chapter 1

chapter 1

My mother was the fiercest woman in all of Longevity Town, yet our shop stood in its most remote corner.

It was not because we lacked money. The business simply was not respectable.

We ran a wife-pawning house, a place that dealt in human beings.

As the name suggested, wife-pawning meant pawning one’s wife. A poor man who had managed to pay for a bride would sell her for a year to someone even poorer. During that year she became the other man’s wife. If she conceived, he paid an additional sum and kept her until she delivered. If she did not, the household that had rented her had to accept its bad luck and return her to the husband she had formally married.

Mother opened such a shop because she knew the trade better than anyone.

She had been pawned seven times in her life and had borne sons on six of those occasions, making her famous back home as a woman blessed with fertile sons. But at thirty, during the seventh arrangement, she gave birth to me – a worthless daughter, as everyone called girls – and the delivery ruined her body. She never conceived again.

My so-called birth father was poor to begin with. The moment I was born, he drowned me in a bucket of filth.

Mother secretly washed my nose and mouth clean. That very night, still bleeding from childbirth, she dragged herself away with me and returned to her husband’s house.

A man willing to pawn his wife seven times was naturally no decent man. He was drunk most of the time, and whenever he woke, he beat her.

When I was seven, he went out drinking. One of his shoes was found by the river, but his body was never recovered.

His death seemed to take Mother’s meekness with it. The woman who had once done nothing but bow her head and endure every blow became a widow determined to keep me alive by herself.

She took me begging all the way from our homeland. The year we nearly starved to death in this town, her nature suddenly changed. She began laughing and cursing freely, telling everyone about her past without shame, then declaring that no one was better than she at judging whether a woman could bear sons.

Respectable households cursed her shamelessness. Yet however much they cursed, they still believed her when she said she could tell which women would conceive easily.

And so we put down roots far from home. We survived by arranging for the Zhang family’s wife to bear a child for the Li family and taking our commission from the bargain.

Ordinary folk disliked entering a place like ours, and most clients cared about saving face, so they came after dark.

By day, only our neighbor Madam Zhu stopped in to gossip.

She was a clandestine prostitute supporting a consumptive husband. She was kind enough, just terribly loose-tongued. Whatever she heard from a customer, she rushed over to chew over with Mother.

The moment she entered that day, she deliberately lowered her voice. “Elder Sister, something incredible has happened. Listen to this strange tale.”

Mother was used to her booming voice and asked curiously, “What could be important enough to make you whisper?”

Madam Zhu glanced theatrically outside before saying with excitement, “A joke about the Emperor himself – is that important enough?

“A customer of mine passed through yesterday on business from the capital. He says everyone there is talking about how the Empress Dowager in the palace isn’t the Emperor’s birth mother. His real mother was framed and driven from the palace years ago. She had to do all sorts of disgraceful work. Now the Emperor wants to bring her back, but the officials won’t allow it. The court argues over it every day.

“Imagine that! Even the Emperor can’t always do what he wants.”

With a teasing look, Madam Zhu added, “Just what kind of shameful work do you think she did, if even the Emperor can’t overcome it?”

Mother spat out a sunflower-seed shell without expression. “At worst, she was like you or me. What is there to laugh at? Do you think the two of us are funny?”

Madam Zhu’s face fell. “Yes, yes, I’m a shameless whore. I only meant well. You gave birth to so many sons yourself. Perhaps one of them will come back someday and take you away to enjoy a good life.”

Mother fell silent.

Those six sons were the wound in her heart, but she had never tried to find them. She feared they might have grown up in bad homes. If I became somebody’s younger sister, I might end up like her, sold away for bride money.

Both women looked miserable, so I hurried to lighten the mood. “Who cares about the Emperor? He’s as far from us as the sky. We should decide whether to spend a little extra on pork-bone soup for lunch.”

The instant I spoke, all their anger swung toward me. Mother slapped the table. “Food, food, food – is that all you think about? How many times have I told you not to come into this shop? Do you think this is respectable work? Do you ever want to marry?”

Madam Zhu joined in. “Listen to your mother, Zhaoniang. Stay away from the shop, and don’t tell anyone outside that you know me. Your mother has spent a fortune raising you. One day you must marry into a decent family.”

I curled my lip. Mother certainly had spent plenty. She had even hired a governess for me. Once starvation was no longer a danger, she seemed determined to raise me as a pampered young lady. Yet if I married into a family too respectable, the first thing they would do was forbid me from visiting her.

“Fine, fine,” I said carelessly. “I’ll marry once our family has a son to support Mother.”

Mother flung a cleaning rag at me. “You wicked girl! Even you dare mock me?”