Fiction—2,800 words
A HOUSE OF MEANS
Things were changing, Ah-nee felt. This winter was not like others, coming upon their house carrying with it a strange vibration upon the air. Whenever she awoke in the early mornings, groping for her slippers under the pallet she slept on, she tried to understand what it was that so disturbed her. Nearby, Siao-ping breathed noisily. The girl only burrowed further under the covers when Ah-nee prodded her. When did she ever rise on the first call? She should be the first up to stoke the fire in the living room before the family came into it, carry in more coal, uncover the birdcages as the room warmed.
Tai-tai liked them to greet her when she entered.
The servants had their own stove, but they were forbidden to burn coal at night with the window shut. The fumes killed while you slept, so they had extra blankets for the cold. But they had an indoor toilet, a luxury compared to what other households provided their servants. In the kitchen, Ah-nee put the kettle on the gas stove for her mistress’ tea, heated the rice gruel and ladled it into a thin porcelain bowl with its matching spoon to the exact invisible line on its delicate sides. Cook would not come down from his attic room for another hour to prepare for market.
Perhaps, if the mistress was in a good mood, she might ask Tai-tai if she felt the same uneasiness as well.
But Tai-tai appeared preoccupied, seeming impatient with the chore of getting through her breakfast and bathing and dressing. Ah-nee therefore said nothing as she bent to the task of re-binding her mistress’ tiny feet after first dusting them with talcum. Their bones were so fine, only the big toe showing while the others, bent under at childhood, were crushed underneath. How could she bear to walk on those poor toes? She marveled at the strength of will Tai-tai exhibited every day shackled to her pain and long ago had given up trying to understand the ideas of beauty in her mistress’ class. There was so much to do putting her mistress together, combing her thin white hair and forming a bun with it, then slipping a woolen chemise over her head and holding her steady as she stepped into the silk gown. Doing up the fifteen frog buttons on the side took more time. Next, some powder on her face. Last, the shawl over her shoulders. Tai-tai was old, old, perhaps the last grand lady in Shanghai. Yellowed pictures of her as a young woman stood about on rosewood tables in her room. Married at sixteen, she posed at her husband’s shoulder as he sat, lord-like, in his mandarin robes. He was long dead before Ah-nee ever came to this house. To her, he belonged so far in the past he almost never existed, except for the rare mention of him by Tai-tai.
In the living room, its fireplace again belatedly built up by Siao-ping, the family gathered: First Son, his wife, the next son, and a grandson bringing with him the bustle of the street. Ah-nee left them to their talk. She wished she could stay, for the grandson always had newspapers with him and would read from them. It was no use trying to read them afterward for herself after they were discarded. Learning her characters was not something a girl child born on a farm did.
Siao-ping came into the kitchen. The face she turned toward Ah-nee was growing more insolent by the day. Sometimes Ah-nee caught her smiling to herself for no obvious reason.
“And what is so funny this morning?” Ah-nee asked. Recently, the girl had cut her hair in a bob. No more bun behind my head, she declared. And the tunic over her trousers had been replaced by a sweater. The trousers were narrower in the leg, another alteration that changed her appearance all over. She was beginning to look like the schoolgirl she never was. The small mounds of her breasts embarrassed Ah-nee, whose own breasts were flattened, as they should be, under her ahmah’s tunic.
Siao-ping took her time answering and sipped from her cup of tea. “They are so worried, aren’t they? They don’t know what to do. I know what they should do.”
“So? What is it you think they should do?”
There was a struggle to hold back, Ah-nee could see that going on. “Oh….” Siao-ping turned to her fully. “Kill themselves, of course.”
The slap resounded in the kitchen, the shape of Ah-nee’s hand clear on the chit’s cheek. They stared at each other, the girl holding her hand to her face and tears starting in her eyes. “Can’t you see?” she gasped, crying freely.
“What do you mean?” But Siao-ping had run out to the yard. There was something there, Ah-nee understood that, and she resolved to find out what all this business was about.
Tai-tai rang the bell, then, and Ah-nee went upstairs in answer. Her mistress was resting on her bed, her feet in their pointed satin shoes raised on a pillow. She looked tired already, this early in the day before even the midday meal. Her voice was kind. “Ah-nee, how is your husband lately? Will he visit soon?”
