The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(11)

3 Afong




(1836)

Afong waited backstage listening to the audience while her eyes adjusted to the darkness. As the first Chinese woman to set foot on American soil, she had grown accustomed to being stared at by people on the street and fawned over during one of the many intimate salons hosted by her new manager, Henry Hannington. But nothing could prepare her for three thousand people packed into the plush seating of the Baltimore Athenaeum for fifty cents apiece to see her in person and marvel at her tiny, bound feet.

Set foot is a strange phrase, Afong thought, as Mr. Hannington introduced her to the crowd and the red velvet curtains were drawn while a twelve-piece orchestra played in earnest. Afong felt the warmth of the gaslighting and could not help but stare blindly at the shapes of the audience beneath an enormous crystal chandelier that looked like an upside-down carousel made of ice and fire.

She straightened her back as the audience clapped, her tiny frame enveloped by the rosewood chair that had been made by craftsmen in Hoiping. The chair—which was more of a throne—sat atop a gilded riser, and her feet, in lotus shoes, rested on a matching footrest. The New York press had described her as cold and taciturn, “an antipode of the modern American woman,” but her stoic appearance and lack of movement were beguiling to the gathering of Baltimoreans. In truth, she guarded her motions lest the weighted headpiece made of silver, inlaid with pearls and kingfisher feathers, topple from her head. That mishap happened only once, in Philadelphia, but she could still hear the clang of the metal, the laughter of the crowd, and the sound of a horsewhip cutting through the air. “If you ever embarrass me that way again,” Mr. Hannington had said through clenched teeth, as he held the whip to her face.

When the orchestra stopped playing, Afong rose to her feet and carefully descended the steps. She shuffled downstage, balancing on the four-inch soles of the silken footwear she had made with her ah-ma on her fourteenth birthday.

Afong had been saving the bright red shoes, embroidered with flowers and songbirds in golden thread, to wear on her wedding day, but when she learned who her husband would be, whose household she would join, she hid them away.



* * *



For most of her childhood Afong thought that she must have been a horrible man in her previous life to have been reborn a woman. She must have been cruel, to be reborn powerless. She must have been greedy to come back as property. She must have been shiftless, to have had her feet bound in this life. She must have been vehement to have been forced to marry an old man whom she had never met, never seen, unable to forget the young man she cared for, dreamt about.

“Afong,” her ah-ma called to her.

Afong walked carefully in her lotus shoes into her mother’s room.

“I have news about your wedding.” Her ah-ma pressed her lips together as though she did not want the words to escape, like horses that she could not rein in.

It was in these moments that Afong had learned to not show her distaste for her arranged marriage. To not wear her doubts about the old matchmaker who wore court necklaces strung with fat pearls, fingers of jade and gilt silver, gifts that everyone knew had been encouragements for her to favor the marital interests of the Yu family.

When Afong was younger she had heard stories of how the Yu were so powerful they could realign the stars. But in reality, the stars did not move for them. Celestial beings did not whisper in the matchmaker’s ears. For if they did, they would have chastised her for taking bribes and upbraided her for placing Afong and her sisters in Yu homes as servants and concubines.

“Dei Yu is gone,” her ah-ma said.

“Gone?”

“He was killed in a mudslide. They found his body two days ago.”

Afong felt something inside that had not been there before: hope. But she held her breath. She remembered the same feeling when her yin yin had died two years earlier. During her vigil, Afong sat with her grandmother’s body, and when she touched her arm her grandmother’s eyes opened. Afong ran to the window and shouted for her ah-ma, who came running, but by the time she arrived the old woman’s eyes had closed halfway and she continued to stare at the spot where Afong had been. That is when she learned that the dead never really leave.

Now as she listened, she pictured a funeral procession for Dei Yu. His wives wailing and rending their clothing, a tearful competition to see who could profess the most grief and curry favor with their mother-in-law. Yet she still feared him, still saw him reaching for her, snatching her wrist, grinding his yellow teeth.

Her ah-ma looked pale. “The wedding will proceed in two days, as planned.”

Afong imagined her aa po’s eyes, staring up at her, her lips moving, silently telling her to run. “But who will I marry?” Afong’s voice trembled and her thoughts found their way into the arms of Yao Han, whom she had hoped to wed since she was eight, even though he was poor and his father had gambled away his meager inheritance. Yao Han had excelled in school and was chosen for the wui si, a version of the Imperial Exam taken by young, gifted students. It was a rare honor, despite his father who was now a bondservant in her family’s orchard. Yao Han was gentle and wrote tales about their spirits meeting on the dot of a unicorn’s horn. How if their hearts were gold they should fear no fire. He always said, “We have many lives, Afong, but this life begins when we realize we only have one.”