The Moon Pearl

by Ruthanne Lum McCunn

  According to Grandmother, the purpose of the five girls’ houses in Strongworm was for training daughters to become daughters-in-law. “The most senior member is the motherin-law, the rest of the seniors are the older sisters-in-law, and the juniors are the young brides.” Whenever Ma and Second and Third Aunt recalled their years as members of girls’ houses, however, they spoke gaily of the games they’d played, the friends they’d made, and Mei Ju believed that Grandmother, being old and strict, was exaggerating the importance of a girls’ house for training. Indeed, Mei Ju expected to have fun in the girls’ house in the same way her grandfather seemed to enjoy his nights in the house he shared with his concubine.

  No one in the family ever mentioned this woman. But the gossips in Strongworm didn’t share their restraint. So Mei Ju knew that after Grandmother had given Grandfather three sons, he’d set her aside like a summer fan which was no longer needed. For years he’d dallied with song girls and courtesans in the market town downriver. Then he’d brought back a pretty young concubine.

  She was, of course, not the only concubine in Strongworm. But where the other concubines lived in the same households as the wives whose affections they’d supplanted, Grandfather’s lived in a small house in which he passed his evenings and nights.

  Sometimes Mei Ju when walking past this house, heard singing—wooden fish songs, popular arias from operas. Usually, the concubine would be the one singing. But occasionally, Grandfather’s reedy piping would lace the concubine’s richer tones. Not infrequently, Mei Ju also heard them laugh.

  The first time she’d heard Grandfather laugh, Mei Ju couldn’t have been more shocked had she heard one of the statues on the temple altar. At home, the closest she’d ever seen Grandfather come to laughing was a smile so thin it seemed little more than another of the many wrinkles that creased his narrow face. Neither had she ever heard him sing. And Mei Ju guessed that Grandfather had set his concubine up in a separate house as a way for himself to escape from Grandmother.

  So too would joining a girls’ house be her deliverance, Mei Ju hoped.

  Mei Ju’s grandmother selected a girls’ house where the most senior member, Empress, was unrelenting in exercising her right to act like a motherin-law and all the seniors were demanding of meticulous service. If a junior failed to respond quickly enough to an order, prepared a snack poorly, or fanned a senior too weakly or too vigorously, the girl would be fined or scolded or both. Even so, Bak Ju won the seniors’ praise for swift and careful service as often as she did from Grandmother, and Mei Ju, to her surprise, was rarely faulted. Then she recognized the reason: the seniors, especially Empress, were too occupied with looking for excuses to punish Rooster, a junior whose family was so poor that they ate gruel and sweet potatoes—famine food—instead of rice, and who had become the butt of village jokes four years ago for calling their son Laureate, the title for the highest degree holder in all China, when he’d barely learned to talk.

  Where Mei Ju, like the other girls in the house, wore thick-soled cloth shoes, Rooster wore straw sandals. Her tunics and pants, thin and bleached of color from many washings, had patches on top of patches. And when girls brought crullers, almond or sweet bean porridge, turnip goh, or sugar buns from home for midnight snacks, Rooster—thin as a stick of incense—always devoured her portion like a starved beast, finishing before anyone else.

  Mei Ju wanted desperately to give Rooster her share of the snacks. But Mei Ju did not dare. No one did. Not when Empress, pouting out her thick lips, always made a point of refusing a second helping to Rooster and even ordered leftovers thrown into the nightsoil bucket to prevent her from retrieving them.

  Rooster’s eyes, tracking the lost treats, would blaze like hot coals. Her long, thin fingers would curl into fists. A few times, she even broke the rules of proper order by fighting back, and on those occasions, Empress exploded in such fury that Mei Ju was reminded of the terrifying big winds which struck Strongworm every summer, ripping branches off trees, blowing tiles off roofs, destroying dikes. Rooster, thrusting out her pointed chin and narrow chest, appeared uncowed. But Mei Ju’s belly would knot, her chest swell, thrusting her heart into her throat.

