“I never stopped thinking about you,” he whispered. “I never stopped loving you. You are the wife of my heart.”
Then he draped his arm over the dummy and pulled it close.
IN THE MORNING, Willow knocked softly on the door. Ren, who was up and seated by the window, called for her to enter. She came in, followed by my mother and grandmother. Willow set down a tray with tea, cups, and a knife. She poured the tea for Ren, and then she went to the bed. She leaned over the dummy bride and began to unbutton the tunic.
Ren jumped up. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve come to cut out Little Miss’s tablet,” Willow said meekly, her head bowed down. “It needs to go on your family altar table.”
Ren crossed the room, took the knife, and pocketed it.
“I don’t want her cut.” He gazed at the dummy bride. “I waited a long time to have Peony with me. I want to keep her as she is now. Prepare a room. We will honor her there.”
I was touched by his idea, but this couldn’t happen. I turned to my mother and grandmother.
“What about my tablet?” I asked.
They held up their hands helplessly and then faded away. And with that, my wedding and my moment of supreme happiness were over.
As Yi predicted, the ghost marriage soothed the household’s fears. Everyone went back to their usual routines, leaving Yi to grow her baby in peace. Ren set up a nice room overlooking the garden for my dummy bride, and Willow cared for it there. He visited daily, sometimes staying for an hour or so to read or write. Yi followed all the customs and traditions by treating me as the official first wife by making offerings and reciting prayers, but inside I quietly mourned. I loved this family and they had fulfilled my desire to have a ghost wedding, but without my tablet—the ugly thing—dotted, I was still just a hungry ghost with some lovely new spirit clothes, shoes, and bindings given to me by my mother and grandmother. And I certainly didn’t think about my mother and grandmother’s request that I finish my project, not when Yi still had to give birth.
THE LAST MONTH of pregnancy arrived. Yi abstained from washing her hair for all twenty-eight days as recommended. I made sure she stayed relaxed, didn’t climb stairs, and ate lightly. When her time approached, Madame Wu held a special ceremony to propitiate the goodwill of the demons who like to destroy a woman’s life at childbirth. She placed plates of food, incense, candles, flowers, spirit money, and two live crabs on a table. She chanted protective spells. Once the ceremony was over, Madame Wu had Willow take the crabs and throw them out in the street, knowing that as they crawled away they would take the demons with them. The ash from the incense was wrapped in paper and hung above Yi’s bed, where it would remain for thirty days after the baby was born to protect her from going to the Blood-Gathering Lake. Despite all this, Yi’s labor was not easy.
“A no-good spirit is preventing the child from coming into the world,” the midwife said. “This is a special class of demon—perhaps someone from a previous life, who has come back to seek payment for an unpaid debt.”
I left the room for fear it might be me, but when Yi’s screams worsened, I returned. She calmed as soon as I reentered the room. As the midwife wiped Yi’s forehead, I looked everywhere. I found nothing and no one, but I felt something—evil and just outside my range.
Yi weakened. When she began calling for her mother, Ren went to find the diviner, who surveyed the scene—rumpled bedclothes, blood on Yi’s thighs, and the midwife out of ideas—and ordered another altar to be set up. He brought out three charms on yellow paper, seven centimeters wide and nearly a meter long. One he hung on the door of the bedchamber to keep out bad spirits; one he hung around Yi’s neck; the third he burned, mixed the ashes with water, and made Yi drink the concoction. Then he burned spirit money, chanted, and thumped the table for half an hour.
But still the baby suffered. He was being held back by something none of us could see or stop. I’d tried so hard to give this gift to my husband. I’d done everything possible, hadn’t I?
