The Moon Pearl

by Ruthanne Lum McCunn

  Before each meal, Ma set a bowl of rice and a platter of taro and dumplings with chicken or pork for Grandfather on top of his coffin, now closed. She also sent Mei Ju or her sister out to the street with a basin of rice mixed with scraps for any hungry ghosts that might be lurking, so they wouldn’t slip in unseen and steal from Grandfather.

  But no one—not Ba or the priest or Widow Low, not even Grandmother—had the power to stop Grandfather’s concubine from exercising her right to lament, to criticize the family for refusing to recognize her in the past, to demand fair treatment for herself in the future. And she returned day after day.

  The concubine always dropped to her knees at the front door, scuffing, wearing thin her pants, which had long turned black from crawling across the floor. Her hands, almost as filthy, had smeared her mourning white with ugly smudges since she often beat her chest and tore at the cloth while singing. From beneath her mourning cap, her hair straggled untidily, falling across her face, which was streaked with tears and dirt. Her voice, having grown hoarse, occasionally faltered in the middle of a song. Still she persisted.

  According to Widow Low, the male relatives of a singer could kneel beside her and weep to show they sympathized, and Grandmother was surrounded with sons and grandsons shedding tears on her behalf. But outside of Grandmother, who had to respond to the concubine’s laments, everybody in the family was still acting as if the woman did not exist. Certainly no one knelt by her. Not even once.

  Mei Ju knew from the gossips that the concubine had been sold into a house of pleasure as a child. But didn’t the woman have a single male relative she could send for? Or was she unable to send for anyone since she could not write, and now, with Grandfather gone, it was unlikely any man in Strongworm would be willing to help her. Was that why she called out so desperately to Grandfather, why her weeping was intensifying, her songs becoming increasingly bitter and unrestrained?

  When Mei Ju took food out to the street for hungry ghosts, the laments—penetrating the walls of the house, sailing out of its windows and doors—pursued her, as did the smoke, heavy with ash, that billowed from the offerings burning in their courtyard. The singers’ bitterness and the acrid taste of soot choked her throat, stung her eyes and made them water.

  Through her tears, Mei Ju sometimes noticed men and women shudder, shake their heads as they hurried past. And above the singing, the crackle of flames, she heard some of them claim the war of words was likely upsetting Grandfather’s spirit as it was every living person, every creature within hearing. A few muttered, “The wife has too much pride. She should relent and make peace with the concubine.”

  How Mei Ju wished these men and women could kneel beside the concubine and add their supplications to hers. But of course they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—any more than Mei Ju.

  The war of words did not end until Grandfather’s burial, and because Grandmother had failed to silence the concubine, the village gossips declared the woman victorious. But Grandfather was in the ground less than two days before the concubine—homeless after Ba obeyed Grandmother’s blunt, “Evict her!”—walked out of Strongworm alone, carrying all she possessed in a small cloth bundle. Then the gossips gave Grandmother the victory. Mei Ju, though, could not forget that Grandmother, who’d been a wife and was surrounded by dutiful sons and grandsons, had lamented every bit as bitterly as the concubine.

  TWO

  1836–1837

  A Matchmaker’s Claims

  BEFORE MAMA and Baba had agreed to Elder Brother’s betrothal the previous winter, they’d used an elaborate network of relatives, clansmen, friends, and acquaintances to verify the matchmaker’s claims that the girl under consideration was healthy, filial, and pliant, a skillful reeler and willing worker. What Elder Brother had wanted to know was whether his betrothed was pretty, and over evening rice, Shadow had asked their parents on his behalf.

  As soon as she began posing the question, Elder Brother’s neck and ears flushed. Swiftly he lifted his bowl to his lips, but it was too small to hide the spread of color.

  “How auspicious,” Baba observed with a barely suppressed chortle. “You’re turning a lucky red.”

  Mama’s chins and belly shook merrily. “Wah, you’re so bright, we don’t need any other light.”

  Burying his face in his bowl, Elder Brother rapidly shoveled rice with his chopsticks. A few grains fell on the table.

  Mama raised both hands in mock horror. “Remember, every grain you drop represents a pockmark on your bride’s face.”

