Dragon Springs Road Read online

  “Hey, girl,” he said, pinching my cheek with large brown fingers. “What was your mother doing over in the Western Residence? Was she running a brothel?”

  “She doesn’t even know what you’re talking about, Lao-er,” said Mrs. Hao. “Get back to the front gate, would you? That rice shop is supposed to deliver three sacks today. Ah-Jien, aren’t you supposed to be sweeping out the upstairs rooms?”

  The other two obediently filed out of her domain. I finished the soy milk, and Mrs. Hao paused from stringing beans to hand me a steamed bun. It was warm, filled with minced pork and salted vegetables. I’d never tasted anything so delicious.

  Finally I got up the courage to speak. “What’s an orphanage?”

  “It’s a place for children without parents.” A short reply, but not unfriendly.

  “But I have a mother. My mother said she would come back.”

  She snorted.

  “What’s a whore?” And what did it mean if my mother was one?

  “A woman who sleeps with men to earn money.” She looked at me. “Were there a lot of men who came to visit your mother?”

  “Noble Uncle was the only one who came to visit,” I said, not sure of what she meant. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. Perhaps she would give me another bun. “What’s zazhong?”

  Mrs. Hao paused. “It means someone who’s half foreign. Your father is foreign.”

  Foreign was the metal box my mother used for storing her cosmetics, the lid printed with a garden scene. Foreign were the thin wafer biscuits she sometimes gave me when she returned from the outside world. I didn’t know foreign could be a person, let alone a father.

  “Has she eaten?” Anjuin’s voice from the kitchen door. “Grandmother wants to see her again.”

  THIS TIME, I only had to face Grandmother Yang, Master Yang, and the eldest son, Dajuin. Anjuin stood behind me, a hand on my shoulder.

  “There’s an orphanage out by Yung An Cemetery,” Master Yang said. “We can leave the girl there, Mother. Foreign missionaries treat children very well, I hear.”

  No, no. My fingers clenched. I had to stay here. Otherwise, how would my mother find me when she came back? I wanted to protest, but Fox’s warning growled in my head and restrained me.

  “What have you learned from the neighbors?” Grandmother Yang asked.

  “No one knows,” Dajuin replied. He and Anjuin shared a strong family resemblance. His face was broad and pleasant, his eyes alert. “The neighbors didn’t even know Master Fong had sold the property until the day the family left. They kept to themselves more and more as they got poorer and poorer.”

  “What about the girl? Whose child is she?”

  “The neighbors say Master Fong only had daughters, no sons,” Master Yang said. “He had a younger brother, but the boy went away years ago to live with relatives in Manchuria.” He paused. “There was talk of a woman who also lived here, but no mention of any girl child. Or any foreigner.”

  “I’ve been praying to the Buddha for guidance,” Grandmother Yang said. “She may be zazhong, but she is a living creature. Come here, girl. I’ve been wanting a closer look at your tunic.”

  She pulled it over my head. I shivered in my thin undershirt and moved closer to Anjuin.

  “Beautiful embroidery,” Grandmother Yang said, under her breath. She turned my tunic inside out. “Very neat stitching. Exceptional work.”

  “It’s silk, isn’t it, Grandmother?” Anjuin said, rubbing the fabric between her fingers.

  My mother had cut down one of her own jackets to sew me this winter tunic. It was silk crepe, green as her jade earrings and printed with bronze chrysanthemums. She had spent days embroidering a garland of chrysanthemum leaves on the cuffs and collar. Grandmother Yang picked apart the hem with small embroidery scissors.

  “The tunic hangs strangely on her,” she said. “By feel, it’s lined with silk padding and should be very light. There’s something in the hem weighing it down. Do you know what’s in here, girl?”

  I shook my head, watching as the old woman picked open several inches of hem. She put down the scissors and drew out a narrow sash of unbleached cotton. On one side was a string of characters stitched in black thread. Grandmother Yang handed it to Master Yang, who read the words out loud.

  I entrust my daughter to your care. These coins should be enough to buy her many years of rice. May the Buddha bless your kindness and reward you in this life and the next.

