The Moon Pearl

by Ruthanne Lum McCunn

  “Better set off firecrackers to drive away evil spirits,” Grandmother told Ba.

  Her meaning was unmistakable, and Mei Ju, dropping her gifts on the table, dashed out of the house. Almost immediately, firecrackers exploded behind her, and it seemed to Mei Ju that her heart, too, was bursting.

  On New Year’s eve, Rooster had written, “Sweep out strife, Bring in peace,” on a strip of red paper that she’d pasted on the wall beside the door, and Mei Ju had marvelled at how simply yet clearly the couplet expressed their shared hope. Hurrying back to the hut after her visit to her family, Mei Ju found the words a mockery. Even so, she was appalled to find Rooster attacking the paper with a knife.

  “My father accused me of deliberately adding insult to injury by bringing home cakes.” Spitting out each word as if it were a hurtful stone, Rooster repeated her father’s tirade. “Your brother might have risen like these cakes and carried us with him. But you’ve shamed our family too deeply for Laureate to have any chance of rising now. The Low elder whose patronage has been protecting him from Old Bloodsucker has all but abandoned him, and Laureate will be lucky if he’s allowed to continue in school.”

  Mei Ju searched frantically for words of comfort, found none. And for a long time, the only sound in the hut came from Rooster scraping the couplet off the wall.

  Opposite Sides

  DURING SHADOW’S New Year visit with her family, she’d been treated like an unwelcome guest. But in her dreams that night, her parents received her warmly, and when she asked to hold her little niece, Elder Brother smiled, Elder Sister-in-law handed her the baby.

  Just as Shadow was about to embrace the tiny bundle, she was wakened by loud squawking. Horribly disappointed, she opened her eyes—saw a hen stretching its neck, flapping its wings, straining to break free of Rooster’s grasp.

  According to Rooster, this hen—which she’d found outside their door—was a gift from Gwoon Yum to give them heart. But Shadow believed her brother had left it to show her his true heart.

  The next time she passed Elder Brother in the street, then, Shadow thanked him.

  “It wasn’t me,” he told her.

  And so unyielding was his tone that Shadow was instantly carried back to a steamy hot day in her fourth year.

  On that hot summer’s day, Elder Brother had piggybacked her to a little stream south of Strongworm’s rice fields so they could cool themselves splashing, paddling about in the shallows, and long before they’d reached the stream, he’d been dripping with perspiration, which had acted like glue, sticking her chest and arms to his back, his neck.

  Peeling herself off Elder Brother, Shadow asked, “Why didn’t you go to the river? It’s much closer.”

  “Because this stream is magical,” Elder Brother said, stripping off his shorts.

  He helped Shadow off with hers, took her hand, walked her into the cool water. “Can’t you see that?”

  The water around them glittered gold in the sun’s glare. Below the surface, fish—large and small, colorful and drab—swam past, some so close their scaly skins and spiky fins and tails brushed her thighs, her brother’s calves. One fish nibbled her fingers, tickling. Soft silt oozed deliciously between her toes, and even when she clouded the water by poking her feet deeper to increase her pleasure, the stream was clearer than the river where Mama did the family wash and water peddlers tied up their boats. Prettier, too, since the grass on the banks was untrampled. With only their two voices, birdsong, the faint whirring of dragonflies’ iridescent wings, quieter as well. But magical?

  “It’s an ordinary stream,” Shadow decided.

  “Wait till I tell you what happened here in olden times—after buffaloes came down to earth but before they lost their ability to talk. You’ll change your mind then.”

  Always eager for a story, Shadow gazed up expectantly. Elder Brother settled on a mossy rock in the shallows, drew her onto his lap.

  “In those faraway days, the seven daughters of the Sun God used to come down from the sky to bathe in this very stream.” He pointed at their shorts lying in the grass where they’d dropped them. “And those seven sisters would leave their clothes on the bank just like we do.”

  Folding Shadow’s right hand in his, Elder Brother directed it at a buffalo grazing upstream in the shade of some willows.

  “One day, a Cowherd was minding his buffalo under those same trees, and he was so hot and tired and bored that he fell asleep.”

  Elder Brother released her hand. “Now what do you think happened while the Cowherd was napping?”

