The Valley of Amazement (75 page)

We still fought on occasion, always over petty things. I found it maddening when he gave women the long gaze. Most of the time, it did not lead to any interest on the woman’s part. But when they smiled, he smiled back. If it happened at a party, he would find some reason to move in the woman’s direction and let his eyes linger even longer. When I accused him of lusting after other women, he denied doing anything of the kind. The way he looked at people was the way his eyes worked, he claimed. I asked him why they didn’t work that way with men. Whatever his eyes were doing, he said, at least he wasn’t going off with other women. So why wouldn’t I be happy with him for that? We would then break into the same argument about his dishonesty and my illogic, which ended with my sleeping in my own bedroom, and him knocking on the locked door, sometimes in the middle of the night, and sometimes two nights in a row.

Our best times were the mundane evenings when we ate our dinner together at home and he kissed me for cooking a dish he particularly liked. We listened to the radio and talked about the news or about Flora or my mother. Sometimes I reminisced about Hidden Jade Path. I took him back to those times when I overheard the courtesans talking about their misfortunes, what I noticed about nervous men at the parties, and what I saw and
heard when I hid behind the French doors between Boulevard and my mother’s office. And we recalled at least a hundred times the evening we first met, both of us adding made-up details to exaggerate how big Carlotta was or how scared Loyalty was, until I was reduced to gasps of laughter when Loyalty said he pissed in his pants when he heard me say I would have to amputate his arm right there and then.

He often ended by saying: “You told me to wait for you to grow up, and that one day we would join our fates together. I was too stupid to do it sooner, but now, you see, here we are.” And then, he took me to bed, as he always did when we talked about our intertwined fate.

There were many moments when he would see me cry silently and he would drop whatever he was doing and come to me and wrap his arms around me, without asking me why I was sad. He knew it was about Flora, or about Edward, or about how I felt the day my mother left. He simply rocked me, as if I were a little girl. Those were the reasons we both knew how deep love was, the shared pain that would outlast any pain we caused each other.

M
AGIC
G
OURD LIVED
a few blocks away. Her big plans to open a courtesan house were quickly forgotten when she ran into an old client, Harmony Chen, who had once been rich and now owned a modest business selling typewriters and “modern office supplies for modern businesses.” Harmony had been her patron and remembered her well. He said the wiggle in her hips was still memorable, and he didn’t mind her personality. So he married her, she said, so he could see that wiggle every day. Harmony told me she made him laugh all the time.

“He’s a good man,” she said. “Considerate. The best life you can have as you get into old age is good food, good teeth to eat it with, and few worries when you go to bed at night. A good husband is extra and can vary whether the number of worries you have is more or less. Mine are less.”

Whenever she came over to visit, she liked to recall the difficulties she endured on my behalf. Her eyes would light up when she recalled something new. “Hey, remember that man who drove the cart—what was that scoundrel’s name? Old Fart? Did I ever tell you he hinted that I should have sex with him? The bastard said we should go into the field and see how big the corn was.”

“That’s terrible.”

She huffed. “I told him we didn’t need to go in the field. I knew the corn was only this big.” She held up her pinkie. “He was snorting mad the whole day.”

She often brought up Perpetual. “Hey, remember when that bastard was beating the life out of you? I didn’t tell you that I tried to pull him off. That’s why he punched me in the eye. I almost went blind.” I thanked her. She waved her hand dismissively. “No, no. There’s no need to thank me.” She waited until I thanked her once more before starting up again. “Hey, remember that night when we thought the whole village might burn down? I just got a letter from Pomelo and she said it was just her room and a shed. She got the news from tradesmen who go back and forth between Mountain View and Moon Pond. The path that went past Buddha’s Hand is like a highway now. Someone was smart enough to turn that white rock into a shrine and now the place is crawling with pilgrims who buy sugared corn cakes and walking sticks. One of the pilgrims found Perpetual’s body a year after he died, just some of his bones and scraps of clothes, also a leather pouch holding a poem. And listen to this! Nine months after Perpetual died, Azure had another son. She claimed it was Perpetual’s, but one rumor has it that the father was her maid’s lover, the manservant. There was another rumor: the mother of the baby was the maid and the father was Perpetual. In any case, Azure claimed it was hers.”

