Women of the Silk

by Gail Tsukiyama

  Lately, Pao noticed, Yu-sung’s grief could no longer be silenced by hard work. It had taken on a new form, something hard and concrete that Pao couldn’t penetrate. She lay motionless in their bed at night and took little notice of him when he walked in. It was as if she was simply tired of her life. On her better days, Yu-sung would be sitting at the table waiting with his dinner, exchanging a few words with him. Pao relished the simple gift of her voice.

  Seeing Yu-sung in this state, Pao began to grieve along with her. He found himself haunted by the deaths of his children and the absence of his daughter Pei, whom he had been forced to give away. Sometimes he saw Pei in his dreams, as he had seen her that day he left her at the top of the steps at the girls’ house. Whenever Pei came to him it was always with the same anxious smile she had worn the day he left her. Only, in Pao’s dream, Pei would lift her hand and point her finger at him accusingly, the tears of abandonment staining her cheeks. Pao never sought forgiveness; he had had no other choice. He could only hope that Pei would someday grow to realize how much the money she made meant for their survival. The years after she went to work at the silk factory were hard ones for them. It took three seasons for the fish to be restored to the ponds and even longer for the mulberry leaves to flourish again.

  It was completely dark by the time Pao reached the house. There was no light on from inside to tell him what to expect. Instantly his hands became sweaty and his heart began throbbing as if it would jump out of his throat. Yu-sung always left a candle lit for him, no matter how late it was. His hand gripped the latch on the door and paused for a moment before pushing it open. The familiar smell of her cooking reached him first and immediately put him at ease. Yu-sung had cooked for him, she must be all right. Pao walked in slowly. Even in the dark he knew every square inch of the house he built. For months now the fear of losing Yu-sung had slowed him, turned him into an old man. Now it wasn’t so much the dark that worried him as it was the quiet.

  Pao fumbled to light a candle. It flickered twice before filling the room with its glow. The food Yu-sung had prepared waited for him on the table. He walked to the thick curtain that hid their bed and lifted it. Yu-sung was in their bed, lying on her side with her back to him. Pao listened hard until he caught the slight sound of her breathing. He took a deep breath and returned to his food.

  He had seen her bedridden only once before. It was a year after Pei left and the quiet baby Yu-ling had come down with a sickness. In a matter of days Yu-ling was gone. Yu-sung had said nothing. She lay in bed with fever, as white as a ghost, grabbing at air in delirium for the death that stole her daughters. Li was still with them then, taking care of her mother as if she were a much older person. But Li had been gone for years, with a husband and children of her own. It was Pao who would take care of Yu-sung now.

  Pao undressed quietly in the dark and let his fallen clothes lie where he stood. Once he had lifted the thick curtain he breathed in the same sticky air Yu-sung did. Very carefully he slid in beside her. Her rhythmic breathing tensed into one long sigh. Pao lay frozen until her breathing became steady and he was sure she was asleep.

  Yu-sung had always been such a light sleeper. The first month of their marriage Pao was sure she hardly slept, pretending to be asleep every time he came near her. He had wanted her so badly he didn’t care if she was asleep or not. He pressed his body on top of hers and entered her roughly, even when he knew he was hurting her. He couldn’t help himself. Once Pao watched her face when he was inside her. Yu-sung squeezed her eyes shut in pain and bit her lip rather than cry out. Seeing her like that, he became soft and quickly rolled off her with a low grunt. He had never been more ashamed of himself.

  Then the babies came, one by one, and Yu-sung slept lighter than ever, always listening for their cries. Even after the dead ones were buried she seem to be listening for them. She would bolt right up in the night hearing these phantom cries, then sometimes cry herself Pao wanted to say something but he didn’t know what or how.

  Pao turned towards Yu-sung and saw the smooth curve of her back. Very slowly he pushed his body across the space that divided them, until he could feel the warmth of her body next to his. He carefully shaped his body against hers so that his face touched her hair and he could smell the oily remnants of cooking in it. Pao moved still closer and let his hand hover over the sharp curve of her hip, then let it fall, as light as a feather.

