The Moon Pearl

by Ruthanne Lum McCunn

  Yun Yun, burdened with chores in the Chows’ fields and wormhouse, didn’t hear him directly but through her in-laws and husband, who chewed on Shorty’s every word, pause, expression, and gesture like dogs thrown particularly meaty bones. In truth, much the village acted the same, and Yun Yun continued to hear talk of Rooster long after Shorty left Strongworm.

  “Too bad she didn’t shave her head from the start, before she shamed her family and destroyed her brother’s future.”

  “Maybe that’s what shamed her into doing right.”

  “Could be. Then again, who knows whether she is doing right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How do we know she isn’t in a house of pleasure rather than a nunnery?”

  “Hnnnh, you got a point there.”

  “That Shorty claims he didn’t take any fare from her. Maybe not in cash. But what do you want to bet he had a taste of her?”

  “Not much to eat on that chicken!”

  “Never mind, there’s that plump one for him to look forward to.”

  “She’s not plump anymore.”

  “Yeah, Shorty had better hope she gives up this spinster business soon.”

  “She will. The other one, too.”

  “No!” Yun Yun wanted to shout at them. “No!”

  But she didn’t dare. Instead, she lamented silently:

  “Beware, sisters,

  Magpies cry and caw at your door.

  Close your ears to them, sisters,

  Sisters, stay strong.”

  Mei Ju noticed that Shadow still cooked rice for three. In bed, they each lay down in their usual space. Even in sleep, neither stretched their limbs beyond their usual boundaries. And Mei Ju, on waking, inevitably listened for Rooster before remembering she was gone.

  Jarred anew, Mei Ju would bolt from the bed and busy herself with chores. But the first tasks of the day had been Rooster’s, and Mei Ju, feeling her absence sharply, would hurry to get past them, to settle into her own work where familiar routine allowed her to pretend for a little while that nothing had changed, that the village wasn’t afire with vicious gossip.

  Every time they left their hut, Mei Ju found the talk against them had grown wilder, more slanderous, and she feared Laureate’s place in the Low clan’s school was in greater peril than ever. As she told Shadow, “Rooster’s parents certainly think so. I just heard them accusing her of smashing their rice bowl forever.”

  “Me too.” Shadow, untying the bundle of new commissions they’d gone to fetch, sighed. “If only I’d been quicker, or if Rooster hadn’t left before I wakened with the idea, we could have worked together on a letter to Laureate’s patron explaining why she decided to be a charity spinster, and she could have sent it from the market town so people would think she’d gone to a letter writer. Better still, she could have given it to her abbess to add a few words. Then Laureate’s patron would be praising Rooster’s parents for good family teaching, the gossips wouldn’t have dared start this vile talk, and Laureate’s place in school and the family’s future would be secure.”

  “Rooster’s a clever planner. Most likely she’ll come up with that idea herself after she’s had a chance to settle into her new life at Ten Thousand Mercies,” Mei Ju said hopefully.

  “A letter might yet help Laureate. But the talk has become too poisonous for people to believe anything except the worst about us.”

  A Miracle

  MEI JU was now the first to rise, and while she was raising the crossbar, the hen danced around her feet. The moment the door cracked open, it squeezed through with a happy squawk, and as the door swung wide, Mei Ju started to follow.

  Something struck her head, her shoulder, her feet. The blows were glancing, but shocking, and Mei Ju jumped back with a piercing shriek. The hen shot into the air, flapping its wings and squawking furiously. Had it also been hit?

  Shadow sprang off the bed, bounded across the hut, crying, “What is it? Are you hurt?”

  Her heart thrashing around in her chest and her belly leaping up to meet it, Mei Ju slammed the door, dove for the crossbar. Fumbling in her haste and panic, she dropped it.

  In one swift movement, Shadow seized the bar, fixed it in place, slipped a stool under Mei Ju. “Here, sit down.”

  With Shadow steadying her, Mei Ju sank onto the stool, fretting over whether the crossbar was enough to secure them from her attacker, whether there was more than one attacker, why the hen had stopped squawking… . Through this tangled whirl, she vaguely felt Shadow’s hands move down her back, rubbing in broad, soothing strokes. And slowly, the spinning of head and heart and belly quieted under Shadow’s touch until Mei Ju became calm enough to speak.

