All the Flowers in Shanghai (19 page)

“Yes, but it is respectful to stay inside.”

I did not wish to talk to this man or his family.

“Very well, I will stay in, but you and your family will leave me alone until the birth of your son. First Wife hit me and the fright may have harmed the baby.”

“I understand.” He gave in so meekly and easily.

And so, for the next six months they did not speak to me unless I granted them a meeting. I spent my time either with Yan or by myself. We ate congee and she told me stories of her husband’s adventures in the army. He was a man of courage yet a simple person, who lived for his Emperor and sacrificed for the family he hoped to have but never did. He traveled around the country and I asked Yan if he had ever been to Daochu, a small town near Xian, the ancient capital. She said she had never heard him talk of it. It felt exciting to hear myself ask about Bi’s hometown. It made me tremble a little.

While I was pregnant, I was served special food so that you would grow up healthy and strong, tall and beautiful. No more Jin Hua ham. Fish, soup, and vegetables instead, so you would be intelligent and wise. My child would be perfect, I was sure, yet in all of this I thought of you very little. I wish now I had spent that time thinking of you, not hating and scheming. I know now I should have enjoyed feeling you grow inside me. If I had let myself feel you, you would have been a part of me and not simply an appendage that I could discard. I should have done what Sister and Ma had never done and Ba was afraid to do, then I could never have let you go. But in my fury I now took up their legacy, and forced myself to ignore you, your kicks, the sickness in the morning that you brought me, and the swelling of my breasts ready for motherhood; I ignored all these signs of your presence, these hints for me to change my mind and reconsider. I had even stopped looking at myself naked so I would never see you, but I felt you then and I always have.

During these six months, I saw that Xiong Fa had also adjusted to his new life. He had started visiting the rooms of certain maids. He had to satisfy himself and so he did what many of the other Sang men had done before him. He was discreet, though, and never disrespected me by taking them out or making any of them a proper mistress. I could tolerate such behavior, because I didn’t care. As I had said to his mother in Tailor Street, I was now the First Wife. That was all that mattered to me.

W
hen you were born, I made sure that only Yan was present. She helped me with your birth as I pushed and suffered, splitting open old scars from my nights spent with Xiong Fa. It was so painful, and I used this pain to hate you as much as I could so that immediately after your birth I had the strength to give Yan her orders. She had her ointment. Soon I would feel better again.

Yan told me the birth had been bloody but that you were healthy and beautiful. I lay on my bed and closed my eyes. I could not help but try to visualize you, but I let my head fall back on the pillow against the headboard and kept my eyes firmly closed as I spoke to Yan, slowly and clearly. I would not let myself see you. The room was cold, as it was early in the evening. The chill of the end of November had already crept inside. I had thrown all the blankets from me and was shivering, though I did not notice this for hours.

I wish I had seen you. Your face was wrapped in a blanket and Yan held you close to her chest, which helped muffle your tiny cries.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter, you must love all your children,” Yan replied, softly and slowly.

“Answer me?” I screamed.

“You’re very angry. You’ve been through so much and are still so young. But you must make yourself care. You must force yourself to want this baby.”

“Just tell me, is it a boy or a girl?” I demanded through clenched teeth.

“A girl,” she whispered.

I refused to open my eyes and in the darkness I saw Ma again, smiling stupidly as I entered the palanquin. I saw Sister, dressed like a whore in those cheap clothes cut from expensive cloth. I had learned to see them more clearly during the last year of living with this mighty family who believed so strongly in themselves and their destiny that others believed in it, too. My parents and Sister had fallen under the Sangs’ spell yet had never known exactly what had captivated them. To imitate them, they had opted for clothes, manners, Society, and displays of wealth. But these people could also be poor, uneducated, and stupid like anyone else, as some of the relatives in this house were. My family had never understood that it was all-consuming pride, arrogance, and self-righteousness that kept the Sang family in their exalted place rather than merit. I had sworn I would be the last girl of my family. This would be the end of Ma’s and Sister’s dreams, of Ba’s and Grandfather’s weakness, the end of our family.

