The Courtesan (6 page)

WAITING FOR A MOON

Jinhua

It is a place where things happen in the night. People come and go and most of them are men, but some are women. Jinhua hears high, singing voices late in the evening, and giggles; the
ding ling
of porcelain and the sound of shoes in the hall outside. She thinks about Baba, but sometimes when she is sleeping under the red, sweet-smelling quilt that used to be Aiwen's, she forgets that he is dead.

There are three pale ladybugs lying on the floor in the room where Jinhua sleeps, and they are dead too. No one is sweeping them up or looking after Jinhua, except that sometimes Suyin, who is the maid, comes to bring rice, and sometimes the eyebrow lady comes. Suyin mostly cares about doing her work, and that is all. Sometimes she cries because Aiwen killed herself and she was Suyin's friend.

The eyebrow lady says she must be called Lao Mama. Once, when Jinhua didn't call her that and said out loud that she wanted to go home, Lao Mama grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her
back. It was hard not to cry when this happened. She won't say that again out loud, but Lao Mama can't stop Jinhua from thinking what she thinks inside her head.

Who misses me in my garden?

The fish. The cat.

The red apricot tree.

I want to go home.

“Suyin, I have a question.”

It is a bright, cold morning, and Jinhua is speaking in a small voice because she is not yet sure of Suyin's mood today. Busy or sad or nice, those are Suyin's moods, mostly. Breakfast is a bowl of gleaming porridge on a bamboo tray with pork and a preserved duck egg and golden bits of crisp-fried
youtiao
topped with ribbons of scallion.

Jinhua is hungry. Her mouth is ready to eat.

“What is your question?” Suyin's breath smells of tea, and her eyes are sleepy. She stops what she is doing.

“Why, Suyin, can't we leave my feet the size that fits my tiger shoes?”

Suyin hands Jinhua a porcelain spoon. “Eat,” she says, moving away, making that
tok-
ing noise with her shoes. “But be careful, the porridge is hot.”

Jinhua hardly thinks about Suyin's limp anymore, but her mouth and eyes look sad today—the way they looked when she put Aiwen's things in the wooden trunk and locked it with the brass padlock in the shape of a dog. The green skirt, the pink shoes, the lacquer box; she packed all those things away so that Jinhua wouldn't touch them ever again. Only a few things are left in the
room: the red lip paint, the quilt on the bed—and the god of wealth is still there sitting on his pile of coins, grinning and looking at Aiwen's apple.

No one knows about the bites that are missing. No one knows yet. Jinhua takes a spoonful of porridge. It has a clean smell, and yes, it is steaming hot, too hot to eat.

Yesterday Lao Mama poked Jinhua's chest hard with her finger, and the finger poking her rib bones almost knocked the breath out of her. Lao Mama said, “You must eat this food so you will become nice and fat and strong for bed business. And then you will eat some more.” She laughed, and the sound of her laughing was like a whole string of firecrackers exploding, and Jinhua could see her golden tooth at the back of her mouth. Then Lao Mama left the room, but the too-sweet smell of her water pipe stayed.

Lao Mama did not explain what bed business is. Jinhua couldn't finish the rice and meat and green vegetables, and her stomach was hurting, and she was wondering about bed business for quite a long time. Now she is hungry enough to eat everything. She lifts the spoon and blows on the porridge and swings her feet back and forth.

Suyin is busy tidying the bed and hasn't answered Jinhua's question about her feet. She has the red, flower-smelling quilt in her hands and her back is turned. “Small feet are beautiful,” she says quite suddenly, “and when you are older you will understand how this is a thing that matters greatly.” Her sigh is like wind in the room, and even though Suyin is standing there next to the bed she seems far away. Jinhua waits for her to say more. She wants Suyin to stay with her even after she has finished eating.

“I will tell you something that is true, and maybe it will help you.” Suyin has turned, and she is hugging the quilt to her chest, and her voice sounds sad and nice, both at once. Jinhua puts the
spoon back in the bowl, and it sinks into the porridge as though the porridge were swallowing it, the whole thing, making it disappear. She notices that Suyin has never once called her by her name.

“The binding of your feet will cost you a thousand buckets of tears,” Suyin says now. Her hands have turned to fists still holding on to the quilt. She drops her head and is looking at the floor, and Jinhua feels a sudden chill even though she has that hot porridge inside her belly.

