"What's worth it?" said Stepmother, coming into the coolness of the cave.
"Are the jujube trees productive this year?" asked Wei Ping, steadfastly ignoring her mother's question.
"Very." She handed a hard green nugget to Wei Ping.
"But why did you pick one so soon?" asked Wei Ping. "They don't taste good till they turn red."
"I'm going to sell them," said Stepmother.
Wei Ping's forehead pinched in alarm. "We never sell our dates. Are we already desperate? Do you think I won't find a husband before Father's pottery runs out?"
"Of course you'll find a husband."
"No. You're afraid I won't." Wei Ping's voice rose to a thin shiver. "You could marry again, Mother. You're still attractive, and your feet are so small." Her words came with a frenzied speed. "And since Father has no other family left, your second husband would have to allow us to accompany you into the new marriage. Then we'd have more time for my feet to grow small—more time to find a husband for me."
"Hush!" Stepmother looked stricken. "How can you talk to your mother like that? Your father, even with all his crazy ideas, wouldn't have stood such insubordination. Hush!"
"Please, Mother." Wei Ping's voice got very quiet. The hysteria was gone now. "Marry again," she breathed.
"Widows of decent families do not remarry. You know that. It is a small matter to starve to death but a large matter to lose one's virtue."
"I don't want to starve to death," said Wei Ping.
"And you won't," said Stepmother. "You'll never know that kind of hunger. Nor will I lose my virtue." She twisted her neck, looking this way and that in worry. "I would never abandon the Wu family ghosts," she said loudly.
"Then what will we do?"
"That's what I've come to tell you. You will have a husband soon. The dates will ensure that." Stepmother sat down on the kang between the girls. "You know the benefits of red dates, of course."
"They invigorate one's spleen and benefit the kidneys," said Wei Ping.
"Yes, and that's when they are ripe. Think how much more beneficial they must be when green. All that goodness is concentrated in the bitterness, before the sugars of maturity." 4
"How do you know that?" asked Wei Ping.
"The spirit of my mother told me."
Xing Xing touched Stepmother's wrist involuntarily in awe. The woman recoiled. Xing Xing blinked her apology. Mother spirits never lie. And Stepmother's mother had understood much about medicine. Xing Xing looked with new appreciation at the green date in Wei Ping's hand. The tiny fruits on their jujube trees were as valuable as agates.
Stepmother stood up. "Xing Xing will pick them and sell them to a jiang hu lang zhong, a barefoot wandering doctor, who will use them to cure all kinds of illness. I heard last night that there is one visiting the village beyond ours, down the river valley."
"And how will that help get me a husband?" asked Wei Ping.
"Xing Xing will tell the lang zhong to let all his healed patients know that you were the source of their recovery, that you are the one who understands the virtues of plants. Every man values a woman with such gifts. He'll advertise you over the whole province. Word-of-mouth propaganda is the most useful."
"But I know nothing of plants," said Wei Ping.
"What flowed from my mother to me should naturally flow to you."
"It doesn't seem to have done so," said Wei Ping.
"It will, soon enough. Besides, once you're married, will it matter?" Stepmother didn't wait for an answer. She pulled the large basket from the corner. "Time for work, Lazy One."
Xing Xing put the bowl holding the fish on the kang, grateful for the opportunity to bow her head so Stepmother couldn't see the shock on her face at what she'd just said: "will it matter?" Stepmother had never before expressed explicitly such crass acceptance of deceit. Was Wei Ping also hiding her face?
As Xing Xing leaned over the bowl she looked sideways at the sleeping raccoon. Whenever it woke, it was immediately hungry. And if she wasn't there to keep guard, its sense of smell could lead it to the beautiful fish. Just at that moment, as though the raccoon was responding to Xing Xing's thoughts, the skin above his nose wrinkled and he sniffed without waking. So she set the bowl inside the basket and carried it outside with her to the jujube trees, singing little comfort songs to the beautiful fish as she walked.
