by Celeste Lim
“Someone hold the little devil still!” Mrs. Guo shrieked, and then my hair was yanked back again as Yunli pinned my head on the table.
My fingers.
My fingers.
“Mistress! Mistress please…!” I choked in between sobs. “Please stop! I beg of you, please! I did not steal anything…I am not a thief, I swear! I swear upon my dead mother’s honor! I swear in the name of our goddess Guan Yin! Please, have mercy!”
But the pressure did not relent, and my fingers went from a deep, angry red to a frightening dark purple. I screamed and screamed. But nothing I did would stop the pain.
“Please, Mistress! Oh, please stop! I cannot take any more!”
“Really? Well, perhaps you should’ve thought about the consequences before doing something so stupid!” And, impossibly, the zanzhi tightened even more.
Blood. There was blood, trickling down the rods. My bones must be breaking. “I—I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Mistress! I won’t ever do it again! I was wrong! Please, stop!”
As suddenly as it had struck, the pressure around my fingers gave out. I fell to the ground in a heap, drenched in my own sweat. I couldn’t move, but I twitched. And then I must’ve lost consciousness, because I no longer felt my fingers.
I woke up the next morning in the toolshed.
“Mama said you are to stay in there with no food for three days,” Yunmin sang just outside the door. My voice was hoarse, but I still managed to laugh. With what they’d done to my fingers, I would not have been able to feed myself anyway. I couldn’t even pick up something as light as a pair of chopsticks.
“She’s gone crazy; let’s go before we catch it.” I heard Yunli, and then their receding footsteps.
My fingers were a ghastly sight. Would I ever be able to use them again?
The zanzhi had grated off almost all the skin on the sides, leaving the bloodied flesh exposed, and around the open wounds on each finger were deep bruises, from dark red to purple to black. Rather than fingers, they looked like fat, horribly disfigured worms. I struggled into a sitting position against the wall. The open wounds felt like the time when a few drops of boiling oil had splattered on my arm in the kitchen, except now the feeling was all over my hands.
Stop, please, stop hurting. I didn’t deserve this. I did nothing so bad to deserve this! I forced my hands into hard fists.
“I said, stop hurting!” I pounded the ground after every word and felt all my wounds reopen, but I kept going.
I bled more. I cried more. I hurt more. I hated even more.
Yunli could burn on the eighteenth level of hell and be cast into the animal reincarnation cycle for eternity and it still wouldn’t be punishment fitting enough for her! I wanted to put my hands around her neck and dig my thumbnails into her throat and watch blood and life seep out of her in front of my eyes. I wanted her beautiful eyes to widen in horror. I wanted her to sob like a baby and beg me for mercy, and I wanted the immense satisfaction of giving her none.
I screamed again and again.
Finally, I sank back against the wall and closed my eyes. Being awake was hard work. If there was any mercy left in this world, let me sleep. Let me sleep through the entire ordeal and only wake up when these wounds were healed.
Sometime later, the bolt on the door slid open, and Auntie San came in. She cleaned and treated my fingers as I clenched my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut. The kind lady, however, wept silently as she dressed my wounds. “Those beasts,” she said. “To have used the zanzhi on such a young girl!”
I tried to smile, which probably looked more like a grimace. Then she left to get me some water and a blanket for the night.
It was a good thing Jun’an had slept through the entire incident, but as soon as the cook left, I heard him crying. I got up and went to sit behind the door. The crying stopped.
“Jing…? That you, isn’t it? Jing, when I grow up, I will protect you,” he promised. “Then no one can hurt you anymore.”
That was my brave and kind little husband. And for the next two days, Jun’an would come down and spend most of his time near the shed, playing around the area, chatting with me, and telling me the stories I had so often told him. He even made me a pretty bracelet, woven out of long blades of grass.
