day before. "Ive tasted this already."
On the third floor were rooms for only the men servants, said Yan Chang, and one of the rooms even had a door to a cabinet that was really a secret hiding place from sea pirates.
My auntie heard this and immediately hissed. "A girl is no better than what she follows! An-mei, you think you can see something new, riding on top of a new cart. But in front of you, it is just the ass of the same old mule. Your life is what you see in front of you."
As soon as we walked into that big house, I became lost with too many things to see: a curved staircase that wound up and up, a ceiling with faces in every corner, then hallways twisting and turning into one room then another. To my right was a large room, larger than I had ever seen, and it was filled with stiff teakwood furniture: sofas and tables and chairs. And at the other end of this long, long room, I could see doors leading into more rooms, more furniture, then more doors. To my left was a darker room, another sitting room, this one filled with foreign furniture: dark green leather sofas, paintings with hunting dogs, armchairs, and mahogany desks. And as I glanced in these rooms I would see different people, and Yan Chang would explain: "This young lady, she is Second Wifes servant. That one, she is nobody, just the daughter of cooks helper. This man takes care of the garden."
How could she leave without me? This was a question I could not ask. I was a child. I could only watch and listen.
"Thank you, Big Mother," I said to Second Wife. And I was looking down to avoid showing her my face, but still I could not help smiling.
And now all she can do is watch it falling. She lies down on a psychiatrist couch, squeezing tears out about this shame. And, I think, she will lie there until there is nothing more to fall, nothing left to cry about, everything dry.
"Be quiet. Nothing is the matter. Go to Yan Chang," my mother whispered.
"The next night, after a long evening of mah jong, Second Wife yawned and insisted my mother spend the night. Stay! Stay! Dont be so polite. No, your politeness is really more inconvenient. Why wake the rickshaw boy? said Second Wife. Look here, my bed is certainly big enough for two.
Yan Chang revealed this story in such a natural and lively way that I applauded her clever ending. We continued to crack chestnuts open, until I could no longer remain quiet.
I saw Second Wifes true nature.
And on that day, I learned to shout.
I could see that turtle in my mind and I knew my mother was seeing the same one.
Before the second cold month began, First Wife returned from Peking, where she kept a house and lived with her two unmarried daughters. I remember thinking that First Wife would make Second Wife bow to her ways. First Wife was the head wife, by law and by custom.
Out in the front courtyard, I saw my mother kneeling, scratching the stone pathway with her fingers, as if she had lost something and knew she could not find it again. In front of her stood Uncle, my mothers brother, and he was shouting.
"An-mei, be a good girl," she said in a tired voice. "Go to Yan Changs room now."
During this ride, my mother argued with the rickshaw puller, who wanted extra cash to carry the two of us and our luggage. Then she complained about the dust from the ride, the smell of the street, the bumpiness of the road, the lateness of the day, the ache in her stomach. And when she had finished with these laments, she turned her complaints to me: a spot on my new dress, a tangle in my hair, my twisted stockings. I tried to win back my mother, pointing to ask her about a small park, a bird flying above us, a long electric streetcar that passed us sounding its horn.
"Now you see, said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone elses joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears. "
But after my mother finished her story, I looked at her and saw she was crying. And I also began to cry again, that this was our fate, to live like two turtles seeing the watery world together from the bottom of the little pond.
The next morning I could not look at my mother. But I saw that Fifth Wife had a swollen face like mine. And at breakfast that morning, in front of everybody, her anger finally erupted when she shouted rudely to a servant for serving her so slowly. Everyone, even my mother, stared at her for her bad manners, criticizing a servant that way. I saw Wu Tsing throw her a sharp look, like a father, and she began to cry. But later that morning, Fifth Wife was smiling again, prancing around in a new dress and new shoes.
"Third Wife was of course indebted to Second Wife for arranging this, so there was no argument over management 9９ｌｉb•nｅｔof the household. And even though Second Wife did not need to lift a finger, she oversaw the purchase of food and supplies, she approved the hiring of servants, she invited relatives on festival days. She found wet nurses for each of the three daughters Third Wife bore for Wu Tsing. And later, when Wu Tsing was again impatient for a son and began to spend too much money in teahouses in other cities, Second Wife arranged it so that your mother became Wu Tsings third concubine and fourth wife!"
My mothers room was brightly lit. As soon as I walked in I could see her. I ran to her bed and stood on the footstool. Her arms and legs were moving back and forth as she lay on her back. She was like a soldier, marching to nowhere, her head looking right then left. And now her whole body became straight and stiff as if to stretch herself out of her body. Her jaw was pulled down and I saw her tongue was swollen and she was coughing to try to make it fall out.
And all these birds rose in the air, alarmed and confused by this new anger, beating their black wings, flying just above, waiting for the noise to stop. But the peoples shouts only grew stronger, angrier. The birds became more exhausted, unable to land, unable to eat. And this continued for many hours, for many days, until all those birds—hundreds, thousands, and then millions!—fluttered to the ground, dead and still, until not one bird remained in the sky.
She cried, "No choice! No choice!" She doesnt know. If she doesnt speak, she is making a choice. If she doesnt try, she can lose her chance forever.
