Chapter 1

When I was six, Father decided to cast out his wife.

He said my mother had violated four of the Seven Grounds for Divorce.

Disobedience to her parents-in-law, failure to bear a son, jealousy, and a quarrelsome tongue.

Grandmother sat in her huanghuali armchair and let Father rage. Once he had finished, she turned to Mother with false solicitude.

“Why not apologize to my son? Live properly with him from now on, bear him several sons, and take a few pretty concubines into the household for him. Then we can let the matter rest. What do you say?”

Mother’s eyes reddened, but she did not answer.

Grandmother tried again. “In this world, a woman who has been cast out is better off dead. Why must you be so stubborn?”

When Mother still said nothing, Father snapped, “Mother, stop trying to persuade her. Let her go and die if she wants!”

At those words, the last trace of reluctance vanished from Mother’s eyes.

“Men truly are all cast from the same mold. Whatever skin they wear, underneath they’re all alike—selfish, heartless, and faithless to the bone!”

Father flew into a rage as well. “You were nothing but an escort guard. If I hadn’t honored you by taking you in, how could you ever have entered a marquis’s residence and become my wife?”

“Zhou Ruowang! Do you think an escort guard who marries you is climbing onto a higher branch—or clipping her own wings?”

Escort guards roamed wherever the road took them. The day Mother chose to remain at Father’s side, she gave up having a home.

She crouched before me, removed the white-jade Buddha pendant from her neck, and gently placed it around mine.

It was a family treasure. The red cord threaded through the jade had already faded and frayed.

She stroked my hair and whispered that she was sorry.

The sunlight was blinding. I can no longer remember whether I cried that day. All I remember is the desolation of her retreating figure.

She left just like that, empty-handed.

Father soon took a new wife, a noblewoman from a great family who pleased my grandparents.

She was not good to me, but neither was she entirely bad.

If I counted carefully, I could always list a few offenses. Yet after a few nights’ sleep, I would think: people are simply like this. Why demand too much of them?

Only two people in the world had any duty to treat me well.

One had abandoned me and walked away. The other barely seemed to see me.

Hatred took energy too.

I did not have enough hatred for many people, so I sorted my grudges into categories and narrowed the list whenever I could.

For instance, whenever my stepmother mistreated me, I charged the debt to my own father.

I had seen the truth myself.

In the inner household she was the lofty mistress, yet before Father she bowed and scraped, docile and meek, never daring to overstep.

She was like a servant too.

Had my own father cherished me, she would never have dared humiliate me.

But what good did it do to balance the accounts so neatly?

For a frail daughter who lived at others’ mercy, the greatest revenge available was to lower her head and secretly roll her eyes when the father she seldom saw suddenly decided to play the parent and prattle on about nonsense.

It accomplished nothing and was not even satisfying.

I lowered my eyes to the Lessons for Women. The dense ranks of characters looked nothing like human speech.

I could not be bothered to read. Wind riffled the pages with a whisper. Then rain came, and after a while the sky went dark.

That was how the days passed.

For no reason I began to imagine the life that woman had lived after abandoning me.

Had she flourished like a fish returned to water, or had retribution found her?

At the thought of retribution, I hurriedly pulled out my ledger of grudges and crossed out every debt I had recorded against her.

Heavens, please. Wipe the slate clean.

Let her flourish like a fish in water.

I lay down, holding the white-jade pendant, closed my eyes, and began to think of her.

Children begin to remember things at three. The three years between three and six had been enough for me to remember her face.

Now, when I summoned it, I mostly remembered her smiling.

She must have loved me dearly.

That was why she could not bear to take me with her.

Grandmother often said the world beyond the courtyard walls was different: every bite of food and every sip of water had to be earned with one’s life.

To remain inside those walls as a pampered young lady who never had to lift a finger was an immense blessing.

“Don’t think about running outside,” she told me. “The world out there is different. Once you leave, they’ll skin you, tear out your bones, and make sure you die a terrible death.”

I admitted I was timid and weak. I could accept dying, but not dying a terrible death. What sort of death was that supposed to be?