Auntie San brought me food in the evening before she went home. “I will lose my job before I’d stand by and watch those beasts starve you to death,” she exclaimed indignantly as she brought out all my favorite dishes from a basket. “I can only come down here once a day, but you can eat all you want, child. And it won’t be leftovers,” she added with a huff.
I parted my flaking lips as my first meal of the day was spooned into my mouth. The warm fish broth tasted both painful and heavenly as it slid past my throat, and the steamed soy chicken as well, and the leek buns…and the dumplings…and the…
This was a little silver lining in one of my many clouds.
Night was the most difficult part of the day to get through. The shed was too cold for just a rug or two, and I was alone with my own thoughts, which often wandered to places I didn’t want to revisit, people I didn’t want to think about.
Mama. If Mama was watching, and if she had known this was happening to her daughter, how sad would she be? Baba certainly wouldn’t be—he was the one who didn’t want me anymore. But Mama would’ve cried for me, surely?
And as though in answer, there came the sound of thunder, followed by the heavy pitter-patter of raindrops on the thin straw roof. Look. Even the sky was crying. Mama must be crying for me. At least someone still cared.
I chuckled, and somehow, that hurt even more than crying.
Wei. Baba didn’t care, but Wei surely did. He’d even tried to help me run away.
Could I?
No.
A daughter-in-law running away was absolutely unheard of. And what about Jun’an then? What would happen to him if I ran away? Would he have to find a new wife? How would she treat him?
I must have drifted off at some point, because in between spells of wakefulness and dreams, that same voice came to me again. Although I’d only heard it once before, I remembered the feeling it gave me, like a warm caressing wind.
“You said that better times would come.” I tried not to sound accusing.
“Yes, they will, dear one. But perseverance is key…,” it assured me gently.
“I cannot take it anymore. I want to go home.”
Then I began to cry.
Stupid Jing, you forget that you no longer have a home outside the Guo family. My own family had not wanted me in the first place. Huanan was no longer home. “I have to find my spirit’s home, Shenpopo said…that place where I truly belong. Where is it?”
“And you will find it, dearest, but now is not yet the time,” the voice whispered wistfully. “But believe me when I assure you that it will come.”
“Who are you?”
There was silence for a long moment, then: “For now, I am a force that’s alive within yourself.”
She might as well have kept quiet. Who could understand that?
“Are you me, then?” I tried again.
“You will know in due time.”
When I tried to roll my eyes, I ended up opening them instead. I woke up, and couldn’t help gazing, for a long moment, at my mother’s black bangle that used to be too big, but now fit my left wrist perfectly.
Abruptly, a dull scratching sound came from the closed window. Someone, or something, was trying to get in. The window was made up of a few wooden boards nailed together, so I had to open it to see what was outside. Too late at night for it to be Jun’an or Auntie San. Was it a burglar, then? But that was silly; why would a burglar try to break into a tool shed?
The scratching was light and hesitant, as though whoever was outside wasn’t sure whether to make himself known. I swallowed. “Who—who is there?” And that was when the scratching stopped, followed by a timid whine that I immediately recognized.
I scrambled to my feet
and, as carefully as I could, climbed into a sitting position on a large wooden box just beside the window. I shouldn’t be opening it—the night was cold, and once the window was ajar, I wouldn’t be able to pull it closed with my hands. But I didn’t care. With my elbow, I slowly pushed one side open, and there, waiting on the windowsill for me, was Saffron, the same golden puppy I had met during the Ghost Festival last year.
“Why, hello again,” I cried as he leaped onto my lap. I circled my arms around him, careful to keep my hands out of the way. Saffron seemed to know I was hurt, for he did not wiggle or jump up, only sat there, wagging his bushy tail and gazing at me with adoring green eyes. I hugged him again. “I’ve missed you, too. Where have you been? And why are you here?”
The puppy slid off my lap and padded over to the corner farthest from the window. When I sat down, he rested his head on my lap. Oh, how I would’ve loved to pet him if doing so wouldn’t hurt my fingers.
