Waxing Moon (10 page)

15

Mistress Yee was in her room, scratching her enormous tummy. For some reason, she felt terribly itchy. She hated being pregnant. Things were happening to her body without her consent, it seemed, and this state of affairs often put her in a foul mood. She was waiting for Mirae to arrive. The doctor had informed Mistress Yee that her maid was no longer contagious. In truth, Mistress Yee was glad to have Mirae attend to her because she was the only maid with the ability to anticipate and accommodate her needs. The others were clueless and subservient, and they repeatedly required detailed instructions. When Mistress Yee’s subordinates were stupid, she needed to be wise and careful; this tired and frustrated her.

“Here I am, Mistress Yee,” Mirae announced.

“Open the door,” Mistress Yee ordered from inside her room, leaning against the cushion with her legs stretched out. Her dainty feet in her white silk footwear wriggled in boredom.

“Sit down,” Mistress Yee ordered cheerfully.

Mirae sat and cast her glance down. Mistress Yee examined her face, amused and surprised. Then she said, “Cheer up, Mirae. It doesn’t look as bad as you might think. You are still the prettiest among all the maids.” She laughed in approval of her own sarcastic phrase.

Mirae sat silently.

“You’ve changed,” Mistress Yee suggested. She took a moment to study Mirae’s reaction. “I don’t just mean your appearance. Your attitude too.”

“I am sorry, Mistress Yee. I don’t mean to be rude to you. And I am here to serve you,” Mirae confessed.

“I don’t mean your attitude toward
me.
I am talking about your attitude toward
yourself,
” Mistress Yee said, grinning maliciously.

Mirae said nothing.

“Do my hair, Mirae,” Mistress Yee ordered, turning around to face the folding screen which she had brought as part of her dowry. Embroidered meticulously in colorful silk and gold threads, it depicted the beginning of spring with cherry blossoms, blackbirds, and a girl on a swing by a stream. “You know, Mirae, that is me.” Mistress Yee pointed at the girl on the swing.

“I know, my lady,” Mirae said.

“You see what I am saying? In the past, you would have said, ‘Oh, my lady, you must have been the prettiest girl ever lived.’ But now, you say, ‘I see, my lady.’ That is not you, Mirae. You’ve changed. That’s not a good sign,” Mistress Yee said, smiling.

“I am sorry, my lady,” Mirae said, taking a comb and perfumed oil.

“No apologies between you and me. You’ve been very good to me.” She laughed. Her pitch-black hair fell on her back. Mirae began to comb it. “Do you know what has changed?” Mistress Yee asked mockingly. “A maid with a pretty face thinks she can marry up. In the end, she becomes a concubine to an aristocrat and has an illegitimate child. As soon as there is another girl with a prettier face, the man leaves her and her child. And that’s the end of her glory. A maid with a homely face, on the other hand, marries a servant in the household, or even better, if she brought a male servant from outside into the household she would be given a place of her own, and she would live as a wife and mother in her own place. That’s the only difference between a pretty maid and a not-so-pretty maid. I had always wondered what might become of you with your pretty face. But now, it’s my opinion that chicken pox might not be a villain after all,” she said, observing Mirae’s reaction as she gazed at the sliver-framed looking glass in her hand.

Biting her lip, Mirae kept combing her mistress’s hair.

“Hurry, Mirae. I have to dine with my husband when he is done with the memorial service. I couldn’t attend with my belly this large; it’s impossible to kowtow to the ancestors. That reminds me of something. I need you to deliver a packet to the temple tomorrow. My due date is approaching, and your master wants to make a special offering so that I will have a smooth delivery,” she said, looking intently at herself in the looking glass.

Still, Mirae said nothing.

“Look here,” Mistress Yee turned around suddenly, pulling her hair away from Mirae’s hands. “I don’t enjoy chattering alone. I am not your entertainer. Do you understand that?”

“I do, my lady. I will try my best not to be an annoyance,” Mirae said.

“You will have to.” Mistress Yee turned around and faced the folding screen again. Now Mirae had to braid her hair all over again because the braid had come loose.

When her hair was done, Mistress Yee sat up, supporting her belly with her hands, and said, “I can’t wait until this is over. It’s so hard to move about. I feel like I have swallowed a watermelon whole. Anyway, I was thinking that you would be the perfect nanny for the baby.”

“It would be my pleasure, Mistress,” Mirae replied, gloomily.

“But when I come to think of it,” Mistress Yee said quickly, “well, I will have to hire someone else. No offense, but it’d be cruel if the first thing my baby had to see was you with your skin condition. Don’t you think?” Mistress Yee said, pouting. She lay back against the cushion with her eyes closed so that Mirae could shape her eyebrows. Mirae clenched her teeth with shame. No tears, she told herself. She took the tweezers and began to pluck Mistress Yee’s eyebrows into the shape of a seagull’s wing.

“Easy!” Mistress Yee shrilled irritably, her eyes still closed. A teardrop oozed out from under her eyelid.

“I will be careful, my lady,” Mirae said, holding her breath.