  Nevertheless, Mei Ju couldn’t stop herself from hoping that she would find happiness in the girls’ house—just as she couldn’t stop herself from eating lychee or from wishing their neighbor, Shadow, could be her friend.

  Shadow

  “MAMA, tell me a story,” Shadow begged.

  “Ai,” Mama protested. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  Her chubby arms too short to circle Mama’s ample belly, Shadow threw them around a stout leg. “Please?”

  “Alright. You win.” Laughing, Mama pushed aside her embroidery frame. “Now you know our village is called Strongworm. But the silkworms we raise are actually weak. No, not weak so much as delicate. Demanding, too. They’re always hungry.”

  “Like Mama and me.” Baba, who’d been helping Elder Brother make a shuttlecock out of coins and feathers, lurched around on his stool, seized one of Shadow’s arms. Pushing back the sleeve of her cotton tunic, he pretended to sink his teeth into her firm, sun-browned flesh, and at the tickle of his warm breath, his short, bristly black beard against her skin, Shadow giggled delightedly.

  Mama patted her belly. “Baba and I certainly like to eat. But we can—and do—eat anything. The worms get stomach trouble if the leaves we feed them aren’t shredded fine enough, or if we’re early or late with a meal, or if we don’t keep their trays absolutely clean of dirt. Even the people caring for them must be clean inside and out.”

  Swinging Shadow up from the floor, Baba held her out at arms’ length as if she had a bad odor. “So as soon as Mama knew you were in her belly, she had to quit the wormhouse.”

  Her plump little legs churning helplessly in the air, Shadow squealed for her brother to rescue her. Bent over the shuttlecock he was making, Elder Brother did not respond. So Shadow squealed louder.

  Mama raised her voice. “Poor Baba. He had to feed and clean one hundred thousand worms all by himself because Elder Brother was only four and couldn’t help him.”

  Baba, settling Shadow onto his lap, heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Since I had to grow the mulberry for the worms too, I couldn’t manage without hiring a laborer. But our profit wasn’t enough to fill another rice bowl for long, and we had to let him go after two seasons.”

  “You were eight months old, and I was almost five, a few months younger than you are now.” Elder Brother, having completed his shuttlecock, scooped Shadow into his arms. “But Mama taught me how to feed you spoonfuls of watery rice congee. How to hold you over my shoulder and pat you so you could spit out any wind in your belly.”

  As Elder Brother acted out what he’d learned to do for her, Shadow burped obligingly. Smiling, Mama took up the story.

  “Then I went back to working in the wormhouse, and your brother quieted you with a rag soaked in sugar water whenever you cried for me. Elder Brother also held your hands for your first steps. He hovered over you when you pulled free and picked you up each time you fell.”

  Baba reached out and gently pinched Shadow’s lips together, forming a duck’s beak. “After you learned to walk, you followed Elder Brother just like a baby duck follows a mama duck.”

  Mama nodded so hard that both her chins wobbled along with her belly. “You stuck closer to Elder Brother than his own shadow.”

  “My turn,” Shadow shrieked, leaping to her feet. “Soon everyone in Strongworm was calling me …”

  Throwing out her arms, she signaled her parents and brother to join her, and together they belted out, “Shadow!”

  During the silk season, Mama had no time for anything except the family’s worms and household chores. But after the seventh and final generation of worms completed spinning their cocoons, she would set up her embroidery frame—a rectangle of wood that pivoted on two upright supports—in their common room. And when Baba returned from selling the cocoons in the
market downriver, he’d bring back lengths of expensive silk and satin that merchants in the town commissioned Mama to embroider.

  In Strongworm, even the rich wore jackets, skirts, and robes of undecorated blue, black, or gray that were scarcely more interesting to Shadow than her own faded cotton tunics and pants. Baby carriers, hats, and shoes were colorful and often elaborately embroidered, but they were also soiled with dirt, food scraps, dust, vomit, and spit.

  Shadow, watching the merchants’ pristine silks and satins ripple through Mama’s fingers, was as dazzled by the hues of sky blue, apple green, deep purple, pomegranate red, and intense pink as if the rainbow had fallen from the sky. And more wondrous than the colors were Mama’s scaly, cloud-breathing dragons, her finely feathered birds that looked as if they were about to break into song, her delicately shaded flowers that all but gave off a perfume.