“You haven’t grown much, have you?” Against my bare skin, Saffron’s fur felt softer than silk and warmer than a quilt. “You always seem to appear whenever I need someone. Are you sure you’re not a jing? Are you sure it wasn’t the Great Golden Huli Jing who sent you?”
Saffron only lifted his head, twitched one of his pointy ears, and gazed at me solemnly. And then he started to lick at my fingers. I inhaled sharply, but I felt no more pain than if a feather had landed on my wounds. I no longer felt cold, for there was a strange warmth coming from my little friend that kept away the chill.
And finally, as Saffron licked gently and purposefully, I must have fallen asleep, because in my dreams, I saw my little friend transform into a handsome golden fox that had me enveloped in the warmth of its five woolly tails all night.
Saffron visited me every night until I was let out of the shed. I wanted so much to keep him, but who was I to ask for a pet? I couldn’t even protect myself, and Mrs. Guo would sooner cook the poor pup for dinner. No, my little friend could not stay. I waved my goodbye from the window.
Thank you, Great Golden Huli Jing, for giving me a friend when I needed one most.
I could no longer visit the shrine back home, so after my ordeal, I took to praying to Guan Yin, the goddess of mercy, for whom the Guos had set an altar in the main hall. The porcelain statue of Guan Yin stood in between Caishen, the god of wealth, and White Lady Baigu. It was said that Guan Yin had a thousand ears so she could hear the cries of the wretched and distressed. I wanted her to hear mine. And perhaps she did, for my fingers had healed after one moon, leaving no effects other than unattractive, reddish-brown scars.
But no matter how fervently the Guos prayed to their deities, the family business had started going downhill very steeply. Mr. Guo’s mood grew darker by the day, and the mistress had been throwing more and more tantrums around the house, striking fear among all the servants. I was extra careful about making any muddles, but most of the time the person who suffered the brunt of her wrath was poor Liu, the house butler.
One day in late winter, I was hurrying along the hallway with a basket of laundry in my hands. But when a loud crash came from the living hall just a few feet away, I stopped. I really should’ve minded my own business, but when Yunli’s shrill voice came resounding from the hall, I couldn’t help tiptoeing closer and kneeling inconspicuously behind the entrance.
“I will not! I refuse! I will never marry the magistrate’s son!” she screamed at her mother. “He may be rich, but he’s fat, and ugly, and stupid! I won’t marry a pig like him!”
I peeked just ever so slightly around the vertical beams and saw Yunli picking up a tea set and smashing it onto the ground. From the amount of shattered porcelain on the floor, it looked as though she had already gone through more than a vase or two, which translated into more work for me. Yunli was throwing a proper fit—a kind I had never seen before.
I saw it coming before she did and winced as the slap from Mrs. Guo landed on Yunli’s face with a loud smack.
“Foolish child! How old do you think you want to be before you get married?” Mrs. Guo boomed in her guttural voice. “Do you think that someone would still want you in another year or so just because you’re beautiful? Ha! They’d say, ‘Ai, ma! There must be something wrong with this girl if she still hasn’t found a husband at this age!’ That’s what you’ll hear!”
Her mama was right. Yunli should’ve calmed down at this point, but she held on to her painful cheek as she stamped her foot and began to bawl. “But the magistrate’s son already has two wives! I shall die before I become a concubine to that worthless, melon-headed son of a hopping zombie!”
“Worthless? Worthless?” At this, Mrs. Guo seized Yunli’s left ear and twisted it so much that I almost felt it myself. “Do you know how powerful the magistrate is? He works directly under the high magistrate of the Taiyuan province! His son could take five wives and still provide comfortably for them should he so desire! You have no idea how fortunate you are. He made an offer of twenty gold pieces for your dowry, and that’s not even half of what our business needs to recover!”
Upon hearing that, Yunli backed away, her eyes opened wide. “Y-You’re making me marry that pig…because Baba is losing money? Is that it?”
