We let go of our leaves and watch them swirl down in slow circles, hitting the water at the same moment. The leaves glide against each other, push apart, and come together again as they’re carried along by the gentle current. They float toward us and then under the bridge. Meiling grabs my hand and pulls me to the other side. We lean out over the balustrade, waiting for our leaves to appear.
“Look! Mine’s first!” she cries. She raises her eyebrows. “But yours is close. Shall we do it again?”
I completely forget myself as we drop flower petals and leaves off one side of the bridge and rush to the other side to see whose will come through first. Sometimes Meiling wins; sometimes I win.
The sounds of voices interrupt our fun. Grandmother Ru and Midwife Shi stand together in the colonnade. Suddenly I’m aware of just how dirty I am—my hands, my clothes. I look down and see that my embroidered silk shoes are ruined. The midwife grins. My grandmother frowns. Then the two women lean their heads together and speak in low voices.
Meiling once again takes my hand. “My mother and I will be back to see Lady Huang. If you don’t find me, I’ll come looking for you.”
Her boldness inspires me. “I hope so,” I say. “I really hope so.”
Then she skips down the bridge and runs to her mother.
“You could try to act more like a lady,” the midwife says.
The message received and understood, Meiling walks carefully and slowly, as though she were a girl of high standing. At the last minute, she glances back at me. I feel something pass between us. As Meiling and her mother step out of sight, I miss her already.
Grandmother claps her hands. From somewhere—the shadows it feels like—Poppy and Inky emerge. They must have been watching Meiling and me all along.
“Give her a bath,” Grandmother orders. “Then bring her to the pharmacy.” To me, she adds, “We will discuss what you learned today and other things too.”
An hour later, I’m seated across from my grandmother. “Do you want to help me make Drink to Quiet the Fetus?” When I nod, she says simply, “Good.” She opens drawers and cabinets, pulling out things I don’t recognize. “This is special large-head atractylodis from Hangzhou,” she says, holding up something brown and dried. “We’re going to soak it in rice water, which will help the healing properties enter Lady Huang’s body through her Spleen and Stomach meridians to dry the Damp, harmonize the Stomach, and prevent miscarriage. Here’s another herb that we’ll prepare in vinegar. It helps to remove toxic Heat, invigorate Blood, and control pain.”
I don’t fully comprehend the things she says, but I’m able to follow her directions. She lets me pour the rice water and later the vinegar. She shows me how to gaze into the liquid to judge its strength by the depth of the color. She asks me to hold the sieve as she pours both mixtures into an earthenware pot. I’d like her to tell me more about what the different roots and herbs are and their purpose, but her thoughts are elsewhere.
“Having babies is central to every woman’s life,” she says. “But every pregnancy is a crisis of life or death. Will the mother survive and continue to run the household? Will the baby survive to become a descendant?”
When we’re done and Inky has taken the formula to Lady Huang, Grandmother directs me to sit across from her. “Your grandfather has spoken about teaching you his medicine. I look at it differently. Your mother died because no male doctor could properly examine or treat her.” She silently taps her fingertips on her thighs, seemingly struggling with what to say. “It is not the custom to teach hereditary medicine to a daughter, who will eventually marry out and take her knowledge with her. Your grandfather’s type of medicine is different. It can be learned from a book, by anyone.”
“But you learned, and you married out.”
“I did,” she admits, but doesn’t expand on how that came to pass. Her fingers give a decisive thump on her thighs. “I cannot say if you will be a good student or not, but I am willing to teach you my medicine. Doctors, whether male or female, call it fuke—medicine for women. Are you interested?”
My mouth spreads into a wide smile. “Yes, Grandmother Ru.”
She hands me a small book. “This volume contains formulas and treatments more than two hundred years old. Start by memorizing the first three formulas. Once you can recite them without mistake, you will come to me ready to enumerate the problems for which they are most efficacious and how best to employ them.”
I take the book and read the title: Excellent Prescriptions for Women by Chen Ziming. Still beaming, I draw the volume to my chest. “Thank you, Grandmother.”
“Don’t thank me yet. When I was your age, I was already helping my parents in their practice. We have much work to do, so stop grinning! Nothing is assured. We will have to see how well you learn. Ultimately, I will decide if you are worthy of absorbing all I know.”
A Slippery Birth
I can now get around the Mansion of Golden Light without help from Inky or another servant. The same cannot be said for the inner chambers, where I feel lost and out of place. Each wife’s position is set by how close her husband is by blood to Grandfather. Higher-placed wives treat the wives of Grandfather’s second cousins as though they were rotten turtle eggs. The concubines are even more biting. Grandfather alone has three of them. I don’t know what names they were given by their families, but here they are called White Jade, Green Jade, and Red Jade. White Jade is the most treasured, because white jade is the rarest and most beautiful form of the stone, but all three are higher placed than Miss Zhao, whom they all seem to enjoy taunting. She is new to the household and vulnerable despite being Yifeng’s birth mother.
When White Jade asks, “Now that Respectful Lady is dead, will you become the wife?” Miss Zhao blushes. She wants this very badly.
Green Jade is even more direct. “If your master truly cared for you,” she observes, “then he would have elevated you already. Like all of us, we belong to the man who bought us. We live where we’re told to live, and we do what we’re told to do.”
I try to block out the conversation by chanting to myself the formula I’m supposed to be learning: Decoction of Four Gentlemen—ginseng root, large-head atractylodis rhizome, licorice root, and poria mushroom. We call licorice root the Emperor of Herbs, because it mixes well with other ingredients and fights against poisons in all forms, whether metal, stone, or herb.
Red Jade cuts through my concentration. “You might think you’re better than we are, but you aren’t. Can you tell me you weren’t born to a poor family? Can you say that your father didn’t sell you to a Tooth Lady so you could become a Thin Horse when you were still so young you’d have no memories?”
Miss Zhao stiffens. “I remember my parents.”
Red Jade snorts. “But can you pretend you weren’t raised in a stable filled with other Thin Horses? The Tooth Lady fed and sheltered you. She taught you to write poems, sing, and play instruments. She bound your feet. You were told that if you did well, you would be sold to become a concubine or a courtesan.”
White Jade nods knowingly. “Yes, like all of us, you are from Yangzhou—the city said to have the most beautiful women in the world. We share something else as well. Whether animal or woman, we are a man’s possessions.”
Soon enough bitterness bubbles from the lips of other concubines in their circle.
“I’ve given birth to three children, but not one can call me Mama. That is reserved for the wife—”
“My husband’s wife could kill me, and she would not be punished by anyone in this household, let alone by the courts—”
“Just you watch, Miss Zhao,” White Jade needles. “Your master will bring someone new home with him—younger, prettier. It happens to all of us.”
With that, Miss Zhao leaves abruptly, making excuses as she walks out the door. I feel for her, in a new home, with no friends, and my father away in Beijing. As soon as she’s gone, though, the gossip really gets going.
“She’s skinny.”
“I don’t care for how she paints her lips.”
“Her gowns are lovely in their own way, but they reveal too much of where she came from.”
I try to focus—the Decoction of Four Substances: angelica root, lovage, white peony root, and…—but it’s hopeless.
While the three Jades happily unite to torture Miss Zhao, they are even meaner to each other. It seems Grandfather has been spending recent evenings with Red Jade, leaving his other two concubines feeling irritable and insecure.
“I serve him food I make with my own hands,” White Jade boasts.
Green Jade brags, “He likes the way I play the pipa.”