The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(12)

“You will marry Dei Yu.” Her ah-ma closed her eyes, as though seeing Afong’s reaction was too much to bear. “Your father has already spent your bride price. You will be delivered and married as planned. Then you will enter the Yu home as a widow.”

Afong opened her mouth but could not speak.

“Two days from now you will wear white instead of red,” her ah-ma informed her. “I will use the time we have left to teach you how to mourn properly.”

Her ah-ma spoke, but they both knew she did not need a lesson in grief.

She had been born a woman.



* * *



Afong sat in the red sedan chair that would carry her to the threshold of her new home and longed for her three older sisters. Each of them had their fates decided by the matchmaker, each left to become a member of someone else’s household. They never left the homes of their new families, they were never seen again in public, and even if their parents died and they were allowed to attend their funerals, they would do so as strangers, members of another family, paying their respects.

When servants from the Yu household lifted her up, Afong looked down at her ah-ma through the stringed veil of the beaded headpiece that her mother had made for her. Her ah-ma did not cry. She did not say a word, but her eyes betrayed her. When Afong looked down at her father he merely looked away. In her fourteen years of this life, he had rarely spoken to her or to any of her sisters, except to yell, or complain that “daughters are as useful as rocks in soup.” Afong knew that to him she was a living reminder of his failure to have a son. Living echoes of the laughter she heard from villagers, how they had called him sa hok behind his back. She could not comprehend why they called him a sand crane or why that was humorous, until Yao Han explained that male cranes sit on the female’s nest. Then she understood.

When the Yu servants carried her away, there were no gongs or drums or firecrackers to mark the occasion, to scare away evil spirits. All Afong heard was the memory of her father yelling at her ah-ma, that she failed him, that her bride price had been used to obtain a second wife, one who might bear him a son. Her father was the eldest, but his younger brother had two heirs and would take over the family business.

Instead of a little boy running ahead of the procession to symbolize the son Afong would soon be expected to give her husband, there was only an older woman in white.

She looked back and said, “I am second wife. First wife is in mourning. You will do everything I say. You will speak only when spoken to. If you are obedient and show proper respect, eventually we might forget how you brought death into our household.”

Afong noticed the people on the street, men and women, farmers and officials, merchants and beggars alike, all had stopped what they were doing to silently watch them pass. That is when she noticed Yao Han, sitting on the thick branch of a willow, a tree that symbolized eternal life, but also eternal grief. He did not wave and she did not acknowledge his presence. Though her heart raced and she wanted to jump down from her chair. She wanted to run to him, but she could not. She did not know how. She could only shuffle on the shriveled flowers her feet had become.

As Afong looked over her shoulder, back toward her old home, there were no musicians following, no men and women of the Yu clan carrying signs and banners of boastful celebration. All she saw was her ah-ma, in the distance, on her knees, her mouth open, in so much pain that sound could not escape.



* * *



When Afong arrived at the gates of the Yu home, white banners of mourning hung from the outer walls and the trees. The entire household staff stood waiting on either side of the circular entrance. There was fabric stretched across the ground. She was no one of consequence, but even the Yu could not allow her feet to touch dirt upon entry.

Servants helped her from the sedan chair as second wife watched. They led Afong to a courtyard where an iron stove sat on the stone walkway. She could feel the heat, smell the burning wood. She stood in front of it, waiting, her dress blowing in the wind.

“A member of the Yu family will help you step over the flame, to cleanse you of bad luck before you enter their home,” her ah-ma had told her.

Afong felt the woman’s hand squeezing the back of her neck, long slender fingers, the legs of a spider. “Stop shaking,” second wife snapped as a servant stoked the coals. With her other hand, she gripped Afong’s elbow. “Grand Mother did not want you here. When tradition dictated that you join our family as a widow, she said you should be disfigured, burned, robbed of your beauty so you cannot seduce Dei Yu’s brothers and cousins. She said you must remain virtuous so Dei Yu can properly deflower you someday in the spirit world.”

She pushed and Afong stumbled forward, tripping over the stove, flame scorching the fringe of her dress, a river of smoke flowing up into the charcoal sky. For a moment, the warmth was Yao Han, her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat quicken as he read poems that he had written for her. Then his words turned to ash and floated away.

“I changed Grand Mother’s mind. I convinced her to send you far away, to America,” second wife whispered in Afong’s ear as she tried to stand. “I told her Dei Yu’s spirit would rather have a beautiful whore than an ugly virgin.” She caressed Afong’s cheek. “Only time will tell what you become.”



* * *



Afong found her mark upon the apron of the Baltimore stage as the chair was removed and unseen ropes were pulled. Great canopies of dyed silk draped down, flowing, spilling on either side, creating a giant proscenium of fabric. Then the black curtain behind the silk rose into the rafters, revealing a colorful, panoramic painting of the Chinese countryside, complete with pagodas and cranes in flight.