Chapter 8
Xing Xing sat high in a jujube tree and stuck her fingers in her mouth to soothe them. She'd gathered the dates last autumn, but the job had been much easier then. She'd simply strung nets under the trees and beaten the branches with a stick. The ripe fruit dropped easily. But these green fruits had to be wrested individually from their stems. Her fingers were sore already, and she was only on the second tree of five.
It was hard to find a comfortable perch in the thorny branches. Last year Xing Xing's body had still been childlike. Now her sensitive chest and soft thighs kept getting jabbed. This was a more unpleasant task than she'd expected.
A scream sheared the air. It was like none she'd ever heard before, and it came from the cave. In her haste to get down, she fell from the tree, opening a wide gash on her forearm.
The air was filled with multiple screaming voices now—Wei Ping and Stepmother together, as well as inhuman screams that Xing Xing realized must be coming from the raccoon. She ran as fast as she could, straight into the cave, and slipped in blood slime. At first she thought it was the blood that dripped from her own elbow, but then she saw brains and lungs and intestine and fur—all that remained of the blind raccoon kit. The stick he'd been bashed to death with lay in the midst, bits of innards clinging to it. Stepmother's blood-spattered face looked crazed as she ripped at the shredded bandages on Wei Ping's left foot. The girl had both hands in her hair and howled at the ceiling, throwing herself around.
"Hold her tight," shouted Stepmother to Xing Xing.
Xing Xing grabbed Wei Ping from behind and looked over her half sister's shoulder in horror as the bandages came away. The unnaturally arched foot that Xing Xing had seen before was now missing the two biggest toes.
"Devil raccoon," spat Stepmother. "Teeth like knives. At least he died in pieces, so his spirit will never be whole. Go for fresh water, Lazy One. Run."
Xing Xing grabbed the bucket and pole and practically flew down the hill to the pool. She was back, panting, faster than she'd ever moved before.
Stepmother washed Wei Ping's feet—the mutilated one and the whole one—rubbing off the dead skin and kneading them more fully into the desired shape. With her thumbs, she worked in pulverized alum. "My baby," she murmured as she pressed, "my sweet baby." There was no blood from the holes where exposed bone showed. Xing Xing stared at the ragged bone ends.
"You'll be fine," said Stepmother. "You'll be fine." Her voice changed the second time she said those words. It sounded weak and strangely without emotion. "We have to hurry and bandage your feet before your blood has a chance to circulate there again," she said. "If we dawdle, you will bleed badly and the pain will be more terrible than you've ever dreamed. It will be savage. You'll wish you were dead."
Why was Stepmother saying such things? Xing Xing wanted to put her hands over Wei Ping's ears.
Wei Ping said nothing. She merely wept softly, her head heavy on her own chest. She breathed with difficulty.
"Your left foot will be smaller than your right now," said Stepmother.
Wei Ping still said nothing.
"So if you want me to act properly, I must do it fast," said Stepmother. "Remember the old saying: 'The eagle swoops down when the hare stirs.' You are not the first girl in China to lose a toe on a bound foot. Even without raccoon devils, it happens. And smart girls look at it as an opportunity. Let's be smart, Wei Ping; now your feet will be much smaller than we'd dared to hope."
Wei Ping gave no reaction. She seemed not to understand.
But Xing Xing understood perfectly. Stepmother's face appeared transformed into a monster face twisted with
this monstrous idea.
Stepmother turned to Xing Xing. "Get me the cleaver."
Wei Ping still gave no reaction.
Xing Xing knew for sure now that Wei Ping didn't ti understand. If she had understood, she'd have screamed no. Xing Xing didn't move.
"Get it, Lazy One," hissed Stepmother. "It's your fault we had the demon raccoon in the house. And that fish must be a demon too. Get me that cleaver or I'll use it on your face, so everyone will know you invite demons into decent homes."
Xing Xing ran outside. She grabbed the bowl with the beautiful fish that was still waiting at the foot of the jujube tree. She ran with it to the pool, her eyes and nose streaming, and dumped the fish in the water at the very moment she heard Wei Ping's shriek.
Chapter 9
Xing Xing squatted by the pool, with her right arm tight around her calves and her left hand dangling in the water. Her forehead pressed on her knees. "Mother, Mother, what can I do? Where can I go?"