  Basting stitches across the cloth, each a few inches apart from the other, made a series of pockets. Grandmother Yang slit open the sash along its seam. As her scissors ripped through each pocket, a coin fell on the daybed. Ten in all.

  Dajuin examined the coins. “Real gold. English sovereigns.”

  Then Grandmother Yang sighed into the silence. “It doesn’t look like the mother ever intends to come back for the girl.”

  In that moment, I finally understood. My mother had abandoned me. The realization slammed into my ribs, knocking the breath out of my body.

  I tumbled through air as thick as ink, as bottomless as the well.

  WHEN I STOPPED falling, I was back in the Western Residence. But it wasn’t early winter. The fruit trees were in bloom, their branches a froth of pink and white. The main house and erfang houses looked well kept, newly whitewashed, the carved wooden panels on all the verandas varnished. The gray tiled roof of the second erfang was whole, not caved in, and the lattice windows on all the houses were fitted with clean white mulberry paper panes.

  A woman’s figure by the door of the main house made my heart jump, but it wasn’t my mother. Her clothing was strange to my eyes, not the long tunic and trousers my mother wore, but a short jacket with loose sleeves and a softly pleated skirt of light silk that barely touched the ground. She floated toward me, a slender figure in autumn colors, swaying on tiny feet encased in gold satin. The shadow she cast was that of a Fox.

  As she came closer, I saw that she was beautiful, her chin small and pointed, her forehead wide. Although her skin was as pale and unblemished as a newly opened lotus, she gave the impression of being much older. Her eyes gleamed amber, a dark glow with green lights in their depths.

  “Where am I?” I said. “This isn’t the Western Residence.”

  This is how it looked three hundred years ago, Fox replied, when I was a much younger Fox.

  “Why did Mama leave me?” I cried. “Did I do something naughty?”

  Whatever I’d done, if only someone would tell me, I would never do it again.

  You didn’t do anything wrong. You must believe she left you behind for a good reason. What matters is that you survive on your own in this world.

  She sat on the stone bench at the edge of the rock garden and took both my hands in hers. Her hands were slim and neat, the fingers pointed, the nails long. Clusters of bright blue butterflies bobbed on gold wires above her elaborate hairstyle, ornaments of kingfisher feathers.

  Your first duty is to please Grandmother Yang. Whether you stay or go is her decision. I can only do so much, so you must be obedient and help things along.

  “Will Mama come back if I’m good?” I asked. “Will you help me find her?”

  The courtyard spun around me; petals of plum blossom drifted up in a slow, dizzying swirl. I fell back into darkness and heard Fox’s answer, so soft it might have been no more than the rustle of bamboo leaves.

  Maybe when you’re older.

  WHEN I OPENED my eyes, it was Anjuin who held my hands. I lay on Grandmother Yang’s daybed, propped up on pillows. The room was empty.

  “Grandmother is walking around, looking at the property,” Anjuin said. “All three courtyards. Everyone else has gone with her. How do you feel?”

  She smiled, and a small kernel of hope planted itself in my heart.

  Slowly, I sat up. “Will Grandmother Yang let me stay? I promise to be good.”

  “The message from your mother invoked the Buddha,” she said. “Grandmother has decided to take you in.
She believes it will earn merit for her next life. You’ll be her bond servant.”

  I could stay. I would not be sent to an orphanage. If Mama came back, I would still be here.

  Looking around the room again, I climbed down from the bed to stand in front of a low dresser and the mirror propped above it. I knew what I looked like, of course. I’d looked into my mother’s hand mirror often enough. Now I stood in front of Grandmother Yang’s mirror, and Anjuin came behind me.

  Her hair was thick and black, sleek as lacquer. My hair looked black, but out in the sunlight I knew it was wispy and dark brown. My eyes were a lighter shade than hers, and my eyelashes curled up while hers were beautifully straight and sparse. Beside her, my skin looked sickly, too pale. Her eyebrows were curved, each a perfect willow leaf, the exact shape my mother used to paint her brows. Mine were straight.

  Was I really so different?

