by Janie Chang
These courtyards where I had grown up were all I knew of gardens, and I thought Anna’s flowers added a nice touch of color. I began to protest, but then . . .
. . . the skies are gray, as gray as the slate beneath my paws as I walk through a winter garden, brown earth covering peony roots, vines bare of leaves. A heavy frost whitens moss-covered stones and a light wind chills the air. There are low hillocks crowned by small pavilions. An arched bridge of stone spans the pond. The entire scene is austere and without color . . .
Look closer, Fox’s voice whispers in my mind, and I look again.
. . . a low mist covers the pond. Tall rocks at the center of the pond rise above the mist, drawing the eye upward to take in a view of the tall pagoda that lies beyond the garden walls. Every path I wander offers its own view of the garden, careful compositions of trees and rocks that frame and conceal, obstruct and anticipate. There is no central highlight to the garden, no majestic water feature or bright concentrations of color. Enjoyment comes from wandering through a series of vistas, from noticing how bamboo shadows cast against a whitewashed wall create a scene or how latticework openings in a wall play a role in the illusion of shadow and light. The visitor is unaware and uncaring of the garden’s boundaries, barely glimpsed through pine and bamboo, obscured so that the garden appears endless . . .
The best gardens are created through the art of deception, says Fox. Gardens should employ the art of the large in the small and the small in the large, providing for the real in the unreal and the unreal in the real.
CHAPTER 15
February 1919, Year of the Goat
I was eighteen now with only a few months before graduation from the mission school. Once my time at the school came to an end I could no longer count on the Yangs for support. Anjuin was in no position to help me. She was twenty-four and still unmarried.
She had convinced her father to buy a used sewing machine and earned a small income from her dressmaking business, which she ran from the small dry goods shop. She kept a few copies of foreign fashion magazines in the store, and although none of her customers were brave enough to wear Western styles, they liked Anjuin’s small flourishes. A ruffle on the hem or artful pleats on a skirt panel made her customers feel daring and modern.
During his annual New Year’s speech, Master Yang said his prospects were looking up, and this time his assurances rang with unusual confidence. He had just signed a contract for a large order of heavy white twill to the company that supplied table linens for the Shanghai Club, the Astor Hotel, and a number of steamship companies.
“We’ve turned the corner,” he declared and downed another cup of wine. “This will make our reputation.”
From the other side of the table, Grandmother Yang gave him a worried look. Such talk tempted evil spirits.
“I’m a little stouter these days, eh?” he said, smiling at her. “People expect a successful businessman to look well fed and energetic.”
Anjuin began ladling out the winter melon soup I’d just brought in, then paused. “Is someone banging at the door?”
“Unexpected visitors for the New Year,” Master Yang cried. “Girl, tell Lao-er to open the gates. Invite them to share our supper!”
Lao-er was already on his way from the kitchen, his New Year’s dinner interrupted, grumbling as he headed for the gate. But as I followed him, I thought the pounding sounded frenzied, not like the good-natured rappings of a drunken well-wisher.
Lao-er opened the gate, and I nearly collided with the man who burst in. “I’m Wu, foreman at the mill. I must see Master Yang immediately!”
Despite the cold evening air, he was damp with sweat. Through the open gate I saw a rickshaw puller leaning against the wall, hand on his side, panting as though he had run a long distance. Out on Dragon Springs Road, a knot of curious neighbors had gathered across the way, drawn by the frantic knocking. Lao-er had enough presence of mind to shut the gate against their inquisitive stares.
The foreman followed me, calling out as we ran for the dining hall.
“Master Yang, the mill is on fire! The mill is on fire! Master Yang!”
Master Yang came hurrying out of the dining hall, Dajuin by his side. Behind them, Grandmother Yang leaned against the open doorway, holding on as though unable to stand on her own.
