The Valley of Amazement

“The blood drained from the old bustard’s face. She said, ‘Maybe it was the maid’s husband who gave her syphilis.’

“I was not expecting her to come up with this, so I had to think fast. ‘Everyone knew that the old sot could barely lean over the side of his bed to piss. He was a bag of bones. But what difference did it make whether she had it first or he did? In the end, they both had the pox, and everyone figured he must have given it to the courtesan, and she probably did not even know. Persimmon drank mahuang tea all day long, to no avail. When her nipples dripped pus, she covered them in mercury and got very sick. The sores dried up, and she thought she was cured. Six months ago, her hands turned black, and then she died.’

“The old bustard looked as if a pot had fallen on her head. Really, I felt sorry for her, but I had to be ruthless. I had to save myself. Anyway, I didn’t go on, even though I had thought to say that someone learned that the Commissioner of Lies had died of the same black hand disease. I told her that was the reason I had feared for her when I saw her hands. She mumbled that it was not a disease but the cursed liver pills. I gave her a sympathetic look and said we should ask the doctor to check her chi to get rid of this ailment, since those pills were doing no good. Then I went on: ‘I hope no one believes you have the pox. Lies spread faster than you can catch them. And if people see you touching the beauties with your black fingers, they might say the whole house is contaminated. Then the public health bureaucrats will come, everyone will have to be tested, and the house closed down until they verify we are clean. Who wants that? I don’t want someone examining me and getting a peek for free. And even if you’re clean, those bastards are so corrupt, you’ll have to give them money so they don’t hold up the report.’

“I let this news settle in before I said what I had wanted all along. ‘Mother Ma, it just occurred to me that I might help you keep this rumor from starting. Until you correct the balance in the liver, let me serve as Violet’s teacher and attendant. I’ll teach her all the things I know. As you recall, I was one of the top Ten Beauties in my day.’

“The old bustard fell for it. She nodded weakly. For good measure, I said: ‘You can be sure that if the brat needs a beating, I’ll be quick to do it. Whenever you hear her screaming for mercy, you’ll know that I’m making good progress.’

“What do you think of that, Violet? Clever, eh? All you have to do is stand by the door once or twice a day and shout for forgiveness.”

THERE WAS NO single moment when I accepted that I had become a courtesan. I simply fought less against it. I was like someone in prison who was about to be executed. I no longer threw the clothes given to me on the floor. I wore them without protest. When I received summer jackets and pantalets made of a light silk, I was glad for the cool comfort of them. But I took no pleasure in their color or style. The world was dull. I did not know what was happening outside these walls, whether there were still protestors in the streets, whether all the foreigners had been driven away. I was a kidnapped American girl caught in an adventure story in which the latter chapters had been ripped out.

One day, when it was raining hard, Magic Gourd said to me, “Violet, when you were growing up you pretended to be a courtesan. You flirted with customers, lured your favorites. And now you are saying you never imagined you would be one?”

“I’m an American. American girls do not become courtesans.”

“Your mother was the madam of a first-class courtesan house.”

“She was not a courtesan.”

“How do you know that? All the Chinese madams began as courtesans. How else would they learn the business?”

I was nauseated by the thought. She might have been a courtesan—or worse, an ordinary prostitute on one of the boats in the harbor. She was hardly chaste. She took lovers. “She chose her life,” I said at last. “No one told her what to do.”

“How do you know that she chose to enter this life?”

“Mother never would have allowed anyone to force her to do anything,” I said, then thought: Look what she forced on me.

“Do you look down on those who cannot choose what they do in life?”

“I pity them,” I said. I refused to see myself as part of that pitiful lot. I would escape.

“Do you pity me? Can you respect someone you pity?”

“You protect me and I’m grateful.”

“That’s not respect. Do you think we are equals?”

“You and I are different … by race and the country we belong to. We cannot expect the same in life. So we are not equal.”

“You mean I must hope for less than you do.”

“That is not my doing.”

