The Moon Pearl

by Ruthanne Lum McCunn

  The rush of preparations did nothing to ease Yun Yun’s distress. Worse, when Lucky asked her parents to find her a husband in Strongworm, they refused. “We couldn’t bear to have you so far from us.”

  Too late, Yun Yun realized she and Lucky should have told their parents sooner of their hopes to be married into the same or neighboring villages. And, shut up in her family’s loft for a bride’s ritual period of mourning with her friends, Yun Yun dropped onto the floor. Lucky did likewise. Knee to knee, they then poured out their regret and sorrow in weeping songs.

  On her wedding eve, Yun Yun was still crying:

  “What is happening is so unexpected.”

  And Lucky, her tone as desperate as Yun Yun’s, echoed:

  “Happy in our companionship,

  We failed to see misfortune descending.”

  Tears streaming down their faces, the two continued to call and respond:

  “We’ve laughed together.”

  “And played together.”

  “We’ve picked flowers.”

  “And strolled down paths.”

  “I’d hoped to enjoy more time with you.”

  “But we’re fated to part.”

  “Tomorrow I go to the rascal.”

  “And there’s no return.”

  “Let’s pledge friendship for a hundred years.”

  “Let’s pledge friendship forever and ever.”

  Yun Yun, too distraught over their coming separation to go on, buried her face in her hands.

  Lucky, embracing her, railed, “Even your parents’ cabbage and livestock are fully matured before they sell them. Why couldn’t your parents wait a few more years before they sold you?”

  In truth, Yun Yun—small boned, with a delicately shaped head above a slender, graceful neck and narrow shoulders—did feel more child than woman, unready to leave home. But her mother had told her, “I was also sixteen when I married.” And her father had said, “A matchmaker doesn’t come along every day with an offer from a family as ideal as the Chows. I couldn’t refuse.”

  Yun Yun was convinced her parents had accepted the offer for her sake, not their own. As she’d pointed out to Lucky, the bride price from the Chows had not included cash. Nor did the cost of their gifts, added together, come to a huge amount.

  Yun Yun, then, defended her parents with an improvised song of gratitude that she sobbed into Lucky’s chest:

  “A sugar bowl in the honey pot,

  Is no sweeter than my life at home;

  A shock of rush inside a shoe of straw,

  Is not better protected than I by my mother’s side.”

  Yun Yun even blamed herself for their coming separation, crying as she dragged herself from Lucky’s arms and descended the ladder for her final meal with her family:

  “I am worthless as a weed.

  Had Father and Mother been fortunate,

  I’d have been born a son;

  Father would have hired many people

  To fetch a maiden.

  But Father and Mother were unfortunate;

  A daughter was reared,

  And soon that daughter will be dead to them.”

  Throwing one last lingering look up at Lucky, Yun Yun took her place at the table, accepted the bowl of sweet rice her mother placed in front of her, and joined in the ritual chorus of “Sik faan, eat rice.”

  All around the table, chopsticks clicked as slowly and deliberately as Yun Yun’s. Her mother and father were usually measured in their eating. And her grandparents, with only a few blackened stumps of teeth left, always chewed and chewed and chewed before they swallowed. But Yun Yun was used to her three younger brothers racing through their meals as they did everything else. Now they were laboring over the clumps of tasty rice like she was. Were they also thinking of how she’d taught each of them to use their chopsticks? How she’d planted stems of bak choy in their rice as trees for them to fell. How she’d guided their little hands, circling their bowls of soup like birds, then swooping down to snap up crunchy bits of lotus root and sweet red dates. Did the rice they were swallowing seem like lumps of stone to them too? Were they, their parents and grandparents forcing themselves to eat, as she was, because the stickiness of the sweet rice symbolized their close relationship, the hope that their ties would not be entirely severed?

  Every grain scoured from their bowls, Yun Yun’s mother rose and sang:

  “All daughters must leave home,

  But few have your luck.

  Your motherin-law’s house is a rich fish pond.

  You’ll doff your cotton tunics,

  And wear only silk.

  Yes, you’re entering the Dragon Gate of Fortune.

  You’ll ride to the sky on a white crane.”