  Chapter Fourteen

  1936

  Pei

  It felt like stepping back in time to be so close to the earth again. At first the immediate thoughts of her childhood stung, but the raw beauty of the land was somehow calming. The brownish-orange soil, like rich mahogany, looked brilliant in the warm sun.

  “Please stop here,” Pei suddenly told the sedan carriers. Once they did, she jumped out of the sedan chair and ran toward the edge of the road.

  In the near distance a maze of fish ponds stood surrounded by thick, healthy mulberry groves. Pei stopped to listen to the soft rustling of their leaves in the wind. It was hard to understand how something so beautiful could bring back such sadness.

  The sky seemed endless. It was an inviting blue, cleaner and clearer than the sky over Yung Kee, which was often filled with billows of dark smoke coming from the various factories. Everything around them seemed so much more brilliant in this pure light of day. Even the air was lighter and fresher, with a slightly sweet aroma that couldn’t help but invite memories of Pei’s childhood.

  “Would you like to walk for a while?” Lin asked, her voice filling the air.

  Pei turned around to see Lin still sitting in the sedan chair, watching her intently. The sedan carriers observed them without concern. They had readily accepted Lin’s offer of a good price to take them out to the countryside.

  Pei ground her foot into the rich soil, and knew immediately it was ridiculous to be riding in a chair and not feeling the land beneath their feet.

  “Yes, if it’s all right with you,” Pei answered.

  Lin climbed down from the chair and walked toward Pei, directing the carriers to follow them. The two lean, shirtless men picked up the lightened sedan chair and followed without question.

  They walked slowly at first, the mild wind pushing against them, while the dust from the road left a thin reddish film on their shoes. Pei remained quiet as Lin walked beside her. Pei knew that just over the hill was where her village had once stood, and she now moved toward it with a mixture of feelings that moved from curiosity to extreme fear.

  “What’s that growing over there?” Lin asked after a while, her voice a gentle intrusion.

  Pei turned. “Most of those are mulberry groves,” she answered. “And there’s some sugarcane. Much of it is grown around fish ponds to help nourish the groves.”

  Lin pointed west, toward fields sprouting thinner, shorter shoots that didn’t resemble the others. “What’s that grown over there?”

  “That’s rice. A great deal of it is grown in the area around here. After it’s harvested, the earth is turned over and another crop is planted so that the process never ends.”

  As Pei spoke, she remembered one of the rare times when her father told Li and her about the land. There was a light in his eyes as he spoke. For the first time she felt the strength of the earth and fully realized the tenderness her father felt for its great, fertile body.

  “It must have been wonderful growing up here.”

  Pei smiled. “I never had anything else to compare it with. I never realized that there was anything beyond mulberry groves and fish ponds, and our occasional trips to the village.”

  Lin laughed. “That doesn’t sound so bad. Growing up in a large city can be suffocating. Here, you can see as far as the eye can take you!” She swept her arm through the air and let it float back down to her side.

  “As much as the land gives, it can take away too,” Pei remembered, thinking of the intoxicating spell the land had woven in the lives of her parents and of so many others before them. H
ow simply lives were ended, and the fates of children determined, by the land they worked. As she looked upon it now, so harmless in its calm beauty, the cruelty it could also yield made her shiver. For the first time, she realized that the price of this land was sometimes paid in blood. It didn’t make the hurt she felt at being abandoned disappear, but it did help to soothe the wounds.

  “Did you live near here?” Lin asked hesitantly.

  “Beyond that hill.” She pointed toward the small hill in the far distance.

  “Where would you like to go first?” Lin asked, brushing away the dust that had begun to settle on her white trousers.

  “If we continue down this road we should come to my village,” Pei answered.

  “I’d like to see it, if you don’t mind.”

