The Moon Pearl

by Ruthanne Lum McCunn

  “What about you?”

  “I can’t stop working.” Elder Sister-in-law peeled her soaked tunic from her back and rubbed the small. “Anyway, it’s too much trouble to drag everything outside. Soon as you leave, I’ll have to put Woon Choi in the meh dai again. That’s bound to start her crying, and I’ll have to bring everything back inside. Just open the door for me, will you?”

  “Why don’t I stay until you’re finished?” Shadow offered.

  Elder Sister-in-law took up her cleaver. “I’m never finished.”

  Shadow had relieved Elder Sister-in-law of Woon Choi’s care for a stretch every day since.

  “The baby calls, ‘Auntie,’ and reaches out her arms for me the moment I come through the door,” Shadow wrote Rooster. “And Elder Sister-in-law says Woon Choi continues to call for me long after I leave. In my heart, I call for her too.”

  Capable Women

  MEI JU anticipated biting into the sweet, pearly flesh of lychee with the same eagerness that her grandfather used to await the lychee wine Grandmother made for him.

  Each year Grandmother would personally select the best of the crop, peel off the lychees’ rough coats, their inner gauzy skins, pit them, then drop their shimmering flesh into a large earthenware container of good quality wine, which she’d seal for six months. Grandfather always marked the date the wine would be ready on the calendar. But long before the actual day, he’d tell Grandmother to bring it out to the common room, and night after night, his knobby fingers would caress the smooth glazed surface of the earthenware jar, toy with the seal until, suddenly, he’d snap it open, filling the whole house with a delicious fragrance.

  His narrow, wrinkled face alight with desire, Grandfather would inhale deeply while Grandmother poured him the first bowl. Placing it in his hands, their fingers would touch, and it seemed to Mei Ju that in that fleeting moment, Grandmother’s fierce black eyes would mist, her permanent scowl and downturned corners of her mouth would quiver. But Grandfather’s eyes and nostrils would pinch tight, and he’d pull away so swiftly the wine would slosh to the bowl’s rim.

  At the first sip, Grandfather’s eyes and nostrils would relax. Having drunk long and deeply, his thin lips would spread in a satisfied smile. Once, after downing several bowls in a row, he’d even broken into song, quavering, “As the lychee follows its own nature, so must I follow mine.”

  White with anger, Grandmother had snapped, “Help your father to bed,” and Ba, together with Third Uncle, had each draped one of Grandfather’s rail-thin arms over their burly shoulders, and carried him out the door to the concubine’s.

  At the time, Mei Ju had thought it was her grandfather’s drunken state that had infuriated Grandmother. After two years as an independent spinster, however, Mei Ju recognized the root of her grandmother’s anger and her grandfather’s—and her own—happiness lay in the sentiment he’d expressed.

  Of course there were times when Mei Ju wished the life she shared with Shadow was as carefree as the one they’d dreamtalked in the girls’ house with Rooster. Nevertheless, Mei Ju was happy. And on the last day of reeling for Master Low, Mei Ju—determined not to slight anyone the way she and her friends had been—told all the reelers, even Old Lady Chow’s crony, “Now that the silk season’s over and you have more time, please come visit.”

  That night, as Mei Ju and Shadow were washing up from their evening rice, there was—for the first time since they’d claimed the hut for their own—a knock on the door. Without taking time to dry her hands, Mei Ju ran to answer it.

  Before she reached the door, it swung open, and Lightning, fairly crackling with excitement, darted in. “We’ll be late for the girls’ house, but we couldn’t wait until tomorrow to come.”

  Thunder, as usual, followed just behind her. “We’ll be fined, but we don’t care. We’ve been waiting forever to talk to you. Really talk, I mean.”

  Lightning nodded. “Because we want to comb up our own hair and make vows to live as independent spinsters too.”

  The girls’ revelations had never occurred to Mei Ju. Yet they seemed a natural unfolding. Shadow, still standing by the wash up bucket, was clearly astonished, however.

  Mei Ju had questions as well. “Did you give us the hen and silk and sausages?”

  Lightning’s eyes sparkled. “You guessed.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come visit long ago?”

  “We didn’t want to impose ourselves on you,” Thunder explained. “Since you invited …”

  “I didn’t want to impose on you any more than I was already,” Mei Ju broke in.

  Walking toward them, Shadow said, “Without your help, we might not have succeeded. How can we ever thank you?”

  “There’s no need.” Lightning slid her right arm around Thunder’s slender waist. “We were helping ourselves as much as you.”

  Thunder leaned into Lightning. “Because if you succeeded as independent spinsters, then we could join you.”

  Abruptly, the sparkle in Lightning’s eyes dimmed and anxiety flickered across her face, then Thunder’s.

  “Can we?”

  “Join you?”