  “The seven sisters came down to bathe?”

  “Right! And when the Cowherd woke and saw them, he fell in love.”

  Shadow’s eyes widened. “With all seven?”

  Elder Brother laughed. “Just the prettiest—the Weaving Maid, who made cloth out of cloud-silk for the other six sisters to stitch into robes for the Gods.

  “Anyway, the Cowherd’s buffalo, who could see into his master’s heart, said, ‘Don’t just stand there gawping at the Weaving Maid. Go steal her robe.’

  “‘Which one is it?’ the Cowherd asked.

  “‘The prettiest, of course.’

  “The Cowherd set out, stopped. ‘I’m not sure I should.’

  “The buffalo pawed impatiently at the grass beneath his hooves. ‘You want the Weaving Maid, don’t you?’

  “The Cowherd gave a lovesick moan. ‘Oh, yes.’

  “‘Then you’d best be quick about it or you’ll lose your chance.’

  “Lickety-split, the Cowherd raced over to the sisters’ robes, snatched the prettiest, dashed back to his buffalo. And when the Weaving Maid couldn’t find her dress, she couldn’t go back to the sky with her sisters, she had to go to the Cowherd. Not just to get her robe, but to marry him since he’d seen her naked.”

  Shadow looked down at her nakedness, her brother’s, threw her arms around his chest. “Like we will.”

  Gently he lowered her arms back onto her lap. “No, you silly melon. Not like us. Brothers and sisters can’t marry. And nakedness doesn’t matter until you’re big.”

  Shadow pouted. “But I want …”

  “The rest of the story?” Elder Brother asked, scooping up a handful of water and pouring it over her head.

  The water streamed down Shadow’s forehead and nose, her cheeks in cool rivulets, trickled inside her ears, down her neck and chest and back, tickling.

  “Yes,” she giggled.

  “Well, the Cowherd and the Weaving Maid were very happy. But the Gods were furious because without the Weaving Maid, they had no new robes. The Weaving Maid’s sisters couldn’t help either, since they were needlewomen, not weavers.

  “After three years, the Gods’ robes were in tatters.

  “‘Enough!’ the Queen of Heaven screeched down to the Weaving Maid. ‘Get back to your loom.’

  “By then, the Weaving Maid and the Cowherd had two babies, and she loved her husband more than ever. But she was too afraid of the Queen of Heaven to disobey. So the Weaving Maid bid the Cowherd a tearful farewell and returned to the sky with their babies.”

  Tears of sympathy rolled down Shadow’s cheeks. “Can’t the buffalo help them?”

  “You’ll have to wait and see,” Elder Brother admonished, tapping the tip of her nose with a finger.

  “The Weaving Maid went back to her loom, and while she worked, the six sisters took turns caring for her children like I take care of you for Mama.

  “Busy as the Weaving Maid was, she missed her husband terribly. The Cowherd missed her too. Saddest of all was the buffalo, who cried for them just like you.

  “‘Kill me,’ the buffalo told the Cowherd. ‘Use my skin to ride up into the sky.’”

  “No,” Shadow yelped.

  “That’s what the Cowherd said. When the buffalo insisted, however, the Cowherd gave in.”

  Shadow’s yelp turned into a wail. “No.”

  “Yes.” Elder Brother squeezed her in a comforting hug. “Th
e Cowherd killed his buffalo, skinned it, and flew up to his wife’s home in the sky.

  “Directly before he reached her, though, the Queen of Heaven saw him. Wah, she was angry! Shouting, ‘I’m never going to wear shabby clothes again,’ she snatched out a long hairpin and swept her arm across the sky.

  “That one stroke created the Silver Stream of Heaven, with the Cowherd on one side, the Weaving Maid on the other. And the two are still on opposite sides—close enough to see each other, but unable to touch.”

  “That’s not fair,” Shadow sobbed.

  “I’m not finished.”

  Relieved, Shadow swallowed her tears, nestled against her brother’s chest.

  “Husband and wife begged the Jade Emperor for mercy, and he decreed that once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh moon, all the crows and magpies in the world should come together and make a bridge with their wings and bodies so the Weaving Maid can cross the Silver Stream to meet the Cowherd.”

