by Tan, Amy
“They have no right,” I said over and over again.
“Only Americans think they have rights,” Magic Gourd said. “What laws of heaven give you more rights and allow you to keep them? They are words on paper written by men who make them up and claim them. One day they can blow away, just like that.”
She took my hands. “Violet, I must tell you about pieces of paper that blew back and forth between here and San Francisco. Someone sent a letter to your mother claiming it was from the American Consulate. It said you had died in an accident—run over in the road or something. They included a death certificate stamped with seals. It had your real name on there, not the one Fairweather was going to give you. Your mother sent a cable to Golden Dove to ask if this was true. And Golden Dove had to decide whether to tell your mother the death certificate was fake, or to keep the beauties, you, and herself from being tortured, maimed, or even killed. There was really no choice.”
Magic Gourd removed a letter from her sleeve and I read it without breathing. It was from Mother. The letter rambled on about her feelings in getting the letter, her disbelief, her agony in waiting to hear from Golden Dove.
I’m tormented by the thought that Violet might have believed before she died that I had left her behind deliberately. To think those unhappy thoughts might have been her last!
I seethed. She chose to believe I was on board because she was eager to sail away to her new life with Teddy and Lu Shing. I asked Magic Gourd for paper so I could write a letter in return. I would tell Mother I wasn’t fooled by her lies and false grief. Magic Gourd told me no letter from me would ever leave Shanghai. No cable could be sent. The gangsters would make sure of that. That’s why the letter Golden Dove wrote to my mother had been the lies they told her to write.
I BECAME A different girl, a lost girl without a mother. I was neither American nor Chinese. I was not Violet nor Vivi nor Zizi. I now lived in an invisible place made of my own dwindling breath, and because no one else could see it, they could not yank me out of it.
How long did my mother stand at the back of the boat? Was it cold on deck? Did she miss the fox wrap she put in my valise? Did she wait until her skin prickled before she went inside? How long did she take to choose a dress for the first dinner at sea? Was it the tulle and lace? How long did she wait in the cabin before she knew no knock would come to her door? How long did she lie awake staring into the pitch-dark? Did she see my face there? Did she see the worst? Did she wait to watch the sun come up or did she stay in bed past noon? How many days did she despair, realizing each wave was one more wave farther from me? How long did it take for the ship to reach San Francisco, to her home? How long by the fastest route? How long by the slowest route? How long did she wait before Teddy was in her arms? How many nights did she dream of me as she slept in her bedroom with the sunny yellow walls? Was the bed still next to a window that was next to a tree with many limbs? How many birds did she count, knowing that was how many I was supposed to see?
How long would it have taken a boat to return? How long by the fastest route, by the slowest route?
How slowly those days went by as I waited to know which route she took. How long it has been since the slowest boats have all come and have all gone.
THE NEXT DAY, I moved into Magic Gourd’s boudoir. I had kept from crying as she packed up her belongings. She held up my mother’s dress and the two rolled-up paintings and asked if she could take them. I nodded. And then she was gone. The only part of my past that remained was Carlotta.
An hour later, Magic Gourd burst in the room. “I am not leaving, after all,” she announced, “thanks to the old bustard’s black fingers.” She had been concocting a plan for two days and proudly unveiled how it unfolded. Just before she left, she met with Mother Ma in the common room to settle her debts. When Mother Ma started doing calculations on the abacus, Magic Gourd raised the alarm.
“‘Ai-ya! Your fingers!’ I said to her. ‘They’ve grown worse, I see. This is terrible. You don’t deserve this misfortune of health.’ The old bustard held up her hands and said the color was due to the liver pills she took. I told her I was relieved to hear this, because I thought it was due to something else and I was going to tell her to try the mercury treatment. Of course, she knew as well as anyone that mercury is used for syphilis. So she said to me: ‘I’ve never had the pox and don’t you be starting rumors that I do.’
“‘Calm down,’ I said to her. ‘My words jumped out of my mouth too soon and only because of a story I just heard about Persimmon. She once worked in the Hall of Tranquility. That was before my time, about twenty years, but you were already here. One of the customers gave her the pox, and she got rid of the sores, but then they came back, and her fingers turned black, just like yours.’
“Mother Ma said she did not know of any courtesan named Persimmon who had worked in the Hall of Tranquility. Of course, she didn’t. I had made her up. I went on to say she was a maid, not a courtesan, so it was no wonder she would not know her by name. I described her as having a persimmon-shaped face, small eyes, broad nose, small mouth. The old bustard insisted her memory was better than mine. But then the clouds of memory lifted. ‘Was she dark-skinned, a plump girl who spoke with a Fujian accent?’
“‘That’s the one!’ I said and went on to tell her that a customer used to go through the back door to use her services for cheap. She needed the money because her husband was an opium sot and her children were starving. Mother Ma and I grumbled a bit about conniving maids. And then I said Persimmon’s customer was a conniver, too. He called himself Commissioner Li and was the secret lover of one of the courtesans. That got the old bustard to sit up straight. It was an open secret among the old courtesans that the old bustard had taken the commissioner as a lover.