  “Something or several things, I don’t know what, hit me. Maybe our hen too.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “No. But I was looking down at the hen so I wouldn’t trip over it.”

  Shadow stepped around Mei Ju to the door, pressed an ear against the rough wood planks.

  “I can’t hear anything. But that doesn’t mean there’s no one out there.”

  Turning from the door to face Mei Ju, Shadow stopped, grabbed her head with both hands.

  “Ai!”

  Alarmed, Mei Ju half rose.

  “Look!” Giggling now, Shadow pointed to the wall opposite the door.

  Thoroughly confused, Mei Ju twisted round. At the sight of their unshuttered window, she crimsoned bright as the streaks in the dawn sky. What a woodenhead she was to have thought them secure because their door was barred! Or herself under attack, when anyone wanting to harm them could have come through the window while she and Shadow slept.

  “But I was hit.” Mei Ju tapped the left side of her head, her shoulder, and foot. “Here and here and here.”

  Shadow sobered. “Everybody’s been predicting our repairs wouldn’t hold up. Maybe part of the roof came down on you.”

  As though they were one, Mei Ju and Shadow spun around, examined the ceiling above the door.

  “It seems alright, but we’d better check outside,” Shadow said.

  Reason told Mei Ju nobody was lurking on the other side of the door. Even so, her intestines clenched as Shadow raised the crossbar and threw open the door.

  Peering fearfully through half-closed eyes, Mei Ju saw no one. But littering the path were short, slender, reddish-brown sticks that resembled nothing from their roof. Mei Ju gasped. Firecrackers? No, these sticks, unlike firecrackers, were linked together in pairs with string. Moreover, their hen was pecking contentedly at one stick, then another, and another.

  “Sausages?” Shadow swooped up the closest pair. “They are sausages! Lap cheung, preserved sausages.”

  Shouting, “Scat,” Shadow rushed at their hen, which fled, squawking, beating its wings, leaving a trail of down and feathers in its wake.

  Mei Ju wanted to help Shadow gather up the sausages. Awed that Rooster might have been right in insisting their hen and black gummed silk had come directly from Heaven, however, Mei Ju remained glued to the stool.

  Shadow, gaily swinging sausages from both hands, returned to the hut. “Someone must have hooked these above the door to keep them out of reach of animals.”

  She spread the sausages out on their table. “Then you must have dislodged them when you opened the door.”

  “Yes,” Mei Ju murmured.

  Even so, their appearance seemed a miracle.

  The previous summer, Yun Yun had carried the stools for her husband and in-laws out to the street in a single trip. Now she’d become so weak, she had to go back and forth three times, and when she returned to the kitchen for the food she’d cooked, she was as breathless as if she’d walked the length of Strongworm.

  At the savory smells, Yun Yun’s nose, chest, and belly seized with desire. In truth, were it not for her motherin-law’s habit of counting every vegetable stalk and measure of rice and meat, Yun Yun would have snatched a few swallows for herself as she heaped three large bowls with steaming m
ounds of rice, mustard greens, and ju yuk beng, pork cakes. That being impossible, she pretended she was eating by scraping her tongue and the insides of her cheeks with her teeth.

  Since early afternoon, the air indoors had been thick and heavy as cotton wadding. And while Yun Yun was serving her in-laws and husband their evening rice, more families spilled out of their houses to eat in the street, then linger, gossiping, smoking, and stirring up breezes with palmleaf fans until the need to sleep drove them inside to their beds.

  In Twin Hills, Yun Yun had enjoyed these summer nights, when the whole street seemed to turn into one big family. Indeed, Lucky had always had to take her firmly by the hand and all but drag her to their girls’ house. Here, for fear of being accused brazen, Yun Yun felt compelled to keep her head bowed. Nor did she dare acknowledge the neighborly greetings she received from women and children with anything more than a slight nod, an unintelligible mumble. So she was relieved when, having delivered the last tantalizing bowl of rice and greens and pork, she could escape into the wormhouse to shred mulberry for the worms, pilfer some of the coarse, bitter-tasting leaves for herself.

