"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?
"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 brother's 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 Tsing's wealth. And three years later, she gave birth to a son, which Second Wife claimed as her own.
"And that is how I came to live in Wu Tsing's house," concluded Yan Chang proudly.
And that was how I learned that the baby Syaudi was really my mother's son, my littlest brother.
In truth, this was a bad thing that Yan Chang had done, telling me my mother's story. Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth.
After Yan Chang told me this story, I saw everything. I heard things I had never understood before.
I saw Second Wife's true nature.
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 you've become!" And of course, her visits always reminded Wu Tsing of Fifth Wife's low-class background and how foolish he had been to be lured by her earthy flesh.
I saw Second Wife koutou to First Wife, bowing with deep respect while offering her more opium. And I knew why First Wife's power had been drained away.
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 Wife's health and happiness.
And I saw my mother's terrible pain as Second Wife bounced Syaudi on her lap, kissing my mother's 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."
And I knew why my mother cried in her room so often. Wu Tsing's 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.
I suffered so much after Yan Chang told me my mother's 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.
Two days before the lunar new year, Yan Chang woke me when it was still black outside.
"Quickly!" she cried, pulling me along before my mind and eyes could work together.
My mother's 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.
"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.
"She has taken too much opium," cried Yan Chang. "The doctor says he can do nothing. She has poisoned herself."
So they were doing nothing, only waiting. I also waited those many hours.
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.
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.
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.
I fainted with all this grief and they carried me back to Yan Chang's bed. So that morning, while my mother was dying, I was dreaming.
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.
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 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?
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.
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.
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.
Because we both knew this: that on the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother's 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.
So on that day, Wu Tsing, fearful of my mother's 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.
And on that day, I showed Second Wife the fake pearl necklace she had given me and crushed it under my foot.
And on that day, Second Wife's hair began to turn white.
And on that day, I learned to shout.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 people's
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.
What would your psychiatrist say if I told him that I shouted for joy when I read that this had happened?
Ying-Ying St. Clair
My daughter has put me in the tiniest of rooms in her new house.
"This is the guest bedroom," Lena said in her proud American way.
I smiled. But to Chinese ways of thinking, the guest bedroom is the best bedroom, where she and her husband sleep. I do not tell her this. Her wisdom is like a bottomless pond. You throw stones in and they sink into the darkness and dissolve. Her eyes looking back do not reflect anything.
I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is part of mine. But when she was born, she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore. And now I must tell her everything about my past. It is the only way to penetrate her skin and pull her to where she can be saved.
This room has ceilings that slope downward toward the pillow of my bed. Its walls close in like a coffin. I should remind my daughter not to put any babies in this room. But I know she will not listen. She has already said she does not want any babies. She and her husband are too busy drawing places that someone else will build and someone else will live in. I cannot say the American word that she and her husband are. It is an ugly word.
"Arty-tecky," I once pronounced it to my sister-in-law.
My daughter had laughed when she heard this. When she was a child, I should have slapped her more often for disrespect. But now it is too late. Now she and her husband give me money to add to my so-so security. So the burning feeling I have in my hand sometimes, I must pull it back into my heart and keep it inside.
What good does it do to draw fancy buildings and then live in one that is useless? My daughter has money, but everything in her house is for looking, not even for good-looking. Look at this end table. It is heavy white marble on skinny black legs. A person must always think not to put a heavy bag on this table or it will break. The only thing that can sit on the table is a tall black vase. The vase is like a spider leg, so thin only one flower can be put in. If you shake the table, the vase and flower will fall down.
All around this house I see the signs. My daughter looks but does not see. This is a house that will break into pieces. How do I know? I have always known a thing before it happens.
When I was a young girl in Wushi, I was lihai. Wild and stubborn. I wore a smirk on my face. Too good to listen. I was small and pretty. I had tiny feet which made me very vain. If a pair of silk slippers became dusty, I threw them away. I wore costly imported calfskin shoes with little heels. I broke many pairs and ruined many stockings running across the cobblestone courtyard.
I often unraveled my hair and wore it loose. My mother would look at my wild tangles and scold me: "Aii-ya, Ying-ying, you are like the lady ghosts at the bottom of the lake."
These were the ladies who drowned their shame and floated in living people's houses with their hair undone to show their everlasting despair. My mother said I would bring shame into the house, but I only giggled as she tried to tuck my hair up with long pins. She loved me too much to get angry. I was like her. That was why she named me Ying-ying, Clear Reflection.
We were one of the richest families in Wushi. We had many rooms, each filled with big, heavy tables. On each table was a jade jar sealed airtight with a jade lid. Each jar held unfiltered British cigarettes, always the right amount. Not too much, not too little. The jars were made just for these cigarettes. I thought nothing of these jars. They were junk in my mind. Once my brothers and I stole a jar and poured the cigarettes out onto the streets. We ran down to a large hole that had opened up in the street, where underneath water flowed. There we squatted along with the children who lived by the gutter. We scooped up cups of dirty water, hoping to find a fish or unknown treasure. We found nothing, and soon our clothes were washed over with mud and we were unrecognizable from the children who lived on the streets.
We had many riches in that house. Silk rugs and jewels. Rare bowls and carved ivory. But when I think back on that house, and it is not often, I think of that jade jar, the muddied treasure I did not know I was holding in my hand.
There is another thing I remember clearly about that house.
I was sixteen. It was the night my youngest aunt got married. She and her new husband had already retired to the room they would share in the big house with her new mother-in-law and the rest of her new family.
Many of the visiting family members lingered at our house, sitting around the big table in the main room, everybody laughing and eating peanuts, peeling oranges, and laughing more. A man from another town was seated with us, a friend of my aunt's new husband. He was older than my oldest brother, so I called him Uncle. His face was reddened from drinking whiskey.
"Ying-ying," he called hoarsely to me as he rose from his chair. "Maybe you are still hungry, isn't it so?"