  DURING THOSE FIRST weeks, Grandmother Yang kept me by her side. She told me about the Yang family in Ningpo, her conversation circling in slowly as she talked about her two other sons and their families, the Yang cousins, the in-laws.

  “And what about your family?” she would ask suddenly, her eyes sharp, her words swooping down at me, her curiosity voracious as a raptor. “What do you remember?”

  But all I did was repeat the words my mother had made me memorize, words to use should anyone ask what I was doing in the Western Residence, words of appeasement if she wasn’t beside me to offer up explanations in her light voice, with her dimpled smile. It was what my mother had told me to say, and I did not deviate.

  “My mother and I lived in the Western Residence as guests of the Fong family.”

  Eventually Grandmother Yang gave up prodding and so did everyone else.

  Of course I remembered my mother. I remembered everything about our secluded life. I just didn’t want to share it with Grandmother Yang or anyone else.

  CHAPTER 2

  My mother said we came to the Western Residence in a sedan chair. She rode here with me sleeping on her lap.

  “Noble Uncle gave us a home,” she often told me. “We must be grateful that he is so kind; otherwise, we wouldn’t have a roof over our heads.”

  She didn’t say how Noble Uncle was related to us, nor did I know enough to ask. At that age, without any knowledge of the wider world, I didn’t even know what “uncle” meant exactly. I thought it was part of his name. Just as “Mama” was my mother’s name. I knew that Noble Uncle lived in the next courtyard, the large Central Residence, with his wives and daughters. I’d never seen him face-to-face. He was the only person who ever came into the Western Residence.

  The Central Residence next door was quiet, with only the occasional female voice calling out. If not for those soft voices and my mother’s daily trips there to fetch our meals, I might have believed the place deserted.

  Of far more interest was the world outside on Dragon Springs Road. Nearly every day my mother and I spied on the street, standing on our platform of old furniture. The conversation of neighbors, their servants’ gossip, and the talk of street vendors made us feel a part of their lives even though we had to stay out of sight.

  On windy days, the kite vendor made his rounds. He toted a shoulder pole, one end carrying a basket of kites painted with tiger faces, butterflies, and the figures of heroes. At the other end, a woven bamboo panel held paper pinwheels that spun so fast when the wind blew they were nothing but blurs of color. I longed for one of those pinwheels.

  During the New Year, dragon dancers swirled their way into the street accompanied by gongs and drums, their acrobatics making cloth scales shimmer. There were weddings, red-painted sedan chairs hung with red curtains and brass bells, processions led by a column of musicians. There were funerals, the family all in white robes, hired mourners behind them wailing and crying, calling upon heaven to show favor to the departed.

  SOMETIMES WHEN MY mother returned from next door with our supper, there would be a slip of paper on the tray. On those evenings, she would hurry me through supper. Then she would stoke up the stove, feeding it just enough coal to heat a kettle of water, which she poured into a large wooden basin. To this she added a few drops of orange blossom water. Fragrant steam rose up, and she would dip a towel in the basin and wash every part of her body.

  Back in her bedroom, she would light the oil lamp and set it by her mirror, open the cedarwood box that held her jewelry and the foreign metal box that held her cosmetics. She applied white rice powder to her cheeks and a small dab of paste that reddened her lips to pomegranate. She could twist her smooth hair a dozen different ways, securing her locks with carved combs and hairpins. Sometimes she simply brushed it out so that it swept down to rest on the seat of her stool.

  She owned three sets of gold earrings, one with gold filigree flowers, another with coral drops red as persimmons, and her favorites, green jade beads that dangled like clusters of grapes.

  Then she would take me to the playroom in the erfang and put me to bed. I hardly ever stayed in bed, though. If I jumped out and stood by the window, I could hear the sound of her liuqin mandolin, its repetitive twanging as she tightened strings and tested the notes, the satisfied strumming when she was pleased with the tones. Then she would light the white paper lantern, which hung like a full moon beneath the veranda roof of the main house.

  The creak of the door between the front courtyards of the Western and Central Residences would announce Noble Uncle’s arrival. He never glanced in the direction of the erfang, but I ducked below the windowsill anyway. Then I would raise my head and peek out the window to watch him stroll up to the main house where my mother waited.

