Lisa See - Peony in Love

“We crept back downstairs. Your mother may have procured your father and your grandfather’s freedom, but that didn’t mean we were safe.

We edged along a passageway lined with severed heads until we reached the back of the compound, where we kept our camels and horses in cor-rals. We crawled under the animals’ bellies through more filth, blood, and death. We didn’t dare risk going back out on the streets, so we waited. Several hours later, we heard men coming. The concubines panicked. They slipped back under the bellies of the horses and camels. The rest of us decided to hide in a pile of straw.”

Grandmother’s voice swelled with remembered bitterness. “ ‘I know your foremost concern is for me and our eldest son,’ your grandfather said to me. ‘My mouth wants to go on eating for a few more years. It is good of you to choose death, protect your chastity, and save your husband and son.’ ”

She cleared her throat and spit. “ Go on eating for a few more years! I knew my duty and I would have done the right thing, but I hated being volunteered by that selfish man. He hid in the back of the pile of straw. Your father went in next to him. As the wife and mother, I had the honor of lying on top of them. I covered myself as best as I could. The soldiers came in.

They were not dumb. They’d been killing for four days already. They used their lances to stab into the pile. They stabbed and stabbed until I died, but I saved my husband and my son, I preserved my chastity, and I learned I was expendable.”

My grandmother loosened her gown and for the first time pulled her water sleeves up and over her hands. She was horribly scarred.

“Then I was flying across the sky,” she said, a slight smile on her face.

“The soldiers got bored and wandered away. Your grandfather and father stayed hidden for another full day and night with my cold body as their protection, while the concubines retreated to a corner and stared for hours at the silent, bloody pile of straw. Then, like that, the Manchus’ lesson ended. Your father and grandfather crawled out of the straw. The concubines washed and wrapped my body. Your father and grandfather per-

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formed all the proper rites for me to become an ancestor, and in time they took me back to Hangzhou for burial. I was honored as a martyr.” She sniffed. “This was a piece of Manchu propaganda that your grandfather was happy to receive.” She gazed around the Viewing Terrace appraisingly.

“I think I have found a better home.”

“But they capitalized on your sacrifice!” I said indignantly. “They let you be canonized by the Manchus so they wouldn’t have to acknowledge the truth.”

Grandmother looked at me as though I still didn’t understand. And I didn’t.

“They did what was proper,” she admitted. “Your grandfather did the right and sensible thing for the entire family, since women have no value.

You still don’t want to accept this.”

I was disappointed in my father yet again. He hadn’t told me anything resembling the truth about what happened during the Cataclysm. Even when I was dying and he’d come to me to beg forgiveness from his brothers, he hadn’t mentioned that his mother had saved his life. He didn’t ask for her absolution or send his thanks.

“But don’t think I’ve been happy with the result,” she added. “The imperial support of my female virtues brought many rewards to my descendants. The family is wealthier than ever and your father’s new post is very powerful, but our family still lacks something it wants desperately. That doesn’t mean I have to give it to them.”

“Sons?” I asked. I was angry on my grandmother’s behalf, but had she really denied our family this most important treasure?

“I don’t see it as revenge or retribution,” she confided. “It’s just that all those who had real value and honor in our family were women. For too long our daughters have been pushed aside. I thought that might change with you.”

I was appalled. How could my grandmother be so cruel and vindictive as to keep sons from our family? I forgot my manners and demanded,

“Where is Grandfather? Why hasn’t he given the family sons?”

“I told you. He’s in one of the hells. But even if he were by my side right now, he would have no power in this regard. The affairs of the inner chambers belong to women. The other ancestor women in our family—

even my mother-in-law—have acquiesced to my desires, because even here I’m honored for my sacrifice.”

Grandmother’s eyes were clear and at peace. But I was broken, torn apart by conflicting feelings. All this was truly beyond me. I had uncles ( 1 3 8 )

who languished in the earthly realm as hungry ghosts, a grandfather who suffered in a dark and painful hell, and a grandmother who was so far from benevolent that she was actually hurting our family by not giving us sons. But above all, I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother.

“You must have seen Mama after you died,” I prompted. “When your soul was roaming.”

“The last time I saw her was when she left us that terrible night with her hands full of jewels and silver. I didn’t see her again until I arrived here at the Viewing Terrace, five weeks after I died. By then the whole family was back in the Chen Family Villa and she’d changed. She’d become the woman you know as your mother, adhering to the old ways, so afraid she could no longer venture out, divorced from the world of words and books, and unable anymore to feel or express love. Since that time your mother has never spoken of the Cataclysm, so I’ve been unable to travel there with her in her mind.”

My thoughts went back to why Grandmother had come here today.

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I thought of my two boy uncles’ deaths.

Grandmother took my hand and looked at me with great kindness.

“Peony, my sweet girl, if you ask your question, I will help you find the answer.”

“What am I?”

“I think you know.”

My uncles had not found peace because they hadn’t been buried properly; I hadn’t been able to move beyond the Viewing Terrace because my ancestor tablet hadn’t been dotted. The three of us had been denied proper burial rites. For us, even access to the hells was denied. Now, as the words came out of my mouth, my last bit of blindness fell away.

“I am a hungry ghost.”

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Red Palanquin

i had nowh e re to g o. i was b e re f t and lone ly. i had no embroidery to work on and for years I hadn’t had brush, paper, and ink to write. I was hungry, but I had nothing to eat. I no longer wanted to fill the long empty hours by staring over the balustrade at the earthly realm below. It hurt too much to see my mother, because now all I could sense was her secret suffering; it hurt to see my father, knowing I’d never been as precious to him as I’d believed. And when Ren entered my mind, my heart constricted in pain. I was alone as no human or spirit should be, unloved and unconnected. For weeks, I cried, sighed, screamed, and moaned. The monsoon was particularly bad that season in my hometown.

Slowly, tentatively, I began to feel better. I folded my arms on the balustrade, leaned over the edge, and looked out. I shielded my eyes from my parents’ home and instead watched the laborers in my father’s mulberry fields. I looked at the girls spinning silk thread. I peeked in on the headman’s family in Gudang. I liked Madame Qian; she was erudite and refined. In other times, she wouldn’t have been married to a farmer, but in the after-math of the Cataclysm she was lucky to have a husband and a home. The five daughters were disappointment upon disappointment. She couldn’t even teach them to read since their futures were tied to work in silk production. She had little time to call her own, but late at night she might light a candle and read from the Book of Songs, the one thing she’d saved from her former life. She had many desires and no way to attain them.