by Amy Tan
Her smile disappeared and she turned her attention to ten plates with special delicacies that had been set on a tea table. “We’ll nourish you for years to come,” she said, and blathered on with other insincere words.
I saw little meat buns and decided I would spare the food from being destroyed. A maid poured wine into a little cup and set it on the table. I picked up the chopsticks and reached for a bun. The madam tapped her chopsticks on top of mine and shook her head. “You must drink the wine before eating. It is custom.”
I quickly swallowed the foul liquid, then reached again for a bun. With two claps and a wave of her hand, she wordlessly signaled that the food be taken away. I thought she intended that I eat in another room.
She turned to me and said, still smiling, “I’ve made a hefty investment in you. Will you work hard to be worth the burden of feeding you?”
I scowled, and before I could call her foul names, she delivered a fisted blow to the side of my head next to my ear. The force of it nearly snapped my head off my neck. My eyes watered and my ears rang. I had never been struck before.
The woman’s face was contorted and her shouts were faint, distant. She had deafened one ear. She slapped my face and more stinging tears rose. “Do you understand?” she said in her faraway voice. I could not gather my senses long enough to answer before more slaps followed. I threw myself at her and would have pummeled her face if the arms of the menservants had not pulled me away.
The woman slapped me again and again, cursing. She grabbed my hair and yanked back my head.
“You brat, I’ll beat that temper out of you even after you’re dead.”
She then let go and shoved me so hard I lost my balance, fell to the floor, and into a deep dark place.
I AWOKE IN a strange bed with a quilt on top of me. A woman hurried toward me. Fearing it was the madam, I wrapped my arms around my head.
“Awake at last,” she said. “Vivi, don’t you remember your old friend?” How did she know my name? I unlocked my arms and opened my eyes. She had a round face, large eyes, and the questioning look of one raised eyebrow.
“Magic Cloud!” I cried. She was the Cloud Beauty who had tolerated my antics when I was a child. She had come back to help me.
“My name is now Magic Gourd,” she said. “I’m a courtesan here.” Her face looked tired, her skin was dull. She had aged a great deal in those seven years.
“You have to help me,” I said in a rush. “My mother is waiting for me at the harbor. The boat is leaving at five o’clock, and if I’m not there, it will sail away without us.”
She frowned. “No words of happiness for our reunion? You’re still a spoiled child, only now your arms and legs are longer.”
Why was she criticizing my manners at a time like this? “I need to go to the harbor right away or—”
“The boat has left,” she said. “Mother Ma put a sleeping potion in your wine. You have been asleep most of the day.”
I was stunned. I pictured my mother with her new trunks stacked on the dock. The tickets had gone to waste. She would be furious when she learned how cleverly Fairweather had tricked her with his greasy words of love. It served her right for being in such a rush to see her son in San Francisco.
“You must go to the harbor,” I said to Magic Gourd, “and tell my mother where I am.”
“Oyo! I am not your servant. Anyway, she is not there. She is on the boat and it is already sailing to San Francisco. It cannot turn back.”
“That’s not true! She would never leave me. She promised.”
“A messenger told her you had already boarded and that Fairweather was looking for you.”
“What messenger? Cracked Egg? He did not see me go in or out of the consulate.” To everything Magic Gourd said, I countered senselessly, “She promised. She would not lie.” The more I said this, the less sure I was.
“Will you take me back to Hidden Jade Path?”
“Little Vivi, what has happened is worse than you think. Mother Ma paid too many Mexican dollars to the Green Gang to leave even the smallest crack for you to slip through. And the Green Gang made threats to everyone at Hidden Jade Path. If the Cloud Beauties help you, they would be disfigured. They threatened to cut all of Cracked Egg’s leg muscles and leave him in the streets to be run over by horses. They told Golden Dove the house would be bombed and that you would suffer the loss of your eyes and ears.”
“Green Gang? They had nothing to do with this.”
“Fairweather made a deal with them in exchange for settling his gambling debt. He got your mother to leave so they could take over her house without interference from the American Consulate.”
“Take me to the police.”
“How naive you are. The chief of the Shanghai Police is a Green Gang member. They know about your situation. They would kill me in the most painful way possible if I took you away from here.”