The beautiful fish sucked at the tip of her thumb.
She turned her head and rested her cheek, instead, on her knees, so that she could look at the fish while she talked to the spirit of her mother. "I didn't mean to bring a demon into the house. I thought I was simply having pity on an unfortunate creature."
The fish now moved to the tip of Xing Xing's index finger.
"But I should have guessed, of course. The wretched spirit of that raccoon was responsible for his misfortune. How could I have trusted him?"
The fish sucked on the tip of Xing Xing's middle finger.
"And I didn't trust him, not really. After all, I brought the beautiful fish with me out to the jujube trees so he wouldn't eat her."
The fish sucked on the tip of Xing Xing's next finger. Then it moved on to suck at the tip of her pinky. The fish's white scales were without blemish, pure white brightness, like the positive energies of the universe. Father had taught Xing Xing that there were two kinds of energies: the negative yin and the positive yang. All things needed both: the stillness, darkness, and cold of yin as well as the movement, brightness, and heat of yang. Without one, the other could not be, for what is brightness without dark? Harmony resulted from a balance of the two.
Xing Xing had always felt more affinity to the yang within her than to the yin, even though she was a girl, because her own name evoked a sense of brightness. Now she thought about how the animal that most embodied yin was the tiger and the animal that most embodied yang was the dragon. And this beautiful white fish wanted to become a dragon, so she, too, was more drawn to yang than yin. Xing Xing and the fish shared a bond.
"I'm glad he didn't eat you," said Xing Xing, moving her face closer to the fish. She sniffled. "But I'm so sad for poor Wei Ping."
A crow cawed, unluckiest of birds. Then another, then the whole flock, out of sight beyond the trees, as though announcing the ill fortune of Xing Xing's family.
Xing Xing looked down at her own naturally small feet. She had always taken pride in them, a pride she kept secret, of course. But now she would have given anything if she could have traded her small strong feet for Wei Ping's big feet before the girl had had them bound. At least with small feet to start with, Wei Ping's ordeal would have been reduced, and maybe her feet wouldn't have given off the stink that drew the demon raccoon to them. Poor, poor Wei Ping.
And, oh, poor, poor Xing Xing, cast out from her family. "Where will I go now? What will I do?" she sobbed.
Xing Xing rested her cheek on her knees again. A girl alone in the world had few choices. Everyone said Xing Xing was pretty. She realized in this moment that she'd secretly harbored the hope that someday Stepmother would decide to find her a husband too. Now that would never happen, and her prettiness could well condemn her to a life without virtue.
She closed her eyes and let the tears slip out sideways, rolling across the bridge of her nose, across her temple, into her hair. In her sadness she imagined many things. Her head became the carp bowl that sat on the ground beside her feet. She was a frog trapped in the bowl, scrabbling at the slick sides. And now the bowl cracked, and a white wave of water washed her out and away, and it was not the pool she was in, but their great, wide river, which in a flash turned wild and swift and carried her into the upper regions of the Han River, then down down down southward into the giant Yangzi River, with its incessant winds, and out to sea, where no frog could survive. Her skin dried in the salt. Her eyes split. Her fingers curled till they disappeared. She heard screaming.
Xing Xing opened her eyes. Was it her own scream she'd heard?
The afternoon sun was already moving toward evening.
"Get up, Lazy One." Stepmother leaned on a cane. Her cheeks were drawn, but the blood that had covered her face and arms had been washed away and she wore fresh clothing. And, most important of all, there was no knife in her hand, nothing to carry out the threat she'd made in the cave. She didn't even hold a willow switch for beatings.
Xing Xing got to her feet with difficulty. She'd been squatting so long, her legs had cramped into position.
"Go get Master Tang's slave boy. The two of you can carry Wei Ping together. We are going to Master Wu's grave."
Had Stepmother truly forgiven her and accepted her back into the family? And going to Father's grave—that was wonderful. Indeed, nothing could be better at this moment than honoring the spirit of Father. Xing Xing stood stupid, afraid to believe her good fortune.