  Confident that Shadow, smiling beside her, would agree, Mei Ju answered for them both. “My sister and I welcome you.”

  Busy in the wormhouse, Yun Yun hadn’t heard what passed between her father and in-laws when he’d come to Strongworm in response to her plea for help. But on their way to Twin Hills, he’d seethed, “I claimed I’d come to warn them that the ghosts of your dead sons were threatening to avenge their deaths from starvation and brutal assaults, and those cowardly bullies were so frightened they didn’t even try to deny their abuse. They just wanted to know how they could avoid punishment. So I told them they’d have to make amends, and they should start by releasing you into my care until the birth of the child you’re carrying.”

  Yun Yun understood then why her husband hadn’t scolded when he’d called her in from the wormhouse, why he hadn’t questioned her about how her father had known she was with child. Indeed, so powerful was the impact of her father’s threat that: when Yun Yun returned to Strongworm ten months later with a daughter, Old Lady Chow grudgingly allowed, “The baby is a small brightness. You’re apparently not a broken pot, and a girl can lead in a son.”

  For Yun Yun, however, her daughter was a large brightness. And although the babe was too young to understand, Yun Yun would softly croon when they were alone:

  “In a hut built for outcasts

  Live women who combed up their own hair.

  Independent spinsters strong as mountain pines,

  Capable women merciful as Gwoon Yum.

  Talk to them and you will know

  That for daughters with courage and vision,

  Old laws can be swept aside,

  New laws can be made.”

  Bright afternoon sunshine poured through the hut’s window. Hoisting Woon Choi—as sturdy now at thirty months as she’d been frail at birth—up in her arms, Shadow showed her the dragon she’d embroidered.

  “See, it has the head of a camel, the horns of a deer, the eyes of a rabbit, the ears of a cow, the neck of a snake, the belly of a frog, the scales of a carp, and the claws of a hawk. That’s why the dragon is magical and can prance and leap in the sky.”

  As Shadow spoke, Woon Choi’s head drooped, heavy with sleep. Fighting to stay awake, she rubbed her eyes with her small fists, pointed to the luminous moon pearl hovering just beyond the dragon’s reach. “Can’t magic dragon catch pearl?”

  Recalling her own frustrated attempts to seize the moon pearl, Shadow explained what she’d finally come to understand, “Catching the pearl would take away the dragon’s reason for dancing.”

  Apparently satisfied, Woon Choi burrowed her head against the curve of Shadow’s neck and surrendered to exhaustion. Savoring the child’s soapy scent, her small puffs of hot, moist breath, Shadow was reluctant to put her to bed. Only when Woon Choi napped, however, could Shadow work
uninterrupted, and she gently laid the child down on the cool matting.

  Woon Choi’s eyes fluttered open. “Mama.”

  Shadow brushed the child’s eyes shut, caressed her silk-smooth cheeks.

  “Mama’s here,” she said, sitting down beside her.

  Watching Woon Choi sink trustingly back into sleep, Shadow thought of what Rooster had sent in response to her letter: a picture of the Goddess Gwoon Yum crowned with the moon pearl, and written in Rooster’s precise hand, “May you know the peace I’ve found here at Ten Thousand Mercies Hall.” But Woon Choi was what Shadow wanted, not peace. And she was grateful that Heaven had answered her father’s and brother’s cry for a boy and her family had soon after given in to Woon Choi’s cries to stay with her.

  Gossips immediately claimed the baby had been aptly named Woon Choi, Change Luck.

  “Certainly she changed her family’s luck by bringing them a boy.”

  “And now Shadow’s relieved them of the girl’s care.”

  “By saving the family the expense of raising a daughter, Shadow’s more than made up for the loss of her bride price.”

  “Have you forgotten Shadow saved her brother too?”

  “Master Low is right. Having an independent spinster for a daughter really is lucky.”

  Not everybody agreed. But Lightning and Thunder won the approval of their families for their choice, and when the two combed up their hair and made vows of spinsterhood, scarcely any of the talk was condemning.

  Yun Yun, stopping to offer her congratulations, said people in Twin Hills knew about independent spinsterhood from water peddlers, and since the district’s network of rivers spilled into the sea, Shadow liked to imagine that little by little, daughters everywhere would come to understand that they could control their own lives.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In researching and writing this novel, I had the help of many people, and I am grateful to them all.

  At the heart of the book are my mother, Bo Jun, and the many spinsters, concubines, widows, and wives who used to gather at our house in Hong Kong. Even when I was very young, these women allowed me to sit among them as they unburdened their sorrows or shared their joy, and what I learned from listening to them has informed every aspect of my life, especially my work.