"She chatted with your mother, discovered that she planned to go to the Monastery of the Spirits Retreat the next day. And Second Wife showed up at that place as well. And after more friendly talk, she invited your mother to dinner. Your mother was so lonely for good conversation she gladly accepted. And after the dinner, Second Wife said to your mother, Do you play mah jong? Oh, it doesnt matter if you play badly. We are only three people now and cannot play at all unless you would be kind enough to join us tomorrow night.
So on that day, Wu Tsing, fearful of my mothers vengeful spirit, wore the coarsest of white cotton mourning clothes. He promised her visiting ghost that he would raise Syaudi and me as his honored children. He promised to revere her as if she had been First Wife, his only wife.
In the afternoon, my mother spoke of her unhappiness for the first time. We were in a rickshaw going to a store to find embroidery thread. "Do you see how shameful my life is?" she cried. "Do you see how I have no position? He brought home a new wife, a low-class girl, dark-skinned, no manners! Bought her for a few dollars from a poor village family that makes mudbrick tiles. And at night when he can no longer use her, he comes to me, smelling of her mud."
And that was how I learned that the baby Syaudi was really my mothers son, my littlest brother.
Everything was too big. My shoulders kept slipping out of the large neck hole. The waist was big enough to fit two of me. But I did not mind. She did not mind. I raised my arms and stood perfectly still. She drew out pins and thread and with little tucks here and there stuffed in the loose materials, then filled the toes of the shoes with tissue paper, until everything fit. Wearing those clothes, I felt as if I had grown new hands and feet and I would now have to learn to walk in a new way.
What my uncle had said was true. After I saw my brother this way, I could not keep my head lifted.
She told me many stories until my face was turned forward, looking toward my new home in Tientsin. But when the fifth day came, as we sailed closer toward the Tientsin gulf, the waters changed from muddy yellow to black and the boat began to rock and groan. I became fearful and sick. And at night I dreamed of the eastward-flowing stream my aunt had warned me about, the dark waters that changed a person forever. And watching those dark waters from my sickbed on the boat, I was scared that my aunts words had come true. I saw how my mother was already beginning to change, how dark and angry her face had become, looking out over the sea, thinking her own thoughts. And my thoughts, too, became cloudy and confused.
It was perhaps two weeks after we had arrived. I was in the large garden in back, kicking a ball and watching two dogs chase it. My mother sat at a table watching me play. And then I heard a horn off in the distance, shouts, and those two dogs forgot the ball and ran off barking in high happy voices.
There was no one at the harbor to meet us. My mother walked slowly down the rampway, through the baggage platform, looking nervously from side to side.
Sitting in this bed, I admired everything as if I were a princess. This room had a glass door that led to a balcony. In front of the window door was a round table of the same wood as the bed. It too sat on carved lions legs and was surrounded by four chairs. A servant had already put tea and sweet cakes on the table and was now lighting the houlu, a small stove for burning coal.
"That night, after Popo told me this, I sat by the pond, looking into the water. And because I was weak, I began to cry. Then I saw this turtle swimming to the top and his beak was eating my tears as soon as they touched the water. He ate them quickly, five, six, seven tears, then climbed out of the pond, crawled onto a smooth rock and began to speak.
Because we both knew this: that on the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mothers case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.
And then we were walking up the staircase. We came to the top of the stairs and I found myself in another large sitting room. We walked to the left, down a hall, past one room, and then stepped into another. "This is your mothers room," Yan Chang told me proudly. "This is where you will sleep."
I know my mother listened to her own heart, to no longer pretend. I know this because why else did she die two days before the lunar new year? Why else did she plan her death so carefully that it became a weapon?
And so, while everything seemed peaceful, I knew it was not. You may wonder how a small child, only nine years old, can know these things. Now I wonder about it myself. I can remember only how uncomfortable I felt, how I could feel the truth with my stomach, knowing something terrible was going to happen. And I can tell you, it was almost as bad as how I felt some fifteen years later when the Japanese bombs started to fall and, listening in the distance, I could hear soft rumbles and knew that what was coming was unstoppable.
She said this word, sz, so hatefully I shuddered. It sounded like the sz that means "die." And I remembered Popo once telling me four is a very unlucky number because if you say it in an angry way, it always comes out wrong.
In her gloved hands she held a large cream-colored box with foreign words written on top: "Fine English-Tailored Apparel, Tientsin." I remember she had put the box down between us and told me: "Open it! Quickly!" She was breathless and smiling. I was so surprised by my mothers new strange manner, it was not until many years later, when I was using this box to store letters and photographs, that I wondered how my mother had known. Even though she had not seen me for many years, she had known that I would someday follow her and that I should wear a new dress when I did.
After Yan Chang told me this story, I saw everything. I heard things I had never understood before.
And when I still did not move, she stood up and walked over, and lifted that necklace off. And before I could cry to stop her, she put the necklace under her shoe and stepped on it. When she put it on the table, I saw what she had done. This necklace that had almost bought my heart and mind now had one bead of crushed glass.
"An-mei, now you are ready to start your new life. You will live in a new house. You will have a new father. Many sisters. Another little brother. Dresses and good things to eat. Do you think all this will be enough to be happy?"