THE RUMBLE OF thunder came closer, and I climbed out of bed to make sure the window shutters were latched. There were voices and footsteps. I pushed open the window to look out. It was nearly dawn, and in the dim light, Third Wife and Grandmother Yang stood at the center of the courtyard, facing the front gate. Wrapped in blankets, they were as still as boats becalmed on a lake. I sensed Anjuin beside me, and after a moment, she slipped out to join them. Yun Na came out of the erfang but remained on her veranda near the covered walkway.
More voices. Men’s voices. The front gate slammed shut.
Then slowly, terribly slowly, figures appeared. Master Yang and Dajuin entered the courtyard, exhaustion evident in every step. The breeze carried with it smells of smoke, sweat, and fear.
“Go and get something to eat from Mrs. Hao,” Master Yang said to Dajuin.
Dajuin shook his head. “I’d rather get some sleep, Father.” Slowly he trudged up the steps of his erfang.
“Bring hot water for your husband’s basin,” Grandmother Yang called to Yun Na. “Then take all his clothes and wash them right away.”
For once, Yun Na hastened to obey. It should’ve been my task to stir the ashes in the kitchen stove and get the kettle boiling, but I wanted to know what had become of the mill. I stayed by the window.
Master Yang trudged to the main house. He stumbled at the bottom step, too tired to lift his feet. The first drops of rain spit down, accompanied by thunder, louder this time. He sat down heavily and turned to look up at the sky.
“Now the rain comes,” I heard him say. Then a low chuckle.
“Eldest Son?” Grandmother Yang’s voice was impatient, frightened.
He stood up. “It’s gone, Mother. The mill has burned down.”
Workers in the district had formed a bucket line to the river. Master Yang, Dajuin, and Lao-er had joined in, but the flames went on to devour the factory. Filled with cotton, the mill and its warehouse burned to the ground. By the time the fire brigades arrived, the weaving machines were no better than scrap metal.
“The police came,” Master Yang said. “They think it could be arson. Those foreign devils from the Shanghai Municipal Police actually asked me about insurance. As if I would set fire to my own factory to get insurance money.”
Rain began falling, cold hard drops that bounced off the tiled roofs. Master Yang turned away from the sky to look at his mother and daughter.
He laughed, a hollow and choking sound. “I told them, there is no insurance.”
Grandmother Yang staggered a little and clutched at Anjuin to regain her balance.
“I must write to my brothers,” Master Yang said and entered the house. The three women stood in the rain, holding on to each other.
WE MAY AS well have draped white cloth across our gates, as families do when in mourning.
Through the peephole in the front gate I could see the curious clustered in twos and threes across the street. It was obvious they were gossiping about the Yangs, but none of them came by to rap on the door. Some passersby even crossed the street to avoid coming too close. A pall of ill fortune hung over the Yang household, and if any of it was leaking out, it was safer to stay away.
At noon Master Yang was still shut in his study. He came out briefly to send Dajuin to the telegraph office with a message for his brothers in Ningpo. Then he withdrew back into his study.
Yun Na didn’t leave her room all morning. Mrs. Hao had me deliver broth to her room in the erfang. When I arrived, Grandmother Yang was sitting beside Yun Na’s bed, looking exasperated. Dajuin’s wife wept, rocking on the bed while holding tightly to her little daughter’s hands.
“My poor daughter, what wil
l become of us? How will we live? How can we afford your dowry?”
Grandmother Yang looked up when I entered, and I placed the bowl in her outstretched hands.
“Chicken broth with an infusion of Compassionate Sage mixture,” I said, reciting what Mrs. Hao had made me memorize. “Sour jujube seed, golden thread rhizome, sweet flag rhizome, mimosa tree bark, red sage root, and ling chih mushroom powder. For hysteria.”
“Can you drink this yourself or do I have to spoon-feed you?” Grandmother Yang asked Yun Na.
Yun Na struggled up. “I’m not hysterical,” she said, grimacing at the pungent broth. “I’m angry. I’m angry and disappointed. We are in so much debt. We’ll be working to pay off the bank for the rest of our lives.”
Her eyes fell on me, and she pointed an accusing finger, nail chewed to the quick. “It’s your fault, you . . . you cursed girl! They should’ve thrown you out on the streets! Your mother knew you were bad luck, that’s why she abandoned you!”