Suddenly, she turned red in the face. “I am no longer less than you! I am more. I can expect more. You will expect less. Do you know how people will see you from now on? Look at my face and think of it as yours. You and I are no better than actors, opera singers, and acrobats. This is now your life. Fate once made you American. Fate took it away. You are the bastard half who was your father—Han, Manchu, Cantonese, whoever he was. You are a flower that will be plucked over and over again. You are now at the bottom of society.”

“I am an American and no one can change that, even if I am held against my will.”

“Oyo! How terrible for poor Violet. She is the only one whose circumstances changed against her will.” She sat down and continued to make chuffing noises as she threw me disgusted looks. “Against her will … You can’t make me! Oyo! Such suffering she’s had. You’re the same as everyone here, because now you have the same worries. Maybe I should do what I promised Mother Ma and beat you until you learn your place.” She fell silent, and I was grateful that her tirade had ended.

But then she spoke again, now in a soft and sad voice, as if she were a child. She looked away and remembered when her circumstances changed, again and again.

Magic Gourd

I was only five, just a tiny girl, when my uncle took me away from my family and sold me to a merchant’s wife as her slave. My uncle told me he was doing only what my father and mother had ordered him to do. To this day, I don’t believe that was true. If I did, my heart would turn completely bitter and cold. Maybe my father wanted to be rid of me. But my mother must have been grief-stricken when she discovered I was gone. I am sure she was. I have a memory that she was. Although how could I know that when I did not see her after I was stolen? I have thought about this for many years. If my mother did not want me, why did the bastard take me away in the middle of the night? Why did he sneak me away?

I cried all the way to the rich man’s house. He bargained and sold me as if I were a piglet who would grow fat and tasty. The merchant had a wife by an arranged marriage, as well as three concubines. The middle concubine was called Third Wife, but she was first in his heart. She was the wife who took me as her maid. The merchant, I soon discovered, found excuses to go to her room more often than to the others. Looking back, it seems strange that she had such power over him. She was the oldest of the wives. Her breasts and lips were larger than what was considered ideal. Her face was not delicate. But she did have a certain way about her that mesmerized her husband. She spoke with a slight tilt of the head and in a soft melodious voice. She knew the right thing to say to soothe his mind, to restore him. I overheard the other concubines say she came from the brothel life in Soochow and she had wrapped her legs around a thousand men and sucked out their brains and good sense. They were jealous of my mistress, so who knows if their gossip was true.

Like my mistress, I was not born with great beauty. My big eyes were my best feature; my big feet were my worst. They had been bound, and they burst from their bindings after I arrived in the merchant’s house, and because I walked on tiptoe, no one knew any better and I did not wrap them up again. Unlike the other maids, I was not just obedient but eager to do anything to please my mistress. I felt proud that I was the maid to the merchant’s favorite, the most highly valued of his wives. I brought her plum flower blooms to put in her hair. I always made sure her tea was scalding hot. I brought her boiled peanuts and other snacks throughout the day.

Because I was so attentive, my mistress decided I would one day be a suitable concubine to one of her younger sons—not as the second wife, but perhaps the third. Imagine me being called Third Wife! From then on, she treated me more kindly and gave me better food to eat. I wore prettier clothes and better-made longer jackets and pantaloons. To help me become a suitable concubine, she criticized my manners and the way I spoke. And that is who I would have become if the master, that ugly dog’s ass, had not ordered me one day to take off my clothes so he could be the first to break me open. I was nine. I could not refuse. That was my life, to obey the master because my mistress obeyed him. When it was over, I was bleeding and could barely stand from the near-fainting pain. He told me to get hot towels for him. He made me clean him, to wipe away all trace of me.

Whenever he visited my mistress, I would be standing outside the room, waiting. I could hear her teasing high voice, his low murmuring, “This is good, this is good. Your moist folds are like a white lotus.” He was always talking about his sex organs and hers. He would grunt, and she uttered little cries that sounded like fear and girlish delight. Then they would fall silent, and I would run and get the hot towels, so that by the time she called for them, I could bring them in immediately.

I would pretend I could not see the master behind the gauzy bed curtain. I saw the shadows of my mistress as she washed him. She would throw the dirty towels on the floor, and I rushed forward to take them away, nauseated by the smell of the two of them. I then had to return and wait. When my mistress left, I went in, and he lay me on my back or stomach, and he did what he wanted, and sometimes I fainted from the pain. So that became part of my circumstances, to open my legs, to bring him hot towels, to remove my scent from him, to return to my room, and to rub his scent off me.