  As Janice E. Stockard points out in Daughters of the Canton Delta: Marriage Patterns and Economic Strategies in South China, 1860–1930, accurate recovery of the past frequently rests on constructing the right questions. Her book and the work of Marjorie Topley and Andrea Sankar—in particular their dissertations The Organization and Social Function of Women’s Chai T’ang in Singapore and The Evolution of the Sisterhood in Traditional Chinese Society: From Village Girls’ Houses to Chai T’angs in Hong Kong—were invaluable in providing the foundation from which I constructed my questions about nineteenth-century Sun Duk. So were diverse works in Chinese from the archives of Him Mark Lai and Judy Yung, ably translated by Ellen Lai-shan Yeung.

  Tsoi Nu Liang and Hu Jie made it possible for me to meet with four elderly self-combers in Shiqiao—Lee Moon, Leung Chat Mui, Tam Ngan Bing, and Yiu Lau Fong—to whom I posed my questions. In answer, these women spoke frankly of their own experiences and those of their sisters and friends. They showed us their spinster house and described others from their youth. When I asked whether they would make the same choice again, their responses were an immediate yes.

  Joseph S. P. Ting and Rosa Yau, curators at the Hong Kong Museum of History, and Pauline Phua at the National Archives of Singapore gave me access to interviews of independent spinsters in their collections. Phoebe Lam transcribed and translated tapes in Hong Kong. Ellen Lai-shan Yeung translated transcripts from Singapore.

  Tsoi Nu Liang and Tsoi Hoi Yat located Cheung Ching Ping’s collection of over sixty weeping songs, Hok Goh Gee Tse, which Ellen Lai-shan Yeung translated. Other sources include: Yang Pi-Wang’s “Ancient Bridal Laments” in China Reconstructs (October 1963, vol. 12, no. 4) and C. Fred Blake’s “Death and Abuse in Marriage Laments: The Curse of Chinese Brides” in Asian Folklore Studies no. 37. All the collectors noted the extemporaneous nature of the songs, and I could see for myself that the same stock phrases were used repeatedly. From these recurring expressions, I composed some of the weeping songs in this novel. The rest of the weeping songs appear as they were recorded or with minor changes. Gwoon Yum’s song is drawn from “Some Popular Religious Literature of the Chinese” by Mrs. E. T. Williams, Journal of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 1900–1901, vol. 33. The muk yu, wooden fish song, that Rooster sings in praise of Shadow’s embroidery was adapted from Ellen Lai-shan Yeung’s translation of Ng Sheung-chi’s “Traditional Embroidery Song” in the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco’s April 6, 1996, program for “Traditional Toishan Muk-’yu Singing.”

  Most of the myriad articles, dissertations, and books I sought were obtained through the perseverance of the staff at the San Francisco Public Library’s interlibrary loan department. Lourdes Fortunado, Roberta Greifer, and Carol Small at my local branch in Noe Valley were helpful too, and during the months I could neither go to the library nor read what I’d already requested, Miriam Locke acted as my legs and eyes. Judy Yung could almost always find what eluded everyone else, and The South China Silk District: Local Historical Transformation and World-System Theory, by Alvin Y. So, which she brought to my attention, proved crucial in deepening my understanding of Sun Duk and synthesizing my ideas.

  Wonderful, wide-ranging discussions with Katie Gilmartin and Peggy Pascoe helped me place the experiences of the Sun Duk women in a larger context. They—together with Carole Arrett, Peter Ginsberg, Marlon Hom, Miriam Locke, Sonia Ng, Jan Venolia, Ellen Lai-shan Yeung, and Judy Yung—also helped shape the manuscript through their careful, insightful readings of early drafts.

  Others who contributed to the development of The Moon Pearl are: Catherine Brady, Chu Moon Ho, Deng Ming-Dao, Marco Fong, Robin Grossman, LeVell Holmes, Steven Kahn, Lee C. Lee, Shelley McKenny, and Marianne Villaneuva.

  The extraordinary commitment of my agent, Peter Ginsberg, and the support of my editor, Tisha Hooks, brought the project to fruition.

  As always, my husband, Don, was involved from conception to publication, and it is to him I owe my largest debt of gratitude.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ruthanne Lum McCunn is the author of Thousand Pieces of Gold and Wooden Fish Songs, among other works, with well over 400,000 copies of her books in print. She lives in in San Francisco.

  BEACON PRESS

  Boston, Massachusetts

  www.beacon.org

  BEACON PRESS BOOKS

  are published under the auspices of

  the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

  © 2000 by Ruthanne Lum McCunn

  All rights reserved

  Text design by Anne Chalmers

  Composition by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McCunn, Ruthanne Lum.

  The moon pearl / Ruthanne Lum McCunn.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-8070-8348-8 (cloth)

  ISBN 0-8070-8349-6 (pbk.)

  eISBN: 978-0-8070-8350-5

  1. Title.

  PS3563.C353 M66 2000

  813’.54—dc21

  00-008738