  Hurriedly Shadow picked up the grains her brother had scattered, threw them into her own bowl. Under the table, she felt her brother’s foot prod hers.

  “Come on,” she urged their parents. “Don’t keep Elder Brother in suspense.”

  “You know we haven’t seen the girl ourselves,” Mama said, her chins and belly rippling anew.

  Shadow groaned. “How did the matchmaker describe her?”

  Behind his beard, Baba’s lips twitched. “No one can live up to a matchmaker’s exaggerations, so we’d best not repeat them. Otherwise Elder Brother’s bound to be disappointed, and that’s no way to start a marriage.”

  Their parents’ responses fueled Shadow’s curiosity, and waiting for the bridal sedan to arrive, she puffed and hissed like a kettle left on a stove too long.

  But when at last the bridal guide led Elder Brother’s betrothed into their common room, all Shadow could see of her was that she was half a head shorter than Elder Brother, and her hands, folded demurely, were small, the skin unusually fair. Everything else was hidden beneath her traditional bridal headdress, beaded veil, loose-fitting, elaborately embroidered red jacket and skirt.

  Hoping to somehow peer behind the bride’s veil as it swayed back and forth when she bowed to the family’s ancestors, Shadow craned her neck, bobbed and twirled her head.

  “You’re fifteen, not five,” Mama hissed. “Act like it.”

  Breathing deeply, Shadow forced herself to stand still, but she continued to stare. And, while Elder Brother’s bride was kneeling and pouring tea for Baba and Mama, Shadow noticed her brother—handsome in his rich black skull cap and long, gleaming black satin robe—likewise studying his bride. Was he able to catch more than slivers of pale forehead, powdered cheeks, and reddened lips between the strands of pearls hanging from the headdress?

  As if she were creating a design for an embroidery, Shadow tried to assemble these fragments into a meaningful whole, realized they were too fractured. Neither was she able to satisfy her curiosity during the wedding banquet that followed, for although she sat at the same table as her brother’s bride, now her elder sister-in-law, women piling pieces of tender, juicy chicken and duck and suckling pig into the bride’s bowl got between them. Furthermore, Elder Sister-in-law didn’t once push aside the dangling pearls with her chopsticks to eat. Motionless as a statue, she maintained a steady murmur of thanks while her bridal guide snapped up the tasty, moist morsels of flesh and crispy skin.

  Shadow, thoroughly frustrated, decided to spy on the bride-teasing where Elder Brother’s friends would try and make Elder Sister-in-law reveal her face.

  “You can’t,” Mei Ju protested.

  Rooster agreed. “A girl can’t hide in a roomful of men without getting caught.”

  Shadow hesitated. Although her brother had asked her to question their parents about his betrothed, he would certainly disapprove of her plan to satisfy her own curiosity, as would Mama and Baba. But then, they wouldn’t ever know about it any more than they knew she’d given Rooster and Mei Ju lessons in the loft of the girls’ house for almost two years.

  With a self-satisfied giggle, Shadow drew her friends into her parents’ sleeping room, pointed at the wall that divided it from the room her brother and wife would share. “You see how the wall stops short of the ceiling by three, four feet? I’ll set a stool on my parent’s bed, stand on it, and look down at the bride-teasing on the other side.”

  “You have to leave wi
th us for the girls’ house, or my sister will want to know why,” Mei Ju fretted. “She’s probably looking for us already.”

  Shadow slumped onto her parents’ bed. How could she have failed to consider Bak Ju? What else had she overlooked?

  “Mei Ju and I can put Bak Ju off the scent,” Rooster offered.

  The furrows of worry creasing Mei Ju’s forehead deepened. “We can try. But what if Shadow doesn’t get to the girls’ house before it’s locked for the night?”

  Rooster waved her hand airily. “That’s easy. We’ll climb out onto the roof and watch for her so we can let her in.”

  Rooster’s confidence restored Shadow’s, and she threw her arms around both her friends, laughing, “You’re more wily than me!”

