chapter 5
Madam Wu was surprised when Uncle Ying told her that the jade vessel in which I had raised the orchid had paid for their freedom.
Nanny Zhang glanced at me, standing behind Xiaoming with Mian in my arms and my head lowered.
“It was the winter-blooming orchid your cousin sent from Anhui,” she explained. “This girl tended it. The day it flowered, I took her to kowtow before you. You were pleased and said the plant must share some affinity with her, so you gave it to her.”
Madam Wu smiled gently. “Yes, I remember now.”
She beckoned me closer.
“Thank you, truly. I wondered why all the sutras I copied and all the prayers I offered had earned me no protection from the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. It seems they sent my lucky star to me long ago.”
Had the gods and Buddhas protected her?
Madam Wu was a bodhisattva herself.
From a few fragments of our conversation, the worldly Uncle Ying had already guessed that she had never truly given me the orchid. Yet when he heard her praise my goodness and gratitude, even he seemed unable to endure it.
“That girl has a wicked heart,” he snorted. “She meant to buy your son and take him home as a live-in husband.”
He gave me a sidelong look, sly and triumphant, as though he had finally avenged some great wrong.
Panic struck me. My arms stiffened around Mian, and heat rushed into my face. I wondered whether there was room to hide under the wonton stall’s battered old table.
Mian must have felt my arms tighten. She poked my cheek with one soft finger and giggled.
“Sister Yu, why is your face so red? It looks like the monkeys’ bottoms at the Xizhimen acrobatic troupe.”
I had no answer, but Xiaoming spoke.
“Mother, I am no longer the Wu family’s eldest young master, and the path of the examinations is closed to me. I was never much of a scholar to begin with.” He looked at me. “But I understand that kindness must be repaid. Dongyu saved my sister and me, and she will face many burdens after taking us home. Our return to the capital may be years away. If she truly needs me, I am willing to marry into her family and care for her relatives with her. One young woman should not have to carry everything alone.”
He spoke each word softly and firmly. Such a shocking proposal sounded perfectly ordinary from his lips.
The early spring chill must have given me a fever. Why else would my face feel hotter and hotter, as though smoke were rising from my head?
I could see nothing but the tips of my shoes, yet I felt Madam Wu’s gaze travel over me.
“Xiaoyu,” she said, laughter in her voice, “as long as you do not dislike him, I will not interfere. Men marrying into their wives’ families is something of a tradition in his maternal clan.”
I neither heard nor understood her properly. My thoughts had melted into paste.
Before Madam Wu or Nanny Zhang could react, I stammered, “I-it’s late. We should hurry back and pack. There’s still so much to buy.”
I fled with Mian in my arms without looking back, as though running fast enough might leave their laughter behind.
The weather warmed. Willow buds emerged, and the sparse plum blossoms burst suddenly into full bloom. By then, we had already been traveling north for more than half a month.
Before leaving the capital, we visited Master Wu twice. Seeing his wife and children safe seemed to breathe hope back into his wasted body. When he learned they meant to accompany him, sorrow and guilt filled his face. He embraced Madam Wu with wet eyes, and everyone wept again.
Exiles had to walk all the way to Ningguta. The journey would be brutal, so we prepared clothes and provisions for him.
I bought cloth and cotton, washed and cut the fabric, and let Nanny Zhang take charge of the sewing. With her help, the clothes were finished quickly and beautifully. As I stroked them, I marveled that the same hands that tended flowers could be so skilled at everything else.
The new clothes were padded. Madam Wu made two pairs of shoes and prepared dried meat. When the prisoners’ convoy set out, we delivered it all.
From the silver I had left, I weighed out one hundred taels for Madam Wu to use in bribing the guards, in hopes that Master Wu’s journey might be easier. From the few scraps remaining, I chose the largest and asked Uncle Ying to arrange a bigger carriage for us.
The wind and rain of the road rubbed away the lines between master and servant. Crammed into one carriage behind Uncle Ying’s caravan, we began to resemble a true family.
The only thing that surprised me was Xiaoming’s frailty.
At first, he drove. It took him several days to learn, and after half a day on the road, the sun burned him. That evening, one gust of cold wind left him ill.
Unable to watch any longer, I dragged him into the carriage and took the reins. I had driven an ox cart in the countryside. With half a day’s instruction from Uncle Ying’s coachman, I mastered the carriage too.
The scenery was beautiful. Mian watched the changing landscape from Madam Wu’s arms and recited:
“Birch-bark roofs and fish-skin clothes, all willow-made;
Dragon scales stir, the foaming waves smell of the sea;
The soaring bird must follow the eastern gyrfalcon.”
By summer, the season they had feared most, we had traveled deep enough north to escape the worst heat.
Xiaoming had said he was no scholar. After watching him on the road, I suspected he was no laborer either.
Uncle Ying was a traveling merchant who journeyed north and south every year, buying and reselling goods along the way. He purchased a great deal in Huanglong Prefecture. Mian followed him about eating sweet rice cakes, and though he was a ruthless trader, he was generous to her.
No wonder. She was lovely as ice and snow, innocent and kind. The jolting road never made her complain, and she kept everyone cheerful.
“Uncle Ying. Uncle Ying is so wise. Thank you, Uncle Ying. What would we do without Uncle Ying?”
She smiled and spoke as sweetly to everyone. Even an iceberg would have melted before her.
I was examining pelts with Mian when Xiaoming approached. Seeing everyone busy, he volunteered to help.
Uncle Ying studied the boy, who had grown even thinner after falling ill three times in two months, and smiled wickedly.
“Go move the goods with Old Wang and the others.”
The laborers cried “Heave-ho!” and slung burlap sacks onto their shoulders. Xiaoming copied them, grasping both corners of a sack and trying to haul it up. His posture held tremendous determination.
“Heave-ho!”
The sack did not move.
The returning workers burst into laughter.
He clenched his teeth, drew a deep breath, and tried again.
The sack remained exactly where it was. The laughter grew louder.
Red with embarrassment, Xiaoming scratched his head, smiled awkwardly at the crowd, and prepared for a third attempt.
I walked over, placed Mian’s hand in his, bent to the sack, and swung it onto my shoulder with one movement. Supporting it with my left hand and carrying our new pelts in my right, I motioned for the siblings to follow.
I ignored the gasps behind me.
All I could think was that if I truly took such a man home as my husband, Grandmother would have one more person to curse.
As the weather grew colder, towns became fewer, travelers scarcer. Even Mian, who usually chatted and laughed all day, fell quiet.
Madam Wu and Nanny Zhang constantly watched the view outside. They were not admiring it. They looked with grave attention, as though only by seeing this desolation could they understand the hardship ahead.
Orange and green fields gave way to black mountains and dark water. When familiar marshes, old elms, and pine forests appeared, the unease in my heart grew sharper.