In the rickshaw on our way to the railway station, my mother murmured, "Poor An-mei, only you know. Only you know what I have suffered." When she said this, I felt proud, that only I could see these delicate and rare thoughts.
My mother, she suffered. She lost her face and tried to hide it. She found only greater misery and finally could not hide that. There is nothing more to understand. That was China. That was what people did back then. They had no choice. They could not speak up. They could not run away. That was their fate.
When my mother and I had tea in her room later that afternoon, I knew she was angry.
I rubbed my eyes and as I awoke I saw a dark shadow and began to cry. It was Wu Tsing.
My mother was not jealous of this young girl who would now be called Fifth Wife. Why should she be? My mother did not love Wu Tsing. A girl in China did not marry for love. She married for position, and my mothers position, 99lib•netI later learned, was the worst.
"She has taken too much opium," cried Yan Chang. "The doctor says he can do nothing. She has poisoned herself."
I saw how fearful Third Wife became when Second Wife told her stories of old concubines who were kicked out into the streets. And I knew why Third Wife watched over Second Wifes health and happiness.
I know how it is to be quiet, to listen and watch, as if your life were a dream. You can close your eyes when you no longer want to watch. But when you no longer want to listen, what can you do? I can still hear what happened more than sixty years ago.
Seeing her this last time, I threw myself on her body. And she opened her eyes slowly. I was not scared. I knew she could see me and what she had finally done. So I shut her eyes with my fingers and told her with my heart: I can see the truth, too. I am strong, too.
And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.
Later she removed that broken bead and knotted the space together so the necklace looked whole again. She told me to wear the necklace every day for one week so I would remember how easy it is to lose myself to something false. And after I wore those fake pearls long enough to learn this lesson, she let me take them off. Then she opened a box, and turned to me: "Now can you recognize what is true?" And I nodded.
I hurried to get dressed. And by the time I ran down the stairs and into the front room, my mother was about to leave. A servant was taking her trunk outside. My auntie was holding onto my little brothers hand. Before I could remember to close my mouth, I shouted, "Ma!"
It is true, she wore strange foreign clothes. But she did not speak back when my aunt cursed her. Her head bowed even lower when my uncle slapped her for calling him Brother. She cried from her heart when Popo died, even though Popo, her mother, had sent her away so many years before. And after Popos funeral, she obeyed my uncle. She prepared herself to return to Tientsin, where she had dishonored her widowhood by becoming the third concubine to a rich man.
"Your mother," said Yan Chang, as if talking to herself, "is too good for this family."
What would your psychiatrist say if I told him that I shouted for joy when I read that this had happened?
I know this, because I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other peoples misery, to eat my own bitterness.
During the coldest winter month, we were all bored, adults and children alike. We did not dare go outside. Yan Chang warned me that my skin would freeze and crack into a thousand pieces. And the other servants always gossiped about everyday sights they had seen in town: the back stoops of stores always blocked with the frozen bodies of beggars. Man or woman, you couldnt tell, they were so dusty with a thick cover of snow.
And even though I knew all this before I arrived, I was still amazed at what I saw.
As I walked away from my old life, I wondered if it were true, what my uncle had said, that I was changed and could never lift my head again. So I tried. I lifted it.
She put something in my hand. It was a heavy ring of watery blue sapphire, with a star in its center so pure that I never ceased to look at that ring with wonder.
"You want to take your daughter and ruin her life as well!" Uncle stamped his foot at this impertinent thought. "You should already be gone."
I did not like to play with Third Wifes daughters, who were as docile and dull as their mother. Those girls were content looking out the window all day, watching the sun come up and go down. So instead, Yan Chang and I roasted chestnuts on top of the little coal stove. And burning our fingers while eating these sweet nuggets, we naturally started to giggle and gossip. Then I heard the clock clang and the same song began to play. Yan Chang pretended to sing badly in the classic opera style and we both laughed out loud, remembering how Second Wife had sung yesterday evening, accompanying her quavering voice on a three-stringed lute and making many mistakes. She had caused everyone to suffer through this evenings entertainment, until Wu Tsing declared it was enough suffering by falling asleep in his chair. And laughing about this, Yan Chang told me a story about Second Wife.
I saw Second Wife koutou to First Wife, bowing with deep respect while offering her more opium. And I knew why First Wifes power had been drained away.
And I knew why my mother cried in her room so often. Wu Tsings promise of a house—for becoming the mother of his only son—had disappeared the day Second Wife collapsed from another bout of pretend-suicide. And my mother knew she could do nothing to bring the promise back.
After Wu Tsing and Fifth Wife arrived home, my mother often stayed in her room working on her embroidery. In the afternoon, she and I would go on long silent rides in the city, searching for a bolt of silk in a color she could not seem to name. Her unhappiness was this same way. She could not name it.
All the servants crowded around the motorcar, looking at their faces in the polished metal, admiring the curtained windows, the velvet seats. Then the driver opened the back door and out stepped a young girl. She had short hair with rows of waves. She looked to be only a few years older than I, but she had on a womans dress, stockings, and high heels. I looked down at my own white dress covered with grass stains and I felt ashamed.