Mistress Yee was tempted to tell the story of her own mother, who had once been a maid, a very pretty one. Mistress Yee’s father, General Bin Yee, a descendent of a famous general and, later, a member of council in the government office, had two wives already and had an affair with her mother. The first wife died of tuberculosis, and the second one was accused of indecency and removed from the house and lived elsewhere in solitude. Her mother had to face opposition from General Yee’s relatives and friends and the vicious accusations that she had caused the second wife’s misfortune. “Is it true?” Mistress Yee had asked her mother one day. She didn’t answer then. But some days later she said, “I did it for you.” When all that had happened, Mistress Yee wasn’t even born. As a child, Mistress Yee held a grudge against her mother. General Yee wasn’t a loving man. Mistress Yee didn’t get along with him, who played the role of a general even at home. As Mistress Yee grew older, she realized that, as much as she resented her mother, she was, slowly but surely, becoming her mother’s daughter.

Applying a wet cotton pad to soothe Mistress Yee’s raw skin, Mirae announced that her job was done. Mistress Yee opened her eyes and said, “Mirae, please don’t pull your face long. Will you stay depressed forever? It’s funny. What would you have done differently that you can’t do now because of your skin? You were my maid, and you are my maid, and you will be my maid unless I dismiss you. It’s remarkably annoying to see you act as if you’d had a different life before the chicken pox, or whatever it was.”

Mirae remembered very well how Mistress Yee had promised, or seemed to have promised, something grand, although intangible, when she was in need of help. Mirae had participated in the affairs of her mistress as if they had been scheming for a shared purpose. She sighed deeply as she was tidying up the room after her mistress had left for breakfast. She was not grieving over her disfigured skin. No, her heart sank because she had wasted her life for nothing and that she had been gravely mistaken when she thought she had a friend in Mistress Yee. “How foolish,” she said aloud to herself. She laughed and laughed until she sounded like a madwoman and tears trickled down her cheeks.

16

Every year, before Mistress Kim had passed away, on holidays, especially on Harvest Day, Mr. O’s servants were busy delivering packages of food to the peasants on his land as a token of gratitude and friendship. But this year, there was no such order from the master. A day after Harvest Day, Nani realized that there was an abundance of leftover food. She knew that some of the peasants expected to taste the food served on the altar in memory of Mistress Kim.

Early in the morning, Nani decided to send some food to at least a few people, thinking that Mistress Kim would have liked her to do so. She was looking for Min to make the delivery, but he was nowhere to be found. She should have been more sensitive when he had brought in the baby in the basket. But then, who had the time and the means to mother an orphan even for a day?

After a while, Nani gave up looking for Min. In the end, Bok, the errand boy for Mr. O, delivered food to a few homes, including Jaya’s.

Grumbling, and feeling still a little guilty for having been heartless, Nani staggered with a mountainous load of laundry to the creek. She was the only one there doing laundry. Everyone else was probably sleeping in after the gluttonous holiday. She began to beat the sheets and clothes with a wooden bat on a flat rock. She saw Bok race by like a puppy. Nani stopped her work and shouted to him, “Have you seen Min?”

“No! He didn’t sleep in the room last night,” the boy shouted back, still racing across the rice field.

“Where on earth has he gone?” Nani said under her breath, beating the blanket cover harder. She hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings. She would tell him that. But where was he?

The tree branches on the surface of the water danced dizzily. Suddenly, Nani raised her head to look at the surrounding mountains and was amazed by the change in the colors. It was definitely fall now. Summer was the time she had to be patient with the scorching heat and the long, stubborn afternoons that didn’t want to surrender. But then the fall would ambush her, and just when she was savoring the best season of the year, it would flee without warning. Nani could feel the crispness in the air. Soon it would be too cold to do laundry in the creek.

By the time she was done with the laundry, a couple of women showed up with their laundry on their heads. They exchanged greetings, but Nani didn’t feel like chatting. There were things to be done. Realistically speaking, she felt that she was the only functioning maid at the moment, and the workload was getting to her. She hurried back to the house, and as she entered the gate, Mirae was leaving, all dressed up, just as she had often done before the infamous chicken pox. Widening her eyes, she surveyed Mirae from head to toe and was impressed. Whatever had happened to her? She was back to herself. This was good, but immediately the familiar hostility she had always felt toward her churned her stomach. “A lady is born,” Nani said, clucking her tongue sarcastically.

“I am going to the temple,” Mirae said coolly. “Mistress Yee wants you.” Mirae walked away briskly.

Nani clucked her tongue again, lingering for a while to watch Mirae sashay. She was swaying her rear end just as lasciviously as before. “Good old Mirae,” Nani remarked resentfully.

The first thing Nani did was to inquire after Min when she saw Soonyi. He had not been sighted since the day before, but no one seemed to think it strange. She hung the laundry behind the maids’ quarters. Then she sat down by the tool shed and pensively ate an unpeeled radish, long, white, and juicy. She was thinking about Mirae; she had seemed pretty in spite of her uneven skin. When her mother was alive, she had called Mirae a mountain fox. Legend told that a mountain fox had turned into a pretty woman at night to seduce a man so that she could eat him whole in the morning. Nani was only nine years old so the story went over her head. But now that she was older, she knew vaguely what her mother might have meant. Mirae was a different sort. There was no one to compare to her.

