Chapter 3

Back then, I thought sleeping meant only sleeping. Like lying beside Teacher and Huiyan every night: close my eyes, open them, and it was morning.

Teacher wept. “What a sin,” she said, her voice shaking. “It’s all my sin.”

After that day, she began teaching me about the world.

We could all read, because we had to read scriptures. Teacher slipped some other books among them and taught me from them in the dead of night.

Huiyan slept soundly beside us. By the light of an oil lamp, I listened as Teacher quietly explained life below the mountain, and the rules and duties that governed it.

Sometimes, when she found an opportunity, Teacher took me through a secret passage to visit the town at the foot of the mountain and other women’s temples on its slopes.

The head of the temple had built it as an escape route in case of emergency. Teacher had learned of it by chance and never forgotten.

Little by little, I learned what shame meant, what a girl from a respectable family was, and what a prostitute was.

I looked at Teacher in anguish, unable to decide whether to love her or hate her.

At last I understood that, as she had said, she had initially raised us only because the temple’s head needed someone to see us through childhood.

The head had promised the women a share of the money for every patron their disciples received once they were grown.

If the head was the chief madam, Teacher was a lesser one.

But our hearts are flesh and blood. Huiyan was too dear, and the days we spent huddled together too warm. Teacher could no longer bear it.

She met my furious gaze. “Hate me. I don’t blame you. I only don’t know whether I should tell your younger sister the truth too.”

I wiped away my tears and shook my head. “No. Don’t tell her. She’s so impulsive. She’ll give herself away.”

Even people who grew up equally ignorant on the same mountain had different temperaments.

Huiyan was a flame. I was a piece of wood, curled in a corner where no one noticed me.

If she understood what we were, it would be written all over her face.

Teacher knew her temperament too. She nodded. “All right. We won’t tell her. Once I’ve saved enough money, we’ll simply take her away.”

Teacher did have a plan. Ever since her heart had softened toward Huiyan and me, she had been saving. When she had enough, she intended to buy three false household registrations and take us far from this place.

But she was nearly thirty. Fewer patrons had sought her out in recent years, and the money accumulated slowly.

Sometimes I resented her for once intending to raise us into disgraced women. But when I looked at the colder women around us, I could not help feeling fortunate too. At least Teacher still had a human heart.

I thought that, when I grew up, I would be willing to look after her for the rest of her life.

Whether to support her or escape Mount Tai, we needed money.

Relying on Teacher alone was too slow. I began copying scriptures to be sold down the mountain.

This was Mount Tai. Though it had improper nuns like us, there were far more legitimate temples thriving on the offerings of worshippers.

Many outsiders came to worship. Many were willing to buy a book of scriptures to take home.

My handwriting was solemn and disciplined, like that of an old Taoist who had recited scriptures for decades.

Teacher changed into ordinary clothes and put on a bamboo hat to take the books down the mountain. The shopkeepers accepted them readily.

I also asked her to teach me everything she knew of human hearts and their filth. Huiyan was innocent. I could no longer afford to be.

Huiyan did not understand what kept us busy. But as I grew thinner, she secretly brought back some of her own meager portion of steamed buns for me. Looking up with worry on her face, she said, “Sister, you can’t get any thinner. If you do, you’ll go to heaven like my mother, and I’ll never see you again.”

Her parents had not sold her. They had died, and her relatives had sold her up the mountain.

Unlike me and the other children, who had never eaten meat even at home, she had tasted it. So she dared to steal a little.

With a bamboo basket stolen from the kitchen and a little unhusked rice, she crouched behind the mountain and tried again and again until she caught a sparrow.

She did not know a bird had to be bled and plucked, or that there were organs inside its belly. She simply buried the whole sparrow in a fire to roast it. Then, as though offering a treasure, she dragged me behind the mountain and whispered, “Sister, I’ll keep watch. Eat it quickly. Mother said meat was good for you. It makes you strong.”

Though she too was swallowing hungrily, she turned her face away and pretended she did not want it. She stood far off to keep watch for me.

It was a charred, rank-smelling lump of meat. Yet it was the most delicious thing I had ever eaten.

There was someone in this world who would rather go hungry herself than eat the meat she had worked so hard to give me.