  Baba boasted that no other woman in Strongworm could work magic with a needle like Mama, and Shadow had long wanted her mother to teach her that magic. But in response to Shadow’s entreaties, Mama would say, “Not until you can thread a needle on your own.” Now, at last, Shadow could.

  Baba, beaming, presented her with a small, hand-held embroidery hoop. “Your grandmother chose your mother for a daughter-in-law because the matchmaker said Mama was a see fu, master, at embroidery. Learn well, and you’ll be sought after for a bride too.”

  Clutching her little hoop, Shadow paid close attention as Mama instructed, “There aren’t many kinds of stitches. Just the long and short, brick, satin, seed, stem, chain, cross, and split. If you’re to become a see fu, however, you must not only execute them with absolute precision but you must know which stitch to use when and in what combination. You must also know how to select the appropriate color and thickness of thread.”

  Under Mama’s guidance, Shadow stretched small squares of cotton the size of handkerchiefs within her hoop. Then, her tongue poking through her lips from her efforts to control needle and thread, she cross-stitched lucky symbols and simple designs.

  To Shadow’s disappointment, her stitches were shockingly uneven, the symbols and designs she created misshapen. Indeed, Shadow was afraid Mama would decide she was too untalented to teach and stop her lessons.

  But Mama didn’t even criticize.

  “If you’re to become a master embroiderer,” she said, “you must develop your own critical eye.”

  So Shadow unpicked and tried again—and again. And when the fabric finally wilted from her abuse, she took a fresh square, started over.

  Day after day, night after night, Shadow applied herself. Slowly her stitches became more even. The colors she chose and the symmetry of the designs and symbols—although still far from magical—came to please her eye.

  Then Mama taught her new stitches, more ambitious designs. And the more skilled Shadow became, the greater her excitement at chasing thread with a needle.

  That same winter, Elder Brother started school, and on his first morning, Shadow clung to him sobbing, “Me too,” as if she were still a baby and not a big girl of five.

  Baba, who had the strength of two buffaloes, peeled her off easily and lifted her up in his arms. “Hush now. Hush.”

  Comforted by Baba’s soft murmur, the beat of his heart against hers, his familiar tobacco breath and scratchy beard, Shadow stopped crying, rested her face against his shoulder.

  “When you marry, you’ll belong to your husband’s family,” Baba explained, his voice still soft, his calloused hand smoothing her hair, carressing her cheek. “So paying tuition for you would be the same as throwing money away. Besides, no motherin-law would take a daughter-in-law with book learning. They want daughters-in-law who’re obedient, skilled in wifely arts, and without any interests beyond duty to family.”

  He set her down. “Be a good girl now. No more fussing.”

  From behind her embroidery frame, Mama beckoned. “Come. I’ll teach you a new stitch.”

  Wanting to please Baba and torn between Mama’s offer and staying with Elder Brother, Shadow didn’t move. Elder Brother, a stocky boy of nine, gently patted her back, nudged her towards Mama. But only when Baba sternly repeated, “Mothers-in-law want daughters-in-law who are obedient,” did Shadow go. Moreover, while watching Mama demonstrate the chain stitch, Shadow’s mind followed Elder Brother and their father out the door and through Strongworm to the small room behind the temple which held the village school. And as she attempted the new stitch herself, Shadow realized with a joyous leap of her heart that if she climbed the flame-of-the-forest tree just outside the temple courtyard, she would be able to stay near her brother without being seen.

  Soon as she escaped her mother’s watchful eye, Shadow scrambled up the tree, heedless of the rough bark scraping her legs through her worn cotton pants, biting into the tender, exposed flesh of her hands and feet. Then, level with the schoolroom window, she scooted close enough to peer in.

  Seated at a desk directly under the window, Elder Brother was clearly bored: his fingers drummed his high forehead, twitched and tugged at his queue; his eyes roved the room. Shadow, staring down at him through the tree’s delicate green fronds and bold red blossoms, willed Elder Brother to look in her direction, to see her.

