I remembered back to how my father taught me to read and under-
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stand, so one day I pushed Yi into Ren’s lap. Beguiled by Yi’s innocence and sincerity, Ren helped her by asking about her reading, forcing her to think and criticize. Yi became a conduit between Ren and me. In our education of her, we were one. She grew to be more than proficient in the classics, literature, and mathematics. Ren and I took pride in her growing knowledge and accomplishments.
But some skills still evaded her. Yi continued to hold her calligraphy brush awkwardly, causing her strokes to be shaky and unsure. Madame Wu stepped in, and through her I drilled Yi on all the lessons Fifth Aunt had taught me, using Pictures of Battle Formations of the Brush; Yi improved just as I had all those years ago. When she sometimes recited poems like a parrot with no sense of their deeper meanings, I knew my efforts still weren’t enough. I remembered Ren’s cousin. I went out and brought Li Shu home, and she became Yi’s tutor. Now when Yi recited, she opened our hearts to the Seven Emotions and transported us to remembered and imagined places. Everyone in the household grew to love her even more.
Not once did I feel jealous, not once did I want to eat Yi’s heart or pull off her head and limbs for Ren to find, and not once did I try to reveal myself to her or visit her in her dreams. But by now I could do almost anything, so when they woke in the morning, I cooled the water they splashed on their faces. When Yi did her hair, I became the teeth in the comb, ef-fortlessly separating each snarl, tangle, and strand. When Ren went out, I cleared his passage, pushed aside obstacles, eliminated dangers, and brought him home safely. During the dog days of summer, I enticed a servant to tie a watermelon in netting and lower it into the well. Then I went down into the darkness, seeped into the water, and chilled it even more. I loved watching Ren and Yi eat the melon after dinner, enjoying its refresh-ing qualities. In all these ways I thanked my sister-wife for being good to my husband and Ren for finding happiness and companionship after so many lonely years. But these were minor things.
I wanted to thank them in a way that would give them the deep-heart happiness I felt when I saw Yi sitting on Ren’s lap or listened to him explain the hidden meaning of one of the Banana Garden Five’s poems.
What was the one thing they could want? What was the one thing every married couple wanted? A son. I wasn’t an ancestor and I didn’t think I could give this. But when spring came, something miraculous happened.
The plum tree blossomed. I had come so far in my own learning that I made it happen. When the petals fell and fruit began to form, I knew I could make Yi pregnant.
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Pearls in My Heart
i remaine d true to the promise i’d made and staye d out of the bedchamber when they were making clouds and rain, but I kept track of the doings in that room in other ways.
Certain nights are inauspicious and potentially dangerous for clouds and rain. On nights that were exceptionally windy, cloudy, rainy, foggy, or hot, I made sure that Yi sent Ren out to visit friends, gather with poets, or give a lecture. On nights threatened by lightning, thunder, eclipses, or earthquakes, I gave Yi a headache. But these nights were rare, so most evenings as soon as the rustling of the bed linens stilled, I slipped through a crack in the window and into the room.
I made myself very small, entered Yi’s body, and got to work, looking for the right seed to bring to the egg. Making a baby isn’t just about clouds and rain, although from the giggles and moans I heard as I waited outside the window, I knew Ren and Yi had fun and brought pleasure to each other. It is also about the union of two souls to bring another soul back from the afterworld to begin a new life in the earthly realm. I searched and searched in the sea of frantic swimming until, after several months, I finally found the seed I wanted. I guided it as it swam to Yi’s egg and entered it. I made myself smaller still so I might comfort the new soul as he arrived in his temporary home. I stayed with him until he traveled to the wall of Yi’s womb and embedded himself. Now that he was safe, I had other practical matters to attend to.
When Yi’s monthly bleeding didn’t come, great happiness infused the ( 2 3 2 )
household. Just under that joy, though, was creeping worry. The last pregnant woman in the compound had died, suggesting evil spirits were after her. Everyone agreed that Yi, with her weak constitution, was particularly vulnerable to mischief committed by netherworld creatures.
“You can never be too careful about previous wives,” Doctor Zhao said, when he and the diviner came for one of their regular consultations.
I agreed, but I comforted myself with the knowledge that Ze was in the Blood-Gathering Lake. However, what the diviner said next chilled me.
“Especially when one of them was not properly married in the first place,” he mumbled ominously, just loud enough for everyone to hear.
But I loved Yi! I would never do anything to injure her!
Madame Wu wrung her hands. “I agree,” she said. “I’ve been worried about that girl too. She took her vengeance on Ze and her baby. Rightfully, perhaps, but it was a hard loss for my son. Tell us what to do.”
For the first time in many years, I burned with shame. I hadn’t known my mother-in-law blamed me for what had happened to Ze. I had to win back her respect. The best way to do that was to protect Yi and her baby from the fears that infested the household. Unfortunately, my job was made more difficult by the instructions that the doctor and the diviner left and by a patient who was tenacious and uncooperative despite her frailty.
The servants made special charms and remedies, but Yi was too modest to accept things from those who had less than she did. Madame Wu tried to keep her daughter-in-law in bed, but Yi was too dedicated and respectful to give up making tea and meals for her mother-in-law, washing and repairing her garments, supervising the cleaning of her room, or bringing hot water when she bathed. Ren tried to coddle his wife by feed-ing her with his chopsticks, rubbing her back, and propping her pillows, but she wouldn’t sit still for his goodness.
From my perspective—as a ghost who lived in the world of demons and other creatures who could cause harm—I could see that these things did nothing to help or protect her. They did, however, embarrass Yi, and make her anxious.
Then, one late spring afternoon during an unseasonable cold snap, I was so frustrated that after the diviner had pushed Yi from her bed to move furniture to build a barrier between her and me, had made her sick to her stomach by burning too many sticks of incense at one time in an effort to drive my spirit from the room, and had poked at her head with his fingers so hard to activate protective acupuncture points that would help guard against me that Yi was left with a throbbing headache, I shouted in ( 2 3 3 )
disgust, “Aiya! Why don’t you just order a ghost marriage and leave her alone?”
Yi started, blinked several times, and looked around the room. The diviner, who had never once intuited the truth of my presence, packed up his bag, bowed, and left. I stayed in the room by the window. I planned to hold my post all day and night to protect the two people I loved above all others. During the afternoon, Yi rested in bed. She nervously worried the quilt with her fingers, deep in thought. By the time a servant brought dinner, Yi seemed to have reached a conclusion of some sort.
When Ren finally came to the bedroom, Yi said, “If everyone is so concerned that Sister-wife Tong wishes to injure me, the two of you should be joined in a ghost marriage so she can be restored to her proper place as your first wife.”