“You’re the only one in the house who can fetch a dowry that high. Do you think Yunmin can demand even half of what you can?”
There was what seemed like a long silence, and then Yunli threw her head back and started laughing. It was laughter, but it was the most heartbreaking sound I had ever heard.
In Yunli’s eyes, I saw many things. In her laughter, I heard many emotions, all roiling. Was that how I looked whenever I thought of my own family? My chest heaved. I couldn’t watch anymore. I picked up the laundry basket and fled.
It was only a few days later that I inadvertently learned another piece of shocking news. I had been escorting Jun’an back to his room for the night, the child happily holding a heart-shaped snowball we had just made.
“We’ll be able to make something bigger, like a snow hut, if we get a few more snowfalls,” I said.
“Oh, I want a snow hut! Could we live in it?”
I laughed. “Of course not, silly; unless you’re a snow jing, you’ll freeze to death. But we can most certainly play in it.”
When we passed by the master chamber, we heard voices in the room. “It’s Baba and Mama! Could we say good night?” I nodded, but as we neared the wooden double doors, it became apparent that they were arguing. I laid a hand on Jun’an’s shoulder so he wouldn’t push the doors open.
“We can’t wait till she’s ready!” Mr. Guo sounded frustrated. “We need the money soon.”
It seemed as though we had come at a bad time, for they were still arguing over Yunli’s marriage. I kneeled down to Jun’an’s height and placed a finger over his mouth. Jun’an nodded obediently and pursed his lips. We listened to his mother’s next words.
“But surely we can still wait a little more, until we’re able to find one who can offer a higher price…”
There was a sharp sound of someone slapping a desk. “The suppliers are asking for payment by the next moon, for Buddha’s sake! It’s their final warning. If we drag this out any longer and word gets out to the magistrate that our business is facing such a crisis, even Yunli’s going to have trouble with her engagement!”
I covered my mouth. So it wasn’t Yunli they were talking about. Now it seemed as though they were going to marry Yunmin off as well. The business must’ve been doing even worse than any of us had imagined. I kept my arms around Jun’an as we continued to eavesdrop.
“We take the first offer that comes in. When is the earliest you can arrange for a baomu to come for inspection?”
What was a baomu? Perhaps an inspector of brides?
“There is one from a reasonably wealthy chinglou who expressed interest. She said she could come in the day after…”
And it was then that time stopped.
Chinglou.
A place that hous
ed courtesans—entertainers of men. Of the wealthy and influential. There wasn’t one in Huanan, but such places were common in cities like Xiawan. My vision began to swim. Mr. and Mrs. Guo were not talking about Yunli or Yunmin.
They were talking about me, and Mrs. Guo’s next words confirmed it.
“Jun’an might get upset…”
“Well, he’ll learn to deal with it like a man.”
I dimly felt tugging at my sleeves.
“Jing, what is a chinglou?” Jun’an asked in the smallest whisper he could manage.
I needed time alone. I hastily ushered my little husband down the hallway. “Well, it’s…” I faltered. “It’s very late; I’ll explain some other time, all right?”
And Jun’an was very good about it.
Sacrificed again.
Given away for the benefit of others.
Another change.
No more belonging to the Guo family.
Never belonged in the first place.
I couldn’t concentrate on a single thought. I had been tossing in my bed for hours. I covered my face and tried to breathe normally.
If I allowed things to unfold on their own, I would be free of the Guos but trapped in a worse place. No! Wei was right. This time, I wouldn’t just sit around and let bad things happen to me. I wasn’t the same Jing as I was a year ago. Aunt Mei could argue that I owed my father enough to marry into a horrid family, but nothing could convince me that I owed the Guos anything—certainly not to be sold to a chinglou.
I would not let them make money off me. They did not even deserve the clippings of my toenails.
I would run away.
I didn’t need the voice in my dreams to tell me it was time to leave. If I allowed myself to be sold into a chinglou, not only would it be more difficult to run away, but my life would practically be over.
But where could I go?