Anchee Min: Pearl of China

Most of the people thought Absalom a harmless fool. Children loved to follow him around. His feet were the main attraction, because they were huge. When Absalom asked the local shoemaker for a pair of Chinese shoes, it became news. People visited the shop just to see how much material it would take and if the shoemaker would double the charge.

When asked his reason for coming to China, Absalom replied that he was here to save our souls.

People laughed. “What is a soul?”

Absalom let us know that the world was coming to an end, and that we would all die if we failed to follow God.

“What evidence do you have?” Papa asked.

“That is what the Bible is for.” Absalom winked an eye and smiled. “The Lord explains the one and only truth.”

Papa said that he was rather disappointed by Absalom’s description of the Western hell. Chinese hell was much more terrifying. Papa loved to challenge Absalom in teahouses and bars. He reveled in the gathering crowd and his growing popularity. Behind Absalom’s back, Papa admitted that he followed Absalom around for the food, especially the cookies baked by Absalom’s wife, Carie.

Compared to NaiNai, Carie was a big woman. She had light brown eyes and a wrinkled, soft, white round face. She wore a funny-shaped hat, which she called a “bonnet.” Stuffed inside this hat was her brown curly hair. Carie wore the same dark dress all year long. It was the color of seaweed. Her skirt was so long that it swept the ground.

Carie had been warning her husband about Papa. She didn’t trust Papa. But Absalom continued to treat Papa like a good friend, although Papa refused to attend his Sunday church on a regular basis.

Like a true artist, Papa fooled Absalom by pretending that he was interested. He was giving me an opportunity to steal. The day after I took the church’s doormat, I heard Carie cry, “There is no need for housekeeping because everything is gone!”

When Absalom held up his Bible-story drawings, I asked about the beard-men who had golden rings on their heads. “Why are they walking in the desert with sheets draped around them?”

Absalom didn’t know that I only asked questions to distract him, so I could carry on with my stealing.

It was hard for Absalom to concentrate. He was interrupted by people’s cries. “When can we have food, Master Absalom? Would you ask God to bring food for us now?”

As Absalom went on with his speech, children pulled his arms and pushed him around. “Who is Virgin? Who is Mary?”

“Who is Madonna?” I asked loudly, attaching myself to Absalom like a leech. My hands were inside his pockets.

By the time Absalom blessed me with a “Jesus loves you,” I had his wallet.

Slipping the wallet into my pocket, I hurried down a side street and made my way out of town. I sensed that I was being followed and cut a jagged path. Still I felt the pair of blue eyes at my back. They belonged to a cream-skinned white girl wearing a black knitted cap. She was a little younger than me. She always sat in the corner of the church room with a black leather-bound book in her hands. Her eyes seemed to say, “I saw you.”

By now I knew who she was. She was the daughter of Absalom and Carie. Her family servant had called her Pearl. She spoke to the servant in the Chin-kiang dialect. Her mother and father never seemed to need her. She was always by herself and was always reading.

To get rid of her, I ran as fast as I could toward the hills. I passed the wheat and cotton fields. After a couple of miles, I stopped. I looked around and was glad that she was no longer in sight. I took a deep breath and sat down. I was excited about my harvest.

As I began to open the wallet, I heard a noise.

Someone was approaching.

I froze and held my breath.

Slowly, I turned my head.

Behind me, in the bushes, was that pair of blue eyes.

“You stole my father’s wallet!” Pearl yelled.

“No, I didn’t.” I imagined the food the money in the wallet could buy.

“Yes, you did.”

“Prove it!”

“It’s in your pocket.” She put down her book and tried to reach into my pocket.

I knocked her aside with an elbow.

She fell.

I held tight to the wallet.

She rose. Anger made her pink lips quiver.

We stood face-to-face. I could see sweat beaded on her forehead. Her skin was white, as if bleached. Her nose had a pointed tip. Like her father’s fake queue, her black knitted cap hid her blonde curly hair. She wore a Chinese tunic embroidered with indigo flowers.

“Last chance to give the wallet, or you’ll get hurt,” she threatened.

I worked up a mouthful of saliva and spit.

While her hands went up to protect her face, I ran.

She followed me through the fields and up and down a hill. By the time she caught me, I had already hidden the wallet. I raised both of my arms and said, “Come and search me.”

She came and didn’t find the wallet.

I smiled.

She gasped, taking off her knitted cap. Golden curls fell across her face.

From then on she followed me everywhere. I was unable to steal. I spent day and night thinking about how to get rid of her. I learned that she had one living sibling, a younger sister, Grace. The Chinese servant who took care of the girls, Wang Ah-ma, had been with the family for a long time.

“ Pearl and Grace want so much to look like the Chinese girls,” Wang Ah-ma chatted to her knitting friends. They sat outside the house under the sun. Wang Ah-ma was making new caps for Pearl and Grace. The caps would cover their blonde hair so that they could look like Chinese girls. Wang Ah-ma said that she had to knit fast because the girls were wearing the old ones out. “Poor Pearl, every day she begs me to find a way to help her grow black hair.”

The women laughed. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her to eat black sesame seeds, and she went crazy eating them. Her mother thought that she was eating ants.”

Before the spring planting season, farmers came to town to purchase their supplies for the year. While men bought manure and had tools fixed and sharpened, women inspected the livestock. Going in and out of food stalls and supply shops, I hunted for stealing opportunities. It had been weeks since I’d had a full meal.

Papa had pawned nearly every piece of furniture we owned. The table and benches and my own bed were all gone. I now slept on a straw mat on the packed-earth floor. Centipedes crawled over my face in the middle of the night. NaiNai suffered from an infection that wouldn’t heal. She could barely move from the one bed we still owned. Papa spent more time with Absalom, trying to get hired.

“Absalom needs my help,” Papa said every day. “Absalom doesn’t know how to tell stories. He puts people to sleep. I ought to be the one to tell his Bible stories. I could turn Absalom’s business around.”

But Absalom was only interested in saving Papa’s soul.

One night I heard Papa whisper to NaiNai, “The dowry would be handsome.” It took me a while to figure out what he meant. One of his friends had made an offer to purchase me as his concubine.

“You are not selling Willow!” NaiNai hammered her chest with her fist. “She is just a child.”

“It takes money to make money,” Papa argued. “Besides, you need to buy medicine. The doctor said that you are getting worse…”

“As long as I am breathing, don’t even think about it!” NaiNai broke down.

What if NaiNai died? I became scared. For the first time I looked forward to Sunday, when I could attend the church, where Absalom would talk about heaven and Carie would serve meals. Papa and NaiNai wanted to join me, but they were embarrassed to show their despair in front of foreigners.