W
HEN
M
OTHER AND
I started discussions about her coming to Shanghai to see me, Magic Gourd pretended to be enthusiastic. “You’ll be so happy to have your real mother back.” I had to reassure her many times that she had been more a mother to me than my real mother. She had risked her life. She had suffered for me.

“You worried about me,” I said. “Constantly.”

“That’s true. More times than you know.”

“I worried over you as well.”

She gave me a doubtful look.

“When you got influenza. I thought you might die, and I sat by your bedside and held your hand. I begged you to open your eyes and come back to us.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“That’s because you were dying. I think my words might have made a difference.”

Whether they had or not, Magic Gourd was deeply touched. “You worried?” she said over and over again. “No one in my life ever worried over me. Not before you.”

She worried whenever I threatened to divorce Loyalty. I didn’t mean I really wanted a divorce. I was just saying how angry I was. It was always the same reason: He had been flirting with a woman. She came over and listened to me, agreeing with everything I said. He was so bad, so thoughtless, so stupid. “But you don’t need to divorce,” she said. “There’s an herb you can put in his tea. I heard it shrivels desire and other things. You just don’t want to do it too often, otherwise it’s permanent, and that would be too bad for you as well.” Then she gently cajoled me into seeing that Loyalty was not that bad compared to some husbands. “Loyalty may be naughty but he is never mean. He’s handsome, too, and a good lover. And he often makes you laugh. Four
things. Most women don’t even get one.”

Shanghai
1929

Mother and I finally agreed that she should come to Shanghai. We did not write the exact words
before it’s too late,
but that was what we were both saying in various ways. I told her that I did not think we should attempt to undo the past by talking about what might have changed the course of our histories. We had forged a relationship of confidantes between two adults, which was more than friendship but not that of a mother and daughter. We had intimate written conversations, yet they were faceless exchanges, separated by distance. Our confessions and remembrances required trust, and while our words flowed freely most of the time, we knew we could retreat behind the safety of a sheet of paper, and we did not need to explain why. We did not worry about offending each other when we were more measured and doled out sparingly the selected words that stood for an unresolved mix of feelings. A face-to-face meeting in Shanghai might expose us to the damaging past and undo what we had forged and was important to us. We both decided it was worth the risk. I warned her that I might not want to embrace her any more than I would a piece of paper. I didn’t know what I would feel seeing her in the flesh. It might raise emotions I had forgotten I had, and thus she would have to be prepared, and not wounded, if I did not throw myself into her arms as a mother and daughter might when happily reunited. She agreed it would likely be awkward and unpredictable, and that she was prepared for distance between us. I thought about that reunion the entire month before she arrived, feeling the gamut of emotions, from being the child who had felt betrayed, to the woman who knew that I had been more important to her than Lu Shing and her son. I would see her, knowing she had been tormented and had grieved for me, as I did for Flora.

As we waited for the boat to arrive, I warned Loyalty to not give her one of his long flirtatious looks.

“How can you even think I would do that?” he said with mock offense.

“You would give an old woman in a coffin that look.”

He laughed and kissed me. “I will be right here with you. Squeeze my hand if it is unbearable and I will find excuses to take you away.”

Even though we had exchanged photos by mail, I had pictured her in one of her high-fashion party dresses, and not in a plain brown suit. Her features were striking, but outside of her world of business, she did not have the mesmerizing qualities that drew men to her side. She did not move gracefully but with jerky nervous movements as she searched for her luggage. She went to me, stopped ten feet away and stared, as if she were seeing a ghost. She was biting her lips as she looked me fully in the face. “I know we agreed to hold off speaking about our emotions. But I have kept seventeen years of your absence inside me, and I cannot hold back the words I had wanted you to hear. I love you so very much.”