"Wake up!" I whispered, and then I turned and saw everybody standing there: Wu Tsing, Yan Chang, Second Wife, Third Wife, Fifth Wife, the doctor.
This was the most beautiful piece of jewelry I had ever touched. It was designed in the Western style, a long strand, each bead the same size and of an identical pinkish tone, with a heavy brooch of ornate silver to clasp the ends together.
The front of the house had a Chinese stone gate, rounded at the top, with big black lacquer doors and a threshold you had to step over. Within the gates I saw the courtyard and I was surprised. There were no willows or sweet-smelling cassia trees, no garden pavilions, no benches sitting by a pond, no tubs of fish. Instead, there were long rows of bushes on both sides of a wide brick walkway and to each side of those bushes was a big lawn area with fountains. And as we walked down the walkway and got closer to the house, I saw this house had been built in the Western style. It was three stories high, of mortar and stone, with long metal balconies on each floor and chimneys at every corner.
In the morning, I awoke to hear—not the bird of joy—but angry sounds in the distance. I jumped out of my bed and ran quietly to my window.
It was not that my uncles house in Ningpo had been poor. He was actually quite well-to-do. But this house in Tientsin was amazing. And I thought to myself, My uncle was wrong. There was no shame in my mothers marrying Wu Tsing.
"We are going to live in a house of our own," she told me happily the day snow fell on the ground all around our house. She was wearing a new silk fur-lined gown the bright turquoise color of kingfisher feathers. "The house will not be as big as this one. It will be very small. But we can live by ourselves, with Yan Chang and a few other servants. Wu Tsing has promised this already."
But one day, all these tired peasants—from all over China—they gathered in fields everywhere. They watched the birds eating and drinking. And they said, "Enough of this suffering and silence!" They began to clap their hands, and bang sticks on pots and pans and shout, "Sz! Sz! Sz!"—Die! Die! Die!
But on the train, I realized how far behind I was leaving my life. And I became scared. We traveled for seven days, one day by rail, six days by steamer boat. At first, my mother was very lively. She told me stories of Tientsin whenever my face looked back at where we had just been.
If I look upon my whole life, I cannot think of another time when I felt more comfortable: when I had no worries, fears, or desires, when my life seemed as soft and lovely as lying inside a cocoon of rose silk. But I remember clearly when all that comfort became no longer comfortable.
And hearing this made me more determined to leave. Because the life in front of me was my uncles house. And it was full of dark riddles and suffering that I could not understand. So I turned my head away from my aunties strange words and looked at my mother.
But Second Wife simply said to me: "Such a pretty girl needs something to put the light on her face."
"Why does First Wife sometimes see and sometimes not see?" I asked Yan Chang one night as she helped me bathe.
This ghost of a woman should have caused no suffering to my mother, but in fact she put ideas into her head. My mother believed she too had suffered enough to deserve her own household, perhaps not in Tsinan, but one to the east, in little Petaiho, which was a beaｗwｗ•99ｌｉb•netutiful seaside resort filled with terraces and gardens and wealthy widows.
I suffered so much after Yan Chang told me my mothers story. I wanted my mother to shout at Wu Tsing, to shout at Second Wife, to shout at Yan Chang and say she was wrong to tell me these stories. But my mother did not even have the right to do this. She had no choice.
The Cold Dew came. It became chilly, and Second Wife and Third Wife, their children and servants returned home to Tientsin. There was a big commotion when they arrived. Wu Tsing had allowed the new motorcar to be sent to the railway station, but of course that was not enough to carry them all back. So behind the motorcar came a dozen or so rickshaws, bouncing up and down like crickets following a large shiny beetle. Women began to pour out of the motorcar.
Those three girls were even more shy than I. They crowded around their mother with bowed heads and did not speak. But I continued to stare. They were as plain as their mother, with big teeth, thick lips, and eyebrows as bushy as a caterpillar. Third Wife welcomed me warmly and allowed me to carry one of her packages.
So every day we stayed in the house, thinking of ways to amuse ourselves. My mother looked at foreign magazines and clipped out pictures of dresses she liked, and then she went downstairs to discuss with the tailor how such a dress could be made using the materials available.
And I would stare at my mother. She did not look evil. I wanted to touch her face, the one that looked like mine.
"An-mei, come! Why are you so slow!" she said, her voice filled with fear. I was dragging my feet, trying to stay in those too-large shoes as the ground beneath me swayed. And when I was not watching which way my feet were moving, I looked up and saw everybody was in a hurry, everybody seemed unhappy: families with old mothers and fathers, all wearing dark, somber colors, pushing and pulling bags and crates of their lifes possessions; pale foreign ladies dressed like my mother, walking with foreign men in hats; rich wives scolding maids and servants following behind carrying trunks and babies and baskets of food.
