Lisa See - Peony in Love

Was Grandmother hearing this? She’d kept our family from having sons to punish my father and grandfather. Did she now see she was wrong?

“How can we blame the men when we made our own choices, your grandmother and I?” Mama asked, as if following my thoughts. “Your father saved me from a terrible fate that would have ended in suicide.”

“But Baba went to work for the Manchus. How could he do that? Did he forget what happened to you and Grandmother?”

“How could he forget?” Mama asked, and smiled at me patiently. “He could never forget. He shaved his forehead, braided his hair, and put on Manchu clothes. This was nothing but a disguise, a costume. He’d proved to me who he was: a man who was loyal to his family above all else.”

“But he went to the capital after I died. He left you all alone. He—” I must have been veering too close to the subject of my ancestor tablet, because I was unable to continue.

“That plan had long been in place.” Mama scrolled back in time to be-

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fore my death. “You were supposed to marry out. He loved you so much.

He couldn’t bear to lose you, so he’d decided to take the appointment in the capital. After your death, his desire to be away from memories of you was even greater.”

For too long I’d believed he was not a man of integrity. I’d been wrong, but then I’d been wrong about so many things.

Mama sighed, and again she abruptly changed the subject. “I just don’t know what will happen to our family if Bao doesn’t have a son soon.”

“Grandmother won’t allow it.”

Mama nodded. “I loved your grandmother, but she could be vindictive. However, in this instance, she’s wrong. She died in Yangzhou and didn’t see what happened to me, and she wasn’t here on earth when you were alive. Your baba loved you. You were a jewel in his hand, but he needed a son to care for the ancestors. What does your grandmother think will happen to her and all the other Chen family ancestors if we don’t have sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons to perform the rites? Only sons can do this. She knows that.”

“Baba adopted that man, that Bao,” I said, doing little to cover the disappointment I still felt that my father had so easily replaced me in his affec-tions.

“It took him a while to learn our ways, but Bao’s been good to us. Look at how he cares for me now. I’m dressed for whatever eternity holds. I’ve been fed. And I was given plenty of spirit money for my journey—”

“He found my poems,” I interrupted. “He went to Ren to sell them.”

“You sound like a jealous sister,” Mama said. “Don’t feel that way.” She touched my cheek. It had been a long time since I’d received a physical show of affection. “I found your poems by accident when I was reorganizing your father’s bookshelves. When I read them, I asked Bao to take them to your husband. I told Bao to make sure Ren paid for them. I wanted to remind him of your worth.”

She put an arm around me.

“The Manchus came to our region because as the richest area in the country we had much that was vulnerable to destruction,” she said. “They knew we would make the best example, but that we also had the best resources for recovery. In many ways they were right, but how could we recover what had been lost in our families? I went home and shut the door.

Now, when I look at you, I know that as much as a mother tries there’s no way to protect a daughter. I kept you locked inside from birth, but that ( 2 1 9 )

didn’t keep you from dying too soon. And now look: You’ve been on pleasure boats, you’ve traveled—”

“And I’ve caused harm,” I confessed. After everything she’d told me, didn’t I owe her the truth about what I’d done to Tan Ze? “My sister-wife died because of me.”

“I heard it differently,” Mama said. “Ze’s mother blamed her daughter for not performing her wifely duties. She was the kind who made her husband fetch water, isn’t that true?”

When I nodded, she went on.

“You can’t blame yourself for Ze’s hunger strike. This strategy is as old as womankind. Nothing is more powerful or cruel than for a woman to make her husband watch her die.” She took my face in her hands and looked into my eyes. “You’re my beloved daughter, no matter what you think you’ve done.”

But Mama didn’t know everything.

“Besides, what choice did you have? Your mama and baba failed you. I feel especially responsible. I wanted you to excel at embroidery, painting, and playing the zither. I wanted you to keep your mouth shut, put on a smiling face, and learn to obey. But look what happened. You flew right out of the villa. You found freedom here”—she pointed to my heart—“in your seat of consciousness.”

I saw the truth of her words. My mother made sure I was highly educated so I’d become a good wife, but in the process she’d inspired me to depart from the usual model of a young woman on the cusp of marriage.

“You have a big and good heart,” Mama continued. “You don’t have to be ashamed for anything. Think instead of your desires, your knowledge, and what’s in here—your heart. Mencius was clear on this point: Lacking pity, one is not human; lacking shame, one is not human; lacking a sense of deference, one is not human; lacking a sense of right and wrong, one is not human.”

“But I’m not human. I’m a hungry ghost.”

There. I’d told her, but she didn’t ask how it happened. Maybe it was too much for her to know right now, because she asked, “But you’ve experienced all that, haven’t you? You’ve felt pity, shame, remorse, and sadness for everything that happened to Tan Ze, right?”

Of course I had. I’d driven myself into exile as punishment for what I’d done.

“How can one test for humanity?” Mama asked. “By whether or not you cast a shadow or leave prints in the sand? Tang Xianzu gave you the ( 2 2 0 )

answers in the opera you love so well, when he wrote that no one can exist without joy, anger, grief, fear, love, hate, and desire. So, you have it from the Book of Rites, from The Peony Pavilion, and from me, that the Seven Emotions are what make us human. You still have these within yourself.”

“But how can I change the wrongs I’ve done?”

“I don’t believe you’ve done wrong. But if you do, you have to take all your ghostly attributes and put them to good use. You need to find another girl whose life you can repair.”

That girl came to my mind in a flash, but I needed Mama’s help.

“Would you walk with me?” I asked. “It’s very far. . . .”

Her smile radiated, sending beams across the dark surface of the lake.

“That would be a good thing. I’m meant to be roaming.”

She stood and looked around the Moon-Viewing Pavilion one last time. I helped her over the balustrade and down to the shore. She reached into the folds of her clothes and pulled out the fish-shaped locks. One after the other she threw them into the lake, each one hitting the water with a soundless splash that sent barely discernible ripples into infinity.

We began to walk. I guided Mama, her spirit skirts trailing on the ground behind her, through the city. By morning we reached the countryside, where fields stretched out around us like an intricately woven piece of brocade. The mulberry trees were dense with foliage. Big-footed women in straw hats and faded blue clothes climbed up in the branches to cut the leaves. Below them, other women—brown from the sun and strong from their labors—tilled the soil around the roots or carried away baskets of the leaves.

Mama was no longer afraid. Her face glowed with peace and happiness. In days long past, she’d come this way many times with my father and she relished the familiar landmarks. We traded confidences, compas-sion, and love—all those things that only a mother and daughter can share.