  When at last he did, it seemed to Shadow that his pleasure was as great as hers. Grinning, he held his book so the pages faced her and pointed to each character as he called it out.

  On every side of Elder Brother, boys—about two dozen ranging in age from seven to seventeen—were also reciting their lessons out loud, and although Shadow strained her ears, she could not distinguish her brother’s voice from theirs. The characters, too, were undecipherable squiggles, snarls, and knots.

  So Shadow edged closer. Still she could not find her brother’s voice among so many. Pointing to her throat, she signaled him to raise his pitch higher, higher yet.

  Finally, she managed to hear him. And as Shadow, clinging to her branch, listened to Elder Brother recite the characters over and over, she slowly untangled then memorized the characters the same way she learned stitches and patterns for her embroidery.

  For the four years Elder Brother attended school, Shadow studied with him by climbing the branches of the flame-of-the-forest tree whenever she could escape her chores, and while walking or fishing or flying kites together, she’d recite what she’d learned. Hiding in the twisted roots of the huge banyans surrounding the altar to Seh Gung, the Community Grandfather, Shadow would scratch out characters in the dirt with a broken twig so Elder Brother could make sure she was learning them correctly. He’d also teach her anything she’d missed.

  By his last year, though, Shadow was so burdened with work during the busy silk season that she was lucky if she could slip away to join him one day in ten. Even in winter, the only time she could count on being near him was at meals and in the evenings, when he’d practice his calligraphy while Baba repaired a tool or smoked his pipe and she worked at her embroidery with Mama. Realizing that once she joined a girls’ house, she’d lose that as well, Shadow begged Mama to let her continue sleeping at home.

  Mama clicked her tongue sympathetically. “I know you don’t want to go. But you’re ten, Elder Brother is almost fifteen. So you’ve got to stop being your brother’s shadow and go to the girls’ house. Otherwise people will talk. Anyway, leaving us at night for the girls’ house will help prepare you for the larger separation that you’ll suffer when you leave Strongworm as a bride.”

  For the first time, talk of marriage didn’t seem like a harmless, far-off dream but terrifyingly close and real, and Shadow balked.

  “Why can’t I marry someone here?”

  “Members of the same clan share the same ancestors, so they can’t marry.”

  “But we have four clans in the village.”

  “There can be no direct contact between a groom’s family and a bride’s either during the marriage negotiations or the rituals of betrothal. So your husband can’t be from Strongworm or Three Temples across
the river or any other village that’s close by.”

  Mama, her voice soft as her folds of flesh, enveloped Shadow in a loving embrace. “That won’t be for many years yet, and in the girls’ house, you’ll learn weeping songs which will help you relieve your sorrow. You’ll also get used to being away from us.”

  Shadow, unconsoled, sought out her brother and pleaded with him to intercede.

  “I can’t,” he told her solemnly.

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Remember how upset you were when I started school?” Elder Brother reminded. “You didn’t think you’d get used to that either.”

  The tears in Shadow’s eyes spilled down her cheeks. “I didn’t have to. I found a way around it. For a few years anyway.”

  “Watch.” Squatting, Elder Brother ferreted in the soft, moist dirt for a moment or two, drew out a wriggly worm, stretched it flat on the ground between them, and swiftly severed it with a sharp stone.

  Shadow, who’d never before seen her brother act cruelly, leaped back as if he’d struck her. The two pieces of worm twitched and writhed, crawled away in opposite directions.

  “See,” he said. “You thought the worm couldn’t be separated, that I had killed it. But it’s fine. Both worms are fine. You will be too.”

  A Bird Snared in a Trap

  MEI JU’S grandmother liked to say, “It’s not enough to work hard. A person must work smart.” And she’d illustrate her meaning by pointing out the shortcomings of their neighbors. “Look at how the Fungs have failed to add to their own holdings despite the earnings of a master embroiderer in their family. Even worse, look at how they let that daughter of theirs follow her brother about. Mark my words, that Shadow will come to no good, and the family will lose what little they have.”