  Shadow waited for Elder Brother to continue. When he didn’t, she cried, “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” he told her firmly.

  And although she renewed her sobbing, Elder Brother refused to relent, insisting, “You can’t change what is.”

  Yun Yun, mourning her dead baby, had counted the days until spring, the start of the silk season, the moment the first generation of eggs would hatch and she could return to sleeping in the wormhouse, Lucky’s comforting embrace.

  When at last Yun Yun slid into her makeshift pallet on the wormhouse floor and called for Lucky, however, she didn’t come.

  Hastily Yun Yun tried again.

  “Lucky, the sun has traveled to the west And disappeared behind the hills.

  Lucky, the birds have flown away

  And are snug in their nests.

  Ai, Lucky, my Lucky,

  Fly to me now.”

  Waiting for the musky scent and gentle warmth that would signal Lucky’s arrival, the cold hardness of the earth floor penetrated Yun Yun’s thin pallet. She became aware of the worms’ crunching, the fetid odor of their accumulating waste.

  Feeling as if her husband’s ever-hungry worm had somehow multiplied into the thousands, and with it, his habit of creating a stink wherever he went by deliberately breaking wind, Yun Yun slid deeper into her pallet, covered her head, smothering everything except her grief for her dead baby, her need for Lucky.

  Night after night, Yun Yun called for her friend. And when Lucky failed to come, Yun Yun began stumbling over stools and buckets, sweeping the same spot and washing the same garment or bowl many times over.

  Then she forgot to shut the door to the wormhouse. The worms, blasted by a cold draft, caught the thief-wind sickness, turning very red, so stiff they could no longer crawl. Those few that survived produced undersized, discolored cocoons.

  Old Man Chow took one look at the sampling Yun Yun brought him and roared, “They’re not worth reeling.”

  Snatching a mulberry branch from the kitchen, he swung at her. “This’ll teach you a lesson you won’t soon forget.”

  Instinctively Yun Yun ducked, and the branch struck the side of the family altar, snapped in two. Hurling down the broken wood, Old Man Chow punched her with his bare fists.

  Knocked off balance, Yun Yun staggered, fell, curled into a ball, and rolled towards the door. Young Chow, coming in, kicked her back to his father.

  Begging for mercy, she dodged his foot, crawled under the altar. Her husband dragged her out, held her down for her father-in-law, who seized a broom and beat her with the handle.

  Silent now, Yun Yun escaped by going inside herself.

  FOUR

  1838

  Mountain Pines

  BENT OVER her embroidery frame, Mei Ju manipulated her needle as skillfully as the long chopsticks and reel she used for unwinding silk from cocoons. But she felt little of the pleasure and none of the peace that reeling brought her. Her friends knew no peace either.

  Rooster, accepting her father’s blame for her brother’s troubles, had purchased a string of prayer beads from a pair of itinerant monks who’d told her that repeating the Bodhivistic chant for overcoming disasters would help Laureate regain his patron’s favor. And it seemed to Mei Ju that except for when Rooster was at her embroidery frame or doing chores, she was pushing the wooden beads through her fingers while murmuring, “Nam-mo-oh-neh-toh-fu.” Even in her sleep, Rooster’s fingers twitched.

  Shadow lay perfectly still in bed at night. Nevertheless, her eyes were ringed black. She ate so little that her tunic and pants—which had all but burst at the seams when they’d made their vows—hung loose. Mei Ju didn’t have to ask why. At the boisterous talk, grunts, and sighs of men passing their hut on their way to or from the fields, Shadow would cock her head toward their door, and when the sounds faded without anyone leaving the road for the short path to the hut, her head and shoulders would sag with a sharp little catch of breath.

  Not wanting to add to her friends’ worries, Mei Ju said nothing when she noticed the mud walls weeping from the spring rains. Nor did she remark on the clamminess of their bedding, their clothes, the dank smell of mold, the moss that was creeping up the legs of their tables and stools, the squish and slide of their clogs on the damp floor. Even when one section of wall, bulging under the weight of water, finally sagged and slid to the floor, leaving a gaping hole, she told them cheerily, “If we turn the table on its side and push it against the hole, that’ll keep most of the rain out, and I’ll fix it as soon as the sun comes out again.”