I kept my eyes closed; the flickering light from the candles washed a strange redness over my closed eyelids, which danced unnaturally in my eyes. I never saw you.

As I said before, “You now need to go into the backstreets and find a peasant couple. A couple who’ll need a child to take care of them in old age. Give them the baby and don’t tell them whose it was. When the family asks, tell them I had a stillborn son, which was very bloody and had to be taken away immediately.”

“We may never find her again,” Yan interrupted me.

“Yes, I know. Tell the peasants she is unwanted and unloved.”

Yan interrupted again, “But you must try—”

“Shut up!” I screamed. You cried then and I screamed louder so I could not hear you. I wanted no memories of you. “Stop saying that. It is better she is with someone who needs a daughter.” I calmed myself a little but I could still hear you. “Quickly, go to the top drawer in my dresser and you’ll find some jewelry in a red velvet bag. Give it to them so they can sell it. Please, go.”

She hesitated to leave the room and remained at the foot of the bed. When I remember this night, I realize Yan waited, giving me a chance to change my mind and the course of my life: not to pursue those years of bitterness and anger that followed. I could not recognize in her silence the invitation for me to turn back. I remember shouting at her, snarling for her to move. I would have slapped her and pushed her away if I had not been in so much pain. She stood there for a few seconds longer. I ordered her to put a small silk cloth in your mouth to stop your crying and wrap you up in some of the soiled sheets, as if you were laundry; no Sang would touch laundry. I heard her do this then take the jewelry and leave. The door closed quietly behind you.

I was alone. I opened my eyes and saw the red-brown of blood and shit from your birth spread across the sheet between my legs. It was smeared on my inner thighs and legs, and as I looked at myself, in pain, I felt no connection to my own body, as though it was simply something to be cleaned and put away, to be used later. I sat back and breathed in the aftermath of childbirth, using the stench to block out any trace of you that might linger and fix you in my memory.

Xiong Fa had not yet come back to the house but First Wife had sent Ah Cheuk to fetch him. By the time he returned, First Wife knew what had happened and immediately told him that his son had died at birth. The loss of a son would be unbearable to them all but they were practical and would move on.

When Yan returned I had passed out. I had contained the pain for so long that when I finally let it flood back, it overwhelmed me. She brought me around and I fully expected her to resume her duties and bathe me. Yet at first she did not help me move, only looked me hard in the eye. She took in my cracked lips and ragged hair, damp with sweat. She looked down at my body and the foul state of the sheets. She was so direct in her expression that for a moment I accepted her reproof and did not react. Then her hold on me was broken and our usual relationship was restored. I demanded that she help me move and then clean me.

I had been lying in one position so long that my muscles had cramped. I could not remember what I had done in the hours that had passed since she left on her errand. I knew I could not have moved at all, because my muscles had seized up, but I could not remember what I had been thinking or seeing. I was only angry.

Yan massaged my legs so that I could move but still she would not speak to me, and the only words that passed between us were to tell me of Xiong Fa’s request to see me. In reply I told Yan to tell him he could come and see me sometime the following day, but he had to make an appointment first.

Yan bathed me and changed the sheets. Blood enough for First Wife here, but no heir. She would demand that Xiong Fa make me pregnant again, but I had learned now that I held the power. An heir was still needed. Until then the promise of the Sang future remained unfulfilled, and First Wife’s duty to Father-in-law still unobserved. I had decided to blame the supposed death of this baby on her attack on me in Tailor Street: such ferocious behavior had clearly brought bad luck on the heir and caused him to suffer during the pregnancy and delivery. And now he had died.

I
woke up late in the day to find Yan sitting by my bed watching me. Her skin hung loosely from her face and her eyes were raw and bloodshot. When she saw me open my eyes she got up.