Surprised to be asked this question, she stammered, “I think he is well, mistress. I do not know when he will come next. There is no way to know.”
“No, of course you do not. Do you miss him?”
How to answer? This was not proper and she searched for the right words to say. “I am used to living in the city, mistress, and he on the farm. When he – the old man – comes to see us, it is good to talk to him to learn about our crops and if our son and daughter have been working hard.” She added, “And it is also nice to have the fruit or vegetables he brings.”
Tai-tai’s voice was very gentle. “Yes. I am sure it is.”
“Is there anything I may bring you now?”
“No, Ah-nee. I will take a little nap now.”
Wondering, Ah-nee went to sort laundry. She always washed the mistress’ personal things while the rest went to the laundress. Everyone in the family was behaving strangely lately. First Son had been bringing home boxes of papers from his office and he was often on the telephone talking in low tones. His wife no longer played mahjong. Instead, she spent hours at her dressmaker’s as though she had a great need of more clothes. The grandson had dropped his habit of wearing a silk scarf in his shirtcollar, a style Ah-nee thought must be very English although she had not seen many English men in her life. Next son was drinking more of his whiskey before meals and in the evenings, and odder still, no one remarked on it. He had begun this habit when he had gotten divorced but never this much.
Cook was in the kitchen rummaging for his shopping bags. His wife worked at another house nearby and sometimes they went together to market. He grumbled, “The price of capon these days. It is cheaper to eat pheasant, there are always plenty of those. But no, mistress must have capon and expect to pay the same as ever. I keep telling her nothing costs what it did last year.”
“It is the birdshot in the pheasant she does not like,” Ah-nee said mildly. She did not like pheasant either when they ate their share of the meals in the kitchen. The meat was dry and all of it was dark.
Cook gave her a sideways glance. He was a tall man, for a Chinese. He was from the north, where people were known for their height, while southerners were small and noisy. “Birdshot may be the least of her troubles,” he remarked, and did not explain what he meant by that.
When Cook was gone, Ah-nee slipped her pocketbook under her tunic and left the house. It was a short walk to the dumpling and noodle shop on Tifeng Lu where a woman was sliding and flipping a spatula under rows of dumplings on the griddle. She was very skilled with the spatula, which she also banged rhythmically on the griddle as she sang out the prices.
“Good day,” Ah-nee said, when she could be heard.
The woman looked up, recognizing Ah-nee. “Good day. Are you well? Is my daughter behaving herself?”
It was difficult, but she made a start. “There is a matter….”
Siao-ping’s mother put down the spatula. “Yes?”
“She is very restless these days. Is she the same at home? May I know what it is that is bothering her?” Ah-nee saw the frown and knew at once she had touched on something painful.
The other woman gestured for her to enter, at the same time calling for someone inside to tend to the griddle. She poured tea for both, and they sat at a small table at the back of the shop. “I was hoping the useless girl would not bring trouble to the house.”
Ah-nee began a polite protest, but became silent. She lowered her gaze to the tea bowl she held and waited.
“She has a friend. A young man. I forbade her to be in his company, but it is like trying to stop running water. She has no shame, and I know they meet when she can slip away. He seems to have no work to do, and he is telling her things that come out of her mouth afterward. She no longer respects anything and I fear for what will happen to her.”
She sighed. “My husband would have known what to do. He would have found this young man and given him a good beating. I think…I think there are more like him and they are everywhere talking to people.” Her glance had the red-eyed look of sleeplessness. “They are everywhere,” she repeated.
When they parted, Ah-nee gripped her hands, wishing the poor woman strength and speaking words of encouragement that sounded as useless to herself as they must to the other.
She walked slowly, thinking of other things she had been told. The beggar king had packed up and left the city, abandoning the creatures who were without protection now that he was gone. It was true they were forced to give him a portion of their daily earnings but he always left them enough so they could eat. He had kept a sort of order in their numbers, spreading them out if there were too many in one neighborhood, taking the babies from one or the other and placing them with beggar women where they would reap the most alms. The foreigners in downtown Shanghai and where they lived in their special districts were more generous than Chinese when they saw the babies. They could not pass by beggars who had animals, either, so he sometimes gave dogs along with the babies. Most important, he paid the police to leave them alone. On Chinese New Year and during the Moon Festival in September he handed out candies. He would do this from the automobile that his chauffer drove throughout the city. His disappearance was a bad omen, Ah-nee felt.
