The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(13)
As Afong began to sing “Mut Lei Faa,” a song about the jasmine flower, the audience gasped as the scenery behind her started to move. The canvas, which was really many painted canvases sewn together, traveled by means of a clever mechanical cranking system, creating the illusion of motion as it scrolled from right to left. Afong sang and the images framed behind her gave way to cascading waterfalls in painted relief, to sharp mountains in winter, then villages with paddies of rice, and onward to a colorful facsimile of Canton harbor at sunset, with junks and fishing boats bobbing on the waves. When the harbor gave way to a scene of a flower garden, jasmine petals began to gently fall from the loft, like snowflakes, upon the stage and the rapt audience as well—red and pink, white and yellow—matching the colors of her embroidered silk tunic and pantalets.
The crowd cheered wildly as Afong sang the last bars in English, “Let me pick you with tender care, sweetness for all to share, jasmine fair, oh jasmine fair.” She smiled but knew this moment of happiness was as fleeting and artificial as the painted scenery behind her. She knew later, as always, she would spend the night alone, as she had for two long years, seven hundred and thirty days, ever since a dead man’s family gave her to the men from New York who brought her to this country.
The curtains fell as the song ended, but the orchestra continued playing. Afong remained still, listening to applause as stagehands removed her headdress and handed her an ornate cane with an inlaid, mother-of-pearl handle. She did not need the cane to walk, but Mr. Hannington thought it looked more dramatic. When the curtains opened again, Afong walked from stage right to stage left then back again to center, careful not to slip on drifts of flower petals as the audience stood and raised their opera glasses to get a better look at her feet. She understood the morbid fascination. Whenever she met a woman whose whalebone corset had been cinched so tight the poor lady could hardly breathe, she felt the same way, wondering how they ate in such condition.
“For more than one thousand years, girls of the Celestial Kingdom have undergone this strange and ungodly ritual,” Mr. Hannington bellowed. His tailcoat smelled of stale sweat, tobacco, and rye as he put one hand on her shoulder, squeezing while he pointed at her shoes with the other. “Binding their feet in strips of cotton, tinged with herbs and soaked in animal blood, which constricts like a nest of serpents as it dries, a bondage which crushes their bones into the shape of a water flower as they lie helpless in their beds. All because a loathsome empress with a clubfoot grew tired of being different, being looked down upon by her own subjects, and thus she dictated that all women of that godless empire be crippled just so. I ask you decent people, what foul human could be so cruel to such a lovely creature?”
Afong stepped to the edge of the stage so theatergoers could get a closer look. She wondered if they would still think she was lovely if they saw her crying at night.
What would my mother think?
Afong displayed her bound feet and the audience chattered, in delight or disgust, awe or bewilderment; in the cacophony of voices it was hard to tell. Though a woman cried out, “God save that poor child,” as a man in the back yelled, “Heathens, all of ’em!”
Even though she learned a fair amount of English during her travels in America, it took a while for Afong to understand that Mr. Hannington was what some considered a member of the shoddyocracy, a fabulist, prone to saying whatever would hold the audience spellbound. She had tried to explain that many years ago, a dancer named Precious Thing performed on the tip of her toes, like ballerinas in America. A noble prince, Li Yu, was so smitten with her performance that other women adopted the fashion. But her manager concocted his own fable.
“Don’t get too high for your nut, girl,” he had said as he chewed on a cigar while counting the night’s receipts. “Your history is whatever I tell them. In America, a lie becomes the truth with sufficient repetition. I merely tell the crowd what they need to hear to be satisfied.” He smiled. “Because every crowd has a silver lining.”
To Afong, Mr. Hannington spoke in riddles and parables, like Confucius, if the great philosopher were drunk, greedy, and indolent.
“But the Chinese Lady does have her unique skills and refinements,” her manager said to the audience, removing his top hat. “As you will soon see.”
It was in this moment that Afong caught a glimpse that took her breath away, a young Chinese man waiting in the wings. She wanted to run to him, talk to him, she could not stop staring. She heard that Mrs. Hannington had found a new interpreter, but Afong expected a bald old scholar with an abacus, a round belly, and gray hairs growing from his ears. Instead this fellow, perhaps in his late twenties, was remarkably handsome, though she was unsure if her heart was racing because of his looks or simply because she had not seen another Chinese person in months and those had been bald old men, merchants and importers. This young man, however, did not have a queue and wore a Western-style suit. He was buttoning his golden waistcoat, when he looked up and caught Afong’s eye. He smiled and she looked away as she turned her attention back to tonight’s patrons.
“But first I need two volunteers, hale and hearty, strapping gents with the most copious of appetites,” Mr. Hannington said as he motioned to various men, encouraging them to join him onstage. “This will be dinner theater for two of you.”
A pair of burly men, one in a fine wool suit, though its threadbare condition spoke of its age, and the other in workman’s dungarees, stepped over the balustrade and alighted on the stage. Afong stepped back as the Chinese man brought forth a lacquered tray with three bowls of rice and three sets of ivory chopsticks.