Women of the Silk Read online

  Over the years, she had grown as silent as her husband. She had learned to keep all her thoughts to herself. Yu-sung had let go of the spontaneity of her girlhood. The years of gathering the mulberry leaves and inhaling the stale, dank earth of the fish ponds had squeezed her life dry. All that was left of Yu-sung’s other life was stored away in her wooden chest at the foot of their bed. Sometimes, when she was alone, she opened the chest, releasing the strong smell of camphor. Below the layers of white paper Yu-sung had carefully folded the red silk dress her mother had made for her, and the lace handkerchief given to her by her grandmother. It was then that she felt most alone. Yu-sung could see her lost joy in Pei, even if Pei most resembled her father. It was Yu-sung’s past life Pei carried in her. And in Pei, she could see her greatest pleasures and her worst fears.

  Pao sat across from Yu-sung, sipping hot tea. He looked across the room at their two daughters sleeping in the corner, and then turned back to her. She knew there was something bothering him, but she kept silent.

  “This baby sleeps easy,” Pao. said quietly.

  “Yes, she is very easy,” Yu-sung answered, remembering the disturbances the other babies caused. “But you have not slept well?”

  “No. It has been a bad harvest; we will have problems when Hung comes to collect.”

  Her husband’s face was stern as he said this, his dark eyes looking past her. She got up quickly and dished some jook into a clay bowl.

  “In a day or two I will be able to help again,” Yu-sung finally said.

  “There is nothing to help with, it’s done.”

  “I could mend or clean for others.”

  “Who would have you? You have just given birth and cannot be away from the child. Besides, it is just as bad for the others.”

  She remained silent.

  “When the month is over, we will go to the village to see the fortune-teller,” said Pao, looking down at the table.

  They had spoken of this only once before. Never would she have dreamed that the gods could be so cruel, that the fate of their daughters would end up in the hands of a blind old man.

  Yu-sung nodded her head in agreement.

  The Fortune-teller

  Pei loved going to the village. Her mother was clean again, and finally able to leave the house. Her usually silent father said they would go to the village in celebration. Even Li, who was always quiet, moved through the house excitedly the morning they were to go. Neither of them could sit still without moving while their mother braided their hair.

  “Keep still or you are not going anywhere!” their mother said, threatening them into silence.

  Pei’s father borrowed an ox and cart for her mother and the baby to ride in. She and Li would take turns sitting next to her. The baby, Yu-ling, was strapped tightly to her mother’s chest with an old gray blanket. They brought rice and vegetables to eat along the way, and their father had promised each of them a sugar candy if they were good.

  Pei longed to see the village, though it was no more than a cluster of makeshift buildings, situated along a much-traveled road. At the far end of the village was a larger, more ornately decorated ancestral hall. Pei had been inside just once. Her mother had told her people went there to honor their dead by lighting long thin sticks of incense, which smelled like something sweet burning.

  When the village finally came into view, Pei jumped down from the moving cart and ran ahead. At the edge of the village she stopped to wait for her family. There was an old woman sitting in front of a small shack, spinning thread from one end to the other of a strange wooden contraption.

  “Ba Ba, what is that woman doing?” Pei asked when her father came.

  “She is spinning silk,” her father answered. “Now come along before we leave you!”

  Pei caught the hard edge of her father’s words, but it never frightened her as it did Li, even when he became so angry he took a stick to her. After the beatings, her father would go out to the groves, and her mother would always calm her tears by reminding her to keep her words to herself. “It is a lesson,” her mother would say, though Pei never really understood what the lesson was. Eventually she did learn when to stop questioning her father.

  Pei skipped alongside the cart as they moved deeper into the village. They were soon surrounded by throngs of people moving toward the marketplace. Stray dogs and cats were left to fend for themselves among the bamboo cages, stacked high and filled with chickens. The dogs yelped and snapped at the ruffled chickens, whose feathers floated in slow motion through the hot air.

  The marketplace provided a source of pure delight for Pei. She loved the crowds and the noise. She watched the men and women behind their makeshift stalls, selling whatever they could.

  Voices beckoned to them.

  “Come this way, I will certainly give you the best deal!”

  “The finest flutes in all of Kwangtung!” another voice rang out.

  “Missy! Step up here! I will read your face for a pittance!”

  They were all there, from the letter writers and herbalists to the marriage brokers and spiritualists. Pei marveled at their persistence, as Li clung to her arm. Farther on, the stalls contained fruits and vegetables and served hot dumplings in soup. Pei looked around, stumbling after her parents, hoping to find the sugar-coated candy she and Li wished for. Everywhere around them was the tantalizing aroma of food.

  Her father slowed down and finally stopped. Behind two wooden crates sat a man her father called the fortune-teller. He was the oldest man Pei had ever seen, with a long white beard that hung in ragged strands down to his chest. In his long, crooked fingers he held a brush, with which he wrote in black ink on a piece of paper in front of him. He stopped and tilted his head toward her father, though he couldn’t have seen a thing, for his eyes were sewn shut. Pei watched as the fortune-teller smiled kindly and lifted his brush in greeting. Her father spoke, as Li’s hand closed tighter around hers.