And then I saw the servants reaching into the backseat of the motorcar and a man was slowly being lifted by both arms. This was Wu Tsing. He was a big man, not tall, but puffed out like a bird. He was much older than my mother, with a high shiny forehead and a large black mole on one nostril. He wore a Western suit jacket with a vest that closed too tightly around his stomach, but his pants were very loose. He groaned and grunted as he heaved himself out and into view. And as soon as his shoes touched the ground, he began to walk toward the house, acting as though he saw no one, even though people greeted him and were busy opening doors, carrying his bags, taking his long coat. He walked into the house like that, with this young girl following him. She was looking behind at everyone with a simpering smile, as if they were there to honor her. And when she was hardly in the door, I heard one servant remark to another, "Fifth Wife is so young she did not bring any of her own servants, only a wet nurse."
"Five years ago—your father had died only one year before—she and I went to Hangchow to visit the Six Harmonies Pagoda on the far side of West Lake. Your father had been a respected scholar and also devoted to the six virtues of Buddhism enshrined in this pagoda. So your mother kowtowed in the pagoda, pledging to observe the right harmony of body, thoughts, and speech, to refrain from giving opinions, and to shun wealth. And when we boarded the boat to cross the lake again, we sat opposite a man and a woman. This was Wu Tsing and Second Wife.
While thinking this, I was startled by a sudden clang! clang! clang! followed by music. On the wall opposite the bed was a big wooden clock with a forest and bears carved into it. The door on the clock had burst open and a tiny room full of people was coming out. There was a bearded man in a pointed cap seated at a table. He was bending his head over and over again to drink soup, but his beard would dip in the bowl first and stop him. A girl in a white scarf and blue dress was standing next to the table and she was bending over and over again to give the man more of this soup. And next to the man and girl was another girl with a skirt and short jacket. She was swinging her arm back and forth, playing violin music. She always played the same dark song. I can still hear it in my head after these many years—ni-ah! nah! nah! nah! nah-ni-nah!
I nodded quietly, thinking about the unhappiness of my brother in Ningpo. My mother did not say anything more about the house, or my new family, or my happiness. And I did not ask any questions, because now a bell was sounding and a ships steward was calling our arrival in Tientsin. My mother gave quick instructions to our porter, pointed to our two small trunks and handed him money, as if she had done this every day of her life. And then she carefully opened another box and pulled out what looked to be five or six dead foxes with open beady eyes, limp paws, and fluffy tails. She put this scary sight around her neck and shoulders, then grabbed my hand tight as we moved down the aisle with the crowd of people.
"This is Third Wife and her three daughters," said my mother.
"The turtle said, I have eaten your tears, and this is why I know your misery. But I must warn you. If you cry, your life will always be sad.
"This turtle feeds on our thoughts," said my mother. "I learned this one day, when I was your age, and Popo said I could no longer be a child. She said I could not shout, or run, or sit on the ground to catch crickets. I could not cry if I was disappointed. I had to be silent and listen to my elders. And if I did not do this, Popo said she would cut off my hair and send me to a place where Buddhist nuns lived.
"What did Second Wife do so my mother would marry Wu Tsing?" I asked timidly.
I could see by the way my mother shrank back and became quiet that she was angry. She did not like Second Wife. I had to be careful how I showed my feelings: not to let my mother think Second Wife had won me over. Yet I had this reckless feeling. I was overjoyed that Second Wife had shown me this special favor.
My mother immediately protested: "This is too much for a small child. She will break it. She will lose it."
"Quickly!" she cried, pulling me along before my mind and eyes could work together.
"See how your evil influence has already spread to your daughter!" exclaimed my uncle.
Yesterday my daughter said to me, "My marriage is falling apart."
"So when Wu Tsing asked your mother to be his third concubine, to bear him a son, what choice did she have? She was already as low as a prostitute. And when she returned to her brothers house and kowtowed three times to say good-bye, her brother kicked her, and her own mother banned her from the family house forever. That is why you did not see your mother again until your grandmother died. Your mother went to live in Tientsin, to hide her shame with Wu Tsings wealth. And three years later, she gave birth to a son, which Second Wife claimed as her own.
And I saw my mothers terrible pain as Second Wife bounced Syaudi on her lap, kissing my mothers son and telling this baby, "As long as I am your mother, you will never be poor. You will never be unhappy. You will grow up to own this household and care for me in my old age."
I knew from the beginning our new home would not be an ordinary house. My mother had told me we would live in the household of Wu Tsing, who was a very rich merchant. She said this man owned many carpet factories and lived in a mansion located in the British Concession of Tientsin, the best section of the city where Chinese people could live. We lived not too far from Paima Di, Racehorse Street, where only Westerners could live. And we were also close to little shops that sold only one kind of thing: only tea, or only fabric, or only soap.
She told me about narrow streets with crowded bazaars. In the early morning peasants sold vegetables I had never seen or eaten before in my life—and my mother assured me I would find them so sweet, so tender, so fresh. And there were sections of the city where different foreigners lived—Japanese, White Russians, Americans, and Germans—but never together, all with their own separate habits, some dirty, some clean. And they had houses of all shapes and colors, one painted in pink, another with rooms that jutted out at every angle like the backs and fronts of Victorian dresses, others with roofs like pointed hats and wood carvings painted white to look like ivory.
The only sounds were that of the girl in the clock playing the violin. And I wanted to shout to the clock and make its meaningless noise be silent, but I did not.
