Secret of a Thousand Beauties (16 page)

17

T
hat night I had a very disturbing dream. I was making love to Shen Feng in the mountain cave, but after we finished and he got up from me, I saw that he was not my mountain husband, but my ghostly one!

His blurry face split into a cunning, sharp-toothed smile. “So you think you’re someone else’s wife now, eh? That’s just a dream! Because you’re my wife till death and then for eternity! If you make out with another man again, I’ll come back every night to haunt and fuck you!”

I jolted awake with a scream, sweating profusely. Though I knew immediately it was just a dream, it took me some time to calm myself. I wondered if my scream had awakened Purple. So I put on a shawl, slipped on my slippers, and walked to her room. I wanted to tell her everything about Shen Feng and the dream of my ghost husband.

I knocked on her door many times, but there was no response. I thought she must be completely exhausted from all the recent events—her miscarriage, Leilei’s death, Aunty and Little Doll’s attempted suicide and injuries. So I went back to my room and softly closed the door.

The next morning, I awoke to the distant sound of roosters crowing. I went to knock on Purple’s door, but there was still no answer. I feared that something was very wrong, so I pushed open her door and found that her bed was empty, and her embroidery tools, normally on the top of her small table, were gone. Alarmed, I dashed into the living room to see if there was any sign of Purple. A piece of paper was lying on the altar, in front of Guan Yin. It was a note from my big sister:

When I finished reading, I collapsed on the chair and sobbed, feeling sick and dizzy. Leilei was dead. Purple had left for good. Aunty and Little Doll were still in the hospital. Shen Feng was off somewhere fighting his revolution. And I was left in a deserted house next to a haunted mountain. But the real haunting was not by the dead but by the living. Were there any more disasters waiting to happen?

I poured myself some tea and felt steadier after I took a few sips. I pondered why Purple had left without me, especially when earlier she’d asked me to escape with her. All I could think was that she felt bitter that Aunty had promoted me to be the lead embroiderer for
Along the River.
Maybe she also thought I should have declined and given the role back to her. But no one else cared who was the main embroiderer in this now-broken household.

Actually, I didn’t care myself whether I was the lead embroiderer and felt sorry that Purple had taken it so hard. I decided to make offerings to Guan Yin and my grand-teacher for them to protect my big sister—wherever she went and whatever she did. Of course, I’d also ask Guan Yin to bless and protect my newly-wed-and-left husband, Shen Feng, the injured Aunty Peony, and shocked Little Doll. So I knelt in front of the altar where the Goddess of Compassion and my teacher’s teacher Qiu Niang sat regally. I poured tea, lit incense, and bowed three times with utmost sincerity and respect. Then I went to bed.

 

The next morning, I dragged myself out of bed with heavy feet and arrived with an even heavier heart to begin the journey back to Soochow to pick up Aunty Peony and Little Doll and bring them home. I feared that Aunty would despair when she arrived home, now empty except for the three of us. On the way home, I finally told Aunty that Leilei was dead. I couldn’t tell how she took the news because she was scowling the whole way back and said nothing.

Back home, Little Doll seemed oblivious and ate her hot soup and almond cakes with relish. With Aunty, however, I had to press her to eat anything at all. I felt affection for both, even though Aunty was cold and mean and Little Doll a little “slow.”

Soon Aunty asked, “Spring Swallow, where is Purple? Why didn’t she come to the hospital with you?”

Little Doll noisily slurped her soup as she looked around. “Yes, where’s Sister Purple, how come she’s not here?”

“Aunty Peony . . . Purple . . . has left.”

She asked calmly, “For good?”

I nodded.

But Aunty kept her cool. “Hmmm . . . another one left. But how do you know she’s not coming back?”

“Because she left us a note,” I said, then took Purple’s letter from the altar and handed it to Aunty.

After she read it, her face turned pale.

Little Doll put down her spoon and started to cry. “I want Sister Purple and Sister Leilei back!”

Aunty cast her a shut-up glance. “Stop fussing, Little Doll! We have enough trouble already!”

Seconds later, when both seemed to calm down, I asked tentatively, “Aunty Peony, what about Purple?”

“What about her?”

“Should we try to get her back? We could place a missing person ad in the newspaper.”

“Absolutely not. What’s the point? She left us a note saying very clearly she’s leaving us and won’t come back. She doesn’t want to be with us anymore, you understand? You think she’ll come back just because she sees an ad? Don’t be naïve, Spring Swallow. Anyway, I already assigned you to do the work; she’s not needed in this house anymore. Ungrateful bitch!”

Having no courage to respond to her anger, I continued to eat but without tasting the food.

When we all finished, Aunty said, “Spring Swallow, if Leilei’s dead, what happened to the body?”

I’d been dreading this question, but I quickly explained how we’d discovered the body, only to find it gone the next morning. Aunty lowered her head, weighed down by all the misery. I thought she also looked scared—nothing made ghosts angrier than lack of a proper burial.

So I quickly added that Purple and I had made a shrine to her on the mountain and already made offerings to her spirit.

“All right, then we all better go to pay respects to her now, even though she betrayed us. We have enough troubles without being haunted. Let’s go prepare offerings.”

Then she turned to Little Doll. “You stay home and keep an eye on things. Clean or embroider.”

“No, Aunty, I want to go with you and Sister Spring Swallow!”

“Stop whining. It’s not the place for a little girl. You understand?”

When we were on the way to the mountain, I asked my teacher, “Aunty Peony, what if Leilei did not drown but was murdered?”

She looked shocked. “Spring Swallow, no more talk like this. Why would anyone do this to her? She must have gone wading in the river and drowned.”