When I was eleven, I became pregnant, and that was how my mistress discovered her husband had been rutting me. She did not blame me, and she did not blame her husband. Many husbands did this to maids. She simply said I was no longer suitable to be her son’s concubine. Another maid brought me a broth and she put this in a long glass tube and stuck this inside me. I had no idea what she was doing until I felt it pierce me and I screamed and screamed as other servants held me down. Later, I had terrible cramps for two days and then a bloody ball fell out and I fainted. When I woke I was feverish and in terrible agony. My insides were turned outside and were so swollen, I thought the baby had not fallen out but was growing. I found out later the maid had sewn me up with the hair from a horse’s tail so that I could break open again like a virgin. But now pus was growing where a baby would have been.

During my fever days, I could not rise out of bed. I sometimes heard people say that my color was green and that I would soon die. I had seen a green corpse once and imagined myself looking the same. I would be afraid of myself. “Green ghost, green ghost,” I kept saying. The master came to see me, and I saw him through the slits of my eyes and gave a scream of fear. I thought he was going to rape me again. He looked nervous and said soothing words, telling me he had always tried to take good care of me and that I should remember that he never beat me. He thought I was so stupid I would be grateful and not come back to haunt him as a ghost. I had already told myself I would. A doctor came, and my arms and legs were tied down before he inserted sacs of medicine, which felt like burning rocks. I begged them to let me die instead. The fever stopped after a week, and my mistress let me stay another month until my insides were no longer outside, and the horsetail stitches no longer showed. And then she sold me to a brothel. Luckily, it was the first-class house where she had worked before the merchant took her as his concubine. The madam inspected me, top to bottom, and poked around the opening of my vagina. She was satisfied that I was unbroken.

They named me Dewdrop. Everyone said I was very clever because I quickly learned to sing and recite poetry. The men admired me but did not touch. They said I was precious, a little flower—all sorts of things that made me truly happy for the first time in my life. I had been so starved for affection I could not eat enough of it. When I was thirteen, my defloration was sold to a rich scholar. I was fearful that he would discover the truth about my virginity. What if he could tell I had been sewn up? He would be angry and beat me to death, and the madam would be furious, and she, too, would beat me to death. But what could I do?

When the scholar took my hips, I clamped my legs together out of fear that he would soon discover the truth. But when the scholar finally broke through the horsetail thread, it was just as painful as the first time and I screamed and cried genuine tears. Blood poured out. Later, when the scholar inspected the damage he had caused, he pulled out the loose hair of a horse’s tail. “Ah, we meet again,” he said. So this was not the first time the ruse had been played on him. I shivered and cried, telling him the master of my old house ordered me to fetch hot towels when I was nine, and that my mistress sewed me up after the baby fell out. I babbled about my fever and how I nearly became a green ghost.

He stood and got dressed. The maid brought in hot towels, and he said he would clean himself. He seemed sad. After he left, I waited for the madam to come into the room and beat me. I imagined I would be driven out of the house. Instead, she came to me and inspected the blood on the bed. “So much!” she exclaimed in a pleased voice. She gave me a dollar and said the scholar had given this extra gift for me. He was a very kind man, and I was sorry to hear that he died a few years later of a high fever.

So that is what it is like to be kidnapped and later taken to the underworld of the living. You are not the only one. And one day, whether your defloration happens here or in the arms of a lover or a husband, you probably won’t need a horse’s tail to be part of your marriage bed.

A MONTH AFTER Magic Gourd told Mother Ma the pox story, the old lady turned for the worst, and everyone agreed she might not last to Spring Festival. Not only did her fingers remain black, but her legs also took on the same hue. Because of the story Magic Gourd had made up, she truly feared she had the pox. We did not know what she really had. Maybe it was the liver pills. Perhaps it really was the pox.

But then the old bustard’s maid came to us in the common room when we were having our breakfast. While carrying out her mistress’s chamber pot, she said, she stumbled and some of the piss hit her face and went into her mouth. 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.”