“Eldest Granddaughter-in-Law.” Grandmother Yang’s voice was icy. In blaming the Yangs’ decision to keep me, Yun Na was blaming Grandmother Yang.
The old woman turned to me. “Go back to your chores, now, Jialing.”
But as I left, I felt her eyes piercing through my back. I could almost hear her mind working.
THE PLUM TREES in the Western Residence were always the first to leaf, spreading a haze of tender green over branches and twigs, so faint at first you would have thought it a trick of the light. Fox sat on the garden seat beneath their fragile shade, dressed in lilac hues. Behind her, the sun threw stippled green light through the bamboos. She patted the bench beside her.
So Yun Na has finally calmed down, she said.
“Mrs. Hao had to boil up some Compassionate Sage mixture,” I sighed. “A relief to everyone. We were worried she would become hysterical.”
Fox snorted. That one. I’d like to give her some of what Ping Mei gives First Wife.
I frowned at her. “What does Ping Mei give First Wife?”
Tincture of opium.
“But that means Ping Mei is turning her into an opium addict!”
Just a little at night, to help her sleep, Fox said. She puts it in First Wife’s sweet red bean soup. I’m sure Grandmother Yang suspects but turns a blind eye. As for First Wife, it makes her sorrows easier to bear.
It was true. Insanity was an embarrassment and the Yangs wanted to save face. They didn’t want First Wife going out or waking the neighborhood at night with her wailing. By giving her a courtyard of her own and a servant of her own, they were already treating her very well, for a barren wife who had been set aside.
But you want to talk about something else, Fox said.
“You know about the fire at the mill. The Yangs are bankrupt. I graduate soon and Miss Morris will stop paying the Yangs. They won’t keep me beyond that. Grandmother Yang wants to go back to Ningpo and I know she won’t take me. I need to earn a living.”
Can the mission school give you work?
I shook my head. I knew how much effort Miss Morris put into finding work for all of us, the obstacles she faced each day.
Fox cocked her head. With the right patron, it’s possible to live a good life for a while.
“What happens after ‘for a while’?”
If a woman is frugal, she can put aside enough money to buy a house or a small business after her patron sets her aside. If a woman is clever and a credit to her patron, he will give her money when they part.
“You have a story for me,” I said, sighing.
I knew a young woman, once, Fox said, as if I hadn’t spoken. Her patron bought her from a brothel and her story would’ve ended like so many others, but she was clever. She saved her money against the day when she would lose his favor. She kept only one maid and lived frugally. She made copies of the jewelry he gave her and sold the real ones.
When her patron became infatuated with another woman, he demanded the jewelry back, which she returned without a murmur. Then she moved to another city, changed her name, and called herself a widow. With her savings she bought an old house and turned it into an inn. She became a respected innkeeper. When she died, she left the estate to her faithful maid. The maid, alas, got married and her husband squandered her inheritance.
“Have you no stories about happy marriages?” I asked.
Marriage isn’t always a happy condition for women, Fox said. At least not the ones I’ve seen. Marriage doesn’t guarantee happiness or a roof over your head. In your situation, a kind and wealthy benefactor would be a better solution.
“In my situation, I don’t run into a lot of kind or wealthy men,” I pointed out.
That newspaper editor seems nice. Her green pupils glowed brighter. Liu Sanmu. A nice name too.
“Women nowadays have more ways to earn a living than they did three hundred years ago, Fox,” I said. “And anyway, Liu Sanmu and I are unlikely to meet again.”
She stared into the bamboos, her eyes shining green, her brows drawn together as though in deep thought.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, after a few minutes of silence.
Oh. I was thinking that I still miss her, Fox said. The innkeeper. We were good friends.
“As good friends as you were with the sister of your scholar-husband?”
No. She was my first and dearest friend.
MASTER YANG RETURNED from Shanghai shortly after noon the following day, shoulders stooped and sagging, dejection seeping from every pore. He had been to see his bank manager, but that meeting couldn’t possibly have been worse than the hour he spent with Grandmother Yang upon his return. The door to her room was shut, but paper-covered windows offer no privacy. We all heard her harsh words.