“I don’t care,” I cried. “You have to help me.”
Magic Gourd stared at me openmouthed. “You don’t care if I’m tortured and killed? What kind of girl did you grow up to be? So selfish!” She left the room.
I was ashamed. She had once been my only friend. I could not explain to her that I was scared. I had never shown fear or weakness to anyone. I was used to having any predicament solved immediately by my mother. I wanted to pour out to Magic Gourd all that I felt—that my mother had not worried enough for me, and instead she became stupid and believed that liar. She always did, because she loved him more than she loved me. Was she with him on that ship? Would she return? She had promised.
I looked around at my prison. The room was small. All the furniture was of poor quality and worn beyond repair. What kind of men were the customers of this house? I tallied all the faults of the room so I could tell my mother how much I had suffered. The mat was thin and lumpy. The curtains that enclosed the frame were faded and stained. The tea table had a crooked leg and its top had water stains and burn marks, making it suitable only for firewood. The crackle-glazed vase had a real crack. The ceiling had missing plaster and the lamps on the walls were crooked. The rug was orange and dark blue wool woven with the usual symbols of the scholar, and half of them were worn bare or eaten by moths. The Western armchairs were rickety and the cloth was frayed at the edge of the seats. A lump grew in my throat. Was she really on the boat? Was she worried sick?
I was still wearing the hated blue-and-white sailor blouse and skirt, “evidence of my American patriotism,” Fairweather had said. That evil man was making me suffer because I hated him.
At the back of the wardrobe, I spied a tiny pair of embroidered shoes, so worn there was more grimy lining than pink and blue silk. The backs of the shoes were crushed flat. They had been made for small feet. The girl who wore them must have wedged her toes in and walked on tiptoe to give the effect of bound feet. Did she rest her heels on the backs of the shoes when no one was looking? Why had the girl left the shoes behind instead of throwing them away? They were beyond repair. I pictured her, a sad-faced girl with large feet, thin hair, and a gray complexion, worn down like those shoes, a girl who was about to be thrown away because she was no longer of any use. I felt sick to my stomach. The shoes had been placed there as an omen. I would become that girl. The madam would never let me leave. I opened the window and threw them out into the alley. I heard a shriek and looked down. A ragamuffin rubbed her head, then grabbed and clutched them to her chest. She stared at me, as if guilty, then ran off like a thief.
I tried to recall if Mother had worn a guilty expression as I was leaving her side. If so, that would be proof she had agreed to Fairweather’s plan. When I had threatened to stay in Shanghai with Carlotta, she might have used that as an excuse to leave. She might have said to herself that I preferred to stay. I tried to remember other fragments of conversations, other threats I had made, promises she had given, and protests I shouted when she disappointed me. In those pieces was the reason I was here.
I spied my valise next to
the wardrobe. The contents would reveal her intentions. If they were clothes for my new life, I would know she had abandoned me. If the clothes were hers, I would know she had been tricked. I slipped over my neck the silvery chain with the key to the valise. I held my breath. I expelled it with gratitude when I saw a bottle of Mother’s precious Himalayan rose oil perfume. I petted her fox stole. Underneath that was her favorite dress, a lilac-colored one she had worn on a visit to the Shanghai Club, where she had boldly strolled in and seated herself at the table of a man who was too rich and important to be told that women were not allowed. I hung this impertinent dress on the wardrobe door and placed a pair of her high-heeled shoes below. It gave the eerie appearance that she was a headless ghost. Below that was a mother-of-pearl box with my jewelry: two charm bracelets, a gold locket, and an amethyst necklace and ring. I opened another small box, which contained lumps of amber, the gift I had rejected on my eighth birthday. I lifted out two scrolls, one short, the other long. I unwound the cloth wrapper. They were not scrolls after all, but oil paintings on canvas. I put the larger one on the floor.
