Over time I improved on the zither, memorized rules, and worked on my embroidery. Two months into my seclusion, Third Aunt announced,
“You are ready to make shoes for your mother-in-law.”
Every bride does this as a sign of respect, but for years I’d dreaded this task, knowing my needlework would instantly reveal my flaws. Now I dreaded it even more. While I would no longer embarrass myself or bring shame on my family through my stitches, I had no feelings for this woman and felt no need to impress her. I tried to imagine she was my poet’s mother. What else could I do to protect myself from the hopelessness I felt? My mother-in-law’s name was the same as mine—Peony—so I in-corporated that flower, the hardest of all to paint or stitch, into my design.
I spent hours on each petal and leaf until after a month the shoes were completed. I held the pair in my hand and showed them to Third Aunt.
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“They are perfect,” she said, and she meant it. I may not have woven in strands of my hair or made them as airy as she would have, but by any other standard they were splendid. “You may wrap them.”
on th e n i nth day of the ninth month, when we commemorate Lady Purple, who was treated so badly by her mother-in-law that she hanged herself in the privy she was required to clean each day, the door to my room opened and my mother entered. I bowed deeply to show my respect, and then I stood still, my hands clasped before me, my eyes cast down.
“Waaa! You look . . . !” The surprise in Mama’s voice caused me to glance up. She must have still been angry with me, because her face was disturbed. But she had perfected the art of hiding her feelings, and her features quickly settled. “Your final bride-price gifts have arrived. You might like to see them before they’re put away. But I expect you to—”
“Don’t worry, Mama. I’ve changed.”
“I see that,” she said, but again I did not detect pleasure in her tone.
Rather, I heard concern. “Come. Take a look. Then I want you to join us for breakfast.”
As I left my room, a single thread held together my emotions—loneli-ness, despair, and my unwavering love for my poet. I had learned to vent my sorrows through sighs.
I followed my mother at a respectful distance to the Sitting-Down Hall. My bride-price gifts had been brought to our home in lacquer-framed boxes that looked like glass coffins. My family had received the usual items: silks and satins, gold and jewelry, porcelains and ceramics, cakes and dumplings, jars of wine and roast pork. Some of these things were for me; most were for my father’s coffers. Ample gifts of cash were for my uncles. This was physical proof that my marriage was going to happen—and soon. I pinched the bridge of my nose to keep from crying.
Once my emotions were under control, I planted a placid smile on my face. I was out of my room at last and my mother would be watching for any lapse in the proprieties. I had to be wary.
My eyes fell on a package wrapped in red silk. I glanced at my mother, and she nodded to let me know I could open it. I peeled back the soft folds. Inside was a two-volume set of The Peony Pavilion. It was the only edition I didn’t already own, the one from Tang Xianzu’s private press. I opened the note that came with the set. Dear Same, I look forward to staying ( 7 4 )
up late with you, drinking tea, and talking about the opera. It was signed by my future husband’s sister-in-law, who already lived in the Wu household.
The bride-price payments were fine, but this gift told me that there was at least one person in the Wu family’s women’s chambers with whom I might find companionship.
“May I keep this?” I asked my mother.
Her brow furrowed and I thought she would say no.
“Take it to your room and then come straight away to the Spring Pavilion. You need to eat.”
I clutched the volumes to my chest, walked slowly back to my room, and set them on my bed. Then, following my mother’s orders, I went to the Spring Pavilion.
I’d been locked away for two months, and I looked at the room and everyone in it with new eyes. The usual tensions bubbled among my aunts, my cousins, my mother, and those women and girls who were unseen in the morning—the concubines and their daughters. But because I’d been away I saw and felt an undercurrent that I’d never fully noticed before. Every woman is expected to be pregnant at least ten times during her lifetime. The women in the Chen Family Villa had trouble getting pregnant, and when they did they seemed incapable of dropping a son.
This lack of sons weighed on everyone. The concubines were supposed to rescue our dying family line, but even though we fed, clothed, and housed them, none of them had birthed a boy either. They may not have been allowed physically to join us for breakfast, but they were with us nonethe-less.
My cousins seemed to have a new attitude toward me. Broom, who’d orchestrated my confinement, used her chopsticks to put a few dumplings on my plate. Lotus poured my tea and handed me her bowl of congee, which she’d flavored with salted fish and scallions. My aunts came by the table, welcomed me back with smiling faces, and urged me to eat. But I didn’t take a single bite. I even ignored the sweet-bean paste dumplings that Shao delivered from my mother’s table.
When the meal ended, we moved to the Lotus-Blooming Hall. Little clusters formed: one group to embroider, another to paint and do calligraphy, yet another to read poetry. The concubines arrived and came to peck at me, present me with treats, and pinch my cheeks to bring in color. Only two of my grandfather’s concubines were still alive, and they were very old. Their face powder accentuated their wrinkles. Their hair ornaments did not make them look younger but only highlighted the white. Their ( 7 5 )
waists were big, but their feet were still as tiny and beautiful as they were on those nights when my grandfather had eased his mind by holding the delicate morsels in his hand.
“You look more like your grandmother every day,” Grandfather’s favorite said.
“You are as kind and good-natured as she was,” the other added.
“Please join us for embroidery,” the favorite went on. “Or choose another activity. It would please us to keep you company in whatever activity you desire. We are a sisterhood in this room, after all. When we were hiding from the Manchus in Yangzhou, your grandmother was very clear on this point.”
“From the afterworld she looks to your future,” the lesser concubine said, in an obsequious tone. “We’ve been making offerings to her on your behalf.”
After so many weeks of solitude, the chatter and competitiveness—all hidden behind the activities of embroidery, calligraphy, and reading poetry—clearly revealed to me the shadow darkness of the women who lived in the Chen Family Villa. I felt tears gather from the exertion of trying to be a good daughter, of listening and protecting myself from their false concern, and of realizing that this was my life.
But I could not fight my mother.
I wanted to submerge myself in my feelings. I wanted to bury myself in thoughts of love. I had no way to get out of my marriage, but maybe I could escape from it in the same way I had here in my natal home, by reading, writing, and imagining. I wasn’t a man and could never compete with the writings of men. I had no desire to write an eight-legged essay, even if I could have taken the imperial exams. But I did have a certain kind of knowledge—all those things I had learned sitting on my father’s lap when I was a small girl and later when he gave me editions of the classics and volumes of poetry to study—that most girls didn’t, and I would use it to save myself. I wouldn’t write poetry about butterflies and flowers. I had to find something that would not only be meaningful to me but would sustain me for the rest of my life.
A thousand years ago, the poet Han Yun wrote, “All things not at peace will cry out.” He compared the human need to express feelings in writing to the natural force that impelled plants to rustle in the wind or metal to ring when struck. With that I realized what I would do. It was something I’d already worked on for years. With the outside world stripped away, I had spent my life looking inward and my emotions were finely tuned. My ( 7 6 )