It tasted sweet. Another maid had told her that a former mistress had sweet-tasting urine and that her hands and feet had turned black as well. So then we knew she had the sugar blood disease.
A doctor came, and over Mother Ma’s protests, he cut off her bindings. Her feet were black and green, oozing with pus. She refused to go to the hospital. So the doctor cut off her feet right there. She did not scream. She lost her mind.
Three days later, she called me to sit with her in the garden where she was airing her footless legs. I had heard that she was making amends to all. She believed her disease was caused by her karma and that it might not be too late to reverse its direction.
“Violet, ah,” she said sweetly, “I hear you have learned good manners. Don’t eat too many greasy foods. It will ruin your complexion.” She patted my face gently. “You are so sad. To keep false hopes is to prolong misery. You will grow to hate everything and everyone, and insanity is certain. I was once like you. I was the daughter of a scholar family and I was kidnapped when I was twelve and taken to a first-class house. I resisted and cried and threatened to kill myself by drinking rat poison. But then I had very nice customers, kind patrons. I was the favorite of many. I had many freedoms. When I was fifteen, my family found me. They took me away, and because I was damaged goods, they married me off as a concubine to a nice man with a vicious mother. It was worse than being a slave! I ran away and went back to the courtesan house. I was so happy, so grateful to return to the good life. Even my husband was happy for me. He became one of my best customers. This is the beautiful tale you can one day tell a young courtesan about your own life.”
How could any girl think that was a lucky life? And yet, if I were Chinese and compared this life with all the possibilities, I, too, might believe over time that I was lucky to be here. But I was only half-Chinese, and I still held tight to the American half that believed I had other choices.
The doctor came a few days later. He cut off one of Mother Ma’s legs, and the next day, he cut off the other leg. She could no longer move around and had to be carried on a little palanquin. A week later, she lost the black fingers, then her hands, one piece after another until there was nothing left, except the trunk and head. She told everyone she was not going to die. She said she wanted to stay alive so she could treat us better, like daughters. She promised to spoil us. As she weakened, she became kinder and kinder. She praised everyone. She told Magic Gourd that she had musical talent.
The next day, Mother Ma did not remember who I was. She did not remember anything. Everything disappeared, like words in breath. She talked in dreams and called out that the ghosts of Persimmon and Commissioner Li had come to take her to the underworld. “They said I am nearly as black as they are, and we three would live together and comfort one another. So I’m ready to go.”
Magic Gourd felt very bad that Mother Ma believed in her lie, even to the end. “Shh-shh,” she said. “I’ll bring you a soup to turn your skin white again.” But by morning, the old lady was dead.
“Hardship can harden even the best person,” Magic Gourd said. “Remember that, Violet. If I become this way, remember the good things I did for you and forget the wounds.”
As she washed Madam Ma’s body to prepare her for the underworld, she said, “Mother, I will always remember that you said I played the zither especially well.”
GOLDEN DOVE CAME to the house a week after Mother Ma died. It had been five months since I had seen her and yet she seemed to have aged a great deal. I felt a flash of anger at first. She had had the opportunity to tell my mother I was still alive. She took away my chance to be saved. I was about to demand she write my mother again, then realized I was acting like a selfish child. There had never been an opportunity for her to save me. We all would have suffered. I had heard many stories since coming to the Hall of Tranquility about people who had been killed when they went against the wishes of the Green Gang. I fell into Golden Dove’s arms and did not have to say anything. She knew the life I had had with my mother. She knew all the ways in which I was spoiled. She knew how much I had suffered as a child, believing that my mother did not love me anymore.
Over tea, she told us that the house had lost its luster. The corners were filled with dirt, the chandeliers had grown chains of dust. And after only a few months, the furniture had become shabby, and all that was unusual and daring in my mother’s house simply looked odd. I imagined my room, my bed, my treasure box of feathers and pens, my rows of books. I saw in my mind the lesson room, where I looked through a crack in the curtains of the French glass doors and saw my mother and Lu Shing talking quietly, deciding what to do.
“I’m leaving Shanghai,” Golden Dove said. “I’m going to Soochow, where life is kinder to those who are growing old. I have a little money. Maybe I’ll open a shop of some kind. Or maybe I’ll do nothing except drink tea with friends and play mahjong like the old matriarchs.”
One thing was certain in her mind: She would not become the madam of another house. “These days, a madam has to be ruthless and mean. She has to make people afraid of what she might do. If she is not harsh, she might as well open the doors and let the rats and ruffians come in and take what they want.”
She gave me news of Fairweather. He was a favorite topic among patrons and courtesans at parties. After he duped my mother, they recounted how cunning and handsome he was. No one thought he had done anything terribly wrong. He was an American who had swindled another American. I was wounded to hear how unsympathetic people were toward my mother. I had never known how much they disliked her.
In Hong Kong, he and Puffy Cloud lived in a villa halfway up the peak. Within a month, due to his gambling habit and Puffy Cloud’s love of opium, they ran out of money. Puffy Cloud returned to brothel life, and Fairweather tried one more time to swindle a businessman, a taipan who was a member of another Triad. “Fairweather wasn’t able to steal the taipan’s money. Instead he stole the heart and virginity of his daughter. All the rumors were the same: Fairweather was stuffed headfirst into a large sack of rice, and with his feet paddling in the air, he was thrown into the harbor, where he promptly sank. To picture it made me feel a little sick, but I was also not sorry to hear he had a frightful death.”
When Magic Gourd left to order tea and snacks, Golden Dove spoke to me in English to avoid feeding gossip to the eavesdroppers. “I’ve known you since the day you were born. You are like your mother in so many ways. You often see too much, too clearly, and sometimes you see more than what is there. But sometimes you see far less. You are never satisfied with the amount or kind of love you have. You want more and you suffer from never being able to have enough. And even though more may be in front of you, you don’t see it. You are suffering greatly now because you are unable to escape from this prison. You will find a way out of this place one day. This is a temporary place of suffering. But I hope you don’t suffer forever from keeping love from your heart because of what has happened. That could have happened to your mother, but you saved her after she was betrayed. All the love she has been able to feel is because you were born and you opened her closed heart. One day, when you leave this place, come visit me in Soochow. I will be waiting.”
“TAKE OFF YOUR shoes,” Magic Gourd ordered. “Stockings, too.” She frowned. “Point the toes.” She sighed and shook her head and continued to stare at them, as if she could make them disappear by thought alone.
The new madam of the house was coming in two days, and Magic Gourd was anxious that I be allowed to stay, so that she could remain, too, as my attendant. She had the shoemaker make a pair of stiff slippers that forced me to stand on just the balls of my feet. He added cuffs to mask the heels of my feet and wrapped red ribbons around my ankles. The slippers gave the illusion of a tiny hobbled foot.
“Walk around the room,” she ordered.
I pranced like a ballerina. After five minutes, I limped stiffly like a duck without feet. I fell into a chair and refused to try any longer. Magic Gourd pinched my arm hard to make me stand. As soon as I took one step, I toppled and knocked down a flower stand and its vase.
“Your pain is nothing compared with what I had to endure. No one let me sit. No one let me take those shoes off. I fell over and