The thumpings and grunts outside could mean only one thing. Ah-nee hurried to open the back door and was glad to see her husband, setting down the bamboo pole from his shoulder.
“Husband, it is good to see you.” His bad teeth were no better, but they were as much part of him as his whiskers.
“And I, to see you, wife. Have you some hot tea for someone who has walked 30 li to come here?” He had, indeed, and with two baskets balanced on the ends of the pole filled with chestnuts and sweet yams.
Ah-nee poured tea and filled a bowl with hot rice and savory pork and vegetables. She was glad she had the pork, his favorite.
While he ate, she settled down for his news. All the homesickness flooded back as he spoke. They continued to hope the farm would produce enough so she could stay there but they were always having to wait for better crops or better weather or enough water to feed the fields. Water had to be hauled by hand, but at least their son was now able to help with that. Another ahmah she knew who worked on the next street had been away from her farm for many years, longer than Ah-nee.
Yes, Ah-nee’s husband reported, their son was growing big and strong. He could chop and hoe as much as his father. The girl? She was becoming pretty! He said this with a growl, as if it was a calamity. Ah-nee too did not know if it was a good thing. Pretty girls began to think they were wasted on a farm; they wanted to come to the city.
When he had finished eating, she went to tell First Son of his visit. It was the polite thing to do even if he did nothing about it. But he came almost at once, and her husband rose to his feet to greet him.
First Son asked, “Are you well? And I see you have brought us magnificent presents, as usual.”
“They are very modest, Lao-pei. I wish my poor farm could produce better. I hope Tai-tai is well? And the others?”
The courtesies over, First Son questioned him. “What is the talk on the farms in the north? Do you hear or see anything that is different from before?”
At this, Ah-nee’s husband shook his head for what he had to say. “We farmers are preparing places to bury our crops, Lao-pei. I am here in town to see if I can buy oilcloth for the storage pits. Our neighbors have asked me to buy for them too. Sometimes when the wind is right we hear gunfire.” He glanced at Ah-nee. “I am sorry you must know this.”
Oh…those pits…lined with stones, the same hiding places they had used during the war with the Japanese.
First Son was nodding. “It is what I have heard on the radio.” He placed a hand on the farmer’s shoulder and wished him well, then handed him a red money envelope and left the kitchen.
Their farewells came soon after, for there was a long road home. Ah-nee packed food in the baskets, shook out the dirt on the blanket he slept in along the way, poured tea into a bottle and corked it, could not find anything more to do to make him safe, and finally helped him fit the basket ropes into the notches at each end of the bamboo pole. She watched him go, chanting under his breath in a rhythm that would help him cover the lis.
That evening Sao-ping was missing from her duties, nor did she appear at all at bedtime. In the morning Ah-nee went to her mother on Tifeng Lu. The woman looked ill even as she scooped and flipped the dumplings and sang out the prices.
Siao-ping had run away, Ah-nee learned, gone with her young man. Her last words to her mother were about going to fight in the revolution against rich people, and then she had run away.
Ah-nee’s own household was in turmoil, as well. The family had been packing and within hours an automobile came to take the trunks away to the train station. Her mistress hobbled into the kitchen, where Ah-nee was wondering what to do about it all.
“Faithful Ah-nee,” Tai-tai said. She had on her coat. “We are leaving, as you can see. Hong Kong is a better place than this city will soon become. Our only regret is that we must send you away, but there is nothing for it. I pray you will be well and your farm will prosper.” She had not slept the last two nights and in the mornings Ah-nee felt as though she were dressing a corpse. She placed a fat red envelope in Ah-nee’s hand. This is a year’s salary, dear friend, with a bonus for the New Year. May you live long.”
“And you, Tai-tai. Goodbye. I wish you and all the family health and prosperity in Hong Kong.” How strange this was, the end, the change.
When everyone had driven off, she waited until the agent who was to care for the house had come. Cook had already left.
Ah-nee took up her bundle of belongings, tucked the red envelope in a pocket under her tunic and stepped out of the house. She had two good flat feet, and they would take her back to the farm. ###