  Of course the future her mother painted was one Yun Yun wanted—but without losing those dear to her. As her mother had just reminded her, however, remaining home wasn’t a possibility, and Yun Yun returned to the loft to dress with a heavy step and even heavier heart.

  Waiting for her was not only Lucky but the bridal guide her mother had hired. This guide was a brusque, middle-aged stranger from another village chosen for her expertise in red affairs and her good fortune: she’d given birth to nine children, six of them sons, all of them living. Tall and heavy-set, she loomed over both Yun Yun and Lucky. Yet the woman gave directions with such clarity and conviction that Yun Yun was glad of her presence. Slipping on her shimmering, sequined, dragon-and-phoenix wedding jacket and skirt, Yun Yun even found herself savoring their weight, the pleasure of silk caressing her skin.

  Then the guide opened the jar of pow fa, the sticky paste made from wood shavings that keeps hair in place. And as the loft filled with its pungent, bitter odor, the guide began the ritual haircombing that would replace Yun Yun’s childish pigtails with a complicated wifely bun, thereby transforming her from a girl to a woman.

  At the first pass of the comb, Lucky chanted, “Slide the comb from roots to ends.” And Yun Yun—remembering how they’d played at red affairs in the girls’ house, the horror of having her head pierced by the groom’s pin—shuddered. Indeed, had she not gripped her stool with both hands, she would have bolted.

  She and Lucky had long ago figured out from watching chickens and dogs mate just what the groom’s pin represented. Now the memory of the animals’ squawks, sharp nips, yelps, and drawn-out howls of anguish stoked Yun Yun’s panic.

  Quickly she reminded herself of her mother’s promise. “Your father has never hurt me. And you can be sure we’ll tell the matchmaker to find you a good husband. One as good as my parents found for me.”

  While discussing with Lucky how escape from hurt might be possible, Yun Yun had long ago wondered out loud whether there were husbands and wives who coupled like the moths in the wormhouse. To her, these creatures looked as if they were performing mysterious, tender, intimate dances. Dances that sometimes aroused a delicious trembling in the pit of her belly.

  “Mine too,” Lucky had confessed.

  Within the curtains of their bed, they’d since awakened these pleasurable shiverings in each other by pretending they were moths, fluttering their eyelashes and trailing their fingers along each other’s bare skin… .

  Loud blasts of a horn jolted Yun Yun back to the loft.

  “The groom’s golden pin finds its mark,” Lucky intoned.

  In a single smooth sweep, the guide picked up the groom’s pin, slid it expertly across Yun Yun’s skull, into her womanly bun. Yun Yun’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Lament as much as you want, but don’t cry,” the guide warned. “Tears will make tracks in your face powder.”

  Without breaking the rhythm of her chant, Lucky seized the handkerchief from the table, dabbed gently at Yun Yun’s eyes, pressed the square of red silk into her hands. The guide set the elaborate headdress in place and secured it, completing the haircombing ritual as Lucky shrilled the final lines of the song.

  “Head crowned with five golden phoenix,


  Pearls dangling from their mouths,

  Hiding the beautiful bride.”

  Yun Yun’s head drooped under the weight of the headdress, and the strands of pearls clattered together noisily. Blinded now as well as thrown off balance, she would have fallen had Lucky not grabbed her elbow and steadied her. Relieved she didn’t have to descend the ladder on her own two feet, Yun Yun climbed onto the guide’s broad back, and the woman, panting hard, carried her down to the common room where the family waited.

  With a loud grunt, the guide set Yun Yun inside a large, flat bamboo sieve. Yun Yun—squinting through tear-swollen eyes between swaying strands of pearls—tried to find her pair of new red shoes for a happy new life, failed.

  Crouching, Lucky scooped up the shoes. Yun Yun leaned on Lucky, and together, they worked each foot into a shoe, their fingers touching, intertwining—slowly parting.

  The guide, still breathing heavily, steered Yun Yun over to her grandparents, parents, and brothers. Soaking her handkerchief with her tears, Yun Yun called out sad farewells to them one by one.

  “Faster,” the guide urged in a whisper. “We have a long journey ahead.”