For the second time in my life, I saw her cry. I nodded and let her put her arms around me and I wept freely, too.

After a few minutes, she let go, and wiped her eyes. “There! Now that’s out of the way. We can go back to being nervous about what we say.”

Loyalty treated my mother with much respect. “It was in your house where I first met your lovely daughter as a seven-year-old brat. She has not changed much, except in age.” My mother liked him immediately. She talked to him in her rusty Chinese. It was a relief to have him there to change the conversation to safer topics whenever either of us became uncomfortable. They recalled people they both knew, the scions of wealthy families, and he gave her an update on what had happened to some of them—whether they were doing the same, worse, or better. Most were doing worse.

Magic Gourd was waiting for us at our house. Many of my letters had mentioned her, and the first time I did, I reminded Mother that about twenty-five years ago she had asked the courtesan Magic Cloud, as she was known then, to leave Hidden Jade Path because of a matter having to do with a ghost and a patron. Magic Gourd, I went on to say, had been with me when I met Edward, when Flora was born, when Edward died, when Perpetual nearly killed me, when we escaped from Moon Pond—during all the moments of my life since my mother had left. I did not say anything about Magic Gourd’s role in training me to be a courtesan. But I had made it clear that Magic Gourd had been like a mother to me. Over the distance of letters, I could not see my mother’s face when she read those words,
like a mother.
The handwriting in her return letter, however, was more neatly written than usual. She expressed sadness that she had treated Magic Gourd so poorly, especially considering how she had taken care of me and how she embodied the attributes a true mother should have, one who was protective, who sought the best for her daughter over all other matters, who was selfless and would sacrifice her own life before any harm befell her child. In those words, she had spoken of the ways she had failed me. In each of her following letters, she asked how Magic Gourd was doing. Magic Gourd also politely asked the same about Mother.

Before coming to Shanghai, Mother already knew that Magic Gourd was now called Mrs. Harmony Chen and that Happy was her given name—Happy Chen in English. She was proud of her status and did not appreciate anyone using her former name. I was the only exception.

In the car on the way to the house, Mother and I talked about how she might introduce herself to Magic Gourd. We were nervous. She could hardly pretend that they had never met. And Magic Gourd was not one to hide her feelings. I had also forewarned Mother that she would not recognize Magic Gourd. She was past fifty and stout.
Her jowls and the corners of her mouth hung down when she was nervous or disapproving. But when she smiled or was excited, they lifted up and added to her ample cheeks. She still had large beautiful eyes, and they were more often kind than critical.

When we walked in the door, Magic Gourd and Harmony were having a leisurely cup of tea. She acted surprised to see us. “Is it that late?” she said. “I thought you wouldn’t be here for another hour.”

Mother went to her and began by saying that she had read about her in so many letters, and it was good to finally thank her. She got no further than that.

“You remember me,” Magic Gourd said. “You kicked me out. The reason had to do with the ghost of the house and a rumor that a greedy courtesan spread. It nearly ruined the business of the entire house. I wished the girl who spread the gossip a bad life, and then I heard she wound up in a Hong Kong gutter next to a fish market and without her teeth, and after that, I told myself, ‘You don’t need to think about that anymore.’” She smiled. “None of us do.”

Mother was free to continue with her expressions of gratitude, using the words
like a true mother
and mentioned the attributes of one. This unleashed the first of endless stories Magic Gourd had at the ready about the harrowing times we had shared. Beginning with the Hall of Tranquility, she informed Mother about how she had trained me so that I would not fall into the dirty hands of cheap customers. Mother did not appear shocked. She said, “She could have wound up in the streets without your guidance.” An hour later, Magic Gourd described the lavish feast Loyalty threw for me when I was fourteen. Eventually it came out that Loyalty had bought my defloration. She turned to Loyalty. “Don’t be embarrassed. It was going to happen with someone, and Violet was lucky it was you.”