It was the portrait of Mother when she was young, the painting I had found just after my eighth birthday, when I rifled her room for a letter she had just received that had upset her so. I had had only enough time for a glimpse before putting it back. Now, while examining it closely, I felt a peculiar discomfort, as if I were staring at a terrible secret about her that was dangerous for me to know—or perhaps it was a secret about me. Mother’s head was tilted back, revealing her nostrils. Her mouth was closed, unsmiling. It was as if someone had given her a dare and she had taken it without hesitation. Although, perhaps she was also frightened that she had done so and was trying to hide it. Her eyes were wide open and her pupils were so large they turned her green eyes black. It was the stare of a fearful cat. This was who she was before she had learned to disguise her feelings with a show of confidence. Who was the painter enjoying her state of fright?
The painting was similar in style to that of European portraits commissioned as novelties by rich Shanghainese, who had to have the latest luxury that the foreigners enjoyed, even if they were renderings of other people’s ancestors in powdered wigs and their beribboned children with spaniels and hares. They were popular decorations in the salons of hotels and first-class flower houses. Mother had mocked those paintings as poorly executed pretensions. “A portrait,” she had said, “should be that of a person who was breathing at the time it was painted. It should capture one of those breaths.”
She had held her breath when this portrait was done. The longer I looked at her face, the more I saw, and the more I saw, the more contradictory she became. I saw bravery, then fear. I recognized in it something vague about her nature, and I could see she had already possessed it when she was a girl. And then I knew what that was: her haughtiness in thinking she was better than others and smarter than them as well. She believed she was never wrong. The more others disapproved of her, the more she showed her disapproval of them. We ran into all sorts of disapproving people while walking in the park. They recognized her, “The White Madam.” Mother would give them a slow appraisal head to toe, then a sniff in disgust, which always sent me into near fits of giggles as the recipient of her stares and rebukes came undone and retreated speechless.
Usually she gave no further thought to people who had insulted her. But the day she received the latest letter from Lu Shing, she had a festering anger. “Do you know what morals are, Violet? They’re other people’s rules. Do you know what a conscience is? Freedom to use your own intelligence to determine what is right or wrong. You possess that freedom and no one can remove it from you. Whenever others disapprove of you, you must disregard them and be the only one to judge your own decisions and actions …” On and on she went, as if an old wound still festered and she had to cleanse it with venom.
I looked hard at the painting. What conscience did she have? Her right and wrong were guided by selfishness, doing what was best for her. “Poor Violet,” I imagined her saying. “She would be taunted in San Francisco as a child of questionable race. Much better that she stay in Shanghai where she can live happily with Carlotta.” I became incensed. She had always found a way to defend her decisions, no matter how wrong. When a courtesan was forced to leave Hidden Jade Path, she said it was a matter of necessity. When she could not have supper with me, she would tell me it was a matter of necessity. Her time with Fairweather had always been a matter of necessity.
A matter of necessity. That was what she said to suit her own purposes. It was an excuse to be selfish. I recalled a time when I had felt sickened by her lack of conscience. It happened three years ago, on a day that was memorable because it was strange in so many ways. We were with Fairweather at the Shanghai Race Club to watch a Frenchman fly his plane over the track. The seats were filled. No one had ever seen an airplane in flight, let alone right above their heads, and when it soared up, the crowd murmured in unison. I believed it was magic. How else could you explain it? I watched the plane glide and dip, then tilt from side to side. One wing fell off, then another. I thought this was meant to happen, until the plane flew into the center of the racetrack and cracked into pieces. Dark smoke rose, people screamed, and when the mangled aviator was dragged from the wreckage, a few men and women fainted. I nearly vomited. The words dead, dead, dead echoed through the stands. The debris was hauled away, and fresh dirt was poured over the blood. A short while later, the horses entered the track and the races began. I could hear the departing people angrily say that it was immoral to continue the races and shameful that anyone would enjoy them. I thought we would also be leaving. Who could stay, having just seen a man killed? I was shocked that my mother and Fairweather had remained in their seats. As the horses pounded the track, my mother and Fairweather cheered, and I stared at the moist dirt that had been poured to hide the blood. Mother saw no wrong in our watching the race. I had no choice but to be there, and yet I felt guilty, thinking I should have told them what I thought.