  Yun Yun, pretending she didn’t hear, forged on:

  “Other daughters are just a village or two

  From grandparents, parents, and brothers.

  I will be separated from mine

  By ten thousand layers of clouds.”

  The guide nudged Yun Yun.

  “But with ghosts and goblins approaching from all sides,

  I can do nothing but sing my sad song.”

  The guide cleared her throat, then coughed with increasing irritation. Yun Yun, realizing she couldn’t spin out her leavetaking any longer, completed it with a vow to keep her family in her heart forever.

  Swiftly the guide herded Yun Yun into the bridal sedan, slammed the door shut, ordered the bearers forward. The men stepped lively, and Yun Yun rocked in the suffocating darkness, helpless as if she were bound hand and foot.

  “In this chair

  I am held captive.

  My brows locked in sorrow,

  No peace in my heart.

  Who will have pity on me?”

  Passersby shouted their approval.

  “How filial!”

  “She knows so many songs.”

  “What learning!”

  “She’ll make a good wife.”

  A few villages later, Yun Yun’s voice cracked, then disappeared altogether. Still she continued to lament.

  When the bearers stopped and the guide threw open the door, Yun Yun slammed shut her eyes against the glare, gratefully gulped the rush of cool air, the happy realization that Strongworm was not as far from Twin Hills as she’d feared.

  Stiff as the breeze gusting in, she tried to rise. The guide pushed her back.

  “Just throw out your handkerchief.”

  Yun Yun gasped. Lost in her laments, she’d forgotton about the ritual that marked the end of her right to express her unhappiness at leaving her family.

  “We’re just half way to Strongworm?” she stammered hoarsely.

  “Yes, so hurry, or it’ll be night before we get there.”

  Fresh tears flooded Yun Yun’s eyes.

  “No more crying or lamenting,” the guide reminded.

  Yun Yun daubed at her eyes with her handkerchief, now a sodden wad.

  “What did I tell you?” the guide demanded.

  She grasped Yun Yun’s arm, propelled it out the door.

  “Drop the handkerchief. Drop it and sing.”

  Yun Yun, remembering how Lucky had placed the red square of silk in her hand, tightened her grip. With an exasperated grunt, the guide pried Yun Yun’s fist open, and the handkerchief, deeply creased and heavy with tears, fell into the dirt.

  Yun Yun stared at the red stain. Then, raising her eyes, she saw behind the guide a scrap of cloudless blue sky. And, reminded of the glowing future awaiting her in Strongworm, Yun Yun mustered what voice she could and chanted:

  “This handkerchief of sorrow

  I drop onto the ground.

  It stays on the ground,

  And the sky turns bright.

  All the tears I’ve shed

  Sink into the sea.

  All the curses I’ve uttered

  Sink into the sea too.

  Good fortune carries me on this road,

  This road that is free of worry,

  This road that is filled with peace,

  This road that leads to my husband’s home.”

  Wife

  HORNS BLARED, cymbals clashed, startling Yun Yun from damp, hot sleep into the cramped, dark rocking of the wedding sedan, a terrible sense of yearning and loss spilling out in song:

  “You, Lucky, are in the West,

  I am going to the East,

  Departing …”

  A deafening series of explosions blasted Yun Yun into full wakefulness, and she realized with horror that the horns and cymbals must have been announcing her arrival in Strongworm so the Chows could set off firecrackers in welcome. Had anyone in the village heard her weeping song? Or had the horns and cymbals drowned her out? Shivering despite the heat, she prayed the noise of the firecrackers was not only driving away evil spirits but any bad luck she might have drawn on herself with her song.

  The sedan lurched into a hard halt, and Yun Yun felt the impact of fists pounding against the door. A moment later, the door flew open, and she tumbled into dense clouds of smoke, the stink of burned powder, her bridal guide’s arms.

  Dizzy and weak from the long journey, Yun Yun found she couldn’t stand without the woman’s help. Nor could Yun Yun see clearly through her tear-swollen eyes, her bridal veil. But desperate to create a favorable impression on her new family, she propped herself up against her guide and listened closely to her promptings for the wedding rites.