  “This is my eldest daughter,” her father said, pushing Li forward.

  “Come, child, do not be afraid,” the fortune-teller said. “I only want to see what life will bring to you.”

  Li obeyed and sat down on the stool across from him. Her father moved closer and gave the fortune-teller the time, date, and year of Li’s birth. The fortune-teller listened, and with a slight nod lifted his large, crooked fingers in front of Li’s face, moving them in small circles, closer and closer until his fingers rested on her face. His fingers moved gently from her forehead down to her chin, and then away from her. He remained silent for a few moments, mumbling inaudible words to himself.

  “This daughter will marry and bear two sons,” the fortune-teller finally said. He looked up at them through his darkness. “There may be illness, but she will survive.”

  Then it was Pei’s turn. Her father pushed her roughly forward. He gave the necessary dates, and the fortune-teller, who looked asleep with his head tilted downward, began the same ritual he had just done with Li. When his fingers touched her face, Pei felt a tingling sensation, which left when his fingers did. When the fortune-teller was finished, Pei looked up at her father. He stood back, watching the fortune-teller with the same intensity as he watched his groves and ponds.

  “Can we go soon, Ba Ba?” Pei whispered.

  “Quiet, girl,” he snapped. Her mother and Li stood quietly behind him.

  “She is a curious one,” the fortune-teller then said. He straightened his back and tugged at the strands of his beard. “I see many numbers in her life, perhaps miles.”

  Pei’s father glanced down at her. “Will she marry?” he asked.

  The fortune-teller turned his head from side to side, stroked another strand of his beard, and slowly said, “This I cannot see clearly.”

  “Is she of the nonmarrying fate?” her father pressed on.

  “She will be loved,” the fortune-teller continued, in a slow, even voice. “By more than one, but there will be difficulties.”

  “I see,” her father
answered in a tone of agreement.

  Pei thought of nothing but the sugar candy. She watched her father take out two silver coins from a small leather pouch and place them in the fortune-teller’s hand.

  When they returned from the village, Pao said very little and went immediately to check on his ponds. Yu-sung and his daughters hurried into the house to prepare their evening meal, their voices drifting slowly away. Pao looked down to the immense floodland below. The burnt-orange earth, crisscrossed by the numerous canals, looked like a web. His grandfather had liked being near water; the delta provided the waterways and the wet, sandy soil, which was suitable for fish breeding and the cultivation of mulberry groves. The fish and leaves were packed in baskets and boated along the canals to market. They were then sold for the highest price to the silkworm owners. This ritual had gone on for hundreds of years, though the floods of the past few years had left very little to bring to market.

  Pao loved the rich, fertile land. He worked for it as hard as his father and grandfather had. As a boy, Pao had been told over and over how his grandfather had taken one look at the land where he stood, then dropped to his knees to rebury his ancestors’ bones. It was the land Pao had hoped to pass down to his own son, but with the birth of his fifth daughter, he could see that this day might never be.

  The sky was darkening; a faint shimmer of light from the moon reflected off the empty ponds. Along with the bad harvest, the Warlords had begun placing taxes on everything from rice and candles to windows and chairs. Pao could only be grateful that there were no glass windows in his house.

  Pao wrinkled his brow and sighed. A decision must be made. There was nothing he could do but wait for the harvest to improve again, even if it meant the sacrifice of one of his daughters. He could at least count himself lucky that daughters were of some use. The fortune-teller had as much as predicted that Pei was of a nonmarrying fate. Then what would she do? An unmarried woman had little in this world without a husband and his family to care for her.

  Pao had heard, from other men along the canal, of steamdriven machinery used in the big villages for silk work. These silk factories accepted unattached girls to work in them for very good wages. There were many girls left to this unmarrying fate in the silk villages, earning money for themselves as well as for their families.

  Pao turned and walked back toward the house, looking hard to see his land in the darkness. He had no other choice. It was not an easy decision to make, since Pei, with all her spirit and imagination, might be the closest thing he would ever have to a son. And it seemed his Hakka blood flowed most prominently in her. He gave one last look towards the shadows and made his decision. Pei would be sent to the silk village.

  Yu-sung put the baby down to sleep. She moved quietly back into the other room, careful not to wake Pao, who slept soundly for the first time in many nights. The shadows cast by the single flame she carried flickered and danced when she placed it on the table. Her two daughters slept in the corner of the room, where the light barely touched.

  In the dull and serious light, Yu-sung poured herself a cup of tea. She sat down, weary from their trip to the village. Now that she could be outside among the mulberry groves again, she was certain that things would be better. It was with this same certainty that she knew her husband had made his decision to send Pei away.

  Yu-sung sipped her tea and closed her eyes. There would never be any mystery for her daughters to decipher. From the moment they came into this world, their fates had been sealed. If Yu-sung pitied them, then she would have to give herself that same pity. And it would not change anything. There was also the chance that Pei would be happier where she was going, make a better life for herself.