  Shadow, her face ashen, sank to her knees and plunged her hands into the mound of soggy fallen dirt.

  Rooster stared at the water streaming through the hole, puddling around Shadow’s knees, Mei Ju’s feet, her own. “This is why the Council of Elders hasn’t bothered to banish us from Strongworm. They knew the rains would do it.”

  More upset by her friends’ reactions than the damage, Mei Ju reminded, “Our first day in the hut, the two of you showed me how mixing straw and dried grass into the mud turns it into a strong plaster, and we patched almost a dozen holes. This one’s bigger, but I can take care of it.”

  Shadow held up two handfuls of mud. “You can’t.”

  She spread her fingers, and Mei Ju, watching the wet dirt slump and fall back onto the mound in soft plops, suddenly remembered her grandmother saying, “Dozens of huts were built for the Tankas, but most washed away after a season or two of big winds.” Refusing to give in to her friends’ gloom, however, Mei Ju assured Shadow and Rooster that the rain they were experiencing wasn’t serious. Moreover, since the big wind in which her sister had drowned, there had been no storms.

  “I can fix this,” she repeated. “We’ll be fine.”

  Shadow, her muddied hands empty, pointed at the hole. “Look at it. Only the bamboo frame is left. That’s why the wall caved in. There’s no wattle to hold a patch.”

  Mei Ju could see that. But every fall, the men in Strongworm cut down mulberry and spread it out to dry for weaving into chicken pens and wind baffles, and it seemed to Mei Ju that she should be able to likewise weave more wattle for their wall.

  Tipping the table on its side and shoving it against the hole, she said as much.

  “How?” Rooster demanded. “We have no mulberry stems and no way to get any.”

  She was right, Mei Ju realized. Although there was such an abundance of dried mulberry that it was also used for fuel, no one was going to risk censure by giving—or even selling—any to outcasts.

  “Can’t our clever rooster produce mulberry stems for us the way she did eggs?” Mei Ju asked hopefully.

  Rooster shook her head. “Not the amount we’re going to need.”

  “Come on,” Mei Ju coaxed. “The hole’s not that big.”

  “But the wall is,” Shadow said. “And we have four that need fixing, because you can bet the mulberry has rotted all the way around.”

  Full understanding hit Mei Ju with the force of a hard fist. Th
e Tanka huts that remained were those the Council of Elders had decided to keep in repair as rain shelters. This winter, the Council—knowing full well that she and Rooster and Shadow had neither the access to mulberry nor the skills to fix any large-scale damage—had sent no one to make the annual repairs. And with one wall already caving in from light spring rains, the hut clearly wouldn’t survive the heavier summer downpours even if there were no big wind.

  Sinking onto the edge of the bed, Mei Ju surrendered. “I can’t fix this. We’ll have to hire someone.”

  Rooster clicked her tongue impatiently. “We earn barely enough to buy rice and oil and salt fish. Can you remember the last time we tasted meat? So if by some miracle we did find someone willing to work for us, what would we pay them with?”

  “We can produce more embroidery for the water peddlers to sell, and they can bring in someone from another village and advance the person’s pay and the cost of materials for us… .”

  Rooster sliced a hand across the air. “No! That would bind us to the water peddlers the way my father is bound to Old Bloodsucker.”

  “I know that, but what else can we do?”

  “Use young, thin bamboo instead of mulberry and try to rebuild the walls our …” Breaking off in midword, Shadow knocked her forehead with the heel of her palm, smudging it with mud. “Ai yah! Even if we work on a small section of wall at a time, how will we protect our embroidery silks from water damage when it rains?”

  The answer seemed obvious to Mei Ju. During the summer months, many men and women wore clothes made from black gummed silk because it was waterproof, and the inside of their hut could likewise be kept dry by hanging this cloth across the rafters and between the bamboo frames empty of wall. About to give this idea voice, however, she realized that inexpensive as black gummed silk was, they couldn’t afford to buy the many lengths they’d need.

  Finally, with a confidence she didn’t feel, Mei Ju said, “We’ll find a solution while we’re cutting the bamboo.”