  Pei looked at her and said softly, “Of course.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to tell Lin that she was afraid her village might no longer exist. She imagined a great expanse of empty land where the makeshift buildings had once stood. The voices of the villagers, and the cries of the animals, which once echoed through the air as they were bought and sold at the weekly market, would be silent. There would no longer be any signs of life, no sign of her childhood. And beyond the village, only more emptiness.

  But as soon as they descended the hill, the village came into sight. Pei felt like a child again, moving excitedly along the road towards the village. Lin kept up with her, while the sedan carriers moved at their own pace, falling farther and farther behind them.

  At the edge of the village, Pei slowed down. It had grown—a few more buildings lined the dusty road—but it felt smaller and much more colorless than she remembered. When she was a child, a journey to the village had meant an occasional sugar candy and the excitement of mixing with people other than her own family. Now Pei saw it for what it really was, a dusty village with its dilapidated buildings that depended on the trade of the poor farmers surrounding it. Dogs and livestock wandered aimlessly, leaving soiled spots on the earth. When Pei turned to Lin, her face was flushed with embarrassment.

  “It isn’t very much, is it?” she said.

  “I’m sure they make do.” said Lin, reassuringly.

  Pei thought of how different her life had once been before Yung Kee and the silk factory.

  The village people eyed them with restraint and curiosity. Their conversations turned into low whispers as she and Lin walked by them. Pei couldn’t help but look hard into each face, thinking one of them might be Li, or her mother, or even her father. She smiled, thinking what a sight they must be marching down the road, dressed identically in white, being slowly followed by two coolies carrying a sedan chair.

  “Would you like to see the temple?” she asked Lin, relaxing into remembering the one nice building the village held.

  “I’d love to see the temple,” Lin answered, her body straightening.

  Pei led Lin toward the temple, which stood at the far end of the village. After so many years, it still appeared a grand building with its ornately painted red-and-gold doors and its tall, thick columns.

  “It was built by the villagers and farmers,” Pei explained.

  “It’s beautiful,” Lin said.

  “I’ve only been inside once, and even then I wasn’t supposed to be. My parents were very angry at me for wandering away.”

  Lin laughed. “You must have been a handful.”

  “I was determined to see what it was like inside.”

  “And did you?”

  “Not without consequences, but it was worth it.” Pei laughed. “My chores were endless, and I wasn’t able to sit for a week after.”

  For the first time Pei felt proud. She directed the sedan-chair carriers to wait for them outside. As they pushed open the heavy doors of the temple, a cool wave of air and incense surrounded them. She felt her heart beating quickly as they entered the hollow room with its high altar; the temple resembled many others she’d since seen. Yet Pei felt something different here, and all of a sudden the dark mystery, the sharp excitement of her childhood returned.

  As they emerged into the bright sunlight from the darkened interior of the temple, Pei blinked herself awake. She had said nothing about visiting her family, though she knew Lin wondered if they would. Pei turned to Lin and was about to say something but stopped, her lips slightly parting as her tongue appeared to moisten them.

  “What would you like to see next?” Pei finally asked.

  “Where you grew up,” Lin answered.

  Pei hesitated. She shifted her weight from side to side before answering, “It’s quite a distance.”

  Lin pointed toward the sedan chair. The two carriers sat in its shade, drinking from tin cups.

  “That’s why we hired them.”

  Pei was quiet again, trying to weigh the possibilities that lay before her. She knew Lin wouldn’t push her if she chose to return to the boat. For the past few years Pei had chosen to say little about her family, even though the pain and curiosity burned inside of her.

  “You don’t have to make up your mind right away; let’s get something to drink,” Lin finally said. “We can decide where to go afterward.”

  They turned around and began walking back toward a small teahouse they had passed. A small crowd of villagers sat outside the teahouse, their conversation ending abruptly with Pei and Lin’s appearance. In the thick silence, Pei could feel curious eyes following them as they walked quickly by. Instead of turning away, Pei stared back at the weather-beaten faces, their squinty glares burning right through her.