We stood near the street, where rickshaws and trucks came and went. We held hands, thinking our own thoughts, watching people arriving at the station, watching others hurrying away. It was late morning, and although it seemed warm outside, the sky was gray and clouding over.
"Be careful, An-mei," she said. &http://www•９９lib.ｎｅｔquot;What you hear is not genuine. She makes clouds with one hand, rain with the other. She is trying to trick you, so you will do anything for her."
You do not need a psychiatrist to do this. A psychiatrist does not want you to wake up. He tells you to dream some more, to find the pond and pour more tears into it. And really, he is just another bird drinking from your misery.
"Wu Tsing must have seen her beauty immediately. Back then your mother had hair down to her waist, which she tied high up on her head. And she had unusual skin, a lustrous pink color. Even in her white widows clothes she was beautiful! But because she was a widow, she was worthless in many respects. She could not remarry.
I saw a woman wearing a long black fur coat and dark Western clothes, very fancy. And in her arms she held a little boy with fat rosy cheeks who looked to be two years old.
My mother did not say anything. She remained bent on the ground, her back as rounded as the turtle in the pond. She was crying with her mouth closed. And I began to cry in the same way, swallowing those bitter tears.
An-Mei Hsu
And then I recalled her story about the little turtle, his warning not to cry. And I wanted to shout to her that it was no use. There were already too many tears. And I tried to swallow them one by one, but they came too fast, until finally my closed lips burst open and I cried and cried, then cried all over again, letting everybody in the room feed on my tears.
"Give the necklace to me," she said suddenly.
I was falling from the sky down to the ground, into a pond. And I became a little turtle lying at the bottom of this watery place. Above me I could see the beaks of a thousand magpies drinking from the pond, drinking and singing happily and filling their snow-white bellies. I was crying hard, so many tears, but they drank and drank, so many of them, until I had no more tears left and the pond was empty, everything as dry as sand.
"Do not look at that woman," warned my aunt. "She has thrown her face into the eastward-flowing stream. Her ancestral spirit is lost forever. The person you see is just decayed flesh, evil, rotted to the bone."
I fainted with all this grief and they carried me back to Yan Changs bed. So that morning, while my mother was dying, I was dreaming.
"And that is how I came to live in Wu Tsings house," concluded Yan Chang proudly.
She described the port and its seafood and claimed it was even better than what we ate in Ningpo. Big clams, prawns, crab, all kinds of fish, salty and freshwater, the best—otherwise why would so many foreigners come to this port?
And then Second Wife walked toward me, smiling, her fur coat gleaming with every step. She stared, as if she were examining me, as if she recognized me. Finally she smiled and patted my head. And then with a swift, graceful movement of her small hands, she removed her long pearly strand and put it around my neck.
And the first thing I saw, the only thing I could see at first, was a magnificent bed. It was heavy and light at the same time: soft rose silk and heavy, dark shiny wood carved all around with dragons. Four posts held up a silk canopy and at each post dangled large silk ties holding back curtains. The bed sat on four squat lions paws, as if the weight of it had crushed the lion underneath. Yan Chang showed me how to use a small step stool to climb onto the bed. And when I tumbled onto the silk coverings, I laughed to discover a soft mattress that was ten times the thickness of my bed in Ningpo.
This was a shocking sight. We were in mourning. But I could not say anything. I was a child. How could I scold my own mother? I could only feel shame seeing my mother wear her shame so boldly.
On the morning of the day we were supposed to arrive in Tientsin, she went into our sleeping cabin wearing her white Chinese mourning dress. And when she returned to the sitting room on the top deck, she looked like a stranger. Her eyebrows were painted thick at the center, then long and sharp at the corners. Her eyes had dark smudges around them and her face was pale white, her lips dark red. On top of her head, she wore a small brown felt hat with one large brown-speckled feather swept across the front. Her short hair was tucked into this hat, except for two perfect curls on her forehead that faced each other like black lacquer carvings. She had on a long brown dress with a white lace collar that fell all the way to her waist and was fastened down with a silk rose.
"An-mei!" I heard my aunt call piteously from behind, but then my uncle said, "Swanle!"—Finished!—"She is already changed."
And I saw my little brother, crying so hard as my auntie held onto his hand. My mother did not dare take my brother. A son can never go to somebody elses house to live. If he went, he would lose any hope for a future. But I knew he was not thinking this. He was crying, angry and scared, because my mother had not asked him to follow.
In truth, this was a bad thing that Yan Chang had done, telling me my mothers story. Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth.
"He is Syaudi, your littlest brother," my mother whispered. He wore a cap made out of the same dark fur and was winding his little finger around Second Wifes long pearl necklace. I wondered how she could have a baby this young. Second Wife was handsome enough and seemed healthy, but she was quite old, perhaps forty-five. She handed the baby to a servant and then began to give instructions to the many people who still crowded around her.
"Wu Tsing had asked her to be his concubine, not for love, but because of the prestige of owning what so many other men wanted. And this sing-song girl, after she had seen his enormous wealth and his feebleminded first wife, consented to become his concubine.