When the diviner said, “The baby has grabbed hold of his mother’s intestines. It is an evil spirit trying to take your wife’s life”—the exact same words he’d spoken at Ze’s bedside—I knew I had to try something drastic and dangerous. I ordered the diviner to renew his chants and incantations, Madame Wu to rub Yi’s belly with hot water, Willow to sit behind Yi to prop her up, and the midwife to massage open the birth canal. Then I traveled up inside until I came face-to-face with Ren’s son. The cord was wrapped around his neck. With each contraction, it pulled a little tighter. I took an end of the cord and pulled to loosen it from the hidden higher depths. Something pulled back and the baby’s body jerked in response. It was cold in here, not warm or hospitable in any way. I slipped under the cord, relieving the pressure on the baby’s neck, and then I grabbed the far end of the cord and pulled as hard as I could to free it from whatever was holding it. We began to move slowly toward the opening. I absorbed each new contraction, protecting Ren’s son, until we slipped into the midwife’s hands. But our joy was tempered.
Even after the baby took his first breath and was placed on his mother’s chest, he was blue and lethargic. There was no question in my mind that the baby had been exposed to unpropitious elements and I was afraid he wouldn’t survive. I was not the only one to worry about this. Madame Wu, Willow, and the matchmaker helped the diviner with four more protective rites. Madame Wu fetched a pair of her son’s trousers and hung them over the end of the bed. Then she sat down at the table and wrote out four characters that meant all unfavorable influences are to go into the trousers on a piece of red paper and tucked it in the pants.
After this, Madame Wu and the midwife tied the baby’s feet and hands with loose red string onto which a piece of cash had been looped. The cash served as a talisman against evil, while the tying prevented the baby from ever becoming naughty or disobedient in this and all future lives. Willow took the yellow sheet of paper from around Yi’s neck and used it to fold into a hat, which she placed on the baby’s head to continue the protection from mother to child. Meanwhile, the diviner took the paper from the door, burned it, and mixed the ashes in water. Three days later, that water was used to wash the baby for the first time. As he was purified, the deathly blue finally disappeared, but his breathing remained reedy. Ren’s son needed even more charms, and I made sure they were gathered together, tied into a satchel, and hung outside the door: hair swept from dark corners to keep the sounds of dogs and cats from frightening him, coal to make him hardy, onions to make him quick-witted, orange pith to bring success and good fortune.
Mother and child survived the first four weeks, and a grand one-month party was given with great quantities of red eggs and sweet cakes. The women oohed and aahed over the infant. The men patted Ren on the back and drank cups of strong wine. A banquet was presented, and then the women retired to the inner chambers, where they huddled around Yi and the baby and whispered about Emperor Kangxi’s first visit to Hangzhou.
“He wanted to impress everyone with his love of the arts, but every inch of his journey cost the people of the country an inch of silver,” Li Shu complained. “The route on which he traveled was paved in imperial yellow. The walls and stone balustrades where he walked were carved with dragons.”
“The emperor held a pageant,” Hong Zhize added. I was pleased to see that Hong Sheng’s daughter had grown into a beautiful and accomplished poet in her own right. “He galloped on horseback across the field, shooting arrows. Each one met its mark. Even when the horse bolted, the emperor still hit the target. This stirred something in my husband. That night, my husband’s arrows met their target too.”
This inspired other women to confide that the emperor’s manly exploits had changed their husbands also.
“Don’t be surprised if there isn’t a flurry of one-month parties ten months from now,” one of the women said, and the others agreed.
Li Shu held up her hands to stop the laughter. She leaned forward
, lowered her voice, and confided, “The emperor says this is the beginning of a prosperous age, but I’m worried. He’s very much against The Peony Pavilion. He says it’s a debaucher of girls and puts too much emphasis on qing. The moralists have grabbed hold of this and are stinking up the streets with their added manure.”
The women tried to cheer each other up with brave words, but their voices quavered with uncertainty. What had started as a comment here or there from one husband or another was now becoming imperial policy.
“I say no one can stop us from reading The Peony Pavilion or anything else,” Li Shu said, with a conviction that no one believed.
“But for how long?” Yi asked plaintively. “I haven’t even read it yet.”
“You will.” Ren stood at the door. He strode across the room, took his son from his wife, held him aloft for a moment, and then brought him back down to nestle in the crook of his arm. “You’ve worked long and hard to read and understand the things I love,” he said, “and now you’ve given me a son. How could I not want to share with you something that means so much to me?”