  One by one, Yun Yun bowed to the Chows’ ancestors before the family altar, then Old Man Chow, Old Lady Chow, and Young Chow. Finally, she poured tea for her husband’s mother and father, now hers.

  To Yun Yun’s consternation, the blurry glimpses that she caught of her in-laws were of a healthy man and woman, neither of whom were anywhere near the age of her grandparents. So why had the matchmaker given old age and infirmity as the Chows’ reasons for insisting on a short betrothal? Moreover, the altar and the room’s furnishings seemed modest for people with means. Were the Chows perhaps avoiding ostentation? Was that why there were only three tables for the wedding banquet?

  Seated at the women’s table, Yun Yun wished her husband had a younger sister. A girl near her own age. A girl she, Yun Yun, would not be afraid to approach with her questions. A girl who would become her friend.

  In truth, Yun Yun wished for her good friend in Twin Hills, for Lucky.

  Out of a confused mixture of modesty and fear, Yun Yun hadn’t attempted so much as a glancing peek at her husband while performing the rituals that made her a wife.

  During the bride-teasing, however, Young Chow surrendered so readily to the men’s boisterous demands that Yun Yun’s fear turned into pity. Indeed, she worried he was suffering as much as she over the embarrassments that were being forced on her through him, and she wondered how she could show her husband that she didn’t fault him for being weak, that she valued gentleness over strength.

  When the men, growing ever more rowdy, shouted for Yun Yun to draw aside her veil and look at her husband, she hesitated for only a moment before bravely reaching up, gathering the strands of beads between her trembling fingers, raising her downcast eyes in search of his.

  As she faced her husband squarely, the men roared.

  “A bold one!”

  “Better watch out.”

  Yet Yun Yun did not drop her gaze. She couldn’t. She was too terrified by what she saw: eyes set deep in a sea of flesh, eyes glittering like a rat’s when it sees fat.

  No sooner did Young Chow dismiss the bridal guide than he pounced, pushing Yun Yun onto her back so roughly t
he side of her head struck the bedpost with a loud crack.

  Crushed beneath him, she could hardly breathe. The straw bedmat bit into her buttocks, her back. And as he mauled her breasts, tore off her pants, and pried apart her legs, she sealed her eyes shut against his brutishness, her shame. She bit her lips to keep from crying out.

  But she couldn’t close out the stink of his breath. The terrible sound of grunting as he labored to drive his blade into her most private parts. The searing pain when his blade, finding its mark, drove into her, tearing and ripping as it sliced deeper and deeper. The memory of her good friend’s tender pleasuring, her mother’s promise to find her a good husband, a man like her father, a man who would never hurt her.

  Two nights in her husband’s bed felt like two years to Yun Yun. The cold faces and sharp tongues of her parents-in-law made the hours out of his bed difficult to endure as well.

  That her bridal guide had changed from brusque to sympathetic helped a little. What sustained Yun Yun, though, was the knowledge that on the third day she could return to Twin Hills with her guide.

  Of course, Yun Yun understood that at the day’s end, she would have to come back to the Chows. Alone. But for the space of a watch, perhaps an entire afternoon, she would have the warm comfort of her grandparents’ and parents’ smiles, her little brothers’ hugs, Lucky’s embrace.

  While dressing for the ritual third-day visit, however, Yun Yun reconsidered. Her parents would be looking for confirmation that she was happy in her new home, and even if she were clever enough to answer their questions with lies, which Yun Yun doubted, how could she hide her clumsy gait, her face?

  Hard as she tried, the pain between her legs made it impossible for her to walk normally. And from the tenderness that she felt when she washed her face, Yun Yun guessed the crack against the bedpost on her wedding night had bruised her skin. One glance and her parents would know they’d failed her. Badly.

  So Yun Yun, citing the distance between Twin Hills and Strongworm as her reason, offered to forgo the ritual visit, and her motherin-law pounced on it. Tipping her bridal guide generously from her own small store of cash, Yun Yun asked the woman to buy some fried sesame dumplings, steamed sponge cakes, and turnip goh for her parents.

  “Don’t you mean stinky beancurd and bitter melons?” the guide said.