Chapter 11
Xiaocui’s worry wasn’t unfounded.
Another two or three years passed, and Mother’s body gradually began to fail her.
After all, she was well into her forties. Seventeen years of widowhood, raising a son alone, had brought plenty of hardship.
With all her daily “labors” these past few years, even the richest field could be plowed thin.
Thin though she grew, her spirits were quite good at first.
Much of the old spite and bitterness had gone from her face.
In their place was an open, satisfied ease.
Sometimes she’d take my hand and reflect,
“For those seventeen years, I lived for other people. Only now am I living for myself.”
Then, sadly, a sudden chill struck her.
First a cough, then fever, then an illness that wouldn’t yield.
The physician said her kidney yin was depleted, her qi and blood exhausted. He feared… the lamp had burned through its oil.
Xie Zeyuan hurried home from his travels and knelt by her bed, sobbing without end.
She lay on the couch, her face waxen yellow, her eyes sunken.
When I carried in her medicine, she was stroking his head and listening to him speak.
At my footsteps, she gave me a small nod.
In a weak voice, she said,
“My boy, go outside. Let your wife attend me.”
“We two have a few private things to say.”
Hesitantly, Xie Zeyuan closed the door behind him.
She looked at me, suddenly smiled, and motioned me closer.
I sat beside the bed and set the medicine bowl on the little table.
“You’ve had a great deal of trouble these past years.”
She raised her hand, and I laid mine in her palm. Her voice was faint.
“Putting men in my path, covering for me all the while. Did you really think I’d gone senile?”
I gave a sheepish smile.
“I was only following your wishes, Mother.”
“Following my wishes?” She chuckled softly.
“Well. I did like all three of them.”
A little light came into her eyes.
“Who knew being alive could feel so wonderful?”
“A lifetime of widowhood, everyone calling me a chaste and virtuous woman, wanting to build an archway in my honor. But only in these past few years did I feel I was a person.”
Those few extra words brought on a long fit of coughing.
I said nothing, only rubbed her back.
“I haven’t much time.” She looked at me, lifting her chin toward two boxes by the bed.
“Those are my private savings, everything I’ve put away all my life. They’re yours.”
I opened one at random. Thick stacks of banknotes, deeds to land and shops, and several sets of pure-gold hair ornaments.
Ten thousand taels at least!
“This is far too generous, Mother.”
“Take it!” She glared at me, a little of her old sharpness returning.
“Don’t give me that false politeness. Do you think I don’t know what you’re like?”
Her voice grew fainter.
“If my boy’s heart starts wandering one day, you’ll have a way out of your own…”
Xie Zeyuan wept as if his heart were breaking, kneeling by the bed and crying “Mother” again and again.
He wanted to petition for a chastity archway in her honor.
I wouldn’t let him.
“Mother doesn’t need that.”
He stared, unable to understand.
But it didn’t matter.
Men found it hard to understand women in the first place.
So we could only understand ourselves.
“Xiaocui, from now on, what I say goes in this house.”
As for Xie Zeyuan, if he wanted a concubine, it wasn’t entirely out of the question.
After all, Hongxiu was growing more and more practiced at doing business with the male courtesan house.
Letting him taste what his mother had tasted—couldn’t that count as carrying on a family tradition?