But First Wife turned out to be a living ghost, no threat to Second Wife, who had her strong spirit intact. First Wife looked quite ancient and frail with her rounded body, bound feet, her old-style padded jacket and pants, and plain, lined face. But now that I remember her, she must not have been too old, maybe Wu Tsings age, so she was perhaps fifty.
"Then the turtle opened his beak and out poured five, six, seven pearly eggs. The eggs broke open and from them emerged seven birds, who immediately began to chatter and sing. I knew from their snow-white bellies and pretty voices that they were magpies, birds of joy. These birds bent their beaks to the pond and began to drink greedily. And when I reached out my hand to capture one, they all rose up, beat their black wings in my face, and flew up into the air, laughing.
My mother had the same fearful look she wore in the harbor station. She walked quickly into the house. I walked around the side of the house toward the front. Two shiny black rickshaws had arrived and behind them a large black motorcar. A manservant was taking luggage out of one rickshaw. From another rickshaw, a young maid jumped out.
The stickiness clung to her body. They could not remove the poison and so she died, two days before the new year. They laid her on a wooden board in the hallway. She wore funeral clothes far richer than those she had worn in life. Silk undergarments to keep her warm without the heavy burden of a fur coat. A silk gown, sewn with gold thread. A headdress of gold and lapis and jade. And two delicate slippers with the softest leather soles and two giant pearls on each toe, to light her way to nirvana.
And then my mother became somber again. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching as our boat drew closer and closer to the dock.
My mother was a stranger to me when she first arrived at my uncles house in Ningpo. I was nine years old and had not seen her for many years. But I knew she was my mother, because I could feel her pain.
Yan Chang later told me my mother had listened to Second Wife and tried to do pretend-suicide. False words! Lies! She would never listen to this woman who caused her so much suffering.
"I also knew that turtle when I was a small child," said my mother. "I used to sit by the pond and watch him swimming to the surface, biting the air with his little beak. He is a very old turtle."
The night before she was to leave, she held my head against her body, as if to protect me from a danger I could not see. I was crying to bring her back before she was even gone. And as I lay in her lap, she told me a story.
Three days before the lunar new year, she had eaten ywansyau, the sticky sweet dumpling that everybody eats to celebrate. She ate one after the other. And I remember her strange remark. "You see how this life is. You cannot eat enough of this bitterness." And what she had done was eat ywansyau filled with a kind of bitter poison, not candied seeds or the dull happiness of opium as Yan Chang and the others had thought. When the poison broke into her body, she whispered to me that she would rather kill her own weak spirit so she could give me a stronger one.
My mother seemed to regain her pleasant nature. She put her old clothes back on, long Chinese gowns and skirts now with九九藏书 white mourning bands sewn at the bottoms. During the day, she pointed to strange and funny things, naming them for me: bidet, Brownie camera, salad fork, napkin. In the evening, when there was nothing to do, we talked about the servants: who was clever, who was diligent, who was loyal. We gossiped as we cooked small eggs and sweet potatoes on top of the houlu just to enjoy their smell. And at night, my mother would again tell me stories as I lay in her arms falling asleep.
After a long time of standing and seeing no one, my mother sighed and finally shouted for a rickshaw.
"A little child cannot understand such things!" she scolded.
But she became only more cross and said: "An-mei, sit still. Do not look so eager. We are only going home."
And then she lifted me down slowly to the cold floor. I heard the wooden clock begin to sing and Wu Tsings deep voice complaining of the chill. And when I went to Yan Chang, it was as though she had expected me and knew I would be crying.
"But this did not stop Second Wife from thinking of a way. She was tired of watching her households money being washed away in so many different teahouses. The money he spent was enough to support five more wives! She was anxious to quiet Wu Tsings outside appetite. So she conspired with Wu Tsing to lure your mother to his bed.
The house, she said, was foreign-built; Wu Tsing liked foreign things because foreigners had made him rich. And I concluded that was why my mother had to wear foreign-style clothes, in the manner of newly rich Chinese people who liked to display their wealth on the outside.
My mother was standing behind me, ready to greet everybody. A woman wearing a plain foreign dress and large, ugly shoes walked toward us. Three girls, one of whom was my age, followed behind.
"Twenty years ago, she had been a famous Shantung sing-song girl, a woman of some respect, especially among married men who frequented teahouses. While she had never been pretty, she was clever, an enchantress. She could play several musical instruments, sing ancient tales with heartbreaking clarity, and touch her finger to her cheek and cross her tiny feet in just the right manner.
Yan Chang said that First Wife chose to be blind to the unhappiness of her marriage. She and Wu Tsing had been joined in tyandi, heaven and earth, so theirs was a spiritual marriage arranged by a matchmaker, ordered by his parents, and protected by the spirits of their ancestors. But after the first year of marriage, First Wife had given birth to a girl with one leg too short. And this misfortune led First Wife to begin a trek to Buddhist temples, to offer alms and tailored silk gowns in honor of Buddhas image, to burn incense and pray to Buddha to lengthen her daughters leg. As it happened, Buddha chose instead to bless First Wife with another daughter, this one with two perfect legs, but—alas!—with a brown tea stain splashed over half her face. With this second misfortune, First Wife began to go on so many pilgrimages to Tsinan, just a half-days train ride to the south, that Wu Tsing bought her a house near the Thousand Buddha Cliff and Bubbling Springs Bamboo Grove. And every year he increased the allowance she needed to manage her own household there. So twice a year, during the coldest and hottest months of the year, she returned to Tientsin to pay her respects and suffer sight unseen in her husbands household. And each time she returned, she remained in her bedroom, sitting all day like a Buddha, smoking her opium, talking softly to herself. She did not come downstairs for meals. Instead she fasted or ate vegetarian meals in her room. And Wu Tsing would make a mid-morning visit in her bedroom once a week, drinking tea for half an hour, inquiring about her health. He did not bother her at night.