“I hope you’re right.” I knew she did not want any rumors that might lead to an investigation.

“Anyway, she’s gone and when a person leaves, the tea cools.”

Nobody wants to drink cold tea, so it will be poured away and forgotten.

Aunty went through the ritual quickly, yet respectfully. After we displayed the offerings—Leilei’s favorite tea, snack, and embroidery—in front of her shrine, we lit incense and kowtowed.

Aunty said a prayer: “Leilei, we’re all very sorry that you had to leave us under such a circumstance. But I promise we’ll come here to make you offerings, especially on the Qingming Festival and other special days. We hope you’re now in the Western Paradise surrounded by fragrant flowers, melodious tunes, and flavorful food. In your next life, we hope you’ll reincarnate into a wealthy household. . . .”

 

Over the next few days, we settled back into our normal routine, or at least as much as we could without Leilei and Purple. But I did not yet start working on
Along the River.

Finally, I asked, “Aunty Peony, can you give me the drawing of
Along the River
so I can copy?”

“There’s no drawing.”

“Then what are we going to do?”

She hesitated a long time, then, “All right, I’ll draw it out on silk for you. I don’t need a copy”—she pointed to her head—“it’s all in here.”

“But, Aunty, how can you remember all that?”

She looked at me as if I was stupid—like she sometimes looked at Little Doll. “Haven’t I taught you that nothing is impossible if you put all your effort into it?”

“But your hands . . .”

“My right hand was injured, but I can use my left, which is still fairly agile.”

I was stunned to hear this. “You can embroider with both hands?”

“There’re lots of things you don’t know about me. All first-rate court embroiderers had to be able to do this.”

“But then why can’t you embroider
Along the River
?”

“Because I don’t want to go through that again. Drawing is easier than embroidering.” She rubbed her eyes. “And I don’t want to strain my eyes with the different colored threads. You understand?”

Before I had a chance to reply, she had dashed upstairs and closed her door with a bang.

Except for coming down to eat and bathe, Aunty Peony stayed by herself in her room for several days. Then one day she descended the stairs triumphantly, arms around bundles of silk fabric. She laid them on the table and asked Little Doll and me to sit beside her.

As she unrolled the scrolls, we were amazed to see her beautiful drawings of
Along the River
with all detail shown. I suspected that Aunty did not really reproduce the entire work from memory, but if she had the original imperial drawings hidden in her secret chamber I had failed to find them.

“Spring Swallow,” Aunty interrupted my thoughts, “before you start to embroider, take several days to study the drawing. Then I’ll lay the first stitch and help you with the difficult parts.”

So the following days I did nothing but study
Along the River,
with Aunty pointing out important details and warning me about pitfalls. I needed to depict both serene rural villages and bustling city scenes. Aunty had not bothered to discuss the work with me in such detail before, and now I appreciated her genius more than ever.

Finally the day came to officially begin. Aunty Peony reminded me to bathe my entire body, especially my hands, and rinse my mouth with herb-scented water. Then she led me to offer incense, tea, food to her teacher, my grand-teacher, and Guan Yin.

When we finished, she said, “Spring Swallow, listen, you must live like the famous embroiderer Yu Chunhui, who locked herself in her room and would not come out until she finished her work.”

I nodded as she used her left hand to carefully put down the first stitch onto the waiting silk cloth.

From that moment on, all I did was embroider, eat, and sleep. Not only my hands but my mind was strained. There were so many things to consider: the selection of just the right shades of colors, the thickness of the different threads, the various sized needles, and the kinds of stitches to lay down. Different details required different stitches to come alive—flat, realistic, wandering, cross, braided.... It all had to come together as a harmonious whole, a balance of dark and light,
yin
and
yang.
All this and keep the viewer interested as the energy gradually intensified to its climax—the chaotic scene depicting people gesturing and shouting as the boat is about to crash into the Rainbow Bridge.

To keep my interest as I worked, I imagined myself as the different people living in the prosperous metropolis one thousand years ago. I’d walk in leisurely steps along the crowded streets, passing a teahouse, a wine store, a butcher shop, a pawn shop, and a temple filled with devotees making offerings. I imagined entering a store selling musical instruments and plucking the four strings of a
pipa,
pretending I could hear the bittersweet melodies filling the air. I’d also enter a fabric and brocade store, my hands caressing the smooth silk....

Every day when I finished work, Aunty Peony would look at what I’d done and give her opinion. She was unsparing; nothing escaped her cleaver-sharp eyes. If there was a flawed stitch, I had to take out the threads and redo it on the spot. Sometimes I would make more important mistakes and she would undo the whole area with an annoyed expression and re-embroider it herself, though I could tell that this was painful for her.

When I’d started to work on
Along the River,
I feared that I could not possibly execute such a sophisticated and complex masterpiece, even with Aunty’s guidance. However, I kept telling myself that this was a test from Heaven. Either I’d finish it perfectly within the short deadline and prove myself a master embroiderer, or I’d fail and always remain a slave to Aunty.

Though I was grateful to Aunty for teaching me her skills, I couldn’t help resenting her constant rebukes. Now that my chance of escaping with Purple was lost, my only hope of leaving Aunty was if my
Along the River
would win the contest.

When I felt overwhelmed by the daunting task, I’d remind myself of Father Edwin’s quote from the sage Laozi: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the ground under your feet.”

He said, “Just keep walking and never stop, and one day you
will
reach your destination, however long the journey.”

He told me about how hard it was for him, as a white ghost, when he first arrived in China to spread the word of God.