"Has talking to that evil fish turned you into an idiot?" Stepmother stomped the cane in the dirt. "Hurry, Lazy One."
Xing Xing ran, with spikes shooting up her legs from her still sleeping feet.
"Stop!" shouted Stepmother.
Alas, this fortune had been too good to be true. Xing Xing turned in dismay to Stepmother.
"Come back and take this bowl." She pointed to the carp bowl on the bank of the pool. "Sell it to Master Tang. No, no, sell it to his wife instead. She has a softer heart. She'll lose it in the clutter of her house, and I'll never have to see it again. Get a good price."
The beautiful fish was too large for that bowl now anyway. The fish would be much happier free in the spring-fed pool. Xing Xing came back, bowed once before Stepmother, then picked up the bowl.
"Walk," said Stepmother. "You mustn't break the bowl. But walk as fast as you can. And"—she pointed her cane at Xing Xing—"never say a word to anyone about what happened today. Once Wei Ping is married, we will find a way to explain to her husband. A way that doesn't mention devils."
Chapter 10
Master Tang's wife, Mei Zi, ran her gnarled finger over the character in the center of the bowl. "Was this your clever idea?"
Xing Xing didn't speak, for to answer would be immodest. Her cheeks went hot. Besides, she didn't want to start a conversation. She had to hurry, for Wei Ping's sake.
"I recognize your calligraphy, of course." Mei Zi looked thoughtfully at the bowl. "It is, indeed, a marvelous bowl." She set it down on the fine bamboo table. "But I have little use for it myself."
Xing Xing pressed her lips together and looked down.
"It would make the perfect gift for my daughter-in-law, however," added Mei Zi after a pause.
Xing Xing looked up with gratitude into the smiling eyes of Mei Zi.
"Let's see how much I can afford for it." Mei Zi went through an inner door, leaving Xing Xing alone in the central room.
The abundance of superb things—rosewood furniture and elaborately carved jade statuettes and lacquer-ware in reds and blacks and an engraved walrus tusk— made her stand very straight and tall, her arms pinned to her sides. She knew that breathing alone never broke things, but still, she breathed shallowly. She would move as little as possible, except for her eyes.
In the cave they had good-quality furniture too, though Stepmother had sold anything not absolutely necessary. But even when Father was alive, their belongings had been in nowhere near the abundance found in. Master Tang's house. Father liked simplicity—a taste Xing Xing had inherited. An
d Master Tang was wealthy—something the Wu family was not.
Her eyes moved past the more showy items and slowly took in the line of blue-and-white porcelain bottles on the shelf beyond the table. They were decorated with lines that made pleasing patterns on the rounded sides and at the neck. The fronts were flat, however, and though she couldn't see the backs, she guessed they were as well. On the fronts were ovals with words written from top to bottom. She read, Asparagus. For the treatment of painful illnesses in the joints and lower back. The next jar said, Sesame, and the next, Poppies. Some of the bottles merely said what the cure was, without the ingredient: Eye remedy; Intestinal calming lotion; Elixir of eight precious ingredients for rescue from danger. One bottle had no words, but an erotic scene instead, and Xing Xing knew it was one of the aphrodisiacs that she'd overheard women gossip about as they stood in little gaggles around the cart of the occasional visiting doctor. Stepmother never talked about them. But Father had told her that erotic scenes were nothing to be shamed by; rather, they were talismans for good luck, and this was a moment when Xing Xing's family needed all the luck they could get. She stared for several minutes.
On the shelf against the adjoining wall were more bottles, their flat fronts in the shape of octagons, sitting on stands and with little necks that held paper and cork stoppers. These had the yin-yang symbol in the center with a series of three lines going out to the sides at intervals, like spokes. There were so many bottles and they were lined up so precisely straight that Xing Xing had that same sensation she felt when looking at the endless horizon of the sea in so many of Master Tang's paintings—that sensation of being as tiny as a dust mote. All the bottles, on both shelves, had a funny little character at the top that Xing Xing had never seen before.
"We bought them when a state pharmacy in the big city closed," said Mei Zi. She had come back without Xing Xing noticing, the girl had been so absorbed in studying the bottles.
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