“But there is something much more terrible than having your feet bound and crying all those tears.” The quilt hangs heavily now from Suyin's outstretched arms, and her voice is dreamy, and Jinhua waits to hear what she will say while she is folding the quilt. “And that is to be a girl like me,” Suyin continues, “with feet that are only half small. To be a girl who will be ugly and unloved for all of her life and there is nothing anyone can do.” Suyin shakes the quilt once, and then again, and then several more times. “To hold the sorrow of feet like mine that were both bound and not, a thousand buckets is not enough.”

Suyin makes a neat fold and tosses the quilt onto the bed as though it were nothing, and her mood has changed again. “So actually, you are a very lucky person, and you should be happy that your feet will be made small.” She shuffles across the room, and her limp is worse than it was just moments ago, and her shoes make that sound.
Tok. Tok-tok.
At the door Suyin pauses, looking back. She is holding her elbows tightly, her arms folded over her belly, and Jinhua calls out. “But there is something I can do, Suyin. I can love you, Suyin, even though you are ugly.”

Suyin blinks and turns away and says, “Tomorrow is an auspicious day. It is the Day of the Smallest Moon. She will come in the morning, early. And now I must go. I have work to do. And you must eat so that you will be strong enough to bear what will happen.”

Jinhua hears the lock on the door. She remembers Timu saying, “Eat so you will be strong enough when the go-between comes to get you.” She remembers Lao Mama poking her and saying, “Eat so you will become nice and fat and strong for bed business.” And now it is this. “Eat so you will be strong enough to bear what will happen.” She cannot eat another mouthful, and she reaches for the red lip paint. She knows what she will do now and tomorrow and the next day and the next, and she will never stop because she will never forget about Baba again, not even when she is sleeping. She will never stop being sorry and sad. And she will never stop wishing that dead people like Baba and Aiwen could come back.

Who misses me in my garden—

I want to go home—

THE DAY OF THE
SMALLEST MOON

Suyin

It is early, and Suyin is
leisi
—tired almost to death—and it is time to get the girl ready for the foot binder. Last night seemed endless, with a third-rate host and his third-rate guests; men who can't keep their hands off even a girl like Suyin, who is there only to sweep the floors and clear away dishes. They were drunk. They named her Madam Working Hands, and then everyone started to call her that. Last night Lao Mama yanked her by the neck and told her to look pleasant for a change and to do whatever the men wanted her to do—even if it was bed business. “They are customers who pay and pay well,” she said, “and there is no accounting for what some men will buy, especially when they are drinking wine. And besides, the landlord will be here tomorrow asking for his money. You must do your part.”

Another time Lao Mama told Suyin that not even a pig would have her. When she said this she was looking at Suyin's feet, and
what Lao Mama said then is the truth. None of the men has ever wanted Suyin in a bed. Some of them like to touch her breasts and laugh at the way she walks, but that is all.

Every turnip has its hole.
This is what Suyin tells herself.
And this is mine.
She has not told Lao Mama that her first moon cycle has just begun. But Lao Mama will find out soon, probably.

“Hao.
”

Lao Mama is standing in the kitchen doorway taking measure with her sharp eye. Her hands are clenched on her hips, and her knuckles are shiny white like small, tight onions lined up in a row. The bulge in the drape of her sleeve is Xiaoyun, Lao Mama's dog, which is no bigger than a lady's small fist.

It is early and cold and dark in the kitchen. Suyin is wary. The single word Lao Mama said—
good
—means nothing yet. The truer, harsher judgment will still come, depending on her mood. Depending on what she sees with that eye of hers.

The two houseboys are standing by the fire, sleepy, tending the brew for soaking feet and bandages. Lao Mama's water pipe is on the table, filled with tobacco, ready to be lit; there is rice and tea and a flowered plate of pickled vegetables, salted duck egg, and strong-smelling
chou doufu
for her breakfast, and the girl is sitting on the stool in the middle of the room, her trousers rolled up to her knees, her legs dangling, her bare feet not quite touching the beaten-clay floor.

