“I never would have recited that poem if I’d known. I never would have hurt you that way.”
“But I was so afraid, I locked you in your room. I’ve lived with my regrets ever since.”
I couldn’t help it, but I blamed my father and grandfather for what happened in Yangzhou. They were men. They should have done something.
“How could you go back to Baba after he let you save him and after Grandfather used Grandmother to save them both?”
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Mama’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t go back to Baba; he came for me.
He’s why I lived and how I came to be your mother. I finished my poem, looped my handmade rope over the beam, and tied it around my neck, but then that Manchu woman came to get me. She was very mad and slapped me hard, but it didn’t shake me from my plan. If not now, I knew I would have a chance later. If they were going to keep me for some Manchu prince, I would have to be clothed, housed, fed. I would always be able to improvise a weapon.”
The woman procurer led Mama back to the main hall. The general sat at the desk. My father was on his knees, his forehead on the floor, waiting.
“At first I thought they’d caught your father and were going to cut off his head,” Mama went on. “Everything I’d done and everything I’d gone through was for nothing. But he’d come to buy me back. With the days of horror and murder over, the Manchus were trying to prove how civilized they were. Already they were hoping to create order out of disorder. I listened to them bargain. I was so numb with pain and grief that it took me a long time to find my voice. ‘Husband,’ I said, ‘you can’t take me back.
I’m ruined.’ He understood what I meant, but he was undeterred. ‘And I have lost our son,’ I confessed. Tears rolled down your father’s cheeks. ‘I don’t care about that,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to die and I don’t want to lose you.’ You see, Peony, he kept me after what happened. I was so broken he could have sold me or traded me—just as those men who’d raped me wanted to do—or he could have discarded me completely.”
Was Grandmother hearing this? She’d kept our family from having sons to punish my father and grandfather. Did she now see she was wrong?
“How can we blame the men when we made our own choices, your grandmother and I?” Mama asked, as if following my thoughts. “Your father saved me from a terrible fate that would have ended in suicide.”
“But Baba went to work for the Manchus. How could he do that? Did he forget what happened to you and Grandmother?”
“How could he forget?” Mama asked, and smiled at me patiently. “He could never forget. He shaved his forehead, braided his hair, and put on Manchu clothes. This was nothing but a disguise, a costume. He’d proved to me who he was: a man who was loyal to his family above all else.”
“But he went to the capital after I died. He left you all alone. He—” I must have been veering too close to the subject of my ancestor tablet, because I was unable to continue.
“That plan had long been in place.” Mama scrolled back in time to be-
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fore my death. “You were supposed to marry out. He loved you so much.
He couldn’t bear to lose you, so he’d decided to take the appointment in the capital. After your death, his desire to be away from memories of you was even greater.”
For too long I’d believed he was not a man of integrity. I’d been wrong, but then I’d been wrong about so many things.
Mama sighed, and again she abruptly changed the subject. “I just don’t know what will happen to our family if Bao doesn’t have a son soon.”
“Grandmother won’t allow it.”
Mama nodded. “I loved your grandmother, but she could be vindictive. However, in this instance, she’s wrong. She died in Yangzhou and didn’t see what happened to me, and she wasn’t here on earth when you were alive. Your baba loved you. You were a jewel in his hand, but he needed a son to care for the ancestors. What does your grandmother think will happen to her and all the other Chen family ancestors if we don’t have sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons to perform the rites? Only sons can do this. She knows that.”
“Baba adopted that man, that Bao,” I said, doing little to cover the disappointment I still felt that my father had so easily replaced me in his affec-tions.
“It took him a while to learn our ways, but Bao’s been good to us. Look at how he cares for me now. I’m dressed for whatever eternity holds. I’ve been fed. And I was given plenty of spirit money for my journey—”
“He found my poems,” I interrupted. “He went to Ren to sell them.”
“You sound like a jealous sister,” Mama said. “Don’t feel that way.” She touched my cheek. It had been a long time since I’d received a physical show of affection. “I found your poems by accident when I was reorganizing your father’s bookshelves. When I read them, I asked Bao to take them to your husband. I told Bao to make sure Ren paid for them. I wanted to remind him of your worth.”
She put an arm around me.
“The Manchus came to our region because as the richest area in the country we had much that was vulnerable to destruction,” she said. “They knew we would make the best example, but that we also had the best resources for recovery. In many ways they were right, but how could we recover what had been lost in our families? I went home and shut the door.
Now, when I look at you, I know that as much as a mother tries there’s no way to protect a daughter. I kept you locked inside from birth, but that ( 2 1 9 )
didn’t keep you from dying too soon. And now look: You’ve been on pleasure boats, you’ve traveled—”
“And I’ve caused harm,” I confessed. After everything she’d told me, didn’t I owe her the truth about what I’d done to Tan Ze? “My sister-wife died because of me.”
“I heard it differently,” Mama said. “Ze’s mother blamed her daughter for not performing her wifely duties. She was the kind who made her husband fetch water, isn’t that true?”
When I nodded, she went on.
“You can’t blame yourself for Ze’s hunger strike. This strategy is as old as womankind. Nothing is more powerful or cruel than for a woman to make her husband watch her die.” She took my face in her hands and looked into my eyes. “You’re my beloved daughter, no matter what you think you’ve done.”
But Mama didn’t know everything.
“Besides, what choice did you have? Your mama and baba failed you. I feel especially responsible. I wanted you to excel at embroidery, painting, and playing the zither. I wanted you to keep your mouth shut, put on a smiling face, and learn to obey. But look what happened. You flew right out of the villa. You found freedom here”—she pointed to my heart—“in your seat of consciousness.”
I saw the truth of her words. My mother made sure I was highly educated so I’d become a good wife, but in the process she’d inspired me to depart from the usual model of a young woman on the cusp of marriage.
“You have a big and good heart,” Mama continued. “You don’t have to be ashamed for anything. Think instead of your desires, your knowledge, and what’s in here—your heart. Mencius was clear on this point: Lacking pity, one is not human; lacking shame, one is not human; lacking a sense of deference, one is not human; lacking a sense of right and wrong, one is not human.”
“But I’m not human. I’m a hungry ghost.”
There. I’d told her, but she didn’t ask how it happened. Maybe it was too much for her to know right now, because she asked, “But you’ve experienced all that, haven’t you? You’ve felt pity, shame, remorse, and sadness for everything that happened to Tan Ze, right?”
Of course I had. I’d driven myself into exile as punishment for what I’d done.
“How can one test for humanity?” Mama asked. “By whether or not you cast a shadow or leave prints in the sand? Tang Xianzu gave you the ( 2 2 0 )