The Clouds Hall
REN’S WORDS REAWAKENED MY DESIRE TO FINISH MY project, but I wasn’t quite ready and neither was Yi. It had been fifteen years since I’d looked at the opera. During that time, I thought I’d harnessed my harmful qualities, but with the new baby in the house I had to be sure. Also, Yi needed to study more before she would understand The Peony Pavilion. I engaged Li Shu, Ren, and Madame Wu to help me prepare my sister-wife. Then, after another two years, during which I cared for the family without incident, I finally allowed my husband to give Yi the volume of The Peony Pavilion that Ze and I had worked on.
Every morning after Yi dressed, she went to the garden to pick a peony. Then she stopped by the kitchen for a fresh peach, a bowl of cherries, or a melon. After leaving instructions for the cook, she took her offerings to the ancestral hall. She first lit incense and made obeisance to the Wu ancestors, and then she laid her piece of fruit before Ze’s ancestor tablet. Once these duties were done, she went to the room where my dummy bride resided and set the peony in a vase. She spoke to the ancestor tablet buried inside the dummy about her hopes for her son and her need for her husband and mother-in-law to remain healthy.
Then we’d go to the Moon-Viewing Pavilion, where Yi opened The Peony Pavilion and looked at all the notes about love that had been written in the margins. She read late into the afternoons—her hair hanging loose down her back, her gown flowing around her, her face set in a small frown as she contemplated this or that passage. At other times she’d pause on a line, close her eyes, and hold perfectly still as she transported herself deeper into the story. I remembered that when I’d seen the opera Liniang did the same thing, using stillness as a way for the people in the audience to reach inside themselves to find their deepest emotions. Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming—weren’t our dreams what gave us strength, hope, and desire?
Sometimes I had Yi put aside her reading and wander until she found Ren, Li Shu, or Madame Wu. Then I’d have her ask them about the opera, knowing that the more she learned, the more her mind would open. I had her inquire about other commentaries written by women, but when she heard their writings had been lost or destroyed, she became pensive.
“Why is it,” she asked Li Shu, “that so many women’s thoughts have been like flowers in the wind, drifting off with the current and vanishing without a trace?”
Her question surprised me, showing, as it did, just how far she’d come.
Yi’s curiosity never caused her to become overbearing, intrusive, or forgetful of her duties as a wife, daughter-in-law, and mother. She was passionate about the opera, but I watched to make sure she never tilted into obsession. Through her, I learned a lot more about life and love than when I was alive or even when I guided my first sister-wife. Gone were my girlish ideas about romantic love and my later ideas about sexual love. From Yi, I learned to appreciate deep-heart love.
I’d seen it when Yi smiled indulgently at Ren when he said he wasn’t afraid of ghosts as a way of soothing her fears when she was pregnant. I saw it in the way she looked at Ren when he held their son on his lap, built kites with him, and taught him to be the kind of man who would care for his mother when she became a widow. I saw it when Yi praised her husband for his accomplishments, minor though they were. He was not the great poet I’d imagined him to be as a girl, nor was he the mediocre man whom Ze had humiliated. He was just a man, with good and bad qualities. Through Yi, I saw that deep-heart love meant loving someone in spite of and because of his limitations.
One day, after months of reading and thinking, Yi came outside to the plum tree where I lived. She poured a libation on the roots, and said, “This tree is a symbol of Du Liniang and I give my heart to you. Please bring me closer to my two sister-wives.”
Liniang had responded to this kindness with a shower of petals; I was too wary to try anything showy like that, but Yi’s offering proved to me that she was ready to begin writing. I guided her along the corridor to the Clouds Hall. The room was small and lovely, with walls painted the color of the sky. The windows were filled with blue glass. White irises in a celadon vase stood on a simple desk. Yi sat down with our copy of The Peony Pavilion, mixed ink, and picked up her writing brush. I peered over her shoulder. She turned to the scene when Liniang’s ghost seduces Mengmei and wrote:
Liniang’s character shows through in the melancholy that inhabits her as she approaches the scholar. She may be a ghost, but she’s chaste by nature.