A sweet child—and yet it is better not to care too much. Bad things can happen. Bad things will happen. Suyin is thinking of Little Sister, and of Aiwen, who has been replaced by this child on the stool. She is thinking also of herself.

The girl didn't want any breakfast, no tea to warm her up. She has stopped asking questions, and her special shoes are in her lap, where she seems to guard them with every part of her body. Suyin has helped her to dress in warm clothes; she has braided her hair and washed her face. She has tried to think of everything and to remember as little as possible of her own time sitting here in this same place on this same stool, fidgeting with her toes on the rickety crosspiece, waiting for the foot binder to come and make her feet small.

“Small for the men who are my customers. Small for bed business.” That is what Lao Mama said then.

Most things are hard to remember after so much time has passed, but this thing is hard to forget.

Lao Mama misses almost nothing now, checking this and checking that. The fire is not hot enough. Neither is the tea. The boys are clumsy because they are anxious—or anxious because they are clumsy. Suyin herself is kneeling, the curved knife in her hand, preparing the girl's feet, trimming her toenails. There is not much to do there. Her feet have been well cared for; they are soft, pale, and clean, the feet of a child who has always worn fine shoes.

The two houseboys are chattering in the way that boys do, baiting each other, pinching, flicking, shoving. Their grip on the basin slips as they shift it to a hotter place on the fire—they are small and it is far too heavy for them—and a dollop of pink liquid slops over the side. The boys cry out, and Suyin leaps to her feet. Embers hiss and the liquid stinks and the fire flares; all eyes dart in Lao Mama's direction and the kitchen god is staring down from the wall, judging them all with his wild eyes.

“Can't you get anything right?” Lao Mama's face twists. Clumsiness annoys her. The boys are quick and brothel-born. Nodding, they work to settle the basin, their five senses now alert to the
danger of Lao Mama's mood. Suyin lends a hand and worries with them—and doesn't want to worry. Not about them. Or anyone. The basin is large enough to stew a small pig, and it is the stink of the wafting, blood-tinged brew that Suyin remembers most of all from her time on this stool waiting for the foot binder. That and how her feet were first so cold and then so hot and filled with pain—and how the pain was even worse when the foot-binding sickness came and almost made her die.

Now Lao Mama has a bamboo rod at hand. She was the one, then, who carved Suyin's toenails and trimmed her flesh and pummeled her muscles until they ached. She wasn't gentle. She didn't try to soothe Suyin, and Suyin cried, and her toes bled, and her feet hurt, and then the foot binder came. When it was over Lao Mama made Suyin stand up. She made her walk. And walk and walk and walk some more. On her poor, raw, twisted feet.

“Get the bellows. Bring more wood.
Kuai dian
—hurry. That fire is wilting like an old man's
jiba.
” Lao Mama's voice has turned nasty. The tiny dog is mewling sweetly from its place in her sleeve. “Where is Cook? What do I pay that useless piece of gooseflesh for? He should be here, working, helping—working.”

“Cook has gone to buy food for this evening's banquet.” In spite of all she doesn't want, Suyin does want to protect the cook. He rose early. He prepared the brew in the basin—
pig's blood and special herbs to prevent infection in the feet.
His own recipe. It doesn't always work, as Suyin knows too well. This morning when the brew was ready, he said, “This is no place for a man,” and he left.

He is a good man who works in a bad place,
Suyin thinks.

“It is not nearly hot enough.” Lao Mama is peering into the basin with a crone's hunch in her back. The hunch is worse than it used to be. Suyin has watched it grow. “She needs this concoction hot enough to sizzle the beak off a chicken,” Lao Mama says now.

She,
they all know, is the foot binder, who is coming soon—at the Hour of the Dragon—and whom Lao Mama despises, not so secretly. It is because she charges so much money to bind a girl's feet, and because Lao Mama cannot get a cheaper price from her or anyone. And so Lao Mama hates her and she always has and always will, and this is the way that Lao Mama turns her face to the world.

Sticks of wood hiss and crackle, and the boys are prodding the fire as though their lives depend on the heat of the embers, and they don't know where Cook has put the bellows. They keep their eyes on the bamboo rod and look relieved when Lao Mama turns her attention to the child. She is holding a pair of bound-foot shoes in her hand, and she brings them close to the child's face and lets them dangle in front of her eyes. Suyin knows how this feels, to be taunted like this.

