Chapter 7
I curtsied and addressed her as Madam. Without waiting for her to reply, I sat in a chair beside the table.
A pot of orchids stood on it, still in bud.
Who knew how much that one pot had cost?
“I’ve come because I have something to say. Since I’m running the household, we ought to set some rules for our daily expenses. There are a number of us. One person can’t have everything spent on her while everyone else goes hungry.”
I spoke at a leisurely pace.
“What do you mean by that?” She had not spoken, but Matron Wei was already agitated. At her age, why had she still not learned to keep her composure?
“I call you Matron out of respect for your years. For now, I’m still the eldest young lady of the Wen family. Please address me as such in future. ‘Young lady’ will do as well.”
“My meaning is quite simple. From now on, anything beyond the regular allowance must come out of your own purse.”
“Madam knows better than I do how much my father earns each month.”
“He loves you and wants to indulge you. That’s his affair. But besides you, he has three children to support. We cannot be left hungry so you can have a dress or a hairpin.”
I saw her eyes moving behind her lowered lids. After a little while, she slowly sat up. Matron Wei slipped a cushion behind her. She smoothed her hair, holding her fingers in a dainty curve as she did so. The sight sent a shudder through me.
“Ill-bred little creature. Do you know who I am? Who are you to dictate to me?” Her words were cutting, though her voice remained soft.
“Since you know who you are, whom are you putting on this performance for all day? You needn’t concern yourself with how well I was brought up.”
“You’ve married into the Wen family. We don’t own a mine, and my father isn’t some fabulously rich man who can fling silver about. If you have money of your own, spend it. If you don’t, do without. And if you truly can’t bear that, take charge of the household yourself.”
“Then how you live and what you spend will be your own affair.”
I left, holding back my anger. Looking up at the gray sky, I suddenly felt that perhaps I had been more fortunate than Song Jin.
When Mother was alive, she had given me the best of everything she could.
My summer dresses, my padded winter shoes: she had sewn every one by hand.
My birth had harmed her health, and she had never conceived again. But she had never resented it. She always wore a smile and made a good life for us.
As for Song Jin’s mother, I wondered whether she had ever even reminded her son to put on warmer clothes in winter.
If she was that sort of person, so infuriating one could scarcely bear the sight of her, why have a child at all?
I wanted to know what Song Jin’s father had been like, but he never mentioned him.
Only once, when I was fetching clothes for him, a bundle in his cupboard came undone and revealed the spirit tablet inside. In that little bundle, he had carried his father with him.
He had brought his father’s memorial tablet on his back when he followed his mother into another man’s house, yet could not openly set it out to make regular offerings.
How bitter that must have been.
There was a reason he wore that cold expression every day.
Yet he never wallowed in his misery or voiced a complaint. He had not even come of age. He was still a young man. To manage that much was already no small thing.