  From her perch on the stool, Shadow’s view of the bridal couple standing near the head of their large, four poster bed was every bit as good as she’d anticipated. But the dark, waxy smoke spiraling up from the half-dozen wedding candles lighting the room tickled her nose, irritated her throat, and stung her eyes, making them water. Blinking furiously, she pinched her nostrils and cut off a sneeze as the bridal guide finished tying back the embroidered blue bedcurtains and directed Elder Sister-in-law and Elder Brother to sit.

  Flushing crimson as the wedding sash looped across his broad chest from shoulder to waist, Elder Brother dropped down immediately, and his friends, who’d crowded into the narrow space between bed and door, teased him for being overeager, turning him a darker shade of red. They also showered Elder Sister-in-law with praise for her modesty in hanging back.

  The bridal guide repeated the instruction. Elder Sister-in-law remained rooted.

  “Wife, sit!” a wag sternly ordered.

  The young men closest to the wag took up the cry. Then the ones behind them began to chant, “Wife, sit! Wife, sit!” Soon all the guests, even the ones so far back in the crush that they were outside the room and couldn’t possibly see, were demanding she sit.

  Head bowed, Elder Sister-in-law edged over to the foot of the bed, obeyed.

  “Closer!” the guests in the room demanded.

  The rest swiftly followed their lead. “Closer! Closer!”

  Elder Sister-in-law didn’t shift an inch. Was she less pliant than the matchmaker had led Mama and Baba to believe? Or did young men brag falsely about their exploits during bride-teasings, their success in forcing brides to do their bidding?

  Suddenly, Elder Brother slid from the head of the bed towards the middle. His friends bellowed approval, and Shadow, startled by her brother’s boldness, wondered whether his eagerness to see his bride might so overcome his bashfulness that he’d draw aside Elder Sister-in-law’s veil himself.

  “Bride, go to your husband!” one of the guests shouted.

  “Yes, the bride must move,” another yelled.

  Others made the same demand, and their cries soon became a solid chant. Still Elder Sister-in-law remained rooted. Then, as the chant swelled louder, Elder Brother bounced comically from the middle of the bed to the foot, halting mere inches from his bride.

  Shadow’s eyes bulged. Elder Brother’s friends roared with laughter. Now, Shadow thought. Now they’ll demand Elder Brother pull back Elder Sister-in-law’s veil, and he’ll willingly obey. Instead, the crowd pushed Trickster Lee forward.

  Gnashing his teeth so loudly that Shadow, up on her perch, could hear him, Trickster Lee hurled out an arm in the large, exaggerated manner of an actor and dangled a purple-red plum on a string between the bride and groom.

  “Bite the plum,” he commanded with droll ferocity. “Bite.”

  Instantly the rest of the guests called out, “Bite.”

  Of course! The bride, biting into the plum, was bound to expose her face. Then why was Elder Brother lunging at the plum and snaring it with his teeth?

  Angling the stick from which the plum hung, Trickster Lee jerked Elder Brother’s face so close to Elder Sister-in-law’s that they would have touched had she not ducked. As she dove, the pearl veil swung wildly. But her head was bowed so low that Shadow doubted even Elder Brother, turned the color of the plum, could see her face. Certainly Shadow, leaning over the partition as far as she dared, couldn’t.

  “Bride and groom must bite the fruit together,” Trickster Lee scolded.

  “Together!” the guests chorused. “Bite into it together.”

  The bridal guide nudged Elder Sister-in-law. But she didn’t respond to the guide any more than she did to the guests’ loud clamoring.

  All at once, Elder Brother took the entire plum into his mouth. Moments later, he spat out the pit.

  His friends shouted their disapproval. Some stamped their feet. When a few went so far as to raise their fists, Elder Sister-in-law shrank against the bedpost. Trickster Lee shook his stick at her.

  Leaping up, Elder Brother capered, playing the fool. And as his friends’ angry shouting turned into guffaws, Shadow understood her brother was trying to protect his bride from them. From her, too, although he did not know it.

  Scrambling off the stool, she slipped out and ran to the girls’ house.

  Months later, after they’d become friends, Elder Sister-in law—her face round and white as the moon, her ready smile warm as the sun—told Shadow, “When I saw your brother doing everything he could to take his friends’ attention away from me during the bride-teasing, I knew he was as exceptional as our matchmaker claimed.”