  His voice carried over the stillness of the night air, frequently gruff and impatient. Then my mother’s placating voice, sweet and high, eventually lilting into a song accompanied by her liuqin. I imagined her dexterous fingers on the four-stringed instrument, plucking out a cascade of notes. I would stumble back to the pallet bed and fall asleep to faraway music, “Plum Blossom Melodies,” “Ambush from Ten Sides,” or “Spring Snow,” her favorite.

  Sometimes my mother went away for a day or two, taking with her the liuqin carefully wrapped in a felt bag, extra strings for the instrument tucked in her tunic pocket. I didn’t like her being away, but we had to do as Noble Uncle wanted because otherwise we wouldn’t be allowed to live in the Western Residence anymore.

  “Why must you go?” I remembered crying when I was younger. “Why can’t I go too?”

  “Noble Uncle wants me to play at a banquet,” she said, pushing the hair off my face. “We must obey Noble Uncle or he will throw us out.”

  That was our fate should we ever displease Noble Uncle. I was vague on the exact consequences of becoming homeless, but I obeyed the fear in my mother’s voice and stayed inside the Western Residence’s courtyard, making not a single sound while she was gone. When my mother returned, she would have treats tied up in her scarf: sugared walnuts, dried sour plums or bright orange kumquats, sesame candies or thin wafer cookies. I became used to these brief absences. She always came back.

  ONE EVENING THERE was no liuqin music or singing. All I could hear were loud words and weeping.

  “I can barely afford to feed my own family!” Noble Uncle’s voice slashed across the courtyard, filled with rage and something else. Anguish. “You think you can solve my problems with the pittance you earn playing that bit of wood? When I must sell the home of my ancestors!”

  In the morning, my mother’s eyes were red and swollen. There was broken crockery and two empty jars of wine in the kitchen.

  She returned from the Central Residence with our breakfast, two steamed buns.

  “That’s all, Jialing,” she said. “The cook gave me these and then he left. Here, you can have both. I’m not hungry.”

  I gnawed on a bun and stood beside the mirror while she put up her hair. When she opened her cedarwood box, all the jeweled hairpins were gone. The partition that held her earrings was empty. On
ly the carved sandalwood combs remained. I looked around the room. The chair she used as a stand for her liuqin was pushed into a corner, and an unfamiliar shape rested on its seat. I ran over to take a look. It was the instrument, its willow wood neck broken.

  MY MOTHER BEGAN going over to the Central Residence every day.

  “The Fongs can’t afford any servants right now, Ling-ling,” she said. “If we’re to stay, I must do more to earn our keep. I must do their cleaning and cooking.”

  We still ate by ourselves in the Western Residence. My mother put meals on the table for the Fongs, and afterward the Fong women would take the dirty dishes to their kitchen, where my mother would do the washing up.

  “Those ladies have never carried a dirty plate until now,” she said. “They embroider nicely, but they should prepare for worse.”

  What “worse” meant, I didn’t know.

  Once, I dared to creep through the door between courtyards while my mother cooked supper for the Fong women. I stole into the main reception hall, where the Fongs’ ancestors stared out from stiff portraits, stern and disapproving. I peered through the windows of the main house and saw Noble Uncle’s family. There were two women and five girls, the girls all older than me. The eldest of them looked directly at the window and caught me staring in, but she didn’t say anything, just gazed back with an air of sad resignation.

  THEN ONE DAY, the Central Residence wasn’t quiet. We could hear men’s voices.

  “Hei ho, hei ho, lift! Again!”

  “Jialing, see what’s going on,” my mother said.

  I needed no further encouragement. I skipped through the bamboo garden to the front courtyard and climbed the heap of furniture.

  On the other side of the wall, workmen were pushing handbarrows stacked high with the Fongs’ belongings. One held a table inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which I knew came from the main hall where the ancestral portraits hung. Two men carried panels from a huge bed, which they transferred to an oxcart outside the front gate. More tables, chairs, cabinets, and storage chests. Vases, side tables, and an altar. A bundle of scrolls in a long basket.