  The one small window, set high in the back wall, had to be left open for air, and over the chopping of her cleaver, the worms’ noisy crunching, and her own determined chewing, Yun Yun—listening for her motherin-law’s shouted commands—caught the faint clatter of chopsticks against bowls, snatches of convivial chatter. Each time Old Lady Chow called, Yun Yun dropped what she was doing, forced down the shard of bitter pulp in her mouth, shuffled out as quickly as she could to refill bowls, to bring tea, pipe, fans. And so frequent were these interruptions and so tough the leaves that Yun Yun never managed to sneak more than a half-dozen. Her pinched belly, then, continued to grouse and cramp. Finally, however, she finished feeding the worms, and with her motherin-law’s grudging permission, went to ease the worst of her hunger with the meager leavings in the kitchen.

  Yun Yun poured a bowl of water into the bottom of the rice pot, scraped what she could off the bottom. Forbidden from starting a fire in the stove for herself, she was in any case too tired, too starved to hold back from instantly gulping down the tepid, rice-flecked water. But she forced herself to prolong the rest of her meal, trailing each of the three stalks of mustard greens through the dab of congealed fat, all that was left of the pork cakes, then biting off no more than a quarter-inch at a time and chewing slowly.

  As she often did when eating, Yun Yun recalled her father’s long-ago counsel, “A properly cared for plant must be fertilized before flowering and after bearing fruit.” Surely a woman needed no less. Was that why no child grew in her despite her husband’s repeated assaults? What, though, could she do?

  The spinsters had generously hidden dried peanuts from their vegetable patch under the fuel they’d given her. But Old Lady Chow had come into the kitchen while Yun Yun was unloading the baskets and confiscated the peanuts, claiming they were from the family’s harvest. Yun Yun couldn’t admit she’d had contact with the spinsters. Moreover, arguing would have earned her a beating. So Yun Yun had said nothing. Neither did she make any attempt to buy herself food from her own small store of cash since it would have no better chance of reaching her belly than the spinsters’ peanuts.

  The last shred of greens swallowed, Yun Yun licked the wok in which she’d cooked them, her husband’s and in-laws’ bowls, carried them out to the courtyard to wash. On the other side of the wall, the members of the girls’ house were chanting a weeping song, repeating each line after Widow Low called it out. Sinking onto the stool in front of the washbucket, Yun Yun silently joined the girls.

  “I strain my eyes looking for my dear ones,

  But my dear ones do not appear.

  I strain my ears listening for my loved ones,

  But I do not hear their steps.

  No, never do my loved ones come.”

  The widow’s voice, quavering with old age, and Yun Yun’s own longing for her family and Lucky in Twin Hills added to the emotion of the words. After only five lines, Yun Yun burst into loud, wracking sobs that drowned out Widow Low, the girls, everything except her misery.

  How long she wept, Yun Yun did not know. But by the time she recovered herself sufficiently to resume the washing, the singing was over and Widow Low was telling the girls:

  “There was once a pious wife who begged permission from her husband to enter a nunnery. He refused her. So she entreated her in-laws. But they, too, refused her.

  “Then the wife stopped serving her husband in bed. She also stopped making offerings to the family’s ancestors, saying, ‘I’ll serve no one except the Lord Buddha.’

  “Her husband and in-laws didn’t want the trouble and expense of getting another wife. So they beat her in hopes of forcing her to surrender. Still the pious wife insisted, ‘I’ll serve no one except the Lord Buddha.’

  “Furious, husband, motherin-law, and father-in-law attacked the woman together. But before their hands could touch her, the Lord Buddha magically transported the pious wife to a mountain nunnery.

  “Even then, husband, motherin-law, and father-in-law did not repent. Only after many years did they come to recognize their wickedness, and they went to the mountain nunnery to seek forgiveness.”

  “Daughter-in-law!”

  From Old Lady Chow’s high-pitched fury, Yun Yun realized her motherin-law must have shouted for her before. Absorbed in Widow Low’s story, however, Yun Yun had failed to hear her.