“You need some soup. I’ll be back soon,” she whispered, so quietly it was as if raising her voice would confirm the truth of what we had done during the night. Perhaps until Xiong Fa came we could live our lie and pretend I had not asked her to betray her own unfulfilled maternal instincts. I lay still and pulled the sheet around me. I could still smell the blood and shit that Yan had wiped from me. I ached and was desperately tired yet I wanted to wait here for her return, so we could understand each other and settle how we would continue living together after this. I remained lying on my back with my eyes closed. In the blackness, the strong smells filled my nostrils and mouth, reminding me of the dark that had filled me last night as I lay back against the bed with my eyes closed, as Yan held you tight in her arms, and I tried to mask your new smell with my own stink. I had not dreamt it, everything was true.

Yan came in and brought me a bowl of strong fish soup to accelerate my recovery. She put the tray on the bedside chair and helped me sit up straight. She brought the bowl to my lips and the fish stock cleared my nose and mind. I sipped, and coughed. Then my hunger returned and I swallowed the soup quickly.

“I also brought you some
mantou
. You should try to eat more, to be strong again.” Having left the steamed buns on the bed for me, she started to leave again. “Mistress, you should sleep. I think I should ask them to bring you a doctor.”

“No,” I shouted, “no doctors!”

She stopped and looked at me, startled mostly that I had suddenly regained my strength.

“I’m sorry, Yan. No, doctors, please. I don’t want any doctors because they cannot help. Just sit near me, please, sit near me. But first tell my husband that I will come to see him on the third day. Tell him that I will come at eleven in the morning to drink tea with him.”

“But he will be at work with his father.”

“If he wants to see me then he will have to be late to work or return home.”

“Very well. I will also draw you a bath tomorrow,” Yan said heartily, encouraged by my willingness to visit my husband.

“Yes, that will be good.”

She left me with the smell of the steaming bread to tempt my appetite. I closed my eyes and thought of the huge flat bamboo baskets that the cook used to stack up on the oven in the kitchen of my old home. I would sit with Grandfather and wait for them to be ready. And just as they were done, and smelling so warm, Ba would appear from his study, and the three of us would eat the buns with thick sauce. The cook would pour it into a bowl for us to dip in our torn pieces of bread. The little pieces of white bread would slowly soak up the thick brown-red liquid. When each piece had become completely saturated with sauce, and there was no white left, we would place it in the center of our tongues and our mouths would fill with the hot bread and salty chili flavors.

W
hen I awoke, the bread was gone and Yan had lit a few candles in the room and was ready to bring me more soup, but first I needed to piss.

“Yan, please help me up. I need the chamber pot.”

I had not stood up since last night and she had to pull me from the bed. With my arm hoisted over her shoulder, she dragged me up and I shifted my weight toward the mirror. In front of it I let the blanket fall from me and looked at my body for the first time since giving you life. My stomach was sagging and I had been bleeding; there were lines of dried blood down my thighs. Yan had tied padding to me where I had split and torn myself, wrapping it thickly around my waist and between my legs. The pain was deep and still very intense; as I moved I felt I was ripping myself open again. She brought in the pot and took the padding off me. I looked again at my waist, hips, and thighs, soft white skin surrounding a mound of slack flesh and blood. I looked as though I had been ripped from something, rather than something from me. Yet I felt whole; one mind and one body. I did not think of the second body that should have been cradled next to mine.

Yan came up behind me and placed her hands gently on my shoulders to lower me onto the pot. As the piss flowed, it burned me and I bit into my lip. When I’d finished, Yan put back the padding between my legs and secured it around my waist.

“Yan, when you take the pot out, please empty it immediately,” I instructed.

“But, mistress, both the doctor and the fortune-teller downstairs have asked to see this.”

“I know.” I fell back into bed and pulled the blanket around myself. Facing the wall, I followed the rough outline of my shadow on the wall cast by the candles Yan had lit.

“They are all downstairs. All waiting, desperate to blame me, to tell Xiong Fa to get a second wife,” I murmured, watching the flickering lights throw multiple versions of my silhouette onto the wall, lending my body different shapes and layers. “Don’t let them see . . . empty it out of the window at the end of the landing.”