“‘Ah, you remember him?’ I said. She tried to show she was not bothered.
“‘He was an important man,’ she said. ‘Everyone knew him.’
“I poked a bit more. ‘He called himself Commissioner,’ I said. ‘But where did he work?’
“And she said, ‘It had something to do with the foreign banks and he was paid a lot of money to advise them.’
“So I said, ‘That’s strange. He told you and no one else that.’
“Then she said, ‘No, no. He didn’t tell me. I heard it from someone else.’
“I made my face look a little doubtful before going on: ‘I wonder who said that. As the rumors go, everyone thought he was too important to question. One of the old courtesans told me that if he had said he was ten meters tall, everyone would have been too afraid to correct him. He sat at the table with his legs wide apart, like this, and wore a scowl on his face, as if he were the duke of sky and mountains.’ That was the way all important men sit, so of course, she could picture him in her mind.
“The old bustard said, ‘Why would I remember that?’
“I sprang my trap. ‘It turns out he was a fake, not a commissioner at all.’
“‘Wah!’ She jumped out of her chair, and then immediately pretended the news meant nothing to her. ‘An insect just bit my leg,’ she said. ‘That’s why I leapt up.’ To improve the lie, she scratched herself.
“I gave her more to scratch: ‘He never came with friends to host his own parties. Remember that? People were expected to invite him to their parties once he arrived. Such an honor! Everyone wanted to please him. In fact, one of the courtesans was so impressed with his title, she gave her goods away, hoping he would make her Mrs. Commissioner. She took him into her boudoir and she never knew he had already stuck himself into Persimmon just before visiting her.’
“The old bustard’s eyes grew really big when I said that. I was beginning to feel a little sorry for her, but I had to go on. ‘And it is even worse than that,’ I said. I told her what I had heard about Commissioner Li, facts she would clearly remember. ‘Whenever he shared this courtesan’s bed, he told her to go ahead and put a full three-dollar charge on his bill—a charge for a party call, even though
he had not held a party. He said he did not want her to lose money from spending so much time with him instead of with other suitors. Anyone would think he was generous beyond belief. By the New Year, he owed nearly two hundred dollars. As you know, it’s customary for all clients of the house to settle their accounts that day. He never did. He was the only one. He never showed his face again. Two hundred dollars’ worth of fucks.’
“I saw the old bustard’s mouth was locked into an expression of bitterness. I think she was trying to keep from cursing him. I said what I knew she was thinking: ‘Men like that should have their cocks shrivel up and fall off.’ She nodded vigorously. I went on. ‘People say that the only gift he gave her was syphilitic sores. They assumed he did, since the maid had it—a sore on her mouth, then her cheek, and who knows how many more in places we couldn’t see.’
“The blood drained from the old bustard’s face. She said, ‘Maybe it was the maid’s husband who gave her syphilis.’
“I was not expecting her to come up with this, so I had to think fast. ‘Everyone knew that the old sot could barely lean over the side of his bed to piss. He was a bag of bones. But what difference did it make whether she had it first or he did? In the end, they both had the pox, and everyone figured he must have given it to the courtesan, and she probably did not even know. Persimmon drank mahuang tea all day long, to no avail. When her nipples dripped pus, she covered them in mercury and got very sick. The sores dried up, and she thought she was cured. Six months ago, her hands turned black, and then she died.’
“The old bustard looked as if a pot had fallen on her head. Really, I felt sorry for her, but I had to be ruthless. I had to save myself. Anyway, I didn’t go on, even though I had thought to say that someone learned that the Commissioner of Lies had died of the same black hand disease. I told her that was the reason I had feared for her when I saw her hands. She mumbled that it was not a disease but the cursed liver pills. I gave her a sympathetic look and said we should ask the doctor to check her chi to get rid of this ailment, since those pills were doing no good. Then I went on: ‘I hope no one believes you have the pox. Lies spread faster than you can catch them. And if people see you touching the beauties with your black fingers, they might say the whole house is contaminated. Then the public health bureaucrats will come, everyone will have to be tested, and the house closed down until they verify we are clean. Who wants that? I don’t want someone examining me and getting a peek for free. And even if you’re clean, those bastards are so corrupt, you’ll have to give them money so they don’t hold up the report.’
“I let this news settle in before I said what I had wanted all along. ‘Mother Ma, it just occurred to me that I might help you keep this rumor from starting. Until you correct the balance in the liver, let me serve as Violet’s teacher and attendant. I’ll teach her all the things I know. As you recall, I was one of the top Ten Beauties in my day.’
“The old bustard fell for it. She nodded weakly. For good measure, I said: ‘You can be sure that if the brat needs a beating, I’ll be quick to do it. Whenever you hear her screaming for mercy, you’ll know that I’m making good progress.’
“What do you think of that, Violet? Clever, eh? All you have to do is stand by the door once or twice a day and shout for forgiveness.”
THERE WAS NO single moment when I accepted that I had become a courtesan. I simply fought less against it. I was like someone in prison who was about to be executed. I no longer threw the clothes given to me on the floor. I wore them without protest. When I received summer jackets and pantalets made of a light silk, I was glad for the cool comfort of them. But I took no pleasure in their color or style. The world was dull. I did not know what was happening outside these walls, whether there were still protestors in the streets, whether all the foreigners had been driven away. I was a kidnapped American girl caught in an adventure story in which the latter chapters had been ripped out.