  By then, Strongworm was buzzing with talk about Young Chow’s wedding, the girl coming to be his wife.

  “The bride’s name is Yun Yun.”

  “Double Gift, eh? Double Sacrifice, more like.”

  “Where’s this Gift, this Sacrifice from?”

  “Twin Hills.”

  “That’s almost a half-day’s journey by boat from Strongworm!”

  “Any closer and the bride’s family would’ve heard talk about the Chows.”

  “And know the matchmaker’s lying.”

  “You got that right. No lies, no bride. Not for a rotter like Young Chow.”

  “Maybe a bride will sweeten him.”

  “Not a chance!”

  “If you ask me, getting married made his old man meaner.”

  “That’s because Old Lady Chow is as tough as he is.”

  “Old Man Chow’s got the fists. Old Lady Chow’s got the mouth.”

  “I’ll take his fists to her mouth any day. That tongue of hers is sharp as an executioner’s blade!”

  The same could be said of the gossips’ tongues, Shadow thought. Yet they didn’t exaggerate. Her girls’ house was next door to the Chows, and she’d heard their loud quarreling more nights than she cared to count. Moreover, as far back as she could remember, Young Chow had been a vicious bully.

  Once, she and Elder Brother had been flying a dragon kite that had taken him months to make. Their faces turned up to the sky, Shadow had been admiring the way the dragon’s gold scales glittered in the sun, Elder Brother had been shouting out his pleasure at how its body twisted and leaped in the wind, when, suddenly, Young Chow had appeared from nowhere and cut the kite’s string.

  Young Chow was as mean now as he’d been then, and Shadow understood why his parents said the wedding would take place within a month of the betrothal: the more time between the two events, the greater the risk that the bride’s family might discover the truth behind the matchmaker’s lies.

  A Red Affair

  YUN YUN had noticed no stranger in Twin Hills, no sign of her parents negotiating with a matchmaker on her account. So she was stunned to see the traditional betrothal gifts of tea, cakes, and betel nuts on the table in their common room. And while her head was yet reeling, her mother removed one of the small golden cakes from the box on the table, formally presented it to her with both hands.

  The cake was one of Yun Yun’s favorites. About to bite into it, however, Yun Yun realized the light, fluffy pastry signified not just betrothal, but the marriage that would follow, and with it, the loss of her good friend L
ucky, her family, everyone and everything she’d ever known.

  Crying, “No,” she set the cake back in the round lacquer box.

  “Silly girl,” her mother said, retrieving the cake and holding it out to Yun Yun. “Don’t you know you must eat it to show you accept the betrothal?”

  Not knowing what else she could do, Yun Yun reluctantly took the cake, broke off a little piece, put it in her mouth. The morsel was dry on her tongue, bitter as ash, and she had to force herself to swallow.

  “Silly girl,” her mother repeated. “You should be happy. Your betrothed’s parents, the Chows, own their land instead of leasing like we do. Better yet, where we still mostly grow rice here in Twin Hills, the Chows’ village, Strongworm, is almost entirely given over to silk production, which yields a greater profit.”

  Yun Yun’s blood quickened: when peeling off the paddy leeches that clung to each other’s ankles and calves during rice planting, she and Lucky had often dreamtalked of marrying into villages where silk was king.

  “True, Strongworm is nearly a day’s walk from Twin Hills. But the two villages are considerably closer by boat.”

  And she and Lucky would convince her parents to find her a husband either in Strongworm or close to it.

  “Furthermore, Young Chow—like your father—is an only son. There’ll be no need for you to vie with sisters-in-law for favor with your motherin-law, no squabbling over who inherits what.”

  Yun Yun, thinking of the warm camaraderie Lucky’s easygoing sisters-in-law enjoyed, felt a stab of disappointment, dismissed it. With Lucky nearby, the absence of sisters-in-law wouldn’t matter.

  Eager to talk to Lucky, Yun Yun stuffed the unfinished betrothal cake into her mouth.

  “The Chows want the wedding next month, before the new silk season begins.”

  The sweetness on Yun Yun’s tongue soured: she and Lucky would be separated for months, maybe longer.