chapter 2

chapter 2

The world has a way of making a liar out of anyone who speaks too soon. Only five days later, a carriage truly did stop outside our home.

A young gentleman stepped down, upright as pine and cypress, plainly a scholar at first glance.

He looked at Mother, eyes reddening, then dropped to his knees and struck his forehead against the ground. “Mother, your unfilial son has not come to see you until the age of twenty. Please come home with me.”

It happened to be market day. Even the remote lanes around our shop were full of stalls and visitors. The moment he knelt, everyone crowded around to gape.

“I used to hear that Madam Liu had borne a great many sons. I thought she invented it to drum up business. One of them has really come looking for her!”

“Bah! What decent man would acknowledge a mother like that? He must have seen her family doing well and come to swindle her money.”

“Hard to say. I wouldn’t go near a wanton mother like her, at any rate.”

The bustling crowd filled with taunts I had not heard in years.

I wanted to rush out and curse them, but Mother shoved me inside. “Not a sound. If you ruin your reputation, all my years of planning for you will have been wasted.”

I did not dare defy her, though fury burned in my chest. Why did none of them curse my dead foster father? Mother had never chosen to be pawned.

As if he had heard the cry in my heart, the man kneeling outside declared, each word ringing firm, “My mother was pawned by her husband. What power did a defenseless woman have to resist? That useless man was unworthy of being called human. What right have you to curse her? The hardships of this world are too heavy for one woman to carry. You all have women in your families. Guard your tongues and gather some virtue for their sakes.”

The crowd quieted for a moment. Mother’s eyes reddened. Then someone sneered, “Fine, righteous words. You still only want the woman’s money.”

The man I had already accepted as my brother rose without shame, took an object from the carriage, and held it high. “My surname is Zhao, my given name Zheng. I placed forty-seventh in the second tier of this year’s imperial examination. This is my official seal. I have come solely to fulfill my filial duty, not for wealth.

“If any of you still doubt me, go to Spring Breeze Street in the capital. The list of successful candidates has not yet been removed. See for yourselves whether my name appears there.”

No one needed to go. Only a person tired of living would forge an official seal.

Commoners did not challenge officials. The people who had shouted the loudest now shrank away, praying Lord Zhao had not noticed them.

He merely knelt again. “Mother, please come home with me. Let me serve you at your knee.”

Mother shook her head coolly. “My lord, you have mistaken me for someone else. I do not recall bearing a child that year, twenty years ago.”

Zhao Zheng was a determined man.

When Mother refused to recognize him, he remained on his knees.

He knelt until even I could no longer bear it. Mother finally sighed. “What a foolish child. He earned a place in the examinations, yet instead of pursuing his future, he came looking for me. If he takes me home, he may never find a wife. What good family’s daughter would accept a mother-in-law like me?”

I lowered my head in silence. She was right. No family would accept her, just as no respectable family would marry me.

Still, I carried her words to Zhao Zheng.

Three days later, a woman knelt beside him outside our door.

A shrill voice rang out, “Princess Rou’an is present. All idlers, withdraw!”

My wonderful brother had somehow persuaded a princess to kneel with him.

This woman of priceless birth bowed her head before Mother. “Mother-in-law, Lord Zhao and I are betrothed. Please return to the capital with us and allow us to fulfill a child’s duty.”

The daughter of the most exalted family under heaven was kneeling there. We would have been fools not to accept such a life of comfort. Mother and I were going to the splendid capital.

Before leaving, her only concern was the shop.

She wanted to give it to Madam Zhu.

Madam Zhu refused. “Elder Sister, I know you’re a good person, but this trade damages one’s virtue as surely as running a brothel. However low I stand as a secret prostitute, I harm only myself. At least I don’t prey on other pitiful women.”

I suddenly remembered when Madam Zhu had first moved next door. She had disdained speaking to Mother and often splashed filthy water outside our shop. Only after her husband fell ill and Mother advanced the money for his medicine had the two grown close.

So that was what she had thought of us all along.

Mother’s voice turned cold. “Nearly thirty, yet still so muddleheaded. If my shop didn’t exist, do you think those women would not be pawned? Can you truly not see who is to blame? If that is how you think, you could never run this place properly. Pretend I said nothing.”

She swept away. I cracked sunflower seeds and smiled. “Sister Zhu, when I was twelve, Mother planned to close the shop and move away with me. Then she changed her mind. Can you guess why?”

That was the year I first menstruated. Mother stared for a long time at my bloodstained trousers.

Afterward, she began asking about selling the shop. We were not wealthy, but we had saved enough to move elsewhere and start some respectable little business.

She said that if we lived cleanly for six or seven years, then when it was time to discuss my marriage, a prospective husband’s family might visit and still be fooled. She swore my life would never become like hers.

But just then, one final husband came to pawn his wife. Mother refused the job.

The fierce farmhand spat outside our door. “Bah! You think yours is some precious trade? If you won’t do it, you think I can’t find someone myself?”

Cats had their paths and rats their tunnels. Even without Mother, he found a broker.

Within a month, the timid woman – weak in the same way Mother had once been – died in the household her husband had chosen, a family of three brothers.

I went to see the body without telling Mother. By the time they carried the woman home, everything below her waist had rotted.

The women who passed through our shop would never know what Mother had done for them.

She had been pawned into too many households. She had met human beings, and she had met demons. She knew better than anyone how to find clients who were at least honest, households where the women might survive the year without beatings or abuse.

We had no power to save them from being pawned. All we could do was wear out our own feet visiting more places, searching for a slightly better chance for them to live.

In five years of business, not one woman had died.

But this one had.

Mother shut herself in her room. Again and again, she looked at the costly travel permits she had bought for our escape, then at the paper offerings she had purchased for the dead woman.

In the end, I burned those terribly expensive permits.

Mother beat me for it.

Then she returned to the little shop and resumed her place behind the counter, her face utterly blank.