  Still, Yu-sung could not help thinking that perhaps everything might be different if she had given her husband a son, a continuance of himself. More than once she had told her husband to take a concubine, another woman who might give him a son, as many other men had done. But always he remained silent.

  Yu-sung stood up. Without taking the candle, she moved toward her daughters in the murky light. As usual, they slept huddled together under a single blanket. It was always Pei who had her arms wrapped around Li, with her knees brought up to her chest and her head resting on Li’s shoulder. Li slept straight and with little movement. Their dark hair carried the small waves of the undone braids, spreading out in a tangled web. Yu-sung could hardly tell one head of hair from the other. Even if she did try to straighten Pei out, she would simply return to the same position by morning. Yu-sung pulled their blanket up, and moved their hair away from their faces. It was all she could bring herself to do.

  The next morning Pei ran down the slope ahead of Li and then stopped to wait for her. Li had always been a slower runner. During the summer they always played down by the ponds when their father took the boat to market and was not around to scold them. He had left the house very early that morning, while Pei lay in bed pretending to be asleep. As usual, her parents spoke a few words in whisper, and then said nothing at all.

  Sometimes, her father would do something to let them know he thought more of them than just being a female nuisance. Yesterday in the village, after they saw the old fortune-teller, her father bought her and Li not one, but two pieces of sugar candy. Pei placed one immediately into her mouth and began sucking the sweetness out of it. The second piece she let sit on her tongue, sucking little by little as they made their way home, hoping to make the candy last as long as possible.

  It was only that morning that Pei found out Li had not eaten either piece of her candy. Li had saved them, tightly wrapped in a piece of paper in her pocket. Li slowed down even more when she saw Pei waiting for her.

  “Please give me a small piece?” Pei asked.

  Li walked right past her toward the pond, knowing how Pei could keep on and on until she got what she wanted.

  “You have your own,” Li answered.

  “I have eaten them,” she said, skipping after Li. “Just a little, please?”

  Li shook her head no.

  Pei stuck her tongue out at Li and ran down to the pond. The pond with its muddy contents had always been her favorite place. She slowed down and squatted closer to the water, trying to catch a glimpse of the fish who used to make it their home. When nothing stirred, Pei became impatient for some movement and threw in a rock, then picked up a stick to stir things around. Before the floods, she would have seen hundreds of dark shadows gliding back and forth in the water, sending white foamy bubbles to the dark surface, but now, the pond was always still.

  Li squatted down beside Pei as she dropped another large rock into the pond. Her reflection rippled alongside Li’s as they watched one circle grow out of another. They looked so alike in the dark water, with their pigtails and their matching blue cotton shirts. Both of them had dark, round eyes, though Li’s rose up slightly at the corners. Pei had always loved Li’s eyes.

  But as much as they looked alike, they were different in every other way. Next to her, she could hear Li’s even breathing and feel her calmness. Li’s hands rested quietly on her knees, while Pei’s felt the ground beside them for anything that would make the water splash. She didn’t dare glance at Li now to see the serious look on her face.

  Pei let another rock drop into the pond, her hand plunging in after it, wetting her entire sleeve. “I wonder what they think of us?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “The fish.”

  Li looked down into the pond, but there was no movement. “I don’t think they think at all, they just swim around waiting to be caught.”

  “We must look like big foreign devils staring down at them,” Pei said, rolling over onto her back. “I bet they really do think about things.”

  “About what?” Li asked, though she knew Pei was just playing with her.

  “About their families, and what they are going to eat.”

  “You’re just being silly,” Li then said, getting up and walking along the edge of the pond. “We be
tter go before Ba Ba gets back.”

  “He won’t be back so soon.”

  “Do what you want, then,” Li said, in a tone that let Pei know she was still the oldest.

  Pei heard her mother calling for them when she was almost back up the hill. Not far ahead of her, she could see Li scrambling to get up. She called for Li to wait for her, pulling at her clothes and using her sleeve to wipe the dirt away from her face.

  Together they walked toward their unsmiling mother. She immediately snapped at Pei, “Look at you, your clothes are a mess. Why can’t you stay clean like your sister? Now I’m going to have to wash your clothes as well as give you your lessons!”

  Pei said nothing. They walked past their mother’s angry stare into the house. Pei took off her summer clothes, which her mother scrubbed and hung out to dry. For the rest of the day, she did her chores, then sat down for their reading and writing lessons, wearing her thick, uncomfortable winter clothing.

  Her mother taught them to read and write in the quiet moments of the evening, or when her father was busy down at the ponds. Once, her father came in while they were having their lessons. He watched them for a moment, saying nothing. Her mother didn’t look up and continued teaching. Only when he quietly left the house again did her mother pause, and let out a small breath before continuing.

  “Sit still,” her mother said, as they sat across the wooden table from her, fidgeting.

  Pei loved to watch as her mother took great care to write the difficult strokes on the precious pieces of paper she bought in the village. Her hand moved up and down in small waves. Sometimes, Pei wanted to reach out and touch her mother’s traveling fingers, but she didn’t dare.