  Calling, “Coming,” she dropped the lid she was washing back into the water with a splash.

  “Coming are you?” Old Lady Chow sneered from the kitchen doorway.

  “I’m sorry. I …”

  Old Lady Chow cut her off with a stinging slap. “Sorry, hah! Stubborn, you mean! Slow, too! And stupid! Too stupid to learn!”

  She kicked Yun Yun off the low stool.

  “Now get inside, ladle out three bowls of almond cream, and bring it out to us!”

  Yun Yun, picked herself off the ground where she’d fallen, felt Old Lady Chow’s razor-like nails cut into her right ear, her head jerked back, her motherin-law’s hot breath blasting the side of her face.

  “Now!” Old Lady Chow screeched directly into Yun Yun’s ear. “Not tomorrow! Now!”

  Thrown off balance, Yun Yun would have fallen again. But one outstretched hand caught hold of the bucket’s edge, another gripped the side of the overturned stool, and these offered just enough support so she could haul herself upright, stumble into the kitchen.

  While serving the almond cream, Yun Yun heard Old Lady Chow declare that Rooster, in shaving her head and becoming a charity spinster, was betraying the vow of independence she’d made when combing up her own hair. But it seemed to Yun Yun that if the pious wife in Widow Low’s story could win praise for becoming a nun, a pious spinster like Rooster should too. And when Yun Yun returned to the courtyard to finish the washing up, she defiantly reimagined Widow Low’s story with Rooster as the heroine.

  In Yun Yun’s pious spinster story, Rooster made her own miracle, as she had in life, by convincing Shorty to take her to the nunnery. But Rooster’s parents and little brother were not alone in begging her for forgiveness at the end: the naysayers in Strongworm—with the exception of the Chows—did as well. Moreover, Mei Ju and Shadow were embraced as independent spinsters by their families and all of Strongworm—again, except for the Chows.

  “Even the Lord Buddha couldn’t move them,” Yun Yun muttered bitterly.

  Pouring out the dirty water from the bucket, however, Yun Yun thought of how her baby brother’s unrelenting wailing had spurred the Chows’ neighbors to speak up for her, how they’d then pressed Old Lady Chow into acting justly. Could that miracle be repeated? Not with Third Brother, of course, since he was in Twin Hills, but with the members of the girls’ house next door?

  Tongues as Swords

  YUN YUN, having suffered many a beating for no good reason, was certainly willing to risk a thrashing to get enoug
h food so she could grow a baby. The very next evening, then, she butted her washbucket and stool directly against the wall separating the Chows’ courtyard from the girls’ house, pressed a cheek against the rough, sun-baked bricks, and in a voice breathy with terror, desperation, and hope, chanted the plea she’d composed:

  “Listen, sisters, I beg you,

  To this sad person;

  This sad person,

  Who has met with misfortune;

  This sad person,

  Cut off from parents and brothers;

  This sad person,

  Who can do nothing except entrust her sorrow to you.”

  Her heart pounding in her ears, Yun Yun couldn’t tell whether the girls were still chattering and playing as they had been when she’d begun her appeal, and she fretted over whether she’d caught the attention of at least one. Yet she didn’t dare chant any louder for fear she’d ruin her plan. And, concerned her motherin-law would interrupt with some demand before the song’s end, Yun Yun started rushing a little.

  “Listen, sisters, I beg you,

  I am dying.

  You can’t untie the knot around my neck,

  But you can loosen it with your songs.

  Listen, sisters, I beg you,

  Hunger eats at me.

  Already it has swallowed all my flesh.

  Now it is gnawing on my bones.

  Listen, sisters, I beg you,

  Sing of this suffering in your songs,

  And if I cannot repay you in this life,

  I will in my next.”

  Mei Ju, lifting the lid from the rice pot, released a cloud of steam redolent with sausage. “Wah, I’d forgotten how wonderful lap cheung smells.”

  “I haven’t.”

  Shadow, coming out of the hut, set down the bench she was carrying, reached over Mei Ju’s shoulder, snared a piece gleaming with lovely pearls of fat.