The child's mouth is open. The shoes are dark blue, and they look impossibly tiny even for someone as small as she is.

“Light my pipe,” Lao Mama says to one of the boys without looking at either of them. Both boys jump as though her voice were an axe falling far too close to where they are standing.

“There was a little girl who would run upon the street. She stole some rice and traded it for something good to eat.” Lao Mama is leering at the child, still holding the shoes, waggling them there right at her face. She finishes the rhyme. “Her mother lost control of her until she bound her feet. And now she's just as good a girl as you will ever meet.”

The last bit Lao Mama says slowly, and the shoes stop moving, and the child's eyes are round with worry. Suyin worries for her and for the houseboys and for Cook as well, and she doesn't want these worries in her heart and in her head—
because she has enough worries of her own, and it is so very painful to worry and to love and not
be loved in return.
One houseboy stands there, Lao Mama's pipe in hand, waiting, unsure what to do. Suyin nods at him. A silent way of telling him,
It is better if you do nothing.

“One of my favorite rhymes,” Lao Mama says now. “Do you know it?”

The child shakes her head—no, she doesn't know the rhyme. The boy nods, as though to say,
I know, I know.

“
Hè,
what is the matter with you? It is a child's rhyme, and nothing more,” Lao Mama says. The child looks close to tears.

She is pitiless,
Suyin is thinking,
and as cruel as poison.
She herself is weary enough to lie down and never get up.

“You should be grateful,” Lao Mama says. “Don't you want to be beautiful?” She lifts the dark blue shoes high above the child's head and drops them one at a time onto the floor next to the stool. As though she were dropping feathers or leaves or bits of confetti. But the shoes are heavier than those things are, and the sound of them slapping the floor startles everyone in the room. And then, suddenly, Lao Mama swoops down to snatch the tiger shoes from the child's lap.

She's caught the girl unawares. Her hands fly up, but Lao Mama is too quick for her.

“You won't need these anymore,” she says. “Soon you will have tiny
san zun jin lian
for feet—three-inch golden lilies—just like mine. Then you can wear other, smaller shoes that make your feet look beautiful—for the turtle heads who are my customers.”

In an instant Suyin knows what is coming, but the shriek stops in her throat, and before her feet can move a single step one tiger shoe is on the fire; flames surge, and the stink of burning felt and silk and embroidery thread fills the air. The child has leapt to her feet. She is clawing at Lao Mama's gown, reaching for the second shoe, and screaming, “No.” Lao Mama holds the shoe up high and
pushes her aside, and the stool topples, crashing to the floor. And now both shoes are burning on the fire; the child is reaching with her hands toward the flames, and Lao Mama is shrieking. “What is she doing? She will ruin herself. Someone stop her. Make her stop.”

Suyin lunges. She grabs a small shoulder, an arm, a hank of hair. She wraps her arms around the child, and the child struggles and then goes limp. Suyin murmurs her name, and it is the first time she has said it aloud. “Jinhua,” she says.
“Mei banfa.”
We can do nothing. “Now that you have come here, you do not own yourself.” It takes a huge effort to keep her voice soft and calm.

Jinhua is sobbing now in her arms, and Suyin is wondering,
How can it be that something so necessary can be gone so quickly, leaving not a trace behind?
For this she has no answer—and she is remembering the burning of everything she had when she first came here to the Hall of Round Moon and how the child said only yesterday, “I can love you, Suyin, even though you are ugly.” When she looks up she finds Lao Mama's eyes on her, and she has seen this look before.
When others give comfort, she finds ways to be cruel. When others love, she hates.
This, too, is Lao Mama's way of turning her face to the world. The houseboys look stricken. Suyin unfolds her arms from Jinhua's body. She sees the houseboys squirm. Lao Mama hesitates; Suyin can see her thinking, deciding, her eyes bearing down.
She has not finished for today.
Lao Mama pulls the little dog from her sleeve—he is tiny in her hand—and now she is holding him at arm's length by the scruff of his neck. Lao Mama loves Xiaoyun and talks to him and feeds him bits of shrimp from her fingertips at mealtimes, but now Xiaoyun is dangling in midair in just the way the shoes dangled—much too close to the fire.