“We were doing badly this month, Mother,” Master Yang sobbed. “It was either pay the insurance company or pay the gangsters.”
“But afterwards, why didn’t you renew the insurance?”
“I had to spend a lot of money to obtain that contract with the table linens company. I paid an introduction fee to a clerk just to get a meeting with his manager. Then more fees to the manager to arrange an appointment with the owner. It’s the squeeze, Mother, always the squeeze.”
There was silence from Grandmother Yang.
“I was going to renew the insurance next month,” Master Yang said, “after getting paid for the first order of table linens.”
Which he wouldn’t be able to deliver, now that the mill was gone.
“Our clan can’t afford to carry so much debt,” Grandmother Yang said. “You will sell this property, Eldest Son. We are leaving Dragon Springs Road.”
THE YANGS’ PROSPECTS for selling Dragon Springs Road quickly were not good. No Chinese wanted to buy a place that had been so unlucky. As for foreigners, their countries were still embroiled in a war and until the fighting was over and the division of spoils clear, very few were willing to buy property outside the foreign concessions. Sooner or later, for the right price, the estate on Dragon Springs Road would sell. Just not quickly enough for Grandmother Yang.
She wanted the family away from this ill-omened home. They would leave immediately for Ningpo. She decided that Dajuin would stay behind to collect rent from the Eastern Residence and take care of selling the property. Anjuin would stay behind also, to run the little dry goods store and keep house for Dajuin.
Yun Na wasn’t happy about leaving Dajuin, but she was with child again and Grandmother Yang wanted her in Ningpo, where she could supervise the pregnancy. Yun Na was in tears, not because she would miss Dragon Springs Road but because she didn’t look forward to sharing a home with an entire clan’s worth of Yang women. They would be returning to Ningpo with a madwoman and a mountain of debt. It would not be a joyous welcome. There were bad feelings among Master Yang’s brothers over the weaving mill. Master Yang, the eldest brother, had lost face as well as the family fortune.
All the servants left to find work elsewhere. Only Mrs. Hao would be going to Ning
po with the Yangs, as cook and companion to First Wife.
At least Grandmother Yang didn’t forbid me to live at Dragon Springs Road while the Yangs still owned it. As for Ping Mei, if Grandmother Yang suspected she might try to squat in the Western Residence, she never voiced any such concern. Perhaps Grandmother Yang had decided to leave that problem to the new owners.
“I don’t need much,” Ping Mei told me. “I’ll go out and beg. I’ve done it before. I can pay the beggars’ guild to let me work in this area. Until the property sells, I’ll sleep here. That’s a better life than any beggar can expect.”
She took out a small brown bottle and took a sip.
“What is that?” I asked, although I already knew.
“Tincture of opium. For the pain in my throat.” She grinned. “And my feet. And my chest.”
ON THE DAY the Yangs left, I couldn’t help but remember the day of their arrival ten years ago, Master Yang’s cheerful voice calling out, the orange tree Lao-er wheeled in, the taste of the steamed bun from Anjuin.
In the front courtyard, I kneeled in farewell to Grandmother Yang. It was a small enough gesture. I owed my life to her decision to keep me, even if Fox had nudged her toward it. In addition to my mother’s note and the gold coins she had provided, there had to have been an inclination, an initial thought for Fox to build on to deepen the desire to follow through with an idea. Grandmother Yang’s kindness had been real.
She patted me on the head. “You have a fine foreign education, Jialing. There’s no need for you to worry about the future.”
We both knew that wasn’t true. But I didn’t correct her. It allowed us both to save face.
NOW THAT THE rest of the Yang family was gone, Anjuin and I prepared the evening meal together when I came home from school. We talked freely with no fear of being overheard. If not for the uncertainty hanging over us all, it would’ve felt like a holiday.
The dining furniture was gone, so the three of us ate at the kitchen table. There was no servants’ table, no ceremony.