I swear I did not plant these words. She wrote them herself, but they mirrored what I’d come to believe. What she wrote next, however, convinced me that her concerns were far different from the ones I’d pondered in my bed long ago:
A mother cannot be too careful when her daughter starts thinking about clouds and rain.
Then she swung back to her own girlhood dreams and the pressing realities of being a woman:
Liniang is shy and bashful when she says, “An insubstantial ghost may yield to passion; a woman must pay full attention to the rites.” She is not wanton. She is a real woman who wants to be loved as a wife.
How these words echoed my own thoughts! I’d died young, but in my roaming I’d come to understand what it meant to be a wife and not just a girl dreaming alone in her room.
Tan Ze had styled her calligraphy after my own. How could she not when I’d guided her hand so often? I’d hoped that, seeing the writing came as if from a single hand, Ren would have understood that all the words were mine. I didn’t worry about that now. I wanted Yi to feel pride in what she was doing.
She wrote some more and then she signed her name. Signed her name! I’d never done that. I’d never let Ze do that.
Over the coming months, Yi went daily to the Clouds Hall to add more comments to the margins. Slowly, something started to happen. I entered into a kind of dialogue with her. I whispered, and she wrote:
The mournful chants of birds and insects, the soughing of the rain-lashed wind. The ghostliness one feels in the words and between the lines is overwhelming.
Once my thought was complete, she dipped the brush in the ink, and then added her own words:
Reading this alone on an overcast night is frightening.
She called upon her own experience when she wrote:
Today, many fine marriages are delayed because people are picky on matters of family status and insist on amassing big dowries. When is this going to change?
How could she not understand that love—not money, status, or family connections—was what marriage should be about when she was living that herself?
Sometimes to me her words were like flowers flowing off her brush:
Mengmei changed his name because of a dream. Liniang fell sick because of her dream. Each had passion. Each had a dream. They both treated their dreams as real. A ghost is merely a dream and a dream is nothing but a ghost.
When I read this, I forgot my years of obsession and glo
wed with pride at Yi’s insights and persistence.
Yi responded to things I’d written and sometimes to things that had come from Ze’s brush. Along the way, I came to hear Ze in certain passages as clearly as if she were still with us. After all these years, I saw she’d contributed far more than I’d realized. Although Yi showed no inclination to join us in our lovesickness, it was as though she were summoning us. And we answered with our thoughts, which she read on the page.
I rejoiced in Yi’s accomplishments and helped as best I could. At night, when Yi stayed up reading, I brightened the candle flame so she wouldn’t strain her eyes. When her eyes got tired, I reminded her to pour a cup of green tea and hold it first over one eye and then the other, to refresh and soothe the redness. For every passage understood, every pastiche dismantled, every moment of affection deeply felt and written about, I rewarded my sister-wife. I kept her son safe when he wandered in the garden, preventing him from falling off the rockery, being bitten by insects, or escaping out the front gate. I warned the water spirits to make sure they didn’t trick him into drowning in the pond and the tree spirits not to let him trip over their roots.
I also began to change and protect the compound as a whole. When Ze was alive, almost all I’d known was the bedchamber. Back then, I’d compared the house unfavorably to the Chen Family Villa. But what I’d thought was beautiful in my family home was actually the coldness and distance caused by wealth—too many fingers, no privacy, no quiet, and all that gossiping, angling, and strategizing for position. This, however, was the home of a true artist. It was also the home of a woman writer. Gradually, Yi made the Clouds Hall into a room where she could find sanctuary from the demands of the household, write in peace, and invite her husband for quiet evenings. I did what I could to make it even more pleasant by sending the fragrance of jasmine through the window, breathing on the blue windowpanes to make them seem even cooler, and running my fingers along the tips of the flowers that bloomed in the garden so their ruffling petals dappled the walls with quivering shadows.