Yan Chang called loudly to other servants to take our luggage, called another servant to bring tea and draw a hot bath. And then she hastily explained that Second Wife had told everyone not to expect us for another week at least. "What a shame! No one to greet you! Second Wife, the others, gone to Peking to visit her relatives. Your daughter, so pretty, your same look. Shes so shy, eh? First Wife, her daughters…gone on a pilgrimage to another Buddhist temple…Last week, a cousins uncle, just a little crazy, came to visit, turned out not to be a cousin, not an uncle, who knows who he was…."
So they were doing nothing, only waiting. I also waited those many hours.
I was so happy those first few nights, in this amusing house, sleeping in the big soft bed with my mother. I would lie in this comfortable bed, thinking about my uncles house in Ningpo, realizing how unhappy I had been, feeling sorry for my little brother. But most of my thoughts flew to all the new things to see and do in this house.
But now they can do something else. Now they no longer have to swallow their own tears or suffer the taunts of magpies. I know this because I read this news in a magazine from China.
"An-mei," she whispered, "have you seen the little turtle that lives in the pond?" I nodded. This was a pond in our courtyard and I often poked a stick in the still water to make the turtle swim out from underneath the rocks.
"But one thing she could not have: children. And she knew Wu Tsing would soon become anxious to have a son who could perform the ancestral rites and therefore guarantee his own spiritual eternity. So before Wu Tsing could complain about Second Wifes lack of sons, she said: I have already found her, a concubine suitable to bear your sons. By her very nature, you can see she is a virgin. And this was quite true. As you can see, Third Wife is quite ugly. She does not even have small feet.
She was crying now, rambling like a crazy woman: "You can see now, a fourth wife is less than a fifth wife. An-mei, you must not forget. I was a first wife, yi tai, the wife of a scholar. Your mother was not always Fourth Wife, Sz Tai!"
It said that for thousands of years birds had been tormenting the peasants. They flocked to watch peasants bent over in the fields, digging the hard dirt, crying into the furrows to water the seeds. And when the people stood up, the birds would fly down and drink the tears and eat the seeds. So children starved.
"She did so many pretend-suicides, we servants began to suspect she no longer bothered to eat the opium. Her acting was potent enough. Soon she had a better room in the house, her own private rickshaw, a house for her elderly parents, a sum for buying blessings at temples.
I felt my mothers hand stiffen on my shoulder. "And there is Second Wife. She will want you to call her Big Mother," she whispered.
When we arrived, a young servant woman ran out and greeted my mother with cries of joy. She had a high scratchy voice: "Oh Taitai, youve already arrived! How can this be?" This was Yan Chang, my mothers personal maid, and she knew how to fuss over my mother just the right amount. She had called my mother Taitai, the simple honorable title of Wife, as if my mother were the first wife, the only wife.
I watched my mother march in her bed. I wanted to say the words that would quiet her body and spirit. But I stood there like the others, waiting and saying nothing.
"As your mother slept soundly in Second Wifes bed, Second Wife got up in the middle of the night and left the dark room, and Wu Tsing took her place. When your mother awoke to find him touching her beneath her undergarments, she jumped out of bed. He grabbed her by her hair and threw her on the floor, then put his foot on her throat and told her to undress. Your mother did not scream or cry when he fell on her.
A few days after Wu Tsing had arrived home, I awoke in the middle of the night. My mother was rocking my shoulder gently.
I watched hot water pouring out of pipes not just in the kitchen but also into washbasins and bathtubs on all three floors of the house. I saw chamber pots that flushed clean without servants having to empty them. I saw rooms as fancy as my mothers. Yan Chang explained which ones belonged to First Wife and the other concubines, who were called Second Wife and Third Wife. And some rooms belonged to no one. "They are for guests," said Yan Chang.
And in the wintertime I would see snow, she said. My mother said, In just a few months, the period of the Cold Dew would come, then it would start to rain, and then the rain would fall more softly, more slowly until it became white and dry as the petals of quince blossoms in the spring. She would wrap me up in fur-lined coats and pants, so if it was bitter cold, no matter!
And on that day, Second Wifes hair began to turn white.
This was a wonderful clock to see, but after I heard it that first hour, then the next, and then always, this clock became an extravagant nuisance. I could not sleep for many nights. And later, I found I had an ability: to not listen to something meaningless calling to me.
"You do not believe me, so you must give me the necklace. I will not let her buy you for such a cheap price."
I immediately looked down and remained silent, until Yan Chang became restless again to hear her own voice speak on this quiet afternoon.