One day, when it was raining hard, Magic Gourd said to me, “Violet, when you were growing up you pretended to be a courtesan. You flirted with customers, lured your favorites. And now you are saying you never imagined you would be one?”
“I’m an American. American girls do not become courtesans.”
“Your mother was the madam of a first-class courtesan house.”
“She was not a courtesan.”
“How do you know that? All the Chinese madams began as courtesans. How else would they learn the business?”
I was nauseated by the thought. She might have been a courtesan—or worse, an ordinary prostitute on one of the boats in the harbor. She was hardly chaste. She took lovers. “She chose her life,” I said at last. “No one told her what to do.”
“How do you know that she chose to enter this life?”
“Mother never would have allowed anyone to force her to do anything,” I said, then thought: Look what she forced on me.
“Do you look down on those who cannot choose what they do in life?”
“I pity them,” I said. I refused to see myself as part of that pitiful lot. I would escape.
“Do you pity me? Can you respect someone you pity?”
“You protect me and I’m grateful.”
“That’s not respect. Do you think we are equals?”
“You and I are different … by race and the country we belong to. We cannot expect the same in life. So we are not equal.”
“You mean I must hope for less than you do.”
“That is not my doing.”
Suddenly, she turned red in the face. “I am no longer less than you! I am more. I can expect more. You will expect less. Do you know how people will see you from now on? Look at my face and think of it as yours. You and I are no better than actors, opera singers, and acrobats. This is now your life. Fate once made you American. Fate took it away. You are the bastard half who was your father—Han, Manchu, Cantonese, whoever he was. You are a flower that will be plucked over and over again. You are now at the bottom of society.”
“I am an American and no one can change that, even if I am held against my will.”
“Oyo! How terrible for poor Violet. She is the only one whose circumstances changed against her will.” She sat down and continued to make chuffing noises as she threw me disgusted looks. “Against her will … You can’t make me! Oyo! Such suffering she’s had. You’re the same as everyone here, because now you have the same worries. Maybe I should do what I promised Mother Ma and beat you until you learn your place.” She fell silent, and I was grateful that her tirade had ended.
But then she spoke again, now in a soft and sad voice, as if she were a child. She looked away and remembered when her circumstances changed, again and again.
Magic Gourd
I was only five, just a tiny girl, when my uncle took me away from my family and sold me to a merchant’s wife as her slave. My uncle told me he was doing only what my father and mother had ordered him to do. To this day, I don’t believe that was true. If I did, my heart would turn completely bitter and cold. Maybe my father wanted to be rid of me. But my mother must have been grief-stricken when she discovered I was gone. I am sure she was. I have a memory that she was. Although how could I know that when I did not see her after I was stolen? I have thought about this for many years. If my mother did not want me, why did the bastard take me away in the middle of the night? Why did he sneak me away?
I cried all the way to the rich man’s house. He bargained and sold me as if I were a piglet who would grow fat and tasty. The merchant had a wife by an arranged marriage, as well as three concubines. The middle concubine was called Third Wife, but she was first in his heart. She was the wife who took me as her maid. The merchant, I soon discovered, found excuses to go to her room more often than to the others. Looking back, it seems strange that she had such power over him. She was the oldest of the wives. Her breasts and lips were larger than what was considered ideal. Her face was not delicate. But she did have a certain way about her that mesmerized her husband.
She spoke with a slight tilt of the head and in a soft melodious voice. She knew the right thing to say to soothe his mind, to restore him. I overheard the other concubines say she came from the brothel life in Soochow and she had wrapped her legs around a thousand men and sucked out their brains and good sense. They were jealous of my mistress, so who knows if their gossip was true.
Like my mistress, I was not born with great beauty. My big eyes were my best feature; my big feet were my worst. They had been bound, and they burst from their bindings after I arrived in the merchant’s house, and because I walked on tiptoe, no one knew any better and I did not wrap them up again. Unlike the other maids, I was not just obedient but eager to do anything to please my mistress. I felt proud that I was the maid to the merchant’s favorite, the most highly valued of his wives. I brought her plum flower blooms to put in her hair. I always made sure her tea was scalding hot. I brought her boiled peanuts and other snacks throughout the day.
Because I was so attentive, my mistress decided I would one day be a suitable concubine to one of her younger sons—not as the second wife, but perhaps the third. Imagine me being called Third Wife! From then on, she treated me more kindly and gave me better food to eat. I wore prettier clothes and better-made longer jackets and pantaloons. To help me become a suitable concubine, she criticized my manners and the way I spoke. And that is who I would have become if the master, that ugly dog’s ass, had not ordered me one day to take off my clothes so he could be the first to break me open. I was nine. I could not refuse. That was my life, to obey the master because my mistress obeyed him. When it was over, I was bleeding and could barely stand from the near-fainting pain. He told me to get hot towels for him. He made me clean him, to wipe away all trace of me.