  The teahouse was small and crowded. They sat on wooden crates, which creaked under their weight. The long wooden table where they sat was one of three that filled the room. The teahouse patrons stared and whispered. The air smelled faintly of jasmine tea, intermingled with smoke. A small, accommodating man nodded and poured them two cups of tea. Then, carrying his large silver pot, he refilled other cups with the steaming liquid. Lin ordered a plate of shrimp dumplings, and then another of sweet cakes. Pei sipped her tea slowly.

  “Would you like to return to the boat?” Lin finally asked. “Or go to another temple?”

  Pei didn’t answer right away. They had come this far; she knew it would be foolish for them to turn back. She picked up a dumpling and ate it slowly. Each bite brought her closer to an answer she’d known since she first felt the red earth beneath her feet again. When she looked up at Lin, she had come to a decision.

  “I’d like to show you where I grew up,” Pei said, lifting her cup to have it refilled.

  The road curved just as Pei remembered it. The sedan bearers moved swiftly through the sleeping land. Pei was amazed at the fact that this same great expanse of land that surrounded her as a child meant so much more to her now, even after all the years that had separated them.

  “When I was young, I paid little attention to the land. It was simply filled with the cracks and crevices that Li and I discovered and played in,” Pei said.

  “Is your farm much farther?” Lin asked.

  “We’re very close now.”

  “We can still turn back if you want.”

  Pei shook her head. “I’m fine. Would you mind if we get down and walk the rest of the way?”

  “No, of course not.”

  Pei immediately told the carriers to stop. They lowered the sedan chair as she and Lin stepped out. The women instructed the carriers to wait for them under the shade of a tree to the side of the road. They then continued on foot.

  It was only a short walk before they approached a slope, which descended to her father’s farm. Pei felt frightened. It was the same feeling of being lost she’d had when she first arrived at the girls’ house. She felt Lin take hold of her arm. “What if they’re no longer there?” Pei whispered. “What if they no longer recognize me?” These questions moved from her lips one after the other, but she didn’t wait for Lin to answer.

  Instead, Pei turned away and stared hard at the maze of water and land down below. Her eyes
suddenly focused on a lone, dark figure in the distance. Quickly she turned back to Lin and pointed him out. She felt the blood rush to her head. “It’s my father,” she said.

  “I’ll wait here.”

  “No, I want you to come with me, please.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Pei nodded.

  Neither of them said a word as they descended the dirt road. They walked towards the largest pond, where Pei’s father was working. He seemed to take no notice of them, swinging his body and steadily spreading handfuls of something into the dark water. Pei felt Lin watching her, but she couldn’t respond. It was as if she were seeing a ghost. She couldn’t take her eyes away from the tall, slender figure of her father.

  To Embrace the Earth

  From the corner of his eye he could see them approaching. When Pao Chung first noticed them, he thought he was dreaming to see such an unusual sight. Then he turned his head just enough to see the two young women dressed in white coming toward him. For a moment he thought his time had come, that the two were sent to lead him into the other world. “What of Yu-sung?” he mumbled to himself, his heart beating faster. But as he drove his fist deeper into the bucket of fish food, scraping the bottom of it, he knew he was still very much alive.

  Most of the time, weeks would go by without his seeing anyone other than Yu-sung. The silence would be broken only by his trips to the market, where he would try to complete his business as fast as possible, then boat along the narrow canals home. The village people with all their needless talk made him uncomfortable. He had always preferred the solitude of his ponds and groves.

  But as the two females approached where he stood by the pond, Pao Chung had no choice but to straighten up and turn to face them. It took a few moments before he allowed his eyes to meet theirs, and when he finally did, he knew immediately it was his third daughter, Pei, who was standing before him. She had grown tall and quite beautiful. Her cheekbones and mouth were definitely his, but her eyes were Yu-sung’s. After so many years, she had found her way home. Pao Chung stood at the edge of the pond watching her, suddenly embarrassed at how he must look to her: a tired old man.