Later that afternoon, as we walked back to the house, a little Chinese girl, who might have been around my age, ran out of a dark doorway, and claimed to Fairweather with her smattering of English words that she was a virgin and had three holes for a dollar. The slave girls were a pitiful lot. They had to take at least twenty men a day or risk being beaten to death. What more could we give them besides pity? And even that was difficult to do because there were so many of them. They darted about like nervous chickens, tugging on coats, beseeching men, to the point of being a nuisance. We had to walk briskly past them without giving them a glance. That day, my mother reacted differently. Once we were past the girl, she muttered, “The bastard who sold her should have his little cock cut off with the guillotine for a cigar.”
Fairweather laughed. “You, my dear, have bought girls from those who sold them.”
“There’s a difference between selling a girl and buying her,” she said.
“It’s the same result,” Fairweather said. “The girl becomes a prostitute. It is a collusion of seller and buyer.”
“It’s far better that I buy a girl and take her to my house than for her to wind up as a slave like this one, dead at fifteen.”
“To judge by the flowers in your house, only the pretty ones are worth saving.”
She stopped walking. The remark had clearly riled her. “That is not a reflection of my conscience. It is pragmatism. I am a businesswoman, not a missionary running an orphanage. What I do is a matter of necessity based on the circumstances at hand. And only I know what those are.”
There were those words again: a matter of necessity. Right after she said them, she abruptly turned around and went to the doorway where the girl’s owner sat. She gave the woman some money, then took the girl’s hand and rejoined us. The girl was petrified. She glanced back at her former owner. “At least her eyes don’t have the deadened gaze that most slave girls have.”
“So you’ve just bought yourself a little c
ourtesan,” Fairweather said. “One more saved from the streets. Good on you.”
My mother snapped, “This girl won’t be a courtesan. I have no need of one, and even if I did, she’d never be suitable. She’s already ruined, deflowered a thousand times. She would simply lie on her back with a beaten look of submission. I’m taking her as a maid. One of the maids is marrying and going to her husband’s village.” I learned later that no maid was leaving. I thought for a moment that she had taken the girl because she had a good heart. But then I realized it was her arrogance in showing up anyone who had disapproved of her. She had stayed at the race club for that reason. She bought the girl because Fairweather had made fun of her conscience.
I scrutinized again the oil painting, noting every brushstroke that had created her young face. Had she possessed more sympathy for people when she was my age? Had she felt any for the dead pilot or the little slave girl? She was contradictory, and her so-called matters of necessity made no sense. She could be loyal or disloyal, a good mother, then a bad one. She might have loved me at times, but her love was not constant. When did she last prove that she loved me? I thought it was when she promised not to leave me.
On the back of the painting were these words: “For Miss Lucretia Minturn, on the occasion of her 17th birthday.” I did not know my mother’s birthday or her age. We had never celebrated them and there was never any reason to know. I was fourteen, and if she had given birth to me when she was seventeen, that would make her thirty-one now.
Lucretia. That was the name on the envelope of Lu Shing’s letter. The words below the dedication had been lashed to oblivion by the dark lead of a pencil. I turned the painting faceup and found the initials “L.S.” at the bottom right corner. Lu Shing was the painter. I was certain of that.
I unrolled the smaller painting. The initials “L.S.” appeared on the bottom of that one as well. It was a landscape of a valley, viewed from the edge of a cliff, facing the scene below. The mountain ridges on each side were ragged, and their shadow silhouettes lay on the valley floor. The pendulous clouds were the shade of an old bruise. The upper halves were pink, and the clouds receding in the background were haloed in gold, and at the far end of the valley, an opening between two mountains glowed like the entrance to paradise. It looked like dawn. Or was it dusk? I could not tell whether the rain was coming, or the sky was clearing, whether it was about arriving there with joy or leaving it with relief. Was the painting meant to depict a feeling of hope or was it hopelessness? Were you supposed to be standing on the cliff charged with bravery or trembling in dread of what awaited you? Or maybe the painting was about the fool who had chased after a dream and was looking at the devil’s pot of gold that lay in that glimmering place just beyond reach. The painting reminded me of those illusions that changed as you turned them upside down or sideways, transforming a bearded man into a tree. You could not see the painting both ways at the same time. You had to choose which one it was originally meant to be. How would you know which was right unless you were the one who had painted it?