All of a sudden, Nani sprang up, tossing the tail of the radish in the air. She ran to Mistress Yee’s quarters as fast as she could. Still panting as she was taking her shoes off, she announced her arrival. There was no reply from inside. Her heart pounded. She announced herself again, more quietly.

“What’s the fuss?” said Mistress Yee irritably.

“Mistress Yee, I was told that you wanted me to come,” Nani said feebly.

“I am glad you are still alive,” she replied. “Come in.”

Nani opened the door and said, “Mistress, I was doing the laundry. I am sorry I am late.”

“Come close,” Mistress Yee said, smiling unexpectedly.

Anticipating calamity, Nani approached. She was sure that Mistress Yee was about to fire her, considering what she had accused her of in the storage room.

“My blood circulation is really bad, and it makes my legs fall asleep all the time. I need a good massage on my legs,” Mistress Yee said as she pulled her long skirt up. Then she pulled up her long, silky white underdress and then her long white underpants, baring her legs. Nani began to massage her legs carefully, rotating her thumbs with just the right amount of pressure.

“Ah, that feels so good. You have the touch. Did you do this for the dead woman?” Mistress Yee asked, her face completely relaxed and her eyes closed.

“No. I did it for my mother,” Nani replied. Her forehead was slightly sweating.

“Well, you are doing a good job,” Mistress Yee said.

A little while later, just as Nani thought that Mistress Yee was asleep, she suddenly spoke: “Nani, how old are you?”

Startled, Nani quickly answered.

“I hear you are engaged to the dumb boy. What’s his name? Min. Is that correct?” Mistress Yee said with a mysterious smile.

Nani, speeding up with her massaging, was at a loss. She didn’t know what to say.

“Now, that is not something to be embarrassed about. Did he ever give you an assurance he would marry you?”

“We haven’t really talked about it, Mistress Yee,” Nani replied.

Mistress Yee opened her eyes and burst out laughing. “You couldn’t have. He can’t speak!” She laughed some more. “Of course, I understand that there are other ways to communicate. And I am sure that you have mastered that language by now. But I want to know if he intends to marry you.”

Nani turned apple red and focused her glance on the floor.

“Do you know that he’s been disappearing at night regularly?” Mistress Yee asked in an all-knowing tone of voice. “Does he come to you?”

“I beg your pardon, Mistress Yee?”

“You heard me,” Mistress Yee said, her eyes closed.

Nani was speechless.

“Does your silence mean yes?” Mistress Yee asked, fixing her glance on Nani.

“Mistress Yee, my mother taught me to behave.” She stopped, unsure about what else to say.

“I don’t really care what you do at night,” Mistress Yee said curtly, still smiling.

Nani bit her lip and lowered her glance.

“If what you say is true—if Min doesn’t come to you at night—then we need to find out where he does go every night,” Mistress Yee said. Her tone was uncharacteristically serious and quiet. She raised her eyebrows questioningly and stared at Nani.

Mistress Yee seemed to expect Nani to come up with a scheme to find out where Min went at night. But she didn’t really believe what Mistress Yee was saying. Min had no place to go, she was convinced, except that he had disappeared the day before because they had a little argument over the abandoned baby. Should she confess the event from the day before? That would demystify his absence. But then she would need to explain why she hadn’t mentioned the incident earlier, so she sat there, listening to her own breathing.

“Will you go look for him?” Mistress Yee asked.

“Yes, Mistress Yee,” Nani quickly answered.

“Where will you go to look for him?” Mistress Yee asked, her eyes sparkling.

“Well, first I will go to the field and see if he is helping out the farmers with the hay or something because he’s always wanted to lend a hand. He is very strong, you see, Mistress Yee. Then I will go to Dubak’s house to ask if he has seen him. They are friends,” Nani rattled on until she realized that Mistress Yee was not listening to her.

“No need to go look for him. We know where he is. We are going to marry him off. I just wanted to let you know that. It seems as though he hasn’t done anything to be obliged to take you as his bride. We would like to arrange a marriage between him and a village girl with a baby, out of wedlock,” Mistress Yee said casually.

Nani opened her mouth. But her tongue was frozen, and her limbs were dissolving into nothingness.

“Massage my feet.” Mistress Yee wriggled her toes impatiently.

Nani grabbed her left foot and began to massage it. Mistress Yee giggled, pulling it away from Nani. Nani could no longer hear or feel anything. She wanted so desperately to see Min and ask him if he loved her. Mistress Yee, still giggling, stretched her legs toward Nani, suggesting that she should go on with the massage. But Nani got up slowly and walked toward the door, as if sleepwalking.

“What are you doing?” Mistress Yee cawed to the back of Nani’s head. By the time she grabbed a teacup to throw at her, it was too late: Nani was out of sight.