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Closing Doors,
Opening Heart
mama neve r aga i n m e nt i one d th e wet ne s s and d i rt on my shoes, skirt, and leggings. A servant took those things away, they were never brought back, and I continued to be locked in my room. During the long weeks of my confinement, I would begin to question everything. But at first I was just a sad girl locked in her room with no one to talk to. Even Willow was barred, except to bring me meals and fresh water for washing.
I spent hours at my window, but my view was limited to a small patch of sky above and the courtyard below. I leafed through my copies of The Peony Pavilion. I sought out the scene of The Interrupted Dream, trying to decipher what Liniang and Mengmei were doing together in the grotto. At every moment, I thought about my stranger. The feelings that filled my chest dampened my appetite and emptied my head. I constantly brooded about how I would continue to hold on to my emotions once I got out of this room.
One morning, a week into my confinement, Willow opened the door, padded quietly across the floor, and set down a tray with tea and a bowl of congee for breakfast. I missed her company and the way she cared for me—
brushing my hair, washing and wrapping my feet, keeping the air between us lively with conversation. These past days, she’d been very quiet when she brought my meals, but now she smiled in a way I’d never seen before.
She poured my tea, knelt before me, and looked up into my face, waiting for me to question her.
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“Tell me what’s happened,” I said, expecting to hear that my mother had decided to release me or that she was going to let Willow stay in my room again.
“When Master Chen asked me to play the part of Spring Fragrance, I said yes, hoping that one of the men in the audience might see me, approach your father, and ask if he would sell me to another household,” she answered, her eyes bright with happiness. “The offer came last night and your father agreed. I’m to leave this afternoon.”
I felt like Willow had just slapped my face. Never in ten thousand years would I have guessed or imagined this.
“But you belong to me!”
“Actually, until yesterday I was your father’s property. Today, I belong to Master Quon.”
That she smiled when she said this unlocked a pocket of anger in me.
“You can’t leave. You can’t want to leave.”
When she didn’t answer, I knew she truly wanted to go. But how could this be? She was my maid and companion. I had never thought about where she’d come from or how she’d come to be my servant, but I’d always believed her to be mine. She was a part of my everyday life like the chamber pot. She was at my feet when I fell asleep; she was the first person I saw in the morning. She started the brazier before I opened my eyes and fetched hot water for bathing me. I had thought she would go with me to my husband’s home. She was supposed to care for me when I got pregnant and had sons. Since she was my age, I had expected her to be with me until I died.
“Every night after you fall asleep, I lie here on the floor and hide my tears in my handkerchief,” she confessed. “For years, I have hoped your father would sell me. If I’m lucky, my new owner will make me a concubine.” She paused, considered, and then added in a practical tone, “A second, third, or fourth concubine.”
That my servant had longings like this shocked me. She was far ahead of me in her thinking, in her desires. She had come from the world outside our garden—the world I was suddenly obsessed with—and I had never once asked her about it.
“How can you do this to me? Where is your gratitude?”
Her smile faded. Did she not answer because she didn’t want to or because she didn’t feel she owed it to me?
“I’m thankful your family took me in,” she admitted. She had a pretty ( 6 8 )
face, but in that moment I saw how much she disliked me, how much she had probably disliked me for years. “Now I can have a different life than the one I was born to as a thin horse.”
I had heard the term before, but I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t fully understand what it meant.
“My family was from Yangzhou, where your grandmother died,” she went on. “Like so many families, mine suffered greatly. The old and ugly women were massacred along with the men. Women like my mother were sold like salted fish—in sacks, by weight. My mother’s new owner was an enterprising man. I was the fourth daughter to be sold. Since then I have been like a leaf in the wind.”
I listened.
“The thin-horse trader bound my feet and taught me to read, sing, embroider, and play the flute,” she continued. “In this way my life was not unlike yours, but in other ways it was very different. Those people grew girls on their land instead of crops.” She lowered her head and glanced at me furtively. “Spring came, autumn went. They could have kept me until I was old enough to sell into pleasure, but inflation and a glut on the market lowered prices. They had to unload some of the crop. One day, they dressed me in red, painted my face white, and took me to market. Your father examined my teeth; he held my feet in his hands; he patted my body.”
“He wouldn’t do that!”
“He did, and I was ashamed. He bought me for a few bolts of cloth.
These last years I hoped that your father might take me as his fourth concubine and that I might bring him the son your mother and the others can’t give him.”
The thought curdled my stomach.
“Today I go to my third owner,” she said matter-of-factly. “Your father has sold me for pork and cash. It’s a good deal, and he’s happy.”
Sold for pork? I was to be married in exchange for bride-price gifts, which included pigs. Perhaps Willow and I were not so different after all.
Neither of us had any say in our futures.
“I’m still young,” Willow said. “I may change hands again if I don’t bear a son or I stop making my master smile. The thin-horse trader taught me that buying a concubine adds to a man’s garden. Some trees bear fruit, some give shade, some give pleasure to the eye. I’m hopeful that I will not be weeded out and sold again.”
“You’re like Xiaoqing,” I said in wonder.
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“I don’t have her beauty or talent, but I hope my future is better than hers and that in my next life I will not be born in Yangzhou.”
This was my first true understanding that my existence in our garden villa was not at all like that of girls in the outside world. Terrifying and horrible things happened out there. This had been kept a secret from me, and I was grateful but curious. My grandmother had been out there and now she was worshipped as a martyr. Willow had come from out there and her future was as set as my own: Make the man in her life happy, bear him sons, and excel in the Four Virtues.
“So I’m going,” Willow said abruptly, as she got up off her knees.
“Wait.” I stood, crossed to a cabinet, and opened a drawer. I fingered my jewelry and hair ornaments, looking for a piece that would be neither too ordinary nor too extravagant. I settled on a hairpin of blue kingfisher feathers shaped into a soaring phoenix, its tail flowing delicately behind it.
I placed it in Willow’s hand.
“To wear when you meet your new owner.”
“Thank you,” she said, and with that she left the room.
Not two minutes later, Shao, my old wet nurse and our head amah, entered. “I will be taking care of you from now on.”